Between 1983 and 2012, over 3,03,000 Sri Lankan Tamils entered India in four distinct waves, as documented in the 2023 report After 40 Years, Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees in India Need Durable Solutions. Today, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Annual Report (2023–24), more than 57,000 remain in refugee camps in Tamil Nadu and Odisha, while nearly 33,000 reside outside camps in Tamil Nadu.

These figures represent not a transient population but a settled community spanning generations. Many arrived as children in the 1980s. Many more were born in India. Among them are nearly 29,500 Indian-origin Tamils — descendants of plantation workers taken to Ceylon under British rule — whose citizenship questions were supposedly addressed under the 1964 Sirimavo-Shastri Pact. Yet decades later, many remain effectively stateless.

The humanitarian emergency of 1983 has become a structural condition of rightlessness.

From solidarity to suspicion

In the early years, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were received with empathy in Tamil Nadu. Shared language, culture, and ethnicity fostered a sense of kinship. Refuge was extended not merely as policy but as solidarity.

That political climate shifted dramatically after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 by LTTE operatives. Public sentiment hardened. Administrative vigilance intensified.

Non-camp refugees were moved into camps. Surveillance mechanisms were strengthened. Identity checks became routine. Refugees report periodic inspections requiring them to be physically present in camps for verification. The implicit message is clear: their presence remains conditional.

Although the Tamil Nadu government provides monthly financial assistance, the support is subsistence-level. Refugees are permitted to work outside camps, yet their formal classification as “foreigners” bars them from property ownership, government employment, political participation, and long-term financial security. Many educated refugees are confined to informal or precarious labour.

The camps are not detention centres — but neither are they spaces of dignity. They are administrative enclosures sustained by indefinite temporariness.

Repatriation as a hollow promise

The end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009 theoretically opened the door to voluntary repatriation. In practice, it has not functioned as a meaningful solution.

The 2023 refugee report notes that despite the Sri Lankan government forming a committee in 2022 to facilitate returns, only a negligible number of refugees had repatriated by early 2023. UNHCR data similarly reflect extremely low return rates.

The reasons are layered. Economic instability in Sri Lanka persists. Many refugees lost land, documentation, and livelihoods. War trauma remains unresolved. For second-generation refugees born in India, Sri Lanka is not a lived homeland but a distant inheritance.

Media interviews in The Hindu and other national outlets consistently indicate that an overwhelming majority prefer integration in India over repatriation. After forty years, return is no longer a practical aspiration for most. It is a formal option detached from social reality.

Legal Limbo: Protection without belonging

For decades, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were technically classified as “illegal migrants” under India’s foreigner laws because they entered without valid passports or visas. This label carried the theoretical risk of detention or deportation.

The Immigration & Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025, issued under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, removed penal liability for registered Sri Lankan Tamils who entered on or before January 9, 2015. This administrative step eliminated criminal exposure and softened the “illegal migrant” stigma.

However, the Order did not recognize them as refugees. It did not confer residency rights. It did not open a pathway to citizenship. They remain legally classified as foreigners — without nationality, without passports, without full civil identity.

The relief is procedural, not transformative.

The CAA and the politics of exclusion

The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) fast-tracked Indian citizenship for persecuted non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Sri Lankan Tamils were excluded from its scope.

This exclusion has drawn sustained criticism. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, argued that the CAA is discriminatory in limiting its protection to three countries and six religions while excluding Tamil refugees who fled ethnic persecution. Reporting by The Hindu has highlighted these constitutional objections.

The Union Government has defended the CAA as a narrowly tailored law addressing specific historical circumstances. Yet the omission of Sri Lankan Tamils raises uncomfortable questions. If the moral justification of the CAA is protection of persecuted minorities, why exclude those who fled one of the longest ethnic conflicts in South Asia?

The selective humanitarianism embedded in the CAA exposes a deeper inconsistency in India’s refugee governance.

Naturalization blocked in practice

In theory, the Citizenship Act, 1955 allows naturalization after eleven years of residence. In practice, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees have faced administrative barriers.

A 1986 Ministry of Home Affairs communication reportedly instructed state authorities not to process naturalization applications of Sri Lankan refugees who arrived after July 1983. Though rarely debated publicly, this directive has effectively frozen citizenship claims for decades.

Thus, while the statute appears neutral, policy implementation has been exclusionary. Refugees who have lived in India for thirty or forty years remain without a viable path to citizenship.

Judicial Interventions: Islands of relief

The Madras High Court has periodically disrupted this inertia. In February 2023, Justice G. R. Swaminathan delivered a notable judgment directing the issuance of passports to individuals born in India under Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, which grants citizenship by birth for those born between 1950 and 1987 irrespective of parental nationality.

In other case, in October 2022, the High Court bench of Justice G. R. Swaminathan recommended that principles underlying the CAA could logically extend to Sri Lankan Hindu Tamils, describing them as victims of racism.

These interventions offer relief to individual petitioners and expose bureaucratic rigidity. Yet they remain case-specific. They cannot substitute for systemic reform.

Security concerns and collective suspicion

Authorities often cite concerns about residual LTTE ideology among sections of the refugee population. Over the years, some arrests have been made in connection with alleged smuggling or revivalist activity.

Security considerations are legitimate. However, collective exclusion based on historic militancy is disproportionate. Democratic governance requires distinguishing between individual criminal conduct and community identity.

Other countries with large Sri Lankan Tamil diasporas — including Canada and the United Kingdom — have managed security screening while still granting citizenship. Security vetting and integration are not mutually exclusive.

To indefinitely withhold rights from an entire refugee population due to past insurgency risks converting precaution into discrimination.

The stateless generation

Perhaps the most compelling dimension of this crisis is generational. Thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils in Tamil Nadu were born in India. They studied in Indian schools, speak with local accents, and participate in local economies.

Yet they cannot vote. They cannot hold secure title to property. They cannot access the full range of civil and political rights guaranteed to citizens.

They are not transient outsiders. They are socially embedded but legally excluded. Their condition is neither classic refugeehood nor voluntary migration. It is structural statelessness.

Matua identity cards, CAA camps and the politics of assurance in Bengal

In Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas — the spiritual headquarters of the Matua community — the year of 2025 witnessed scenes that resemble a political mobilisation drive as much as a religious gathering. Loudspeakers make repeated announcements, volunteers sit behind rows of wooden desks scrutinising Aadhaar cards and voter IDs, and long queues of men and women wait under plastic sheets clutching old refugee papers. What is being distributed is not merely a card, but a promise — or at least the suggestion — of protection.

Ground reports, including detailed coverage by The Wire, describe how camps run by factions of the All India Matua Mahasangha are issuing “Matua eligibility cards” and “Hindu identity cards.” Applicants pay ₹50 or ₹100, submit photographs and identification documents, and are told that possession of these cards will make it easier to apply under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The camps are associated with leaders aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including Union Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Shantanu Thakur and his brother Subrata Thakur — descendants of the Matua founding family tracing back to reformer Harichand Thakur. As reported by The Wire, differently coloured cards (pink and yellow) are being issued by rival factions, each presented as proof of Matua and Hindu identity.

Legally, these cards are not citizenship documents. They do not confer nationality, voting rights, or statutory recognition under the Citizenship Act. Yet thousands are lining up to obtain them.

Electoral anxiety and the promise of protection

The surge in applications is unfolding against the backdrop of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal. The revision exercise has triggered widespread anxiety among refugee-origin communities who lack older documentation or whose names were missing in previous electoral revisions.

In this climate of uncertainty, the BJP has framed the CAA as a shield. In December 2025, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, speaking in Kolkata, publicly assured the Matua community that individuals who have applied for citizenship under the CAA would retain their voting rights and need not fear disenfranchisement. Media reports quoted him as reiterating that refugees from religious persecution would be protected and treated as citizens.

These assurances carry considerable political weight. The Matuas — largely Namasudra Hindus who migrated from East Pakistan and Bangladesh — constitute one of Bengal’s most influential Scheduled Caste communities. Concentrated in districts such as Nadia and North 24 Parganas, they play a decisive role in dozens of assembly constituencies. The BJP’s gains in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Matua-dominated belts were widely attributed to its citizenship plank. However, subsequent state and panchayat elections indicated shifting loyalties, making continued consolidation electorally significant as fresh polls approach.

The visible intensity of the certificate drives — the public messaging, digitisation desks, and symbolic use of religious space — suggests that citizenship outreach is not occurring in a vacuum. It is unfolding in synchrony with electoral timing.

Symbolism, documentation and political strategy

For many Matua families, citizenship documentation has remained incomplete for decades. Some possess Aadhaar cards but lack legacy electoral roll entries. Others lost birth certificates long ago. The New Indian Express report highlighted cases such as that of Laturam Sikdar and Padma Sikdar in Nadia district, who reportedly received citizenship certificates after applying under the CAA framework following anxiety triggered by electoral roll revision announcements.

Such cases are cited by BJP leaders as proof that the CAA delivers security. At the same time, leaders of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) have questioned the legality of issuing religious certificates through private camps. As reported by The Wire, TMC MP Mamata Bala Thakur has argued that the Citizenship Act does not require any religious certificate issued by a socio-religious body and accused the BJP of collecting documents from vulnerable communities under misleading assurances.

The fees collected, the absence of statutory backing for the cards, and the overlap between religious identity and electoral messaging have intensified scrutiny. Yet for many in the queues, legal nuance is secondary. In an environment where documentation determines belonging, even unofficial paper can feel like insurance.

Selective urgency and the Sri Lankan Tamil contrast

The developments in Thakurnagar acquire deeper significance when viewed alongside another long-standing refugee question in India — that of Sri Lankan Tamils in Tamil Nadu.

For over four decades, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees — many of whom fled ethnic persecution during the civil war involving the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — have lived in camps in Tamil Nadu. As discussed earlier, over 57,000 remain in camps and tens of thousands more reside outside camps. Despite decades of residence, generations born in India, and repeated appeals by Tamil Nadu’s political leadership, they remain without a clear pathway to citizenship.

Notably, the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act excluded Sri Lankan Tamils from its fast-track naturalisation framework, even while extending protection to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The contrast is stark: while Matua Hindus from Bangladesh are being publicly assured that citizenship applications will safeguard their voting rights, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees — who have lived in India for up to forty years — continue to exist in legal limbo.

In West Bengal, citizenship drives are visible, vocal, and politically foregrounded as elections approach. In Tamil Nadu, long-settled refugee communities await structural reform without comparable urgency from the Union government.

This divergence raises uncomfortable questions about selective prioritisation. When citizenship becomes electorally salient, administrative energy appears to intensify. When communities lack equivalent electoral leverage at the national level, reform stagnates.

Citizenship as electoral currency

The Matua certificate camps in Thakurnagar reveal how citizenship, documentation, religion, and electoral politics intersect in contemporary India. For the community, the card represents reassurance against bureaucratic erasure. For the ruling party at the Centre, it consolidates a key voter base before polls. For opposition parties, it exemplifies the politicisation of identity and documentation.

But when placed alongside the unresolved plight of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu, the contrast exposes a broader pattern: citizenship policy is not merely a humanitarian instrument — it is also an electoral strategy.

In one state, camps distribute identity cards amid public assurances of voting rights.
In another, refugees of forty years remain without statutory belonging.

Between these two realities lies a central question: Is India’s citizenship policy guided by uniform principles of protection and integration — or by political calculus shaped by the electoral map?

As state elections draw closer in Bengal, the queues in Thakurnagar are not just about paperwork. They are about power, protection, and the politics of belonging — a politics that appears far more urgent in some regions than in others.

A question of constitutional integrity

After forty years, the issue is no longer about temporary asylum. It is about justice, equality, and constitutional coherence.

The Immigration & Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025 removed criminal liability but not exclusion. The CAA fast-tracks citizenship — selectively. Naturalization exists in theory but is obstructed in practice. Political resolutions by Tamil Nadu’s government, led by M. K. Stalin, remain subject to Union discretion.

Protection without integration becomes containment. Containment without timeline becomes neglect.

Sri Lankan Tamils in India are no longer merely refugees seeking safety. They are a community woven into the social fabric of Tamil Nadu, awaiting formal recognition of what has long been a lived reality.

Forty years is not temporary protection. It is a generation denied belonging.

Related:

MHA says data on CAA citizenship applicants not maintained, cites lack of record -keeping provisions to RTI

First set of citizenship certificates issued to over 300 under CAA: MHA

Kolkata man commits suicide, family claims CAA rules led him to it

CAA: An attempt to legitimise expansionist nationalism

CAA discriminatory against Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka: DMK

The post From Permanent Refuge to Perpetual Limbo: Why Sri Lankan Tamil refugees remain without citizenship even as electoral assurances reshape belonging in Bengal appeared first on SabrangIndia.

What followed has only deepened that concern. Across campuses, students protesting the Supreme Court stay on UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026 have faced intimidation, surveillance, violence, and criminal process. Instead of debate, there has been policing. Instead of institutional introspection, securitisation. And instead of engagement with the substance of caste discrimination, there has been an aggressive narrowing of what may even be spoken.

Together, these developments mark a dangerous convergence: the criminalisation of speech, the judicial suspension of equity safeguards, and the shrinking of democratic space within institutions meant to nurture critical thought.

देशभर में यूजीसी एक्ट के समर्थन में बहुजन छात्रों के प्रदर्शन हो रहे हैं, लेकिन मुख्यधारा का मीडिया चुप है। pic.twitter.com/Nqdq8CpJhd

— Hansraj Meena (@HansrajMeena) February 4, 2026

A judicial stay that did not calm campuses—but exposed a fault line

The immediate trigger for nationwide student mobilisation was the Supreme Court’s decision to stay the UGC Equity Regulations 2026, observing that the framework appeared “too sweeping” and required closer scrutiny. The stay was framed as a neutral act of caution. On campuses, it was experienced as something else entirely: a sudden withdrawal of long-awaited recognition.

As reported by India Today, students argued that the regulations were halted before they could even be tested. No implementation, no data, no demonstrated misuse—only a speculative fear that accountability mechanisms might be abused. The contrast was striking. In a legal system where far-reaching executive actions are often allowed to operate while constitutional challenges remain pending for years, a framework designed to protect marginalised students was frozen at inception.

