IPT 2.2 | Conclusion

Targeted attacks on media critical of the government’s policies, and to media and Internet freedom:  

• Journalists, human rights defenders advocating for the rights of minority communities continued to come under attacks by state and non-state actors. This targeting includes threats and acts of physical violence, as well as online abuse. Commenting on the role of BJP aligned online accounts in online abuse against journalists, especially women journalists in India, The International Centre for Journalists observed in its recent report: “The abuse routinely feature threats of death and rape. They are disinformation-laced, and they display characteristics of orchestration. They are also deeply misogynistic and redolent of religious bigotry”. 
• The raids of BBC’s offices two weeks after the international media house released a two-part documentary on Prime Minister Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat violence that resulted in the killings of some 20000 persons, mostly Muslims, when he was the state’s Chief Minister.    
• The Supreme Court of India noting in April the cavalier and clandestine manner in which the government raised the claim of national security to ban Kerala based MediaOne news channel which had been denied security clearance by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2022.  
• Clampdown in Punjab, including Internet blockade and restrictions on phone services, in the context of police action against a Sikh activist accused of leading separatist movement, and an incident reported of a Sikh man beaten by a mob.   

Erasing India’s diverse past by national school regulators making broad changes to textbooks taught in senior classes, removing reference to Muslim kings and queens, and to critique of  against Hindu nationalist mobilisation during India’s Independence movement.   

India continues to fall in its democratic rankings, an alarming trend with general elections a year away. Sweden based Varieties of Democracy report 2023 downgraded India to an ‘electoral democracy’ calling it ‘one of the worst autocratisers in the last 10 years’. The annual Freedom House Report for 2022 graded India as ‘Partly free’, on account of the country’s discriminatory policies and persecution of Muslims. India’s civil society space is classified as ‘Repressed’ by the CIVICUS monitor for 2022. India’s Press Freedom ranking by Reporters Without Borders continues to fall with the repression of journalists, and is ranked 150 out of 180 countries for 2022. Together, these rankings show the continuing fall in India’s democratic credentials and need an urgent attention by the international community to ensure the world’s largest democracy remains so. 

Yet India has refused to acknowledge these trends. In March, India’s 4th UPR cycle outcomes were adopted, with India accepting over two-thirds of the 339 recommendations and making note of the remaining. However, the country was very selective in supported recommendations made on the rights of religious minorities, notable exception being recommendations on legislations concerning the rights of religious minorities, including suspending anti-conversion laws, preventing sectarian and targeted religious violence, condemning and preventing hate speech against Muslims, withdrawal of AFSPA in Kashmir, among others.       

The edition of the India Persecution Tracker demonstrates the continuing and dangerous rise of violence against India’s religious minorities.  The persecution is setting in, with BJP-ruled state and affiliated private groups, all evidently working to a plan, and with requisite capacity, to inflict without let, on Muslims and periodically Christians, a barrage of a million cuts, physically, socially, economically and mentally.  Authorities – law enforcement, prosecution, judiciary – have abdicated, willingly or unwillingly, to a point where no remedy seems available and dissent is impossible. The rising trend of violence, abuses and discrimination points to the risk of upscaling of violence, should a trigger event present itself. It becomes imperative then on the international community to hold the Indian government accountable to fulfil its obligations on the responsibility to protect its citizens, including religious minorities and other vulnerable groups.