On India’s 79th Independence Day, an SOS: Let mass atrocities not become inevitable

India will celebrate the 78th anniversary of Independence on August 15. On the eve of Independence in 1947, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in his famous tryst with destiny speech, declared, “All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations.”

The Constitution adopted in 1950 followed up by committing to secure for all its citizens, justice and equality, and to promote among them, fraternity and the unity and integrity of the nation.

However, 11 years of Bharatiya Janata Party rule at the Centre and decades in the majority of states have put paid to that promise. Since the BJP took power nationally in 2014, it is increasingly being established that religious minorities in India have been reduced to second-class citizens, denied their rights to life and liberty, as well as socio-cultural, economic and political rights.

India’s pivot to being a partisan state that no longer speaks for over 20% of its population, but rather actively marginalises them, has been both precipitous as it has been astonishing.

Muslims have faced the brunt of the abuses, discrimination and dehumanisation. In 2024, a civil-society report listed these instances against Muslims: 21 killings by the police, 61 cases of “half encounters” by the police that did not result in the deaths of targets, several instances of arbitrary home demolitions and thousands of arbitrary arrests. There were 14 cases of lynchings of Muslims.

Another group reported 59 episodes of hate crimes and riots against Muslims.

Alongside, Muslim educational, charitable and religious institutions were targeted. Muslim have had weaker access to livelihoods and participation in public life. Their religious and cultural freedoms have been restricted.

Most violations occurred in BJP-ruled states – Jammu and Kashmir (now a union territory), Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Manipur, Uttarakhand, among others.

A panel of international experts who have prosecuted international crimes at Rwanda and other United Nations tribunals had concluded in 2022, after examining evidence of some of the gravest anti-Muslim violations in India from 2019, that in BJP-ruled states, the evidence pointed to the abuses being systematic and organised as state policy. The situation has only worsened since.

Much of this deterioration is enabled by hardening anti-minority rhetoric. Dehumanising language, many being incitements to violence and discrimination, provided the backdrop as well as licence for anti-minority abuse.

One civil society report recorded 1,165 in-person hate speech events in 2024, targeting religious minorities, mostly Muslims, a 74.4% increase from 2023. Senior BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, have played a crucial role in driving anti-Muslim hate. Despite United Nations experts expressing alarm, the trend has continued.

That this emboldens would-be perpetrators was made apparent after the killings of 26 men in Pahalgam by terrorists in April. Researchers have documented 64 instances of hate speech events across nine states in just 10 days following the atrocity.

Hindutva groups such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, Sakal Hindu Samaj and Hindu Raksha Dal conducted a coordinated nationwide campaign of hate and intimidation, calling for violence against and social exclusion and economic boycott of Muslims, the report concluded.

The real-life consequences of this hate campaign have been grim. In the period since the attacks and Operation Sindoor, there have been increased extrajudicial killings of Muslims by the police, murders by Hindu vigilantes, several assaults and over 5,000 instances of Muslims being arbitrarily detained or arrested.

The authorities have arbitrarily demolished homes across several states. A United Nations expert on housing said, “India is leading the world in illegal home demolitions, especially affecting minorities and vulnerable groups.”

Assam has been especially active in persecuting Muslims. There has been a major escalation of demolitions and evictions of Muslims in the state in recent months. Even the United Nations Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination has taken note of this, demanding a de-escalation of the situation.

In addition to this, several Indian Muslims have been illegally pushed into to Bangladesh, as Human Rights Watch has reported. Alarmed by reports of Muslim Rohingya refugees in India being forced into the sea from Indian navy vessels, United Nations experts launched an inquiry of the “unconscionable, unacceptable acts”.

Fears of mass denationalisation and disenfranchisement of Indian Muslims have been fuelled by the voter verification drive in Bihar, ahead of state elections there scheduled for November. Citizens groups have noted the many policy and procedural weaknesses of the process and that the election officials seem captive to BJP’s executive control.

As it turns out, 2025 is also when the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh is celebrating its centenary year.

The Sangh, geared to promoting Hindutva, claims to be the largest socio-cultural voluntary organisation in the world. VD Savarkar, Hindutva’s foremost ideologue, believed that India was under threat because of the presence of non-Hindus. Savarkar called on Hindus to unite and reclaim their supremacy, and advocated violence against Muslims as the means to achieve that goal.

MS Golwalkar, the Sangh’s chief from 1940 to 1973, offered “foreign elements”, Indian Muslims and Christians, in RSS-speak, two options: “Either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow it to do so, and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race.”

Modi has been a life-time member and was a former official of the Sangh, before he became chief minister of Gujarat in 2002. He has credited Golwalkar for grooming him to political leadership.

Hindutva’s current popularity builds upon decades of work by frontline affiliates of the Sangh, which according to observers, play major roles in BJP electoral campaigns, besides undertaking a number of other activities in service of Hindutva mission. Together they make up the “Sangh Parivar” or RSS family.

Along with its sympathisers in the vast and powerful legacy and social media that form its extensive propaganda machine, the Sangh Parivar works in tandem with the BJP in power to realise Hindutva’s grim objectives for India’s 300 million minorities.

In these 11 years the BJP has also turned a vibrant democratic India into a “repressed” “electoral autocracy”, in the categorisation of several international organisations.

The BJP’s aggressive majoritarianism is also degrading India’s global standing, as the world’s largest democracy with the promise to provide moral and political leadership to resolve the world’s most significant challenges.

Yet the BJP’s support among its core remains at all-time high, and the Opposition is too self-serving and disorganised to mount any serious challenge.

As we reflect on what India has become, it is important not to ignore the lessons arising from the genocide underway in Gaza: that if a people are dehumanised long enough, it paves the way for mass atrocities down the line. The absence of any outrage in Israel and among western audiences about the prolonged brutalities against Palestinians is because of their long portrayal as terrorists, barbarians – animal-like, not human.

It is incumbent on all right-thinking Indians and the international community not to let the abuses and dehumanisation of Muslims in India be normalised, and for atrocities to become an inevitability.

The international crimes in Gaza have been many years in the making – as they were in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia and Myanmar, among others. In India too, we will be failing if we do not acknowledge and act on the early signs of the atrocities. That will perhaps also go to save the soul of India as a just and equal nation.

Sajjad Hassan is a researcher and organiser on human rights and dignity.