The context matters. The 2026 regulations did not emerge in a vacuum. They were the product of years of litigation, including the long-pending petition filed by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, both of whom died by suicide after alleged caste-based harassment. Over time, the Supreme Court itself sought reports, monitored compliance, and pressed for reform. A Parliamentary Standing Committee reviewed the draft regulations in late 2025, recommending substantive changes—many of which were incorporated.

Yet, at the very first hearing after notification, the framework was stayed.

For students already navigating hostile campuses, the implication was stark: caste discrimination may be acknowledged rhetorically, but meaningful institutional safeguards remain deeply contested.

Campuses Respond: Different languages, the same demand for justice

The response to the stay has varied across universities, shaped by institutional histories and student politics. But taken together, protests at JNU, BHU, and Delhi University reveal a shared insistence that equity cannot remain a matter of administrative goodwill.

JNU: The defence of ideological space

At Jawaharlal Nehru University, students organised torchlight processions demanding immediate implementation of the regulations and renewed calls for a statutory Rohith Act—a central anti-discrimination law for higher education.

Placards and slogans opposing Brahmanism and Manusmriti dominated the march. Defending the language used, JNUSU representatives told PTI that the slogans were ideological critiques, not attacks on any caste group—an important distinction grounded in established free-speech jurisprudence. Political critique, even when sharp or unsettling, lies at the heart of constitutional democracy.

Student leaders also raised a pointed question: why was extraordinary urgency shown in staying these regulations when countless cases involving civil liberties remain pending for years? The warning from the campus was clear—if justice is indefinitely deferred within universities, it will not remain confined there.

UGC गाइडलाइन के समर्थन में जेएनयू स्टूडेंट्स का मार्च#JNU #UGCRegulations2026 pic.twitter.com/S9tlsULus0

— Dalit Dastak | दलित दस्तक (@DalitDastak) February 4, 2026

BHU: Evidence, reports, and institutional failure

At Banaras Hindu University, the protest took a different form. Hundreds of SC, ST, and OBC students marched carrying letters, official reports, and citations, demanding Equal Opportunity Centres, Equity Committees, transparency in grievance redressal, and public disclosure of compliance.

As reported by India Today, students cited the Thorat Committee Report (2007) and the IIT Delhi study (2019), both of which document systemic discrimination and its links to mental health crises, dropouts, and suicides. The emphasis here was not symbolic resistance but institutional accountability.

A heavy police presence and alert proctorial boards accompanied the march—an unsettling reminder of how quickly claims of discrimination are met with securitisation rather than reform.

Delhi University: From regulation to law

At Delhi University, Left-backed student groups led an “Equity March” through North Campus, framing the issue as a legislative and constitutional question. According to The Times of India, speakers argued that without statutory backing, grievance mechanisms remain fragile, easily diluted, and subject to withdrawal.

The demand for the Rohith Act surfaced repeatedly—reflecting a growing consensus that enforceable rights, not discretionary guidelines, are essential to address structural caste discrimination.

Violence, policing, and the price of naming caste

Even as students mobilised, reports of violence and intimidation surfaced from multiple campuses. As per reports, a BHU student allegedly being beaten by upper-caste peers for sharing a poster supporting the UGC protests in a WhatsApp group. At Allahabad University, students discussing equity regulations were reportedly attacked, with allegations pointing to ABVP-linked groups.

Most chilling was the Allahabad University episode itself: students allegedly assaulted, and one student arrested or warned for speech alone. If the use of the word “Brahminism”—a staple of academic critique—can invite police action, the boundary between maintaining order and enforcing ideological conformity has all but vanished.

For many protesters, these incidents crystallised the argument for equity regulations: without enforceable safeguards, marginalised students are left vulnerable not just to bureaucratic neglect, but to physical and legal harm.

चप्पा चप्पा गूंज उठेगा , जय भीम के नारों से pic.twitter.com/5eb3H59nXr

— Dr. Om Sudha (@dromsudhaa) February 4, 2026

This is shocking and absolutely unacceptable in university campuses. Students who were peacefully discussing equity regulations in University of Allahabad were reportedly beaten up by Brahmanical forces of ABVP. This is exactly why we need equity regulations. The safety of… pic.twitter.com/beFHX0xoSh

— Rehna Raveendran (@Rehna_AntiCaste) February 4, 2026

A BHU student was brutally beaten by upper-caste students simply for sharing a poster about the UGC protest in a WhatsApp group.

To stop this kind of hooliganism and violence on campuses, strong and enforceable UGC regulations are absolutely necessary.
pic.twitter.com/vUKPXjAjm1

— Harshita Narayani (@DearAspirant) February 4, 2026

Faculty Unease and the Limits of the Framework

Faculty responses have complicated the picture rather than resolved it. The JNUTA noted that the regulations fail to address the deep-rooted and systemic nature of discrimination. At protest gatherings, faculty speakers acknowledged these limitations—pointing to the absence of punitive provisions, excessive power vested in principals, and the exclusion of elite institutions like IITs and IIMs.

Yet the consensus among many educators was striking: even an imperfect framework represented a rare institutional acknowledgment that caste discrimination exists on campuses. To halt it before implementation was not correction—it was erasure.

Media silence, political quiet, and democratic erosion

A recurring concern across protests has been the muted response of large sections of the mainstream media and the conspicuous absence of sustained parliamentary debate. Students questioned how a nationwide mobilisation demanding discrimination-free campuses could unfold without political engagement at the highest levels.

When speech is criminalised, safeguards are stayed, and violence is normalised or ignored, trust in democratic institutions begins to fracture—not through apathy, but through lived experience.

देशभर में यूजीसी एक्ट के समर्थन में बहुजन छात्रों के प्रदर्शन हो रहे हैं, लेकिन मुख्यधारा का मीडिया चुप है। pic.twitter.com/Nqdq8CpJhd

— Hansraj Meena (@HansrajMeena) February 4, 2026

More Than a Regulation: A test of university democracy

As highlighted by the incidents above, the battle over the UGC Equity Regulations has outgrown the regulations themselves. It has become a test of whether universities will remain spaces of critique or instruments of control; whether caste can be named without punishment; and whether equality will be treated as a constitutional obligation or an administrative inconvenience.

When students are arrested for words, protections are suspended before they are tried, and dissent is met with force rather than reason, the crisis is no longer confined to campuses. It speaks to the health of the republic itself.

The question now confronting India’s universities is no longer about guidelines or committees. It is about whether democracy—messy, uncomfortable, and argumentative—still has a place in the classroom.

.Related:

Hate Speech Before the Supreme Court: From judicial activism to institutional closure

When Protest becomes a “Threat”: Inside the Supreme Court hearing on Sonam Wangchuk’s NSA detention

Another Campus, Another Death: Student suicides continue unabated across India

My birth is my fatal accident, remembering Rohith Vemula’s last letter

‘Diluted Existing Rules’: Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi’s Mothers Slam UGC’s Draft Equity Regulations

The stay of UGC Equity Regulations, 2026: The interim order, the proceedings, and the constitutional questions raised

The post Campuses in Revolt: How the UGC Equity Stay and Criminalised Dissent Have Ignited Student Protests Across India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta indicated that all matters in the batch would be closed, while explicitly preserving the liberty of parties to pursue other remedies under law. One case alone—Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Ors.—was kept pending, limited to monitoring the progress of trial and allied proceedings arising out of a 2021 alleged hate crime against a Muslim cleric in Noida.

The January 20 hearing was not merely procedural. It functioned as a consolidated reckoning—bringing together nearly every strand of hate-speech litigation that has occupied the Court since 2020, and laying bare the Court’s evolving understanding of its own role, the limits of judicial supervision, and the persistent failures of enforcement.

The Beginning: 2020 and the turn to the Supreme Court

The present batch of cases originated in 2020, at a moment when hate speech entered the Supreme Court not as a marginal criminal issue, but as a structural constitutional concern.

The immediate triggers were:

• The “Corona Jihad” campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic, which communalised disease and cast Muslims as biological and civic threats; and
• Sudarshan TV’s “UPSC Jihad” programme, which alleged a conspiracy by Muslim candidates to infiltrate the civil services.

Petitioners argued that these narratives violated equality, dignity, and fraternity, and that State authorities had either failed to act or were complicit through inaction.

In 2020, the Supreme Court intervened to restrain the telecast of the “UPSC Jihad” programme, marking an early acknowledgment that certain forms of hate speech—especially when amplified through mass media—implicate constitutional values beyond ordinary criminal law.

This was the Court’s first decisive signal that hate speech would not be treated merely as offensive expression, but as conduct capable of restructuring social hierarchies and legitimising exclusion.

Expansion of the Docket: Dharam Sansads and genocidal speech (2021–2022)

The hate-speech docket expanded dramatically in 2021–22, following Dharam Sansad events and religious gatherings where speakers openly called for:

• Violence against Muslims,
• Economic boycotts,
• Armed mobilisation, and
• Genocide.

Petitions by Qurban Ali, Major General S.G. Vombatkere, journalists, civil liberties organisations, and religious bodies highlighted a disturbing pattern:

• Hate speech events were openly announced,
• Police often granted permission or remained passive, and
• FIRs, if registered at all, rarely resulted in arrests or prosecutions.

This phase forced the Court to confront not isolated speeches, but a systemic failure of enforcement.

October 2022: The Court steps in

In October 2022, the Supreme Court issued what remains its most consequential intervention on hate speech.

The Court directed that police authorities must register FIRs suo moto in cases involving:

• Promotion of communal hatred, or
• Offending religious sentiments,

without waiting for a formal complaint. Failure to act, the Court warned, would invite contempt proceedings.

The reasoning was explicit: Hate speech strikes at fraternity, corrodes secularism, and threatens constitutional morality. It cannot be left to the discretion of local authorities who may be unwilling to act.

This order marked the Court’s shift from reactive adjudication to supervisory constitutional enforcement.

2023: Nationwide application and preventive policing

In April 2023, the Supreme Court extended its October 2022 directions to all States and Union Territories, making clear that:

• The obligation to act was nationwide;
• Enforcement must be religion-neutral; and
• Police must act proactively, not defensively.

Throughout 2023, the Court:

• Passed preventive orders ahead of announced rallies,
• Directed videography of events,
• Required status reports on FIRs and investigations,
• Entertained contempt petitions alleging non-compliance.

The Court also began drawing upon its Tehseen Poonawalla (2018) jurisprudence on mob lynching, exploring whether similar preventive, remedial, and punitive frameworks could be adapted to hate speech.

Yet even as directions multiplied, enforcement remained uneven—setting the stage for judicial introspection. Across these six years, the Court was not operating in an evidentiary vacuum. Ground-level documentation repeatedly entered the record, including through material placed by Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) under its Hate Watch (HW) programme. These compilations drew from verified complaints filed by CJP across multiple States before police authorities, district administrations, minority commissions, and other statutory bodies. The same may be accessed here.

During various hearings, this data—reflecting patterns of non-registration of FIRs, selective enforcement, delayed action, and repeat offending by the same speakers—was intermittently brought to the Court’s attention. The material served a dual function: it both corroborated petitioners’ claims of systemic enforcement failure and demonstrated that hate speech was not episodic, but embedded in everyday administrative practice. While the Court acknowledged these inputs at different stages, their presence underscored a recurring tension in the proceedings: between empirical evidence of ground-level inertia and the Court’s increasing reluctance to continue long-term supervisory engagement.

Recalibration: “We cannot monitor the entire country” (2024–2025)

By late 2024 and 2025, a notable shift occurred.

Benches—including Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta—began articulating concern that the Supreme Court:

• Could not act as a permanent national monitoring authority;
• Could not substitute itself for police stations, magistrates, and High Courts; and
• Would not legislate from the bench in the absence of parliamentary action.

This was not a repudiation of earlier orders, but a recognition of institutional limits: judicial directions had reached their ceiling without corresponding executive will. The trajectory of this batch of litigation—from its inception as a broad constitutional intervention to its present narrowing—mirrors a discernible shift in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence when confronted with complex societal harms. What began as a wide-ranging judicial attempt to frame hate speech as a threat to fraternity, secularism, and constitutional morality gradually contracted into a posture of institutional restraint, marked by repeated assertions of jurisdictional and functional limits.

Over time, the Court’s role evolved from norm-setting and preventive oversight to a more confined emphasis on statutory remedies, executive responsibility, and case-specific adjudication. The impending closure of most petitions reflects not a denial of the harm caused by hate speech, but a judicial recalibration—signalling that the enforcement deficit cannot indefinitely be remedied through continuing mandamus. This recalibration forms the immediate backdrop to the January 20 hearing.

January 20 Hearing: A comprehensive closing of the docket

The January 20 hearing brought together every unresolved dimension of the hate-speech litigation. At the outset, the Bench indicated that it was inclined to:

• Close all connected matters, and
• Leave parties free to pursue statutory and constitutional remedies elsewhere.

The sole exception would be Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani, which involved a concrete hate crime and an ongoing criminal process.

Arguments of the petitioners

1. The problem is enforcement, not law: Advocate Nizam Pasha, appearing for Qurban Ali, made a central submission:

The crisis is not legal inadequacy, but institutional reluctance—especially when alleged offenders are linked to the ruling establishment.

He argued that:

• Hate speech events are often advertised in advance;
• When the Court previously intervened, events were cancelled or toned down, proving the effectiveness of oversight;
• The same habitual offenders operate across States;
• FIRs are registered but arrests and follow-up are absent, enabling repetition.

Pasha also referred to an application seeking takedown of an AI-generated video, allegedly circulated by the BJP’s Assam unit, portraying Muslims as poised to overtake the State if the party lost elections. He argued that hate speech frequently prefigures hate crime, calling for precisely the acts that later occur.

2. Hate speech as a constitutional tort: Advocate Sharukh Alam, appearing in Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani, urged the Court to reject the framing of hate speech as merely a law-and-order problem.

She argued that:

• Hate speech entrenches discrimination and exclusion;
• It should be understood as a constitutional tort, engaging Articles 14, 15, and 21;
• In the Noida case, the Maulana was stripped and assaulted because of his religious identity.

