hate crimes in india research paper

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Article Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Need to Invoke International Criminal Law
• 3. Probing India’s Engagement with International Criminal Law
• 4. Measuring the Recent Crimes in India against the Framework in Customary International Law for Crimes Against Humanity
• 5. Persecution and Murder as Relevant Crimes Against Humanity in Customary Law
• 6. The Search for Accountability within the Framework of International Criminal Law
• 7. Conclusion
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Hate Crimes Against Minorities in India: Locating the Value of an International Criminal Law Discourse?

PhD researcher, European University Institute, Italy. This piece was written during my time at Leiden Law School. I would like to thank Prof. William Schabas and the anonymous peer reviewer for their feedback on earlier versions of the article. The usual disclaimers apply. [ [email protected] ]

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Raghavi Viswanath, Hate Crimes Against Minorities in India: Locating the Value of an International Criminal Law Discourse?, Journal of International Criminal Justice , Volume 19, Issue 3, July 2021, Pages 611–642, https://doi.org/10.1093/jicj/mqab051

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Violence against Muslims and Dalits in India has drastically increased since the incumbent political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), came to power in 2014. Around 85% of perpetrators are alleged to have been associated either with the BJP or its sister Hindu organizations. In at least some cases, law enforcement agencies have been either indifferent or hostile to the victims. Such crimes may be considered as hate crimes, yet an understanding of this concept — as a tool which accounts for the criminality of individual acts while appreciating the systemic prejudices that motivate them — is lacking in Indian law. This warrants consideration of international criminal law, as a discourse which may complement and support domestic reform, since hate crimes constitute an inhumane affront to the values of dignity and liberty which underlie international core crimes. In this context, this article examines whether the elements of crimes against humanity, particular those of murder and persecution, may be applied to the recent events in India.

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Hate crimes in India

M mohsin alam bhat.

Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India

Violence driven by sectarian hostility is back on the centre stage of India’s public discourse. Since 2015, numerous incidents of hate violence have dramatically unfolded on the pages of both old and new media. While we still do not have any official numbers, data drawn from media sources indicates a considerable spike in incidents of individuals being targeted on the ground of their identity. 1 Many of these incidents have involved mobs attacking members of caste and religious minorities, often in the context of cow protection or inter-faith relationships. 2

India has had a long and tortuous history of sectarian mass violence. 3 The country was born in the throngs of the tragic Partition in 1947 that led to more than two million deaths. 4 Since then, there have been hundreds of incidents of what in India are often described as ‘communal riots’. 5 Sectarian mass violence is intimately related — in terms of causes and effects — to political ideologies and ambitions. 6 Violence has often accompanied sectarian mobilisation in the context of elections. 7 The most striking problem throughout this history has been state complicity in violence, and impunity of state and non-state actors. 8

While there is a need for more research, contemporary incidents of hate violence appear to follow these patterns. Most of the reported incidents have involved targeting of individuals rather than mass violence. But they continue to fit into, and often serve, a political ecosystem. 9 Incidents of violence have often preceded and followed political hate speech. 10 And as is the case with sectarian mass violence, the report on legal accountability here remains dismal. 11

This special issue seeks to make three contributions. First, it reckons with the contemporary. What are the historical antecedents of contemporary hate violence in India? In what ways is the present moment a continuation from the past? What new challenges for the law does it pose? Second, it seeks to advance the conversation around hate violence by taking legal categories seriously. What categories are best attuned to capture the personal and social harm of violence? How should we best interpret these legal categories to advance the ends of justice? Third, the issue takes the role of institutions seriously. How should we evaluate the role of criminal justice institutions in addressing — or maintaining — impunity? What are the best institutional strategies to address violence?

