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A Genocide Watch Blog Series
FILE- A woman holds a placard during a protest against the killing of a Muslim man in Belagavi district of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, in Bengaluru, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File)
Introduction
Genocide is not a sudden event. Genocide Watch views genocide as a non-linear process that develops in ten often overlapping stages that are predictable but not inevitable. In India, all the early warning signs of genocide against Muslims are present. The of threat of genocide must be addressed quickly and proactively.
Genocide Watch’s ten stages framework for recognizing the warning signs of genocide prescribes preventive measures to be taken at each stage. This blog series underscores the fact that genocide in India is not inevitable. Genocide can and must be prevented. Genocide Watch calls for immediate preventive action by the Indian federal and state governments, international organizations, Indian civil society organizations, and India’s allies.
In a ten-part blog series, we will explain the ten unfolding stages of genocide observable in India. We will provide actionable recommendations to prevent genocide in India.
Part 1 of this series will provide the historical context for genocidal violence against Muslims in India. It analyzes how the first stage of Genocide, Classification, is unfolding in India.
Historical Context
Religious, ethnic, and caste violence in India today must be situated in the historical context of Moghul conquest, British colonial rule, and Hindu religious nationalism. Hindu-Muslim relations in India are still fractured by the schisms that led to genocidal massacres during partition in 1947.
From independence to 1992, Hindutva (Hindu supremacist) organizations like the R.S.S. were on the periphery of Indian politics. Hindutva is a fusion of Hindu fascism, fundamentalism, and nationalism.
In 1992, the demolition of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, began the Hindutva movement’s rise in the Bharatiya Janata Party and its takeover of Indian politics. Hindu nationalists claimed that the mosque was built on the site of a destroyed Hindu temple. They claimed the site was the birthplace of the god, Ram. They have now built a huge new Hindu temple dedicated to Ram on the site of the destroyed mosque.
The demolition of the medieval-era Babri Mosque by Hindu mobs in the north Indian town of Ayodhya in 1992 triggered some of the deadliest religious riots [File: Getty Images]
The destruction of the mosque was an extraordinary victory for Hindu nationalism. The demolition set off Hindutva riots against Muslims. The violence it sparked across India polarized society and politics along religious lines.
Taking up the ideological commitments of Hindutva, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had only received two seats in the Lok Sabha (Parliament of India) in the general election of 1984, went on to win majorities and lead coalition governments in 1998, 1999, 2014, and 2019.
No single person was more influential in the rise of Hindu militancy in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), the ideological founder of Hindutva. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar rose to fame for his campaign to "Hinduise Politics and Militarise Hindudom.”
Savarkar yearned for restoration of an imaginary Hindu “Rashtra” (Nation.) He asserted that Muslims and Christians can never been true Indians since their holy lands are outside of India.
Savarkar imagined a once vibrant Hindu India that Muslims and Christians had destroyed. Such fantasies of a lost ideal past are often central to genocidal ideologies. Savarkar's mythic Hindu India and his notion of who might or might not be a “true Indian” became the ideology of M.S. Golwalkar, founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the extreme Hindu nationalist organization on which the BJP was built.
Savarkar's Hindutva ideology underlies the beliefs of the leadership of today's BJP . Prime Minister Narendra Modi hails Savarkar as a "true son of Mother India and an inspiration for many people."
Since 1992, India has had numerous massacres of Muslims by Hindu mobs. A euphemism is used to deny their genocidal nature. They are officially misnamed "communal riots." The euphemism is used to portray them as two-sided conflicts between religious groups. In fact, they have been one-sided genocidal massacres by Hindus against Muslims.
The most notable of these were the 1992-1993 Mumbai (Bombay) massacres (900 dead), the 2002 massacres in Gujarat (over 2000 dead, most of those killed were Muslims), and the 2020 Delhi massacres (53 dead).
Today, India is riven by 'us' versus 'them' hate speech. The pluralism enshrined in the Indian constitution is being systematically undermined and dismantled. The idea of unity in diversity is giving way to an authoritarian ideology of uniformity and Hindu domination.
India's pluralistic foundations, hundreds of ethnicities, religions, and languages, make uniformity contrary to Indian history and the Indian Constitution. The only way India could attain uniformity would be through dictatorship and totalitarian intolerance. Hindutva's history of violent, extra-constitutional action has made Hindu nationalism a grave threat to the secularism and protection of diversity in India's constitutional order.
Stage 1 : Classification
Classification is a fundamental process in genocide. Groups of people are designated as belonging to “us” versus “them” categories. The “Others” are represented as threats to the goals, ideals, and wellbeing of those belonging to the “us” category.