The State of Uttar Pradesh denied the hate-crime characterisation, stating that:

• A chargesheet had been filed,
• Trial was underway, and
• Departmental action had been taken.

The Bench decided to retain this matter alone, limited to monitoring progress.

3. The sanction question: Senior Advocate Siddharth Aggarwal, appearing for Brinda Karat, raised a distinct legal issue: Whether prior sanction is required at the FIR stage, a view adopted by a Magistrate and upheld by the Delhi High Court.

Aggarwal argued that:

• Sanction is required only at the cognisance stage, not for FIR registration;
• The issue is pending reference in Manju Surana.

Justice Vikram Nath asked him to submit a brief note, recognising the issue’s doctrinal importance.

4. Media, elections, and civil liberties:

• Senior Advocate M.R. Shamshad (Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind) highlighted the growing targeting of religious personalities, with FIRs refused on erroneous sanction grounds.
• Advocate Amit Pai cited failure to register FIRs even in cases of casteist speech by elected officials.
• Senior Advocate Sanjay Parekh (PUCL) recalled the Court’s earlier reliance on Tehseen Poonawalla, while acknowledging the need for adaptation.
• Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, as amicus curiae, posed a structural question: Can hate speech be meaningfully curbed when social-media and broadcast platforms profit from virality?

State and institutional responses

• ASG S.V. Raju claimed substantial compliance, stating FIRs were registered in most cited cases.
• NBDA sought to be heard, citing self-regulatory guidelines.
• Election Commission, through Senior Advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, stated it already had enforcement mechanisms and was open to strengthening them.

The court’s direction

After hearing all parties, the Bench:

• Directed brief written notes within two weeks,
• Reserved orders,
• Ordered closure of all matters except Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani, which will continue on the next date.

Conclusion: What January 20 ultimately signals

From restraining a television programme in 2020, to mandating suo motu FIRs nationwide, to threatening contempt, the Supreme Court spent nearly six years attempting to compel the State to confront hate speech as a constitutional harm.

The January 20 hearing marks an institutional conclusion: the Court has articulated the law; enforcement must now occur elsewhere.

Yet the decision to keep Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani alive—and to seek notes on unresolved legal questions—suggests that the Court has not abandoned the field entirely. It has instead stepped back from continuous supervision, leaving behind a dense jurisprudential trail that future courts, litigants, and lawmakers will have to grapple with.

As matters stand, the Supreme Court has reserved orders, directed the filing of brief notes, and indicated closure of all but one surviving case. Final orders are imminent, and with them, a formal conclusion to one of the Court’s longest-running engagements with hate speech as a constitutional issue. Whether this moment comes to be seen as a principled withdrawal in deference to institutional boundaries—or as a premature retreat from constitutional guardianship—will depend less on the text of the final order, and more on what follows on the ground. Whether this represents constitutional restraint or constitutional retreat is a question that will outlive this batch of cases.

Detailed reports of these matters may be read here and here.

Related:

When Genocide is provoked from the Stage: Raebareli hate speeches, Bhagalpur dog whistles, and a delayed FIR

The Politics of Processions: How the Sanatan Ekta Padyatra amplified hate speech in plain sight

The Orchestrated Extremism: An analysis of communal hate speech in India’s election cycle (2024–2025)

CJP urges NCM action against hate speech campaign vilifying Bengali Muslims as ‘Infiltrators’

The post Hate Speech Before the Supreme Court: From judicial activism to institutional closure appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As per Bar & Bench, the order was passed by a Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, while hearing a batch of three writ petitions challenging the 2026 Regulations. Though interim in nature, the order is notable both for the breadth of constitutional concerns flagged by the Court and for the decision to suspend a regulatory framework expressly designed to address caste-based discrimination in higher education.

What follows is not merely a recounting of the proceedings, but a critical examination of why a stay was granted, whether settled principles governing interim interference were adhered to, and how the Court’s reasoning engages—sometimes uneasily—with the constitutional understanding of caste, equality, and structural disadvantage.

Background: From the 2019 PIL to the 2026 Regulations

The 2026 Regulations were framed pursuant to proceedings in a 2019 writ petition filed by Radhika Vemula and Abeda Salim Tadvi, the mothers of Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi, both of whom reportedly died by suicide after facing sustained caste-based discrimination within their educational institutions. According to LiveLaw, the PIL sought the creation of a robust institutional mechanism to address caste discrimination on campuses, contending that existing safeguards—particularly the 2012 UGC Regulations—had proved insufficient.

The petition may be read here.

Over the years, the Supreme Court repeatedly emphasised the need for a stronger, more effective framework, even inviting stakeholder suggestions while the draft regulations were under consideration. After this consultative process, the UGC notified the 2026 Regulations in January 2026, expressly superseding the 2012 framework.

A close reading of the orders passed in that matter reveals a judicial trajectory that sits in visible tension with the later decision to place the 2026 Regulations in abeyance.

1. January 3, 2025: Court acknowledges systemic failure and demands data, enforcement, and redesign

In its order dated January 3, 2025, the Court expressly recognised that adjudication could not proceed without assessing how universities had implemented the 2012 Equal Opportunity Cell Regulations, and whether those mechanisms had actually worked in practice.

The order may be read below:

Crucially, the Bench:

• directed the UGC to collate nationwide data on Equal Opportunity Cells,
• sought disclosure of complaints received and Action Taken Reports, and
• required the UGC to place its newly formulated draft regulations on record.

This was not a neutral procedural step. It reflected a judicial acknowledgment that formal regulatory existence had not translated into substantive protection for marginalised students. The Court was, at this stage, explicitly concerned with implementation failure, not over breadth or misuse.

2. April 24, 2025: The Court permits notification — and treats the Regulations as additive, not suspect

By April 24, 2025, the Court went further. While disposing of an application seeking to restrain the notification of the draft regulations, the Bench refused to halt the regulatory process. Instead, it clarified that the UGC was free to notify the regulations and that they would operate in addition to the recommendations of the National Task Force constituted in Amit Kumar v. Union of India.

The order may be read below.

Two aspects of this order matter for present purposes:

First, the Court expressly noted that the steps taken by the UGC pursuant to the Payal Tadvi–Rohith Vemula petition were “in the right direction,” signalling judicial approval of a stronger, institutionalised framework to address discrimination, harassment, and mental health crises in universities.

Second, the Court treated the regulations as iterative and corrigible—open to additions, deletions, and refinement based on stakeholder input and the Task Force’s findings. There was no suggestion that the very idea of a caste-conscious equity framework was constitutionally suspect.

3. September 15, 2025: Court endorses a robust, explicitly caste-conscious regulatory vision

The September 15, 2025 order is perhaps the clearest articulation of what the Court itself considered necessary to remedy caste-based discrimination in higher education.

The order may be read below.

After recording detailed submissions by senior counsel Indira Jaising, the Court flagged — without rejection — a set of far-reaching structural safeguards, including:

• a clear prohibition on all known forms of discrimination,
• an express ban on segregation based on rank or performance,
• grievance redressal bodies with mandatory representation from SC/ST/OBC communities,
• personal liability of institutional heads for negligence,
• caste-sensitive mental health counselling,
• NAAC-linked audits and social data collection, and
• withdrawal of grants for non-compliance.

What is striking is that many of these proposals go well beyond the minimal guarantees under the 2012 framework. The Court did not characterise them as excessive, divisive, or constitutionally dubious. Instead, it treated them as necessary correctives to entrenched structural discrimination.

The contradiction: Seen in this light, the later stay of the 2026 Regulations marks a sharp doctrinal and institutional turn.

In the Payal Tadvi–Rohith Vemula petitiom, the Court:

• acknowledged caste-based discrimination as systemic and institutional,
• accepted that neutrality and general anti-ragging norms were inadequate,
• encouraged regulatory expansion and refinement, and
• emphasised accountability, representation, and enforceability.

Yet, in staying the 2026 Regulations, the Court shifted focus to concerns of vagueness, misuse, and over breadth—without explaining why these concerns could not be addressed through interpretation, amendment, or guidelines, the very tools it had earlier endorsed.

This creates a deeper constitutional unease: how does one reconcile a jurisprudence that recognises caste as a structural axis of harm with an interim order that treats caste-specific regulation as inherently suspect? The stay order appears to privilege abstract equality concerns over the lived realities that animated the original petition — the deaths of students failed by institutional indifference.

The Payal Tadvi–Rohith Vemula proceedings were premised on the understanding that caste discrimination in universities is not episodic, but embedded in evaluation systems, hostel allocation, disciplinary processes, and grievance mechanisms. The Court’s own directions repeatedly moved towards differentiated, targeted protections.

Against that record, the suspension of the 2026 Regulations risks flattening constitutional analysis into a question of formal symmetry—treating all students as equally situated—precisely the approach that the Court itself had earlier found wanting.

It is against this backdrop—of Court-monitored reform aimed at addressing demonstrable institutional failures—that the interim stay assumes particular significance.

The Present Proceedings: What transpired before the Court

The challenge to the Regulations came by way of three writ petitions, filed by Mritunjay Tiwari, Advocate Vineet Jindal, and Rahul Dewan. The principal target of challenge was Regulation 3(1)(c), which defines “caste-based discrimination” as discrimination on the basis of caste against members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes.

According to LiveLaw, the petitioners contended that:

• The definition is restrictive and exclusionary, as it does not recognise caste-based discrimination against persons belonging to non-reserved or “general” categories;
• This exclusion renders such persons remediless, even if subjected to caste-linked harassment or institutional bias;
• The provision violates Article 14 by creating an unreasonable classification lacking a rational nexus with the stated objective of promoting equity.

From the outset, the Bench subjected the Regulations to close scrutiny. Three issues dominated the hearing:

1. The dual definitions of “discrimination” (Regulation 3(1)(e)) and “caste-based discrimination” (Regulation 3(1)(c));
2. The omission of ragging from the 2026 Regulations, despite its inclusion in the 2012 framework; and
3. The use of the term “segregation” in Regulation 7(d), particularly in relation to hostels, classrooms, and mentorship groups.

The Court repeatedly remarked that the Regulations appeared vague, capable of misuse, and potentially productive of social division rather than cohesion.

The Interim Order: What the Court did

By its interim order dated January 29, 2026, the Supreme Court:

• Issued notice to the Union of India and the UGC, returnable on March 19, 2026;
• Directed that the 2026 Regulations be kept in abeyance; and
• Exercising powers under Article 142, ordered that the UGC Regulations of 2012 would continue to operate in the meantime.

As per Bar&Bench, the Court framed four substantial questions of law, broadly concerning:

• The rationality and necessity of defining “caste-based discrimination” separately;
• The impact of the Regulations on sub-classifications within backward classes;
• Whether “segregation” envisaged under the Regulations violates constitutional equality and fraternity; and
• Whether the omission of ragging constitutes a regressive and unconstitutional legislative choice.

While these questions undoubtedly merit careful adjudication, the grant of an interim stay itself demands closer scrutiny.

Why was a stay granted — and was it justified?

Ordinarily, courts exercise considerable restraint while staying statutory or delegated legislation, especially when such legislation is aimed at addressing systemic discrimination. The established standard requires a strong prima facie case, demonstrable irreparable harm, and a balance of convenience favouring suspension.

In the present case, the Court relied primarily on:

• Ambiguity in drafting,
• Possibility of misuse, and
• The perceived exclusion of general category individuals from the definition of caste-based discrimination.

However, ambiguity and potential misuse have traditionally been treated as grounds for interpretation, not suspension, particularly in the context of welfare or protective legislation. The order does not demonstrate how the continued operation of the Regulations would cause irreversible harm sufficient to justify a blanket stay. Notably absent is any engagement with the harm caused by suspending a framework designed to respond to caste-based exclusion—an exclusion that is neither hypothetical nor speculative.

The Court’s reliance on the revival of the 2012 Regulations as a safeguard also assumes that the earlier framework was adequate, despite the fact that the 2019 PIL itself was premised on its failure to prevent institutional discrimination.

The Conceptual Problem: What is “caste-based discrimination”?

At the heart of the Court’s concern lies an unresolved conceptual question: is caste-based discrimination symmetrical?

The petitioners — and, to some extent, the Court — appear to approach caste as a neutral identity marker, capable of disadvantaging any individual depending on circumstances. This framing overlooks the constitutional understanding of caste as a structural system of hierarchy, not merely a personal attribute.

Indian constitutional jurisprudence has consistently recognised that caste-based discrimination is not simply discrimination involving caste, but discrimination arising from historical, social, and economic subordination of specific communities. To ask why upper-caste individuals are not explicitly protected under a provision addressing caste-based discrimination is to ignore this asymmetry.

Importantly, the Regulations already define “discrimination” broadly and in caste-neutral terms. Any harassment, humiliation, or unfair treatment faced by individuals from non-reserved categories is squarely covered under this definition. The absence of a separate label of “caste-based discrimination” for such individuals does not render them remediless.

The Court’s concern, therefore, risks collapsing the distinction between structural oppression and interpersonal conflict, treating unequal social realities as constitutionally equivalent.

The Slippery Comparison: “Upper castes” and de-notified or extremely backward communities

As noted by legal scholar Gautam Bhatia, one of the petitioners has argued that the impugned regulation suffers from a constitutional flaw comparable to the presumption underlying the colonial Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, which stigmatised entire communities as inherently criminal and was later repealed for violating principles of equality and constitutional morality. This submission, however, appears to rest on an analogy that implicitly places socially dominant or ‘upper’ caste groups on the same constitutional footing as communities that were historically criminalised and later de-notified.

De-notified tribes, in particular, have faced:

• Colonial-era criminalisation;
• Persistent social stigma;
• Economic exclusion; and
• Institutional invisibility even within reservation frameworks.

To suggest that excluding general category individuals from the definition of caste-based discrimination creates an equal protection problem risk flattening historical injustice into abstract formalism. Constitutional equality does not require identical treatment of groups situated in radically unequal positions. Indeed, such an approach may itself violate the principle of equality by treating unequal’s alike.

The Court’s rhetorical invocation of a “casteless society,” while normatively appealing, sits uneasily with judicial precedent cautioning that claims of castelessness often precede, rather than follow, the dismantling of caste hierarchies.

