IAMC Report: State of Religious Minorities in India (April 2022)
As foreign governments and international human rights bodies, including the United Nations, are raising concerns over India’s treatment of its minorities, hate crimes and organised attacks against the Muslim community have only become more frequent. Professor Gregory Stanton, founding president of the research and advocacy organization Genocide Watch, has already placed India at the alarmingly high 8th stage of genocide. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government have not only turned a deaf ear to the escalating violence but are also accused of providing impunity to the Hindu extremist groups responsible, many of which have links to BJP’s parent organisation, the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The increasing hate speeches and violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and Adivasis in April reveals a more radical shift in the supremacist vocabulary of India’s Hindu nationalists, particularly against the Muslim minority. This escalation of hate speech can be best described by analysing the shift from slogans such as “Desh ke ghaddaro ko, Goli maaro saalo ko” (shoot the bastard traitors of the country) to a more direct and pointed slogan such as “Jab Mulley Kaate Jayenge, Tab Ram Ram Chillayenge” (When Muslims are be slaughtered, they will shout ‘Ram Ram’).
The role of the police over the years, especially in April 2022, also indicates a more institutionalized form of violence mechanism being put into place in the Indian polity. This report shall elaborate more on the police’s role in not just downplaying the violent attacks against minorities but more often being an active participant in the violence. Discriminatory legislation against Muslims has increasingly been deployed in states where the BJP is in power. Laws that openly challenge the fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian constitution are aggressively used to push minorities further to the margins.
Here is the report:
April-2022