India?s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Reuters 

WASHINGTON: Kashmiri and Sikh protesters waved flags and chanted slogans against India?s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he arrived at the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump.

"We are here today basically to raise awareness of the human rights violations that are happening in India," Jatinder Grewal, Director of Sikhs for Justice told CBN News.

Over the past few years under Modi?s rule, conditions for Sikhs, Christians and other religious minorities have grown difficult.

"When Modi came to power in 2014 he promised the Christians and other minorities that he would allow freedom of religion, he lied," said Pastor Rob Rotola who also protested outside the White House, "The only people that have favoured status in India are not all people, they are the Hindu nationalists. It?s the far extremist party that tends to violence. And as these groups have ramped up the violence, the police state and the government looks the other way, and is allowing it to happen."

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"I am here to speak for the Indian church," said Bishop John Lutembeak, a missionary in India, "The Indians who are being persecuted by Prime Minister Modi, by a group of radical Hindus. Christians have been killed, women have been raped and Hindu is taking more part in India and it wants to turn India into a Hindu nation and this is what has brought us here to protest, to show that world that even the conversation that President Trump will have with Prime Minister Modi should put into consideration that tolerance of different religious. Let not one Hindu religion be over other religions and begin to persecute them."

Trump and Modi held a meeting at the White House on Monday, and called on "all nations to resolve territorial and maritime disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law."