Vagueness, misuse, and the burden on protective legislation

The Court’s repeated emphasis on the “possibility of misuse” raises a familiar but contested trope in Indian constitutional adjudication. It is well settled that: The possibility of abuse of a law is no ground to strike it down.

This principle assumes even greater importance in the context of protective regulations, which have historically been diluted through misuse arguments advanced by socially dominant groups. The order does not explain why ordinary safeguards—such as inquiry mechanisms, appellate review, and judicial oversight—would be insufficient to address misuse on a case-by-case basis.

By foregrounding speculative misuse over structural exclusion, the order risks imposing a higher justificatory burden on equity-oriented regulations than on other forms of delegated legislation.

Ragging, non-regression, and judicial overcorrection

The Court’s concern regarding the omission of ragging from the 2026 Regulations is doctrinally significant, particularly in light of Justice Bagchi’s invocation of the principle of non-regression, as reported by LiveLaw. However, even assuming the omission is a serious flaw, it is not self-evident that the appropriate response was to stay the entire regulatory framework, rather than:

• Read the Regulations harmoniously with existing anti-ragging norms;
• Issue interpretative directions; or
• Direct limited corrective amendments.

The chosen course reflects a form of judicial overcorrection, where legitimate concerns about incompleteness lead to wholesale suspension.

Article 142 and the revival of the 2012 Regulations

The use of Article 142 to revive the 2012 Regulations raises further questions. While intended to prevent a regulatory vacuum, the move effectively substitutes judicial preference for executive policy, without a finding that the earlier framework better advances constitutional values.

This is particularly striking given that the 2026 Regulations were framed pursuant to Court-monitored proceedings and stakeholder consultations following the 2019 PIL. The revival thus appears less as a neutral stopgap and more as a normative rollback, albeit temporarily.

What the Supreme Court Directed in the Payal Tadvi–Rohith Vemula PIL — and why the stay order sits uneasily with it

The Supreme Court’s interim stay of the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026 must be read against the backdrop of the Court’s own continuing supervision in Abeda Salim Tadvi v. Union of India—the petition arising from the institutional failures that culminated in the deaths of Payal Tadvi and Rohith Vemula.

Conclusion: interim caution or substantive retreat?

The Supreme Court’s interim order undoubtedly reflects a desire to prevent social fragmentation and regulatory excess. Yet, in its emphasis on neutrality, symmetry, and speculative misuse, the Court risks diluting the constitutional logic of substantive equality that has long justified differentiated protections for caste-oppressed communities.

The deeper danger lies not merely in staying one set of regulations, but in the judicial reframing of caste-based discrimination as a universally symmetrical phenomenon, detached from history and structure. Whether this framing endures at the final stage will determine whether the Court’s intervention is remembered as a moment of careful constitutional recalibration—or as a cautious but consequential retreat from the promise of transformative equality.

The complete order may be read below:

Related:

A Cultural Burden: The ascending hierarchy of caste warfare and the crisis of the Indian republic

Freedom Deferred: Caste, class and faith in India’s prisons

Everyday Atrocity: How Caste Violence Became India’s New Normal

Two Dalit and Tribal girls brutalised in Andhra Pradesh: Pattern of caste violence exposes deep-rooted injustice

Caste Cloud Over Ambedkar Jayanti: From campus censorship to temple exclusion

CJP Maharashtra: Surge in communal and caste-based violence with six incidents in January 2025

2024: Love Jihad as a socio-political tool: caste, endogamy, and Hindutva’s dominance over gender and social boundaries in India

The post The stay of UGC Equity Regulations, 2026: The interim order, the proceedings, and the constitutional questions raised appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Historical practices underscore the institutional roots of this humiliation, which are alarmingly mirrored and even innovated upon in contemporary India. Accounts from the Peshwa rule describe how untouchables were prevented from using public streets due to the polluting effect of their shadow; in Poona, they were forced to wear a broom attached to their waist to sweep away their footprints. Visuals of such a humiliating practice has been immortalised by Dalit writers and poets (Dalit shahirs)—performers in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries—that created a body of literature and theatre known as Dalit jalse.[1] Such ritual enforcement of segregation persists today in modernised forms of humiliation. This includes incidents where a 12-year-old Dalit boy died by suicide after being locked in a cowshed and shamed for accidentally entering an upper-caste house in Himachal Pradesh (October 2025), or the horrific case of a 14-year-old Dalit child forced to consume his own faeces (July 2020).

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The continuance –in the 21^st century — of these ritualistic forms of violence, seven decades after India’s independence, confirms a profound failure of the constitutional promise of equality. The violence is often preceded by symbolic degradation—the imposition of dominant caste thought and perception—which acts as a necessary pre-condition for the subsequent material and physical violence. This structural denial of humanity maintains the cultural and ritual authority of the caste system, fundamentally resisting constitutional mandates.

In 1950, the Constitution of India promised a radical rupture: the abolition of untouchability (Article 17), equality before the law (Article 14), and a vision of dignity that sought to transcend birth-based hierarchy. Even then, as Indians celebrated a vision of equality and non-discrimination, there was vocal resistance (in the Constituent Assembly) to a complete and total abolition of Caste itself at the time of the Constituent Assembly debates; finally, as a compromise, Article 17 was enacted. Seven decades later, the persistence and intensification of violence against Dalits across regions and institutions suggest that even the limited promise remains incomplete.

In recent years, this crude form of violence and exclusion has acquired new visibility — and new legitimacy. Incidents of caste humiliation no longer remain confined to villages or agrarian conflicts; they permeate public spaces, reflective of the re-legitimisation of this othering by the dominance of the political ideology ruling at the Centre and over a dozen states: Schools, cities, social media, and even the judiciary’s symbolic space have been breached: it is as if a shrill messaging is being broadcast of the casteist majoritarian regime in power; that caste exclusion and hierarchy is not simply justified but will be violently imposed. When an advocate of India’s apex court “dares” flinging a shoe at the present Chief Justice of India (CJI), a Buddhist and this is followed by singular racial abuse online, it shatters the comforting belief that institutional achievement insulates against stigma. Such episodes illuminate a wider social truth: caste not only continues to function as India’s deepest grammar of power, adapting to modern structures rather than disappearing within them. Caste resurgence is the order of the day, being re-imposed, brutally by this dispensation. What India is witnessing is the classic form of counter-revolution.

This article maps this regression. Mostly drawing upon recent incidents documented in 2025 —including those in Thoothukudi, Panvel, Meerut, and Madhya Pradesh—it reconstructs what can be termed the “new architecture of caste attacks.” Major incidents before 2025 have also been included to show a pattern. Violence and exclusion today occur through overlapping arenas: the village, the city, the school, the digital sphere, and the state itself. Each arena reveals how caste’s social logic survives despite constitutional guarantees.

Notably, all the incidents referred to in this piece has been provided in detail in a separate document below:

The Ascending Hierarchy of Attack: From ritual to institutional apex

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar envisioned the Constitution as a path towards both a moral and social revolution. The formal abolition of untouchability was meant not merely to criminalise discrimination but to destroy its social roots. Yet Ambedkar warned in the Constituent Assembly that “political equality” without “social and economic equality” would leave democracy vulnerable to caste hierarchy’s return.

The decades following independence saw significant legislative advances—the Protection of Civil Rights Act (1955), the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (1989)—but these were accompanied by obdurate police and administrative non-application and followed by a persistent social backlash. Caste privilege adapted: open exclusion gave way to subtler forms of humiliation and violence disguised as defence of “tradition,” “honour,” or “religion.”

The post-2014 political climate added a new layer. In 1999, India had already experienced a glimpse of what was in store to come, when the National Democratic Alliance (in its first form) had the RSS-inspired Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) only as a minority. Yet, following the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, the ghastly lynching of five Dalit men in the village of Dulina, Jhajjar district, Haryana, after being falsely accused of cow slaughter, on October 15, 2002, shook the nation. A spate of such crimes continued and were documented.[2] The complicity of the police and the alleged involvement of far right organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) was part of the details recorded.

The ascent of cultural majoritarianism, the mainstreaming of “Sanatani” rhetoric, and the weaponisation of social media have together normalised casteist discourse while weakening institutional checks. The result is not the re-emergence of caste, but its reconfiguration through new technologies, idioms, and legitimations.

The analysis of caste violence must recognise its escalating and diversifying trajectory. The attacks are no longer confined solely to remote rural pockets but have ascended a hierarchy of space and institution, moving from localised ritual control to sophisticated psychological control in urban institutions, and finally culminating in explicit political and ideological confrontation with the nation’s highest constitutional offices.

The sheer volume of reported cases underscores the crisis. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, in 2023, 57,789 cases of crimes against SCs were registered, a slight 0.4% increase from 57,582 cases in 2022. Looking at a wider period reveals a substantial escalation. A study by the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network noted a 177.6% rise in crimes against SCs between 1991 and 2021.

This violence is not exclusive to villages; urban centres exhibit alarming rates. As per the statistics, Uttar Pradesh (15,130 cases) reported the highest number of crimes against SCs, followed by Rajasthan (8,449), Madhya Pradesh (8,232), and Bihar (7,064). Despite these statistics, the true incidence is severely underreported. Research suggests that only about 5% of assaults are officially recorded, often due to police indifference, bribery demands, or outright dismissal of complaints, particularly rape reports.

The structural progression of violence can be categorised across distinct spheres, illustrating the systemic nature of exclusion in the modern Republic.

Table 1: Typology of Caste Atrocities: The continuum of humiliation

 Ground Zero: Traditional sites of visceral violence (village to street)

Despite rapid urbanisation, the village remains the most enduring theatre of caste violence. In rural Madhya Pradesh, Dalit families were beaten and their seeds confiscated for cultivating common land (July 2025); in Chhatarpur, twenty families faced social boycott for accepting prasad from a Dalit neighbour (January 2025). Similar patterns appear across Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Bihar.

1. Controlling the Essentials: Land, water, and ritual space

In rural India, the primary mechanisms of caste control revolve around denying access to essential resources and ritual spaces, thereby enforcing physical and ritual segregation. Access to water, a non-negotiable human right, remains violently conditional upon caste status. The case of the 8-year-old Dalit boy in Barmer, Rajasthan, who was severely beaten and hung upside down for touching a water pot intended for upper castes, is a visceral demonstration of this control (September 2025). Similarly, the suicide of the 12-year-old Dalit boy in Himachal Pradesh was a direct consequence of humiliation for trespassing on upper-caste property (October 2025).

Ritual spaces, intended to be public, are often violently guarded to enforce untouchability. Dalits have been barred from offering prayers at a Durga Puja Pandal in Madhya Pradesh (September 2025) and violently assaulted for attempting to enter a temple during a religious procession in Churu, Rajasthan (September 2025). The Madras High Court was recently compelled to intervene and issue instructions to the Tenkasi administration regarding the equitable distribution of water due to persistent caste bias, highlighting how essential services are used as weapons of caste control (July 2025). The requirement for police to guard a Dalit wedding in Gujarat, sometimes using drones, underscores the fragility of civil rights protection when faced with entrenched local hierarchy (May 2025).

2. Policing Dalit Assertion: Rites of passage and mobility

Caste violence is inherently triggered not just by deviation from purity codes but by the assertion of equality and self-respect. This is most vividly manifest in attacks aimed at policing Dalit mobility and rites of passage, particularly wedding processions (baraats).

The act of a Dalit groom riding a horse, traditionally reserved for dominant castes, often leads to violence. Incidents across Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan involve grooms being pulled off their horses and guests being attacked (February 2025). This violence becomes ideologically intensified when Dalit identity is asserted. In Mathura, a Dalit baraat was attacked with stones and sticks after the Thakur community objected to the playing of songs related to Dr. Ambedkar and the Jatav community (July 2025). This deliberate suppression of public visibility and self-respect confirms that the violence is preventative, aimed at suppressing any public display of Dalit parity, thereby revealing the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of caste control.

Furthermore, intimate choices that threaten the integrity of caste endogamy are met with brutal force. Honor killings and extreme violence against inter-caste relationships are widespread. A Dalit youth in Tamil Nadu was hacked to death over an inter-caste relationship, with his girlfriend implicating her own family. In another incident, a Dalit boy in Tamil Nadu was stripped, beaten, and subjected to caste slurs for meeting a Vanniyar girl. (July 2025) The alleged honour killing of a Dalit man in Pune over his marriage to a Maratha woman, characterised by his family as a caste murder, confirms that this policing of reproductive choices transcends the rural-urban divide (February 2025).

3. The geography of forced servitude and political disobedience

Economic empowerment and political participation by Dalits are routinely met with retributive violence designed to re-establish feudal control. Violence often flares up when Dalits refuse forced labour or assert their rights over agricultural resources. In Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit youth was brutally beaten and his house set ablaze for refusing to work as a labourer (August 2025). Other attacks have involved dominant caste men snatching seeds and assaulting Dalit families cultivating their land (June 2025).

The targeting extends explicitly to Dalit political empowerment. A Dalit woman Sarpanch and her husband in Rajasthan were attacked with an axe over disputes regarding MNREGA road work (June 2025). This illustrates that achieving political mobility through constitutional offices is tolerated only as long as it does not challenge the economic and social dominance of local power structures. When a Dalit woman attempts to administer public projects (MNREGA), the challenge to local caste authority is met with physical terror, fundamentally linking economic development to caste subjugation.

The Modern Crucible: Institutionalised discrimination (city to school)

Cities were once imagined as caste’s antithesis—sites of anonymity and merit. Yet attacks on Dalit wedding processions in Agra and Meerut, and stone-pelting during Ambedkar-Jayanti rallies in Rajasthan, show that urbanity merely relocates caste antagonism.

Public celebrations become battlegrounds for visibility. The sight of a Dalit groom on a horse, or the sound of Ambedkarite songs, is treated as provocation. The violence is performative: it polices who may occupy the street, who may celebrate publicly, and which forms of joy are legitimate. In several districts, local authorities have begun escorting Dalit weddings with police and drones—an image at once tragic and telling.

Urban caste violence underscores how modern citizenship collides with inherited status. It also demonstrates the selective nature of state protection: preventive deployment rather than structural reform, treating equality as an event to be managed, not a norm to be lived.

