June 2023
This edition of the India Persecution Tracker provides an overview of the abuses and discriminations against religious minorities in India from April to May 2023.
Key trends from this period include:
Largescale ethnic violence in the Northeastern state of Manipur, and targetted attacks against the Christian population there. These have been ongoing since May 3rd, leaving 98, mostly Christians, dead, according to official count. Human Rights Watch has made credible allegations of police bias against the minority community.
An ongoing escalation of incitement and violence against Muslims in Uttarakhand is being reported. Muslim properties were marked, and posters put up threatening Muslim businesses to close down. Multiple shops owned by the community were attacked following incitement by right-wing actors, forcing many Muslims to flee (details in Section 4).
Senior leaders of the BJP, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are fuelling sectarianism and religious polarization, that feed anti-minority rhetoric, mostly in the context of BJP’s elections campaigns.
The acts of commissions and omissions by authorities are manifestations of the continuing backsliding of democracy in India. New evidence from the period reinforces these trends: India has fallen to 161/180 rank in Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 World Press Freedom Index. Recent inauguration of the Parliament building, with its consecration by Hindu seers, also brought home to the world the distance that India has travelled, of late, from its secular moorings.
2023 is the year of India’s presidency of G20, as India also continues to be on the Human Rights Council. 2023 is also the year the world observes the 75th anniversary of the UDHR. As Indian leaders are welcomed in foreign capitals, it is important for the international community to call out the violations in India, and remind the leaders of India’s obligations to protect its religious minorities; ensure justice and accountability; and put in place mitigating measures to prevent escalation.
Anti-minority violence, especially attacks against Muslims on the pretext of cow protection or preventing mixed-faith relationships, have continued, with dramatic expressions in the period under review of coordination between majoritarian vigilante groups and local authorities, in the violence as well as in the ensuing criminal proceedings (details in Section 3).
Watchdog institutions and those of justice are failing to enforce laws and regulations, so that the rule of law continues to break down further, at the cost of minority groups (details in Sections 7 and 8).
Concerns about the worsening violations and restrictions on religious minorities in India were voiced by the US State Department recently in its annual International Religious Freedom Report 2022, where it also referenced US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s listing of India among top countries with potential for mass killings.
International attempts to call out the violations, including a statement by the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues on India hosting a G20 tourism meeting in Kashmir in May, whilst people in the region suffer human rights violations and serious restrictions on basic freedoms, were met with condemnations by the Government of India, rather than honest reflection.
A rise in anti-Muslim hate speech and incitement to violence meeting the ‘top level’ of hate speech is widespread across several states, and has all the signs of being orchestrated, with members of the ruling BJP as active participants.
These among other trends, forced the hand of the Global Alliance for National Human Rights Institutions to defer the re-accreditation of India’s National Human Rights Commission for a second year in a row.
Our own analysis confirms these fears. Using the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes, we have been looking at risk factors, seen to point to mass violence against civilians. Early findings are showing that India meets several key indicators of risk of mass violence, including those on instability, ideology and actors; the capacity to commit atrocities; and weakened institutions. These contribute to the absence of mitigating factors to prevent the situation from escalating, putting especially vulnerable communities in specific geographies at grave risk.