Situating the contemporary

This issue self-consciously situates itself in the current moment. On 1 April 2017, a mob of self-styled gau rakshaks (cow protectors) attacked and killed Pehlu Khan only a few kilometres from Delhi. 12 Pehlu, a 55-year-old dairy farmer, was transporting cows he had recently purchased from a cattle fair across the border in the State of Rajasthan. The video of the gruesome act that was soon circulating online generated both outrage and alarm. This, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident. Over the next many months, a series of violent incidents — with Dalit and Muslim victims — came to dominate the public discourse. In July 2018, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Deepak Misra, warned against India turning into a ‘mobocracy’. 13

These incidents of vigilantism and mob lynching were a reminder of the deep social cleavages in our society. They also soon exposed the limitations in the criminal justice system. Commentators and activists noted the failure of the police to rein in the perpetrators. They also noted the tremendous costs of this violence for the victims and survivors, as well as for the social fabric.

While this special issue was being finalised, Delhi was on fire. From December 2019, there were unprecedented protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. 14 The legislation introduced a religious test for citizenship for a country that many have always seen to be founded on secularism. 15 The inspiring mobilisation adopted the constitutional language of equality and inclusion in the face of tremendous political opposition. Just as the protests were dealing with the impact of COVID-19, shocking violence broke out in Delhi on 23 February 2020. The violence, initially directed at the protestors, spread like wildfire, resulting in more than 50 casualties and hundreds of displaced citizens.

The sectarian violence was a reminder that this special issue must foreground its immediate context even as it sought to intervene academically. This context made the intervention urgent and significant. The interviews with Harsh Mander and Teesta Setalvad — two of the foremost activists in the field — keep this issue grounded in the concrete realities of violence, impunity, and accountability. Both Mander and Setalvad chart the histories of sectarian violence in India — from the Partition violence, the various episodes of mass communal violence, to the recent spate of more localised incidents of lynching. They draw from their extensive experience of legal activism to explore the entrenched institutional problems that have inhibited legal accountability. They also offer the political causes and stakes of battling hate violence. Significantly, their experiments with legal interventions offer important resources to scholars and researchers interested in constructing social solidarities and litigation strategies.

Nikhil Roshan’s photo-essay further grounds this special issue. It highlights both the context as well as the ethical stakes involved. Through images and text, Roshan explores the horrors of the recent Delhi violence. He presents a vivid portrayal of what we may often miss in our study of hate violence. We do see the loss of life. But we may fail to see how everyday poverty and segregation enable violence. His contribution reminds us that overt violence breaks out from intractable — and often invisible —marginalisation.

Framing hate crime

The political and legal category that is conventionally used to describe sectarian violence in India is ‘communal riot’. As Setalvad points out in this issue, the use of the word ‘riot’ potentially mischaracterises the nature of the violence, which is often targeted against minorities and accompanied by state complicity. She argues that the category of ‘pogrom’ is better suited to describe the nature and impact of sectarian violence in the Indian context.

The Supreme Court’s July 2018 order, which acknowledged the harms of hate violence, laid down a series of guidelines to counter it. 16 The Court framed its intervention in terms of the category of ‘lynching’. 17 In their contribution to the issue, Bhat, Bajaj, and Kumar point out how — despite the Court’s extensive guidelines — police personnel have often operated with an interpretation of the category that runs counter to the stated objectives of the judicial order.

This discussion illuminates the value of paying close attention to the words we use to describe violence within and outside legal discourse. Joanna Perry’s contribution to the issue is a strong expression of this keen attention on how legal categories visibilise violence, create spaces of institutional redress, and travel transnationally. Perry argues in favour of adopting the hate crime framework in India, which in her view invites institutions to focus on protection for marginalised groups facing violence, rather than treating them as the problem. The core of her contribution offers an institutional and contextual account of how the hate crime concept has travelled into local national contexts. She notes that this can be best understood as a vernacularisation of the concept: national state and non-state actors adopt the concept creatively by often formulating ‘partner concepts’ that suit the local contexts. She thus advocates creative, strategic, and hybrid ways of battling hate crime by evolving local techniques, definitions, and institutional modes. She argues that ‘vigilantism’ can be such a partner concept in India, which can incorporate the normative and institutional goals of the hate crime concept while being responsive to the specific challenges in the country.