1. The Cost of Merit: Caste in elite academia

Caste discrimination has infiltrated the highest echelons of Indian society, shifting the site of exclusion from the village field to the university lecture hall, resulting in a disturbing incidence of student suicides. Elite educational institutions, far from being meritocratic safe spaces, operate under a constant atmosphere of systemic, psychological violence against marginalised students. This structural violence is enacted through ridicule, ostracism, administrative bias, and academic sabotage.

Between November and December 2025 itself, three deaths of Dalit students across India underscored the lethal intersection of caste discrimination, institutional neglect, and structural exclusion in educational spaces. On November 6, a 19-year-old Dalit student of Deshbandhu College, Delhi University, and sister of JNUSU presidential candidate Raj Ratan Rajoriya, was found dead in her Govindpuri rented flat, with BAPSA alleging grave procedural lapses by the police, absence of medical personnel and female officers, and broader “institutional apathy” by Delhi University, including its failure to provide adequate hostel accommodation for marginalised students, forcing them into unsafe and isolating housing conditions. On November 20, an 18-year-old Dalit student, S Gajini, from Government Arignar Anna Arts College in Villupuram, succumbed to injuries ten days after attempting suicide, allegedly driven by caste-based abuse and assault by men from a dominant caste following a road altercation; despite an FIR under the SC/ST Act, the accused remain unidentified. On December 12, a 17-year-old Dalit student at a DIET institute in Kurnool died by suicide after prolonged distress linked to her struggle with English-medium coursework, highlighting how language barriers, caste location, and lack of institutional academic support continue to disproportionately burden first-generation and marginalised learners.

The environment becomes hostile because of the active weaponisation of meritocracy. Dalit students are frequently taunted as “non-meritorious” or “quota products”. This psychological assault on their intellect and dignity constitutes epistemic violence, a modernised replacement for ritual pollution, turning academic spaces into sites of structural harassment.

Case studies vividly illustrate this pattern:

• Rohith Vemula, 2016 (Hyderabad University)[3]: Vemula’s administrative exclusion, which forced him and four others to sleep in a makeshift “Dalit ghetto,” was recognised by his peers as a modern form of villevarda. While his death sparked a national political movement, the later police closure report attempted to undermine the caste-based motivation by questioning his Scheduled Caste status, thereby reinforcing the pernicious stigma of “fake merit”.
• Darshan Solanki, 2023 (IIT Bombay)[4]: Solanki died by suicide after allegedly facing ostracisation and ridicule from peers for asking basic questions in technical subjects. The institutional response from IIT Bombay, which prematurely denied any caste discrimination before a full inquiry was completed, exemplified institutional denial and refusal to confront endemic caste bias.

This environment of toxic exclusion is responsible for widespread trauma, with reports indicating that 80% of suicides in seven IITs were committed by Dalit students. Furthermore, the bias extends beyond performance, affecting administrative representation. Ten Dalit professors at Bangalore University resigned from their administrative roles, citing discrimination. The perpetuation of this violence reveals a fundamental rigidity: caste acts as a boundary that professional success cannot breach.

Table 2: Manifestations of exclusion in educational institutions

2. Invisible Barriers: Urban exclusion and professional glass ceilings

For Dalits who successfully navigate the hostile academic environment and achieve high professional status, the violence persists, though it adopts subtler, institutionalised forms. This reality demonstrates that economic independence does not translate into the annihilation of caste.

The suicide of Dalit IPS officer Puran Kumar, who questioned unfair promotions and postings, tragically illustrated that rank and wealth do not grant immunity; caste prejudice penetrates the highest echelons of bureaucracy (October 2025). Similarly, a Dalit Assistant Professor at SV Veterinary University was subjected to public humiliation when his chair was allegedly removed, forcing him to perform his duties while sitting on the floor (June 2025).

Discrimination is also structural in the dynamic urban private sector. Research indicates that job applicants with a Dalit name face significant discrimination, having approximately two-thirds the odds of receiving an interview compared to dominant-caste Hindu applicants with equivalent qualifications. This demonstrates that social exclusion is not a rural remnant but is actively practiced in the most modern sectors of the economy. This systemic sabotage of upward mobility means that educational and professional achievements merely shift the form of violence from physical assault to debilitating psychological and institutional harassment.

3. The digitalisation of hate and incitement

The rise of digital media has provided a new, pervasive medium for the normalisation and amplification of caste hatred. Based on a 2019 report by the human rights organisation Equality Labs, caste-based hate speech was found to make up 13% of the hate content reviewed on Facebook India. This digital sphere has facilitated the de facto normalisation of caste-hate speech and is recognised as a medium for oppressing and humiliating Dalits.

This toxic online envionment is actively utilized by right-wing extremist organisations, which have grown in prominence, sometimes using platforms like Instagram to promote hateful content and even fundraising. Major digital platforms demonstrated a historical disregard for addressing this issue, taking years to incorporate “caste” as a protected characteristic in their hate speech policies, and often failing to list it as an option in their reporting forms.

This digital rhetoric creates a climate of ideological validation that can incite physical violence. Harassment campaigns against high-profile Dalit figures, such as the Chief Justice of India, function as a coordinated form of symbolic violence intended to normalise the rejection of constitutional equality and test the boundaries of legal impunity.

The Politicalisation of Caste Warfare: The current regime context

Beyond violence lies symbolic appropriation. Dalit culture—its festivals, songs, and icons—is increasingly commodified or sanitised within a homogenised “Sanatani” narrative. The exclusion of India’s tribal President from the Ram Mandir inauguration exemplifies this politics of selective inclusion: representation without recognition.

In West Bengal, the “vegetarianisation” of Durga Puja since 2019 reflects a subtler transformation. Non-Sanatani groups, including many Dalit and Bahujan communities, are labelled “non-sattvic,” their rituals cast as impure. This recoding of religiosity transforms caste into cultural hierarchy.

At the same time, Ambedkar’s image is everywhere—on posters, statues, and government programmes—yet his emancipatory thought is domesticated. The appropriation of Ambedkar without the politics of equality amounts to symbolic capture: a neutralised memory that conceals continuing oppression.

Cultural exclusion thus performs two contradictory gestures—erasure and incorporation—both of which depoliticise Dalit assertion while reaffirming upper-caste control over meaning.

1. The Rise of Neo-Traditionalism: Sanatana dharma and exclusion

The period following 2014 has been marked by a significant ideological shift, where the ruling party’s emphasis on Hindu nationalism has provided an explicit political and cultural sanction for traditional caste principles. The concept of Sanatana Dharma has become a central ideological tool. Critics argue that this philosophy inherently justifies and maintains the rigid caste hierarchy, contrasting sharply with the constitutional ideals of liberty and equality. Any critique of caste discrimination, such as those made by Udhayanidhi Stalin regarding the system prevalent in Sanatana Dharma, is immediately framed by the dominant political ecosystem as an attack on Hinduism, aimed at polarising the electorate.

This ideological polarisation was directly responsible for the attempted shoe attack on Chief Justice B.R. Gavai (October 2025). The attacker, Rakesh Kishore, specifically shouted, “Sanatan ka apmaan nahi sahenge” (We will not tolerate the insult of Sanatan Dharma). This action linked a perceived anti-Hindu judicial stance (related to the Khajuraho deity ruling) directly to the caste identity of the judge. The incident functioned as an ideological declaration: constitutional morality, when used by a Dalit judge to challenge majoritarian religious claims, is deemed an “insult” that must be violently resisted, placing religious tradition above constitutional law.

2. Selective appropriation of Ambedkar and Hindutva strategy

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political affiliates have engaged in a sustained and deliberate political strategy to appropriate the legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, primarily to secure electoral gains and neutralise the profound ideological threat his philosophy poses to the foundational principles of Hindutva.

This strategy involves selectively invoking aspects of Ambedkar’s life, such as his conversion to Buddhism, while simultaneously minimising or ignoring his radical denunciation of Hinduism as being incompatible with democratic values. The attempt is to portray Ambedkar as a “Hindu social reformer” rather than a foundational critic of the caste system, thereby drawing Dalit politics into a unified, but hierarchical, “Hindu” fold. This co-option strategy is further highlighted by political attempts to link Ambedkar to RSS founders, despite historical evidence to the contrary.

The tactical use of Ambedkar’s image is often contradicted by ground realities. For instance, symbolic gestures are performed alongside reported policy failures, such as the denial of scholarships to 3,500 Dalit students in Uttar Pradesh, forcing public condemnation from Dalit leaders (June 2025). This gap between rhetoric and action confirms that the strategy is one of symbolic integration designed to neutralise dissent, rather than a genuine commitment to substantive social justice.

3. Symbolic constitutional exclusion

The pattern of exclusion extends to high constitutional functionaries from marginalised communities. The noticeable absence of President Droupadi Murmu, an Adivasi (Scheduled Tribe) and the constitutional head of state, from the inauguration of the highly politicised Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was widely criticised by opposition leaders, who connected it to her earlier exclusion from the Parliament building inauguration.

Although President Murmu belongs to the Adivasi community, the incident forms part of a larger pattern of ritual exclusion of marginalised constitutional authorities from highly faith-based state functions. The event, serving as a defining moment for the new majoritarian ideology, suggests a reordering of constitutional hierarchy. The exclusion of the head of state, particularly one from a marginalised background, implies that ritual purity and majoritarian religious identity are positioned to supersede constitutional hierarchy and the democratic principle of representation.

The Assault on the Constitutional Apex: Targeting the judiciary

1. The CJI Incident: From judicial remark to caste attack

The attempted shoe attack on Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai stands as the most explicit act of caste-based political defiance directed at the core institutions of the Republic. The violence was ideologically motivated, following the CJI’s remarks during a hearing about a Vishnu idol in Khajuraho.

The caste dimension was immediately clear. The ideological defence of the attacker, Rakesh Kishore, who invoked Sanatan Dharma, and the support of influential right-wing figures like YouTuber Ajeet Bharti, who called Gavai a “lousy, undeserving judge” and accused him of “anti-Hindu sentiments”, establishes a crucial political point. The attack was not aimed at judicial competence but at the perceived “anti-Sanatan” judicial decision, rooted in the judge’s Dalit identity. This confrontation establishes that challenging ritual caste authority through constitutional interpretation is now publicly deemed an act of ideological treason.

2. Impunity and state response

The response of the state apparatus to the assault and subsequent incitement has set a dangerous precedent of selective justice. The attacker, Rakesh Kishore, was released shortly after questioning because the CJI declined to press charges. Kishore subsequently expressed no remorse for his actions.

Crucially, those who digitally incited further violence were also handled with remarkable leniency. YouTuber Ajeet Bharti, who made provocative remarks about the CJI and allegedly suggested actions such as spitting on the judge, was briefly taken in for questioning by Noida Police but was not arrested and was later released.

This lenient approach towards both the physical attacker and the digital instigator demonstrates a deep political hesitation to punish ideologically driven attacks rooted in majoritarian caste sentiment, even when directed at the highest judicial authority. This establishes a political environment that minimises the gravity of such threats, potentially intimidating the judiciary and compromising its ability to enforce social justice laws without fear of retribution.

Gendered Violence and Custodial Deaths: The deepest layer of impunity

Caste and gender intersect to produce some of India’s most brutal crimes. Dalit women continue to face disproportionate sexual violence, often as retribution for asserting dignity or property rights. Cases from Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district (2023) and Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi forest region (2024) illustrate patterns where rape is both punishment and warning.

Custodial deaths compound the pattern. Dalit men arrested on minor charges have died in custody under suspicious circumstances, their families alleging torture. Investigations are often perfunctory, medical reports delayed, and officers reinstated. Such cases demonstrate how state power fuses with social prejudice, converting constitutional guardians into instruments of caste discipline.

The intersection of caste and gender is absent from mainstream criminal jurisprudence. The law individualises crime; caste violence is collective. Without recognising this collective dimension, justice remains procedural rather than transformative.

Regional Patterns: The southern paradox

Contrary to common perception, official data and recent reportage show high incidence of atrocities in southern states—Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala—regions long celebrated for social reform. The Thoothukudi incident (2023) and the string of attacks in Tirunelveli district (over 1,000 cases in five years) reveal both persistence and visibility.

This “southern paradox” has sociological roots: assertive Dalit movements and higher reporting rates coexist with dominant-caste backlash. Greater literacy and media presence ensure documentation but not necessarily deterrence. The violence is thus both a measure of progress (assertion) and of resistance (repression).

The Post-2014 Inflection: Normalisation and silence

The last decade marks a qualitative shift. Three developments stand out:

1. Cultural majoritarianism: The language of “Sanatan Dharma” has become a political grammar through which caste is re-inscribed as divine order. Public discourse valorises hierarchy as heritage.
2. Digital propagation: Organised online ecosystems amplify caste-coded slurs and mobilise outrage with unprecedented speed.
3. Institutional silence: From police stations to ministries, selective inertia signals tacit endorsement. Silence becomes policy.

This triad—rhetoric, technology, and silence—has rendered caste violence socially negotiable. The constitutional ethos of equality competes with a cultural ethos of graded dignity.

The Constitutional Abyss: Implications for the Indian republic

1. The Failure of the SC/ST (PoA) Act: Legal protections as fiction

The rampant escalation of violence highlights the systemic failure of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (PoA Act). Designed as a potent legal shield, the Act is continually undermined by institutional resistance and poor enforcement, leading to low conviction rates.[5]

Police inaction is endemic; research documents the prevalent practice of police failing to register FIRs or prematurely closing cases through “Final Reports”. Despite the Supreme Court’s, clear directive that FIR registration is mandatory for cognizable offenses, police show a “differential stance” on enforcing the PoA Act compared to other statutes, demonstrating systemic bias in justice delivery.

Moreover, the state apparatus frequently operates as an agent of caste oppression. Incidents include police custody deaths of Dalit individuals, police brutality against a Dalit woman in Haryana, and officers being booked for assaulting a retired Dalit official. This pattern demonstrates that the constitutional mandate to protect Dalits is often betrayed by the very instruments of state power, rendering legal protections fictional.

The SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 and its 2015 Amendment remain India’s most potent instruments against caste violence, yet enforcement deficits persist. The act mandates immediate FIR registration, establishment of special courts, and protection of victims. Ground reports show chronic under-registration, downgrading of charges, and police bias.

Judicial interpretation oscillates between protection and dilution. The Supreme Court’s 2018 Subhash Kashinath Mahajan judgment introduced safeguards against “false cases,” effectively softening arrest provisions until partially reversed by Parliament. This episode revealed how institutional anxiety about misuse can overshadow concern for victims’ safety.

At stake is not merely criminal justice but constitutional morality—Ambedkar’s phrase for the ethical framework that must animate state action. When police or courts treat caste violence as routine, they erode that morality. The Republic then survives in form but not in substance.

2. The conceptual meaning of exclusion and humiliation

The pervasive violence is structurally maintained through exclusion, which is the combined outcome of deliberate deprivation and systemic discrimination, preventing Dalits from exercising full economic, social, and political rights.

Humiliation serves as a continuous psychological weapon, seeking to deny the basic humanity of the Dalit individual and enforce ritual hierarchy. Whether through being stripped and beaten, forced into humiliating acts, or subjected to taunts questioning their merit, the goal remains the denial of constitutional dignity. Dr. Ambedkar’s formulation established that democracy requires the foundational principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The evidence suggests that when Dalits attempt to live a democratic life—by asserting social equality (riding a horse), achieving academic merit (joining an elite institution), or claiming high constitutional office (CJI)—they are met with structural violence and, frequently, death. This structural opposition confirms that the traditional social order fundamentally rejects the core ethical commitments of the Indian Constitutional Republic.

Conclusion: Safeguarding constitutional morality

Philosophers from Avishai Margalit to Axel Honneth define humiliation as the denial of recognition essential to personhood. Caste violence operates precisely through such denial. Its power lies not only in inflicting pain but in publicly authorising inequality. When a Dalit child is beaten for entering a temple, or when a Chief Justice is abused online, the message is continuous: certain bodies remain conditional citizens. Humiliation thus functions as pedagogy—teaching both victim and perpetrator the limits of equality. To counter it requires more than punishment; it requires re-socialisation—a transformation of cultural consciousness that law alone cannot produce.

The investigation into the hierarchy of attacks against Dalits, tracing the violence from ritual control in the village to ideological confrontation at the highest constitutional levels, confirms a severe crisis of constitutional morality in India. The nature of caste warfare has transitioned from covert rural brutality to overt, high-profile ideological confrontations in the urban and judicial spheres. This escalation is profoundly enabled by a political climate that prioritises majoritarian traditionalism over the egalitarian principles of the Constitution. The targeting of a Dalit Chief Justice, sanctioned by ideological rhetoric and met with institutional leniency, signifies that the foundational democratic tenet of equality is now under explicit, active threat.

To address this existential challenge, a set of structural and policy reforms is necessary to transform nominal guarantees into substantive equality:

1. Mandatory and independent police accountability: Legislation must be introduced to mandate the immediate and unconditional registration of FIRs under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act for all cognizable offenses, coupled with the establishment of independent police accountability commissions with the authority to prosecute officers who violate or fail to enforce the Act.
2. Criminalising institutional caste bias: Stringent anti-discrimination laws, backed by criminal penalties, must be implemented across all educational, corporate, and governmental institutions to address structural and psychological harassment, ending the systemic institutional denial of caste discrimination.
3. Digital accountability for incitement: Robust legal and regulatory measures are necessary to hold social media platforms accountable for the unchecked proliferation of caste-based hate speech and the incitement of violence, recognising it as a direct threat to public order and democratic principles.

The escalation of caste violence against Dalits—from the exclusion of a child from water access to the political assault on the Chief Justice—is a gauge of the Republic’s health. If the judiciary cannot be protected from attacks based on the caste identity of its leader, the entire legal and democratic framework built to secure social justice stands compromised.

More than seventy-five years after independence, the Indian Republic stands at a moral crossroads. Formally, it is a constitutional democracy; substantively, it remains stratified by caste. The incidents chronicled in 2025 itsef—stretching from rural Madhya Pradesh to the Supreme Court’s digital corridors—suggest not an aberration but a continuum.

The question is therefore not whether caste survives, but how the state and society have adapted to its survival. The new architecture of attacks—spanning villages, cities, institutions, and cyberspace—reveals that violence and exclusion now coexist comfortably with democratic form.

Ambedkar warned that “Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.” The task ahead is to deepen the soil—to cultivate a culture where dignity is not negotiable, where equality is not episodic, and where the law’s promise finally becomes social reality. Until then, every assault on a Dalit body, image, or word remains an assault on the Constitution itself.

References

Indian colleges are hotbeds of casteism. How can they do better? – The News Minute https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/indian-colleges-are-hotbeds-casteism-how-can-they-do-better-176683

Caste and the Dalits: An Introduction – Global Ministries https://www.globalministries.org/resource/caste-and-the-dalits-an-introduction/

A clash of ideologies: Why Ambedkar and Hindutva are poles apart – The Polity https://thepolity.co.in/article/173

Hate Speech against Dalits on Social Media – Brandeis Library Open Access Journals https://journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/caste/article/download/260/61/1048

View of Hate Speech against Dalits on Social Media: Would a Penny Sparrow be Prosecuted in India for Online Hate Speech? https://journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/caste/article/view/260/61

Caste-hate speech – International Dalit Solidarity Network
https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Caste-hate-speech-report-IDSN-2021.pdf

Atrocities on Dalits in Contemporary India Even After 75 Years of Indian Independence https://ijfans.org/uploads/paper/5af7bf7ae1851636fe726333533b1c8b.pdf

Dalit scholar’s protest exposes casteism in India’s higher education – FairPlanet https://www.fairplanet.org/story/dalit-scholars-protest-exposes-casteism-in-indias-higher-education/

IIT-Bombay Dalit student death | Senior says Darshan Solanki felt alienated by roommate, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/iit-bombay-dalit-student-death-senior-says-darshan-solanki-felt-alienated-by-roommate/article66611752.ece

Attack on CJI: Union MoS Athawale seeks SC/ST Act charges as BJP does a tightrope walk https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/shoe-attack-cji-mos-athawale-sc-st-act-bjp-10298249/

Ram Mandir Invitation: NCP Leader Raises Concerns about Draupadi Murmu’s Exclusion,

https://www.epw.in/engage/article/rohith-vemula-foregrounding-caste-oppression#:~:text=Between%202016%20and%202021%20itself,death%20sparked%20a%20political%20movement.

Rohith Vemula: Foregrounding Caste Oppression in Indian Higher Education Institutions, https://www.epw.in/engage/article/rohith-vemula-foregrounding-caste-oppression

IIT Student Suicides: Curse Of Caste On Campus? | Left, Right & Centre – YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhDhIhQiRWQ

How many lives will it take before India acknowledges dominant caste hegemony in educational institutes? – Citizens for Justice and Peace
https://cjp.org.in/how-many-lives-will-it-take-before-india-acknowledges-dominant-caste-hegemony-in-educational-institutes/

India’s caste system: ‘They are trying to erase dalit history. This is a martyrdom, a sacrifice’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/24/student-suicide-untouchables-stuggle-for-justice-india

Suicide by Dalit students in 4 years – The Hindu https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/suicide-by-dalit-students-in-4-years/article2425965.ece

Unveiling The Tragic Link: Caste Discrimination And Suicides In Higher Education https://theprobe.in/stories/unveiling-the-tragic-link-caste-discrimination-and-suicides-in-higher-education/

Urban Labour Market Discrimination – GSDRC
https://gsdrc.org/document-library/urban-labour-market-discrimination/

Indian women, Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims face discrimination in earnings and jobs: Oxfam report https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2022/Sep/15/indian-women-dalits-adivasis-muslims-face-discrimination-in-earnings-and-jobs-oxfam-report-2498476.html

An Introduction to Right-Wing Extremism in India – ScholarWorks at UMass Boston, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1809&context=nejpp

For far-right groups in India, Instagram has become a place to promote violence, report shows – PBS
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/for-far-right-groups-in-india-instagram-has-become-a-place-to-promote-violence-report-shows

Online caste-hate speech: Pervasive discrimination and humiliation on social media, https://teaching.globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/resources/online-caste-hate-speech-pervasive-discrimination-and-humiliation-social-media

Udayanidhi Stalin’s Critique of Sanatana Dharma – Two Articles – Janata Weekly
https://janataweekly.org/udayanidhi-stalins-critique-of-sanatana-dharma-two-articles/

The Eternal Discrimination Of Sanatana Dharma – Madras Courier, https://madrascourier.com/opinion/the-eternal-discrimination-of-sanatana-dharma/

Dr.Ambedkar, Sanatan Dharma and Dalit Politics – Countercurrents, https://countercurrents.org/2023/09/dr-ambedkar-sanatan-dharma-and-dalit-politics/

(PDF) The attack on the CJI and the shadow of caste – ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396310357_The_attack_on_the_CJI_and_the_shadow_of_caste

Right-wing influencer Ajeet Bharti faces scrutiny online after ‘shoe attack’ on CJI Gavai, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/after-shoe-attack-on-cji-right-wing-youtuber-ajeet-bharti-faces-scrutiny-online-101759830247046.html

RSS and Ambedkar: A Camaraderie That Never Existed – Janata Weekly, https://janataweekly.org/rss-and-ambedkar-a-camaraderie-that-never-existed/

From criticism to praise: How RSS changed stance on Ambedkar – Deccan Herald, https://www.deccanherald.com/india/from-criticism-to-praise-how-rss-changed-stance-on-ambedkar-3492843

Appropriating Ambedkar: Effort to merge Left and Ambedkarite politics – The Hindu, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/appropriating-ambedkar-effort-to-merge-left-and-ambedkarite-politics/article8500076.ece

RSS At 100 And The Philosophy Of A Nation’s Unmaking – OpEd – Eurasia Review, https://www.eurasiareview.com/08102025-rss-at-100-and-the-philosophy-of-a-nations-unmaking-oped/

Who Is Ajeet Bharti? YouTuber Questioned After Controversial Comments On CJI Shoe Attack https://zeenews.india.com/india/who-is-ajeet-bharti-youtuber-questioned-after-controversial-comments-on-cji-shoe-attack-2969348.html

Why did Noida Police question Ajeet Bharti? What he commented on CJI BR Gavai after ‘shoe attack’ | Latest News India – Hindustan Times
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-did-noida-police-question-ajeet-bharti-what-he-commented-on-cji-br-gavai-after-shoe-attack-101759894807122.html

Prof Abhay Dubey on Ajit Bharti Arrested for Inciting Violence Against CJI Gavai after Shoes Hurled – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqpJ8s7HZhk

YouTuber Ajeet Bharti Taken in for Questioning After Remarks on CJI Shoe Incident, Released Later – LawBeat
https://lawbeat.in/news-updates/youtuber-ajeet-bharti-taken-in-for-questioning-after-remarks-on-cji-shoe-incident-released-later-1533340

‘Final Reports’ under Sec-498A and the SC/ST Atrocities Act | Economic and Political Weekly, https://www.epw.in/journal/2014/41/commentary/final-reports-under-sec-498a-and-scst-atrocities-act.html

Dalits and Social Exclusion: An Overview – International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v8i7/ART20199584.pdf

India Exclusion Report 2013-2014 – Selected caste extracts
https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/India-Exclusion-Report-2013-Selected-caste-extracts.pdf

The Death of a Dalit in a Democracy – Caste – The India Forum, https://www.theindiaforum.in/caste/death-dalit-democracy

[1] This body of work is also a major source for stories and protest songs (Qawwali) that focus on anti-caste movements and give voice to Dalit struggles wherein the broom and pot would be consistent imagery for this protest tradition.

[2] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/india0207/6.htm; https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/article30193600.ece#:~:text=IN%20one%20of%20the%20most,presence%20of%20scores%20of%20onlookers.

[3] https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/we-all-failed-rohith/

[4] https://cjp.org.in/iit-mumbai-report-on-darshan-solanki-death-crucial-evidence-overlooked/

[5] https://sabrang.com/cc/archive/2005/mar05/cover.html

The post The Anatomy of Humiliation: Defining caste violence in the Constitutional era appeared first on SabrangIndia.

While India has long witnessed episodic flashes of communal hostility or sporadic acts of vigilantism, the six-month period under study stands apart for its density, coordination, and geographic spread. Under Togadia’s polarising leadership, AHP and RBD conducted dozens of public rallies, Shastra Puja ceremonies, trishul and weapon distribution events, ideological training camps, anti-conversion protests, disruptions of minority religious gatherings, and direct interventions into interfaith and community life. The patterns revealed in these events are not incidental expressions of bigotry but components of a carefully structured ideological project that merges theology, masculinity, ritual, and violence into a coherent organisational strategy.

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The socio-legal significance of this mobilisation lies not only in the content of the speeches or the frequency of the gatherings but in the formation of a parallel normative order—a majoritarian apparatus that increasingly shapes public life, community relations, and the distribution of violence. AHP–RBD’s activities represent the consolidation of what may be termed an infrastructural form of vigilante sovereignty. In this system, communal identity becomes the organising principle of public order; violence is reimagined as moral duty; masculinity becomes a civic ideal; and the state’s authority is supplemented—or overridden—by militant religiosity. This is not a spontaneous phenomenon. It is patterned, scripted, routinised, and embedded in organisational structures that grant it continuity, reproducibility, and diffusion.

This article examines the six-month mobilisation through a socio-legal lens, drawing from an extensive dataset of AHP–RBD events across multiple states (see attached document for a comprehensive list). By tracing thematic narratives, analysing rhetorical patterns, studying ritual practices, and observing the organisation’s interactions with state institutions—particularly the police—we demonstrate how AHP–RBD’s activities signal a dangerous reconfiguration of India’s democratic order. The mobilisation reveals the emergence of a dual authority structure: the formal, constitutional state that guarantees equality, liberty, and religious freedom, a constitutional order that is being hollowed out; and a parallel, extra-legal majoritarian sovereignty that polices interfaith intimacy, adjudicates religious legitimacy, regulates gender and sexuality, and authorises violence in the name of community protection.

