The London-based rights body in its annual report for 2015-16 warned against worldwide assault of freedoms with many governments "brazenly" breaking international law, including an "intensified crackdown on key freedoms" in India.
"Scores of artists, writers and scientists returned national honours in protest against what they said was a climate of growing intolerance," the report said on India.
"Authorities clamped down on civil society organisations critical of official policies, and increased restrictions on foreign funding. Religious tensions intensified, and gender and caste-based discrimination and violence remained pervasive. Censorship and attacks on freedom of expression by hardline Hindu groups grew," it added.
"What is heartening is that there has been opposition to the erosion of rights. The widespread outrage around incidents of religious intolerance, a Supreme Court ruling striking down an oppressive law on free speech online, the many public protests against ill-conceived reforms to land acquisition laws - these offer hope that 2016 can be a better year for human rights in India."
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Amnesty rebuked Indian authorities for "failing to prevent many incidents of religious violence, and sometimes contributing to tensions through polarising speeches and pervasive caste-based discrimination and violence".
Laws which did not meet international standards on freedom of expression were used to persecute human rights defenders and others, the report said.
It also highlighted "restrictive foreign funding laws" being used to repress NGOs critical of the government.
The Ministry of Home Affairs cancelled the FCRA
registration of thousands of NGOs for violating provisions of the law. In April, the Ministry ordered that it would have to approve foreign funds from certain identified donor organisations.
In reference to violence against women, it said: "Although nearly 322,000 crimes against women, including over 37,000 cases of rape, were reported in 2014, stigma and discrimination by police officials and authorities in India continued to deter women from reporting sexual violence, and most states still lacked standard operating procedures for the police to address violence against women."
In another positive development, it lauded a historic peace framework agreement reached in Northeastern India between the government and the "influential armed group National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah faction)".
Globally, Amnesty International warns of an insidious and creeping trend undermining human rights which has come from governments deliberately attacking, under-funding or neglecting institutions that have been set up to help protect our rights.