While Perry focuses on vigilantism as a potential partner concept in India, Vandita Khanna’s contribution develops the concept of ‘targeted violence’. Using the Delhi High Court’s judgment 18 in the Hashimpura massacre case as a springboard, she develops the normative contours of targeted violence. Specifically, she shows the concept’s potential for making the autonomy and dignity harms of violence legally legible.

This focus on legal categories — rather novel in the Indian context — can generate a more searching academic conversation about how various manifestations of hate crime are connected. There is now an important field of scholarship on caste-based violence or atrocities. How is the category of caste atrocities conceptually, legally, and normatively related to that of hate crime based on other identities like religion, race, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation? Does thinking of them within the rubric of hate crime enhance our understanding of violence and generate more compelling solidarities? Or will we lose out on nuance and specificity? We hope the special issue generates this dialogue.

Legal institutions

The third theme of this special issue is the promise and limitations of legal institutions. In her contribution, Perry quotes legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry on one of the most profound challenges of law. While the state is often the major violator of human rights, Merry writes, ‘ironically it is also the agent for carrying out human rights reforms.’ 19

The nuances of this central dilemma are apparent in the interview with Mander. He describes the long legal battle for legal justice in cases of sectarian violence. The debate on the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 is of particular relevance. As he notes, the specific challenge in India has been not to proliferate criminal law, but to strengthen institutional accountability. His account perhaps reveals the need for a constant acknowledgment — on the part of advocates, lawyers, and activists — of the law’s entrenched limitations to counter violence.

This is also the core of Bhat, Bajaj, and Kumar’s contribution. They provide a sobering account of the Supreme Court’s celebrated judgment against mob lynching. 20 Their detailed interviews with police officials, and the account of one police investigation in a lynching case, show that the fate of court orders and criminal legislation remains precariously subject to the quotidian exercise of police discretion. This exercise is shaped by and channels entrenched police culture and institutional bias. The conversation about legal reform, thus, must also integrate the systemic questions of prejudice, power, and democracy.

1 See Alison Saldanha and Karthik Madhavapeddi, ‘Our New Hate-Crime Database: 76% of Victims Over 10 Years Minorities; 90% Attacks Reported Since 2014’ ( Fact Checker , 30 October 2018). https://archive.factchecker.in/our-new-hate-crime-database-76-of-victims-over-10-years-minorities-90-attacks-reported-since-2014/ . Accessed 17 July 2020.

2 Annie Gowen, ‘A Muslim and a Hindu Thought They Could be a Couple. Then Came the ‘Love Jihad’ Hit List.’ ( The Washington Post , 26 April 2018). https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-muslim-and-a-hindu-thought-they-could-be-a-couple-then-came-the-love-jihad-hit-list/2018/04/26/257010be-2d1b-11e8-8dc9-3b51e028b845_story.html . Accessed 17 July 2020; Rahul Bhatia, ‘The Year of Love Jihad in India’ ( The New Yorker , 31 December 2017). https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2017-in-review/the-year-of-love-jihad-in-india . Accessed 17 July 2020.

3 Asghar Ali Engineer (ed),  Communal Riots in Post-Independence India (2nd edn, Universities Press 1997); Ashutosh Varshney,  Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale University Press 2002).

4 Gyanendra Pandey,  Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge University Press 2001); Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India (Cambridge University Press 2009).

5 Steven I Wilkinson, ‘Riots’ (2009) 12 Annual Review of Political Science 329.

6 Zoya Khaliq Hasan, ‘Communalism and Communal Violence in India’ (1982) 10(2) Social Scientist 25.

7 Paul Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (University of Washington Press 2011); Steven I Wilkinson,  Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (Cambridge University Press 2004).

8 See Surabhi Chopra and Prita Jha (eds), On Their Watch: Mass Violence and State Apathy in India, Examining the Record (Three Essays Collective 2014).

