India inverts the high-prevalence cases: only ~13.5–16% of men are circumcised, because the Hindu majority doesn't — circumcision (khatna) is a Muslim-MINORITY practice, and precisely because of that it functions as a marker of Muslim identity. Prevalence is low everywhere (Mizoram 2.5% → UP ~19%) except Muslim-majority Lakshadweep (94.5%). Sikhism prohibits it.
"Without khatna he is considered a Hindu" (Sahay 2014) — and that identity-marking has been weaponised in communal violence, from Partition (1947) to the April 2025 Pahalgam attack, where men were disrobed to check circumcision before being killed by religion. India has no statute; a 2023 Kerala HC PIL to criminalise it was dismissed ("the Court is not a law-making body").
Despite a large HIV epidemic (low ~0.2% prevalence), VMMC is NOT in India's strategy — NACO declined trials in 2009 as "a sensitive matter," India isn't a WHO priority country, and the ecological correlation is weak. Documented harm (2022 Kashmir series, 34 mishaps, no deaths) clusters around non-medical "half doctors." Honest caveats: two separate prevalence estimates; specific HIV figures not re-verified; the Dawoodi Bohra FEMALE cutting (also "khatna") is strictly separate, not conflated.
Switch to the in-depth article for the full picture and sources (#215–222).
India inverts almost every other country in this index. Where Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey are high-prevalence countries where nearly every boy is circumcised, India is a low-prevalence country — only about one man in seven — because the overwhelming Hindu majority does not circumcise at all. Here circumcision is not the norm but a minority marker: a practice of India's Muslims, and, precisely because of that, a sign of who is and is not a Muslim. That fact has, at its darkest, turned a foreskin into evidence in communal killings.
The sources here are numbered references (#215–222) in the references library and against the India country profile. Two things are handled carefully: the prevalence figures (two different estimates, kept separate) and the word "khatna" itself — which in India denotes both male circumcision and the Dawoodi Bohra community's female genital cutting. This page is about male circumcision; the female practice is a strictly separate matter and is not conflated with it.
A minority practice in a non-circumcising country
Estimates of how many Indian men are circumcised sit around the low teens: a modelled figure of 13.5% (Morris et al. 2016) and a survey figure of 16% from the government's National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4, 2015–16). The two come from different methods and are best read side by side rather than averaged. What matters is the pattern beneath the number: circumcision is rare across almost all of India — from 2.5% in Mizoram to about 19% in Uttar Pradesh — and near-universal only in the Muslim-majority union territory of Lakshadweep (94.5%). It is, almost entirely, a practice of India's Muslim minority, who perform khatna (or sunnat) on boys in childhood. The Hindu majority does not circumcise, and Sikhism actively prohibits it.
Circumcision as a mark of who you are
Because it tracks one community so tightly, circumcision in India carries a meaning it does not carry in countries where everyone is cut: it is a marker of religious identity. A multi-centre study put it plainly — "with the circumcision done… the person is accepted as a Muslim; without khatna he is considered a Hindu," and "an individual was said to be a Muslim from the day he was circumcised." To be circumcised, in the Indian social imagination, is to be Muslim.
That identity-marking function has a grim history. In the communal violence of the 1947 Partition, and again as recently as the April 2025 Pahalgam attack, men have been disrobed so that their circumcision status could be checked — and used to decide who lived and who died, by religion. It is the most extreme illustration of what it means for an irreversible mark made on a child's body to double as a permanent badge of communal belonging.
No law — and a court that declined to make one
India has no statute regulating or restricting non-therapeutic male circumcision of minors. The question did reach a court: in February 2023 a group called "Non-Religious Citizens," with five others, filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Kerala High Court asking it to declare non-therapeutic circumcision of Muslim boys illegal — a cognizable, non-bailable offence violating the child's Article 21 rights — and to direct the government to pass a ban. On 29 March 2023 the court dismissed the petition, holding that "the Court is not a law-making body" and that the petitioners had not substantiated their case. The very fact that the petition asked the government to enact a prohibition confirms that none exists. (Separately, India's Dawoodi Bohra female genital cutting — also colloquially "khatna" — has been litigated at the Supreme Court; that is a different practice and is not addressed here.)
A large HIV epidemic — but circumcision is not the answer India chose
India has one of the world's largest HIV epidemics in absolute numbers, yet a low overall prevalence (around 0.2%). Despite the international evidence that voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) reduces female-to-male HIV transmission in high-prevalence settings, India has never adopted it. As far back as 2009 the head of the National AIDS Control Organisation "flatly refused to consider" circumcision trials, calling it "a sensitive matter" — unsurprising given the practice's charged identity meaning. India is not on the WHO/UNAIDS list of VMMC priority countries (all of which are in sub-Saharan Africa), and Indian ecological data shows only a weak, inconsistent circumcision–HIV correlation across states. In India, circumcision is about religion and identity, not public health — and the public-health establishment has been careful to keep it that way.
When it goes wrong
The documented harm in India fits the pattern seen elsewhere: it clusters around non-medical operators. A 2022 study at a Kashmir medical college treated 34 circumcision mishaps in Muslim boys — a third of them massive bleeding caused, in the authors' words, by "half doctors" — alongside incomplete circumcisions and glans injuries. All were treated successfully and none died. It is a single-hospital series of referred complications, not a national rate, but it points to the same lesson recurring across this index: the danger lies in untrained provision, and the procedure is never entirely without risk.
The honest bottom line
India is the mirror image of the high-prevalence cases: a country where most men are intact, and where being circumcised means something precisely because most are not. For a bodily-autonomy lens, India shows the practice at its most socially loaded — an irreversible childhood mark that is simultaneously a religious obligation for one community and, in the worst moments of India's communal history, a death sentence administered on sight.
Compiled from a June 2026 deep-research pass: prevalence (Morris et al. 2016, modelled; NFHS-4 2015–16 via Kenyon, F1000Research 2019); the religious-identity-marker finding (Sahay et al., PLoS One 2014; Madhivanan & Krupp, IJME 2009); the 2023 Kerala High Court PIL dismissal (ThePrint/PTI and corroborating outlets); the HIV/VMMC stance (IJME 2009; Kenyon 2019; HIV/AIDS-in-India overview); and documented harm (Hassan et al., Afr J Paediatr Surg 2022). Two prevalence estimates are reported separately. Specific HIV prevalence/PLHIV figures were not re-verified and are not asserted. The Dawoodi Bohra female genital cutting (also "khatna") is a strictly separate practice and is not conflated here. See references #215–222.