The implications for constitutional democracy are profound. AHP–RBD’s activities challenge the secular and egalitarian commitments of the Constitution. More critically, they expose how these commitments are weakened not only through state action but through state inaction—through selective policing, tacit endorsement, rhetorical alignment, or the silent normalisation of extremist discourse. As hate becomes publicly permissible, minority communities experience shrinking civic space, and majoritarian aggression becomes an accepted instrument of social control.

From a social movement perspective, AHP–RBD functions as a radical flank within the wider Hindutva ecosystem. By expanding the boundaries of extreme speech and acceptable violence, it shifts the Overton window rightward and allows mainstream political actors to appear moderate while benefiting from the emotional climate generated by extremist mobilisation. From a legal standpoint, the group’s actions—ranging from hate speech and incitement to weapons handling and vigilantism—constitute repeated violations of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Arms Act, and fundamental constitutional rights.

This article argues that AHP–RBD’s mobilisation is not merely evidence of rising majoritarian aggression but an indication of a new mode of communal politics—one that fuses ritual, masculinity, religious symbolism, historical revisionism, and legal ambiguity into a potent political formation. It is both ideological and infrastructural, capable of generating continuity, producing cadres, shaping emotional climates, and influencing electoral behaviour. To understand its legal implications, we must move beyond individual violations and analyse the broader socio-legal transformation it represents: the gradual emergence of a parallel polity that threatens to displace constitutional democracy from within.

From VHP margins to radical extremist formation

Praveen Togadia, a trained cancer surgeon, entered the arena of Hindu nationalism through the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and subsequently rose to –or was ordained to–become the International Working President of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). This period was his political crucible. He distinguished himself through militant cultural mobilisation, most notably the organisation of ‘Trishul Deeksha’ (trident distribution) ceremonies for Bajrang Dal activists, a direct act of communal provocation and arms dissemination that often-violated state bans.

The Bajrang Dal, the original youth wing of VHP, provided the blueprint for AHP-RBD’s operational tactics. Its foundational ideology—Hindutva, Islamophobia, and a far-right position—was perfected during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the subsequent Gujarat pogrom of 2002, where Togadia’s influence was significant. For a previous and thorough analysis of Togadia’s antecedents and actions, see the May 2003 issue of Communalism Combat, Against the Law.[1] The Bajrang Dal legacy of violence and communal targeting, from anti-Christian attacks to ‘moral policing,’ is the exact ideological inheritance upon which the AHP-RBD is built.

The AHP-RBD is Togadia’s vehicle to claim his position as the authentic voice of uncompromising, hardline Hindutva. This background explains several features of AHP–RBD’s mobilisation:

• its rhetorical extremism, which goes beyond even the most polarising elements within mainstream Hindutva;
• its obsession with demographic fear and gender policing;
• its reliance on ritual militarisation as a means of identity formation;
• its disregard for legality and due process;
• and its strategic positioning as a radical flank to the BJP, indirectly reinforcing the latter’s political dominance.

AHP–RBD is a product of ideological intensification, organisational displacement, and the opportunities created by a political climate increasingly tolerant of majoritarian aggression. It thrives in the gaps between state authority and nationalist discourse—in the ambiguities of legal enforcement, the ambivalence of political leadership, and the anxieties of a society grappling with polarisation, insecurity, and historical grievance.

Hate as a structure- analysis of the pattern

The events analysed in this article consists of detailed descriptions of AHP–RBD events across India between April and November 2025. These events include rallies, speeches, religious ceremonies, festivals, weapons training camps, “awareness” drives, protests against minority institutions, processions, and interventions in local disputes. Each event contains descriptive information about the location, the nature of the activity, the content of speeches, the symbols deployed, the performative elements (such as tridents, swords, firearms), and the presence or absence of police.

Through this article, the events of the past six months are seen not as a collection of isolated incidents but as an aggregated structure—a corpus of political performance through which a particular vision of the nation, society, and citizenship is constructed and enacted.

Based on the data, a clear pattern emerges in the language and symbolic repertoire deployed across AHP events. Hate speech, in this context, must be understood not simply as verbal hostility but as a technique of discursive engineering—an organised method of drawing communal boundaries, allocating moral worth, identifying enemies, and legitimising forms of aggression. Across states and settings, the same tropes reappear with remarkable consistency: demographic panic, the spectre of “love jihad,” historical grievance, territorial loss, and civilisational threat. These are not spontaneous utterances but components of a deliberate ideological script crafted to evoke fear, shame, pride, and defensive anger in the audience.

Equally revealing is the ritualised dimension of the mobilisation. Ceremonies such as Shastra Puja, Trishul Deeksha, communal sword-blessing, or the devotional display of firearms function as much more than cultural performances. They represent attempts to sacralise violence by embedding it directly into religious and moral practice. When weapons are blessed, displayed, and circulated as objects of collective reverence, the boundary between devotion and aggression collapses. Drawing from anthropological work on ritual and theories of political religion, this analysis reads such events as performative acts that create a moral obligation toward vigilantism. They invite participants to imagine themselves not merely as believers but as defenders, making violence appear righteous and necessary.

The data also reveals how AHP–RBD positions itself as a source of extra-legal authority. In numerous instances, cadres assume functions associated with policing: intervening in interfaith relationships, raiding churches or prayer meetings, detaining individuals accused of “suspicious” behaviour, or monitoring localities under the guise of protection. Viewed through socio-legal theory, these actions are not isolated encroachments but indicators of a parallel governance structure. AHP effectively performs sovereign functions—identifying threats, enforcing discipline, and adjudicating moral transgressions—thus competing with the state’s monopoly over lawful coercion. Vigilantism here becomes a mode of rule, not an aberration.

Placed against constitutional and statutory frameworks, the significance of this pattern becomes sharper. The organisation’s rhetoric raises questions under hate-speech jurisprudence; its weaponised rituals potentially violate the Arms Act; its interventions into religious practice implicate Articles 25 and 26; and its targeting of Muslim and Christian communities challenges the equality guarantees of Articles 14 and 15. The concern is not the presence of individual violations but the cumulative erosion of constitutional norms they represent. As such practices become normalised, the protective architecture of fundamental rights weakens, and the boundaries between state authority and majoritarian desire blur.

Seen through the lens of social movement theory, this mobilisation aligns with what many term a radical flank: an extremist wing of a broader ideological ecosystem that shifts public norms by expanding the limits of permissible discourse. AHP’s open hostility, explicit calls for social segregation, and sacralised vigilantism create a climate in which mainstream political actors appear moderate even as they move closer to majoritarian positions. The dataset illustrates how such fringe rhetoric does not remain at the edges but gradually migrates toward the centre of political common sense, fuelling polarisation and recalibrating the moral thresholds of democratic life.

The analysis therefore treats hate not as a series of discrete incidents but as a structure—an enduring architecture embedded in speech, ritual, space, and authority. Mobilisation is read as a continuous process of meaning-making, one that is inseparable from legality, identity, and the distribution of state power. Recurrent performances of communal hostility gradually establish new baselines for what counts as acceptable public behaviour, shifting social norms long before laws change. At the same time, the analysis foregrounds how extra-legal actors strategically exploit legal ambiguities and enforcement gaps to assert control over public space, intimate life, religious practice, and everyday social relations. In this view, hate operates both as discourse and governance, reshaping the moral and constitutional landscape from below.

1. Majoritarianism, vigilante sovereignty, and the production of fear

To understand AHP–RBD’s mobilisation based on the data, the organisation must be placed within three key theoretical perspectives: majoritarian nationalism, vigilante sovereignty, and the politics of fear. Majoritarian nationalism describes systems where one religious or ethnic community is treated as the true owner of the nation, while minorities are viewed as conditional members or potential threats. This framework aligns closely with AHP–RBD’s speeches, which repeatedly frame India as a Hindu nation and portray Muslims and Christians as outsiders who must be monitored or restrained.

The idea of vigilante sovereignty helps explain how non-state groups act like extensions of the state. Such groups enforce moral rules, police communities, intervene in personal relationships, and sometimes use or threaten violence. AHP–RBD’s raids, detentions, and street-level interventions fit this pattern, challenging the state’s exclusive right to use force and maintain public order.

The politics of fear shows how movements rely on fear not only as an emotion but as a tool of mobilisation. By invoking demographic threats, “love jihad,” religious conversion conspiracies, and historic betrayals, AHP–RBD creates an atmosphere of danger that makes aggressive action seem justified. Fear becomes the glue that binds supporters together and the justification for exceptional attitudes and behaviours.

In a one-sided political vacuum where the Opposition is yet to come up with a convincing, consistent and effective response to all the hyper claims made in hate speeches unleashed –be it on “demographic fear”, the “communal regulation of intimacy”, “ritual militarisation” and strong, street-level enforcement(s) of the rule of law, this vigilantism goes unchecked.

2. The politics of demographic fear

Demographic fear sits at the heart of AHP–RBD’s mobilisation strategy. Across the six-month dataset, leaders repeatedly promote the idea that Hindus are on the verge of becoming a minority and that Muslims are growing in number with deliberate, strategic intent. This narrative is presented as unquestionable fact. It relies less on evidence and more on repetition, emotion, and imagery: Muslims are described as multiplying rapidly, expanding territorially, organising politically, and threatening the very survival of the nation.

Although demographic anxiety has long existed within Hindu nationalist thought, AHP–RBD deploys it with unusual intensity and uniformity. Whether speaking in Ahmedabad, rural Maharashtra, small towns in Uttar Pradesh, or border districts in Assam, leaders use almost the same script: Hindus are shrinking; Muslims are taking over land; demographic imbalance will end Hindu civilisation; Muslim “vote banks” control politics; and Hindu women face imminent danger. The consistency of this message across regions reveals a coordinated ideological project rather than scattered local sentiment.

Viewed through a socio-legal lens, demographic fear acts as a political tool. It creates a sense of permanent emergency, shaping the present through imagined threats from the future. In this atmosphere, constitutional norms appear inadequate. Hate speech is reframed as a “warning,” weapons training becomes “protection,” and vigilantism is cast as “preventive action.” Even constitutional equality is portrayed as a risk Hindus can no longer afford.

Demographic fear also becomes a way of mapping territory. Several speeches describe Muslim-majority areas as “occupied zones,” “mini-Pakistans,” or “Bangladeshi territories.” This transforms ordinary patterns of residence or work into symbols of invasion. A Muslim neighbourhood becomes hostile territory; daily life becomes evidence of encroachment.

Socially, demographic fear collapses individuals into a threatening collective. A Muslim child becomes a sign of “population jihad,” a Muslim family becomes a plan of conquest, and a Muslim locality becomes a base of expansion. This removes any possibility of seeing Muslims as citizens or neighbours. They are recast as demographic threats, not people. Such dehumanisation makes discriminatory acts or violence appear justified.

At the same time, demographic fear reshapes Hindu identity. It portrays Hindus as vulnerable and under siege, encourages men to adopt a protector role, and frames women as symbols of community honour. This narrative helps unify diverse Hindu groups around a shared sense of danger and duty. In speech after speech, AHP leaders ask Hindus to “wake up,” “stay alert,” and “prepare for struggle.” Fear becomes a tool for building collective identity.

Legally, demographic fear is not just misleading—it is harmful. It fuels discrimination, normalises exclusion, and creates justification for violence. Indian constitutional law, especially in hate speech cases such as Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan (2014) and Amish Devgan (2020), makes clear that speech portraying an entire community as dangerous violates equality, dignity, and public order. Yet at many AHP–RBD events, police and local authorities stand by, signalling that such rhetoric is tolerated. This gap between constitutional protection and on-ground practice allows demographic fear to circulate freely and take root in public life.

In the end, demographic fear is the foundation on which AHP–RBD’s entire mobilisation rests. It casts Muslims as permanent adversaries, turns reproduction into a battleground, and provides justification for weapons rituals, gender policing, vigilantism, and calls for segregation or violence. Without demographic fear, much of AHP’s narrative loses force. With it, almost any action becomes thinkable.

3. Gender, sexuality, and the communal regulation of intimacy

Gender and sexuality lie at the centre of AHP–RBD’s ideological project. Although the organisation claims to defend “Hindu dharma” and “protect Hindu women,” its speeches reveal a deeply patriarchal, hyper-masculine, and communal vision in which women’s bodies and choices are controlled in the name of community honour. The conspiracy theory of “love jihad”—the claim that Muslim men intentionally form relationships with Hindu women to convert them and weaken Hindu society—functions as the main tool for this control.

Nearly half the events in the data refer directly to “love jihad.” This is not accidental. It reflects a worldview in which gender becomes the most important site of communal conflict. Hindu women are portrayed as innocent, gullible, and easily manipulated. Muslim men are cast as predatory, cunning, and hypersexual. This binary has no factual basis, but it is designed to justify constant vigilance, suspicion, and hostility.

Within AHP–RBD’s discourse, the Hindu woman is not treated as an autonomous individual with constitutional rights. Instead, she is imagined as the carrier of Hindu lineage and the symbol of community purity. Her body becomes communal property; her relationships are judged through the lens of demographic threat. Any interfaith relationship is interpreted as coercive by default. By denying Hindu women agency, the organisation turns them into objects of protection rather than subjects of choice.

This framework produces three major socio-legal consequences.

• First, it legitimises the surveillance of women. AHP–RBD members monitor public spaces—markets, colleges, workplaces—to watch interactions between Hindu women and Muslim men. Their presence creates an environment of constant scrutiny. Hindu women become boundary markers rather than free citizens, their mobility and friendships policed in the name of protection.

• Second, it encourages violence against Muslim men. In many speeches, Muslim men are presented as inherent threats, and audiences are urged to confront, punish, or even kill them. Such rhetoric directly violates the BNS and constitutional guarantees of equality and personal liberty. Yet these statements are made openly, often with police present, signalling that communal violence in the name of gender protection is tolerated.

• Third, this discourse undermines constitutional rights. The Supreme Court in Hadiya affirmed that adults are free to choose their partners. Judgments in Shafin Jahan, Navtej Johar, and Puttaswamy recognise autonomy, dignity, and privacy as core constitutional values. AHP–RBD’s mobilisation, however, replaces individual autonomy with communal control. Interfaith relationships are reframed as conspiracies, and constitutional protections are cast as threats to Hindu survival.