9 See Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, ‘Lynching and Trolling: Why Political Parties Can’t Absolve Themselves of Responsibility’ ( The Economic Times , 8 July 2018). https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/et-commentary/lynching-and-trolling-why-political-parties-cant-absolve-themselves-of-responsibility/ . Accessed 17 July 2020; Shoaib Daniyal, ‘The Modi Years: What has Fuelled Rising Mob Violence in India?’ ( Scroll.in , 23 February 2019). https://scroll.in/article/912533/the-modi-years-what-has-fuelled-rising-mob-violence-in-india . Accessed 17 July 2020.

10 Nimisha Jaiswal, Sreenivasan Jain, and Manas Pratap Singh, ‘Under Modi Government, VIP Hate Speech Skyrockets - By 500%’ ( NDTV , 19 April 2018). https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/under-narendra-modi-government-vip-hate-speech-skyrockets-by-500-1838925 . Accessed 17 July 2020.

11 KTS Tulsi, ‘Fear of Law has Evaporated as Cases of Lynching Have Become Regular and Brazen’ ( Outlook , 23 December 2019). https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/india-news-opinion-fear-of-law-has-evaporated-as-cases-of-lynching-have-become-regular-and-brazen/302503 . Accessed 17 July 2020.

12 Abhishek Dey, ‘“He Said He Was Hindu, They Let Him Go”: How One Man Escaped an Attack by Cow Vigilantes in Alwar’ ( Scroll.in , 6 April 2017). https://scroll.in/article/833800/%20he-said-he-was-hindu-they-let-him-go-how-one-man-escaped-an-attack-by-cow-vigilantes-in-%20alwar . Accessed 5 April 2020.

13 Tehseen S. Poonawalla v Union of India & Others (2018) 9 SCC 501.

14 Human Rights Watch, “Shoot the Traitors”: Discrimination Against Muslims under India’s New Citizenship Policy (April 2020).

15 Niraja Gopal Jayal, ‘Citizenship Amendment Act: ‘Principle of Discrimination Based on Faith will be Difficult to Limit’’ ( The Indian Express , 24 December 2019). https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/indian-constitution-citizenship-amendment-act-modi-govt-6181761/ . Accessed 17 July 2020.

16 Tehseen S. Poonawalla v Union of India & Others (n 13).

18 Zulfikar Nasir & Others v State of Uttar Pradesh & Others 2018 SCC Online Del 12153.

19 Sally Engle Merry,  Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice (University of Chicago Press 2009) 5.

20 Tehseen S. Poonawalla v Union of India & Others (n 13).

M Mohsin Alam Bhat—Associate Professor.

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Department of Economics

Deepankar basu's research on hate crimes against religious minorities in india reports 300% increase.

An economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found a possible causal connection between the rise to political dominance of India’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a significant increase in the incidence of hate crimes against the country’s religious minorities.

In a recent working paper published by the UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute, Deepankar Basu has linked the massive parliamentary victory of the BJP in 2014 with a 300% increase in the level of antiminority hate crimes.

Basu, associate professor of economics at UMass Amherst, used data from Citizen’s Religious Hate Crime Watch to create a state-level panel data set for 27 of India’s states and the National Capital Territory of Delhi, comparing the five years prior to and following the May 2014 election, in which the BJP won over 31% of the popular vote and 282 of 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha. He found increases in the number of incidents in 20 of the 28 states in the five years following the elections, with double-digit increases in eight states.

In India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, incidents of hate crimes rose from just two in the period of 2009-13 to 45 in the period following the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP collected nearly 43% of the state’s popular vote. Rajasthan’s number of hate crimes rose from two to 20 after the BJP received over 55% of the election’s votes.

Ten states and Delhi had zero incidents of hate crimes reported in the five years prior to the elections, but suffered multiple hate crimes in the five years following, with Delhi, Bihar Gujarat and Jharkhand all seeing double-digit crimes reported.

“An election is a way in which information about attitudes, in this case anti-Muslim attitudes, can be thought to be aggregated,” Basu writes. “Thus, BJP’s spectacular electoral victory in 2014 sent a signal to those holding strong anti-Muslim sentiments that such sentiments were widely held in society. Since the election campaigns by key BJP leaders had demonised and vilified Muslims, its victory made it acceptable to verbally and physically attack Muslims. Since key political leaders did not strongly condemn such attacks and law enforcement officials were lax, it reinforced the attacks on Muslims by creating and sustaining a culture of impunity. It is this social atmosphere that encouraged violent, and often lethal, attacks on Muslims across India.”

