Public opinion of India is worsening in Australia and the United States, according to a new survey from America’s prestigious Pew Research Centre.
The poll was conducted between February and May this year and sought views on India from participants across 36 countries. Overall, global opinion on India was mixed, but increasingly unfavourable views of the nation were recorded across Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.
In Australia, 55% of people held unfavourable views of India while 44% held favourable ones, one percentage point lower than in 2025, but nine points lower than in 2023, when a majority of Australians last held a positive view of the country.
The decline comes after record-high levels of mass immigration from India, making Indians the largest foreign-born group in Australia for the first time this year, following a series of migrations deals signed by both major parties since 2022.
In the US, 50% of Americans held unfavourable views of India, with 45% holding favourable views and about 4% refusing to answer or saying they didn’t know. India’s favourability was four points lower than last year, and down from 51% in 2023.
Elsewhere in the Americas, 44% of Mexicans had unfavourable views of India, while 30% held favourable views and 26% didn’t know or refused to answer.
Similar results were seen in Argentina and Chile, with about 40% of people in both countries holding unfavourable views and 25% holding favourable ones. The remainder in both countries didn’t know or refused to answer the question.
This general trend was similar but less pronounced throughout Asia, where public opinion in Singapore and Japan was slightly more positive than not, whereas in South Korea and Malaysia it was more negative.
A number of other countries across Asia and the Middle East showed extreme anti-India sentiment, with 72% of Turks and 91% of Pakistanis holding unfavourable views of the country.
Europe was about the only region in the world where public opinion of India was broadly positive, with 63% of Germans and 71% of Britons holding favourable views of the country.
Pew research analyst Sneha Gubbala said public opinion of India in the US was at a two-decade low, and falling in most other parts of the world.
“These ratings are some of the lowest since 2008, when we began asking this question. The share of Americans with a favourable opinion of India has been mostly declining since 2023, when 51% expressed this view,” she said.
“Outside of Europe, views of India tend to be less favourable now than in 2023. In South Korea, favourability has decreased from 59% in 2023 to 44% in 2026.”
The Pew results echo similar findings from Australia’s Scanlon Foundation and the group’s 2025 Mapping Social Cohesion survey, which found increasing negative attitudes over the last three years towards Hindus, Sikhs and other non-Christian religious groups.
Header image: Left, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with US President Donald Trump. Australian PM Anthony Albanese with Mr Modi (PMO).