When one social group uses classification to exclude members of another group from the universe of its moral obligation, it becomes possible not only to classify its members, but to see its members as a threat to those who are included in "our" group. Classification is the process that reifies and expresses ethnocentrism, racism, religious bigotry, ideological intolerance, and exclusionary nationalism.
In the nation-state system, a primary way in which classification is operationalized is by excluding certain groups of people from citizenship. The salience of this process as an early warning sign for genocide can be seen in the historical context of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 in Nazi Germany. They stripped Jewish people of their German citizenship. They were a prologue to the Holocaust.
A recent example is how Rohingyas in Myanmar were stripped of their citizenship using Burma's 1982 citizenship law. This denial of citizenship stripped Rohingya of their civil and political rights. As “foreigners” they could be massacred and deported from Myanmar from 2012 to 2017, when hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were forcibly deported from Myanmar to Bangladesh through genocidal terror.
In India we are witnessing a similar process. With the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019, migrants who entered India from bordering countries on or before 31 December 2014 are afforded a pathway to Indian citizenship. However, only migrants who are Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Jain, Buddhist, or Christian are permitted to use this path to acquire citizenship. Muslims are excluded. Migrants belonging to most South Asian faiths, except Islam, are eligible for Indian citizenship.
Protesters demonstrate against India’s Citizenship Amendment Bill in New Delhi on December 21, 2019. Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times/Getty Images
The CAA’s invidious practice of classification excludes Muslims from the Indian national identity. The Citizenship Amendment Act is based on the Hindutva notion that Muslims are inherently non-Indian.
Immigrant Muslims are therefore unworthy to become Indian citizens.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was especially written to exclude Bengali Muslims who had migrated to Assam to escape from the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh.
The Citizenship Amendment Act was coupled with the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC requires the Indian government to create a register of all "Indian” Citizens. It requires everyone who claims citizenship to present documents to prove that they were Indians before 1971. Due to the CAA's differential treatment of Muslims and Hindus, when the NRC is applied, Hindus who do not have documents to prove their citizenship can obtain fast-track citizenship. Muslims cannot.
The NRC is intended to exclude refugees who fled the war in Bangladesh in 1971, most of whom are Muslim. Under the CAA and NRC, refugees who entered India after 1971 are classified as "foreigners.” They are subject to detention and deportation. Fourteen new detention prisons have already been constructed in Assam to hold Bengali refugees before they are deported to Bangladesh.
In 2024, the NRC has only been implemented in Assam. But nearly two million Muslims from Bangladesh have been classified as deportable “foreigners.” So far, few have been expelled from India. But they could be deported. Their Indian citizenship has been stripped from them.
India has over two hundred million Muslims. Muslims constitute fourteen percent of the Indian population.The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in its 2019 manifesto, promised a phased nation-wide implementation of the National Register of Citizens. Due to the differential treatment of Muslims and Hindus under the CAA and NRC, millions of Muslims could be deported. Millions more will be stripped of their citizenship and their constitutional rights.
Under the NRC, India will be divided by a nationwide system of classification by religion. India could even be turned into an apartheid state. Hindus would have full rights. Muslims, Christians, and others would only have second class status.
Classification is pervasive in India. Government police respond to Muslim protesters with violence and divisive language. Muslim children in school are labeled “Pakistani terrorists” by their classmates. The widespread Hindutva sentiment promoted by the BJP government is that Non-Hindus, specifically Muslims, are not truly Indian. They are instead the harmful “Other”.
In claiming that India is a monolithically Hindu Rashtra (Nation), Hindutva perpetuates the politics of "othering". In 1998, before the violent 2002 Gujarat riots, widely circulated leaflets and pamphlets propagated hatred for both Christians and Muslims.
One leaflet said, “We all are Hindus. Let us unite and stop the bloody tendencies of the Christians.” Similar leaflets targeting Muslims were widely distributed. This propaganda was intended to promote violence against the “other.” It demonstrates the intrinsically classificatory nature of Hindutva, the dominant ideology of the BJP. Exclusionary nationalism has taken control of India since Modi's election as Prime Minister in 2014.
Genocide Watch considers laws in India that target Muslims, exclude immigrants, repress dissidents, and promote the ideology of Hindutva as Classification, an early warning stage of Genocide.
Genocide Watch recommends :
The Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens Act must be repealed.
Hindutva leaders who incite hate crimes and genocide must be arrested and prosecuted.
The U.S should impose sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act on Indian leaders who violate religious freedom and human rights or who incite their followers to commit genocide.
Financial support should be provided to Indian organizations that work with Hindu and Muslim NGO leaders to overcome hatred, religious bigotry, and exclusion of immigrants.
In the next part of this report, Genocide Watch will examine how the second stage of Genocide, Symbolization, is occurring in India.
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