Basu also collects reports of hate crimes in 2019, and sees the troubling trend continuing, if not possibly increasing.

“In this paper, I have limited my analysis to the end of 2018 to study comparable period before and after the 2014 elections. But incidents of anti-minority hate crimes have continued occurring in 2019 in an equally disturbing manner as in the previous five-year period,” Basu writes. “In fact, since the end of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which the BJP won in an even more decisive manner, the country has seen a spurt of hate crime incidents. Within a period of about 90 days, the country has witnessed horrific incidents of hate crimes, 13 of which were exclusively against Muslims. It seems that the rate of occurrence of hate crimes against Muslims that had declined between 2017 and 2018 is about to reverse itself.”

The complete working paper, “Majoritarian Politics and Hate Crimes Against Religious Minorities in India, 2009-2018,” is available online via  PERI’s website .

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Hate Crime in India

Understanding Nuanced Discrimination Against North-Eastern Population

• © 2023
• G. S. Bajpai 0 ,
• Garima Pal 1 ,
• Tusha Singh 2 ,
• Advait Tambe 3

National Law University, Delhi, New Delhi, New Delhi, India

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Maharashtra National Law University Mumbai, Mumbai, India

Faculty of law, university of delhi, new delhi, india, new york university school of law, new york, usa.

• Explores victim-centric approach to racial hate crime against north-east Indians in an empirical approach
• Examines the context and factors propelling hate behavior specially in educational institutions
• Initiates discourse towards codifying hate crime legislation and curating preventive measures

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

• G. S. Bajpai, Garima Pal, Tusha Singh, Advait Tambe

Analysis of Profile of Northeast Population of India Living in Metropolitan Cities

Rationale behind security concerns to hate crimes, secondary victimization during post-victimization stages, assessment of legal development and services provided against hate crimes, findings and suggestions, summary and conclusion, back matter.

• North-east Indians
• vulnerability to hate behavior
• hate crime legislation

About this book

This book investigates perceptions against the people of north-east India, and why such prejudicial attitude exists. It subsequently quantifies and develops measures to counter such stereotypes and affiliated violence.

This research examines the north-east Indian population’s and the general Indian population’s understanding of hate crime against the north-eastern population in metropolitan cities of India, both in concept and in perpetration. Further, it evaluates the existing constitutional and statutory provisions in India to determine if the proposed legislation and provisions are sufficient with regards to hate crime against north-eastern people of India.

Drawing on empirical research addressing racial hate crimes in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune, this book’s case studies provide a qualitative dive to the problem and offer experiential analysis in order to curate preventive measures.

Authors and Affiliations

G. S. Bajpai

Tusha Singh

Advait Tambe

About the authors

G.S. Bajpai is an Indian professor and the incumbent Vice-Chancellor of National Law University Delhi. He was the former Registrar of the National Law University Delhi from September 2014 - May 2021. He was subsequently appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law and served in the position till February 2023.

Garima Pal is an Assistant Professor at Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai. She was prior working with National Law University Delhi and Symbiosis law School Pune.

Tusha Singh is pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Delhi Faculty of Law.

Advait Tambe is a candidate for LL.M. in International Legal Studies at New York University.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Hate Crime in India

Book Subtitle : Understanding Nuanced Discrimination Against North-Eastern Population

Authors : G. S. Bajpai, Garima Pal, Tusha Singh, Advait Tambe

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30522-1

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Law and Criminology , Law and Criminology (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-031-30521-4 Published: 26 May 2023

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-031-30524-5 Due: 26 June 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-3-031-30522-1 Published: 25 May 2023

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XII, 142

Number of Illustrations : 1 b/w illustrations

Topics : Crime and Society , Human Rights , Criminal Behavior

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