Sociologically, this gendered narrative binds Hindu men together through a shared sense of masculine duty. The call to protect Hindu women becomes a mechanism for creating solidarity among Hindu men. Masculinity is defined in militarised terms—strength, vigilance, and readiness for confrontation. Rituals such as weapon worship or trishul distribution reinforce this ideal. In effect, gender becomes a tool for producing a community of men primed for conflict.

“Love jihad” is therefore not only a myth or a political slogan. It is a central organising principle of AHP–RBD’s mobilisation. It regulates women’s autonomy, fuels hostility against Muslim men, strengthens group identity, and provides moral justification for vigilante action. It transforms everyday intimacy into a battleground and reimagines private relationships as matters of communal survival.

4. Ritual militarisation and the sacralisation of violence

One of the most notable features of AHP–RBD’s mobilisation is the central role of ritual in normalising violence. The dataset records numerous events involving Shastra Puja (weapon worship), Trishul Deeksha (the distribution of tridents), firearm training sessions, self-defence workshops, and public displays of swords, guns, and tridents. These are not decorative additions to political gatherings. They form the core of the organisation’s ideological strategy.

Shastra Puja, traditionally a religious ritual, is given a distinctly political meaning in AHP–RBD events. In Togadia’s speeches, weapons are celebrated not for their symbolism but for their function: the ability to defend the Hindu community through force. Swords stand for courage, tridents for purity, and guns for preparedness. When weapons are blessed, violence itself is blessed. The ritual frame offers moral cover for aggression, allowing political intent to hide behind religious practice.

Trishul Deeksha takes this further. Distributing tridents to young men is presented as a religious initiation, but it effectively creates a pool of recruits marked as “defenders of Dharma.” These tridents act as identity symbols—visible signs of readiness for confrontation. Such initiation rituals resemble practices used by militant groups in other contexts, where symbolic objects bind participants emotionally to the idea of collective struggle.

The presence of firearm training raises serious legal concerns. Under the Arms Act, handling or training with weapons requires strict permissions. Yet AHP–RBD frequently holds such sessions in public, often without police objection. Firearm training serves two purposes: it teaches practical skills and signals that the organisation sees itself as a force parallel to the state. It implies that AHP–RBD does not accept the state’s monopoly over violence.

From a sociological perspective, these rituals work to create a sense of community built around aggression. They produce male-dominated spaces where violence is sanctified, celebrated, and practiced. Religious devotion merges with militant nationalism, creating what scholars call a “sacralised polity”—a political identity shaped through ritualised displays of strength and readiness for conflict.

The socio-legal implications are far-reaching. Ritual militarisation dissolves boundaries between religion and politics, symbolism and force, legality and illegality. It creates a community that believes it has a moral right—perhaps even an obligation—to act outside the law. Weapons become sacred objects, violence becomes a communal act, and vigilantism becomes a perceived duty. In doing so, these rituals undermine the fundamental principle that only the state may use legitimate force, eroding a key pillar of constitutional democracy.

5. Territorial mythology, historical revisionism, and the spatialisation of hate

A key feature of AHP–RBD’s mobilisation is the way it reimagines geography and history through a communal lens. The organisation does not limit itself to present-day political disputes; it draws from a broad mix of mythologised history, civilisational claims, and territorial grievance. This revisionism is not merely cultural. It is a strategic attempt to redefine who belongs to the nation, who owns its land, and who has moral authority over its public and sacred spaces. Claims that global religious sites—Mecca, Medina, the Vatican—were once Hindu temples are historically baseless, but they serve an ideological purpose. They create a narrative in which Hindu civilisation is the original owner of sacred geography, and Islam and Christianity are portrayed as late, intrusive forces that took what was not theirs.

This worldview forms the core of AHP’s political theology. Hinduism is framed as the world’s first civilisation and the rightful custodian of global sacred space. Muslims and Christians are described as foreign arrivals, civilisational disturbers, and historical invaders. This racialised framing attempts to detach Indian Muslims and Christians from national belonging itself. If even Mecca is described as stolen Hindu territory, the implication is clear: if global Islamic spaces are illegitimate, then Indian Muslims’ connection to India is even more fragile.

These ideas have concrete socio-legal effects. Outlandish territorial claims become the basis for communal mobilisation. The demand to “reclaim” Kashi or Mathura is not an isolated argument about specific temples; it rests on a broader theory that all Muslim religious structures were built on destroyed Hindu sites. Mosques are reframed as symbols of past defeat. Muslim presence becomes a reminder of humiliation. Violence, in this worldview, becomes not aggression but restitution—an attempt to “correct history.”

This spatial politics is reinforced by emotionally charged language. Muslims are frequently described as “occupiers,” “encroachers,” “land-grabbers,” “Bangladeshis,” or “jihadi settlers.” These labels turn ordinary residential areas into imagined battlegrounds. Citizenship becomes a form of occupancy, always at risk of being revoked. In cities like Ahmedabad and Vadodara, leaders claim that Muslim-majority areas function as “no-go zones,” suggesting that the state has lost control over its own territory. Even though such claims lack factual basis, they generate territorial fear—a sense that Hindus are losing physical ground within their own homeland.

AHP’s territorial imagination therefore operates as a project of remaking India’s social geography. It asserts Hindu ownership over land, temples, cultural memory, and even urban space. It calls for active “reclaiming,” often framed as a religious duty. Ayodhya is invoked repeatedly as proof that reclamation is both possible and necessary; from this starting point, Kashi, Mathura, and numerous other sites are presented as the next steps in a never-ending civilisational project. The logic then extends beyond religious sites to entire regions. Districts in Assam, border areas in West Bengal, and parts of Uttar Pradesh or Karnataka are portrayed as “Hindu land under occupation.”

This mythologised re-territorialisation creates an atmosphere where violence becomes spatially authorised. Areas labelled as “occupied” become legitimate targets. Local Muslim communities are cast as heirs of historical invaders. Calls for “ghar wapsi” (re-conversion) sit alongside calls for the physical return of land and shrines. Space itself becomes a tool for asserting dominance.

Constitutionally, this spatialised rhetoric cuts at the heart of India’s secular framework. It undermines equal citizenship, freedom of religion, and the principle that every person belongs to the nation regardless of ancestry or historical claims. The Constitution does not recognise civilisational ownership as a basis for citizenship or territorial rights. Yet AHP’s vision creates precisely this hierarchy, reducing minorities to conditional members whose belonging is always in question.

By turning geography into ideology and history into grievance, AHP reshapes the everyday landscape of citizenship. Places where Muslims live, work, study, or pray are reframed as contested space. The symbolic “reclaiming” of Ayodhya, Kashi, and Mathura becomes a template for local domination. In this way, territorial mythology becomes a form of mobilisation, transforming public space into a site of communal assertion and fear.

6. Vigilante sovereignty and the emergence of extra-legal authority

A striking pattern across the six-month dataset is AHP–RBD’s routine assumption of policing powers in public life. The organisation intervenes in interfaith relationships, raids Christian prayer meetings, stops or disrupts mosque construction, questions Muslim men in public spaces, conducts anti-conversion patrols, and targets activities it labels as threats to “Hindu interests.” These are not isolated excesses. Together, they form a consistent system of vigilante sovereignty—where a non-state group exercises coercive authority normally held by the state. The singular impunity enjoyed by them is reflected in the wilful inaction of the police and administration wherever such rallies are/may be held.

Vigilante sovereignty describes situations in which the state’s exclusive control over violence weakens, and ideological groups step in to enforce their own moral and communal rules. AHP–RBD does not simply break the law; it creates an alternative legal order grounded in majoritarian claims rather than constitutional principles. Under this order, minorities are treated as security risks, women’s choices are subject to policing, and dissent becomes dangerous.

This vigilante order is maintained through three connected practices: surveillance, intervention, and punishment.

• Surveillance involves monitoring interfaith couples, tracking alleged conversions, observing the building or renovation of mosques, keeping watch on Muslim-owned businesses, and noting “suspicious” gatherings. This is not state surveillance—it is community surveillance. AHP cadres patrol local areas, monitor social media, gather information through informal networks, and maintain lists of individuals labelled as threats. Public safety is redefined to mean Hindu security; the presence of Muslims is framed as danger.
• Intervention is the next step. AHP–RBD members frequently enter private or semi-private spaces—homes, shops, churches, prayer halls, schools—to stop activities they see as harmful. These interventions often occur in the presence of police. In many events, police officers accompany AHP cadres when confronting interfaith couples or disrupting prayer meetings. The police rarely intervene to protect constitutional rights. This signals a breakdown of state neutrality and a sharing of authority between state and vigilante actors.
• Punishment is the final mechanism. Punishment may take the form of threats, public shaming, calls for economic boycotts, harassment, or physical assault. In several speeches, AHP leaders openly call for killing Muslim men accused of forming relationships with Hindu women. Such statements amount to direct criminal incitement, yet legal action is rare or non-existent. This impunity reinforces the belief that AHP is entitled to enforce its own version of justice.

The growth of vigilante sovereignty signals a larger transformation in India’s political culture: the emergence of a dual legal order. One order is constitutional, grounded in equality, dignity, personal liberty, and religious freedom. The other is majoritarian, grounded in identity, hierarchy, and demographic fear. AHP–RBD’s activities show that in many contexts, the majoritarian order is beginning to overshadow the constitutional one.

This shift carries serious jurisprudential consequences. The Constitution assumes that the state alone protects rights and wields legitimate force. When non-state actors take on state functions—raiding, interrogating, disciplining—without consequence, the constitutional promise collapses. What emerges is a patchwork of informal jurisdictions where constitutional rights are selectively enforced or suspended. These are not declared emergencies; they are silent, everyday suspensions made possible by police complicity, public fear, and the normalisation of hate.

This pattern is not unique to India. Similar dynamics have appeared in other democracies under strain: paramilitary groups in Colombia, extremist Buddhist groups in Myanmar, anti-Muslim vigilantes in Sri Lanka, and evangelical militias in Brazil. In each case, vigilante sovereignty grew when governments aligned themselves with majoritarian ideologies, allowing the line between state and militia to blur.

AHP–RBD’s actions place India on a comparable path. By intervening in relationships, the organisation claims control over personal freedom. By stopping prayer meetings, it claims control over religious expression. By patrolling public spaces, it claims control over visibility and movement. Through weapons training and youth mobilisation, it claims control over violence itself.

The consequences are profound. Vigilante sovereignty normalises discrimination, encourages extremism, weakens formal policing, and turns public space into a site of communal conflict. It reduces minority communities to conditional citizens whose rights depend on majoritarian approval. And it undermines constitutional remedies, because the harm is inflicted not directly by the state but by private actors operating with state tolerance.

The rise of this parallel authority may be one of the most serious threats facing India’s constitutional democracy today. It is not a temporary disruption. It is a developing system of governance—one that allocates coercive power along communal lines and embeds majoritarian dominance into everyday life.

7. The expansion of hostility toward Christians

Although Muslims remain the primary focus of AHP–RBD’s mobilisation, the dataset shows a clear and growing hostility toward Christians. This appears in speeches, protests against churches, disruptions of prayer meetings, accusations of forced conversion, and repeated rhetorical attacks on Christian institutions. The widening of the “enemy” category—from Muslims alone to Muslims and Christians together—signals a broader ideological ambition: the construction of a multi-target hate regime capable of policing all religious minorities under a single civilisational narrative.

The language used against Christians differs in content but mirrors the structure of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Muslims are portrayed as demographic threats; Christians as conversion threats. Muslims are framed as territorial and violent; Christians as deceptive and manipulative. Muslims are labelled infiltrators; Christians are labelled converters. Both sets of stereotypes reduce entire communities to singular, hostile identities serving a supposed anti-Hindu agenda.

This hostility toward Christians draws from a long-standing theme in Hindu nationalist thought. Since the colonial period, Christian missionaries have been depicted as foreign agents seeking to weaken Hindu culture through conversion. AHP–RBD revives this suspicion and blends it with contemporary anxieties about globalisation. Small prayer gatherings are described as “conversion factories,” and Christian charities are accused of hiding evangelism behind social service. Christian organisations are framed as part of a global conspiracy to destabilise India.

In multiple documented incidents, AHP members raided modest prayer meetings—often held in private homes or rented halls. These gatherings involved small groups reading scripture or singing hymns. Yet AHP cadres portrayed them as illegal conversion activities, despite any evidence. In some cases, police stood by silently or cooperated with the vigilantes. This produces a chilling effect: ordinary Christians fear harassment simply for assembling to pray.

Such acts strike at the heart of Article 25 of the Constitution, which protects the freedom to practise and profess religion. While propagation may be regulated, peaceful prayer cannot be criminalised. AHP’s interventions amount to an informal ban on Christian worship, undermining both religious freedom and equal citizenship.

At a strategic level, anti-Christian rhetoric helps AHP broaden its reach. By depicting Christians as agents of foreign powers, the organisation taps into nationalist anxieties about global influence and cultural loss. This narrative complements anti-Muslim fear: one enemy threatens demographics; the other threatens culture. Together, they create a sense of constant siege and justify continuous mobilisation. Unlike anti-Muslim mobilisation, which is often localised, anti-Christian mobilisation can be deployed even where Christians are few, giving AHP a tool for organising in diverse regions.

This has political effects as well. Christian communities often support opposition parties in states like Kerala, Goa, and parts of the Northeast. Intimidating these communities weakens their political engagement, reduces turnout, and disrupts civil society networks. Fear becomes a quiet form of electoral influence.

The hostility toward Christians is therefore not a minor extension of communal rhetoric. It reflects an attempt to define Indian identity through exclusion—to construct Hindu majoritarianism as the only legitimate form of belonging. In such a framework, constitutional rights become conditional, minority presence becomes suspect, and religious freedom exists more on paper than in daily life.

By targeting both Muslims and Christians, AHP–RBD is building a broader authoritarian cultural order. This multi-target hate regime claims the power to decide which religions are acceptable, whose practices are legitimate, and whose presence is a threat. It marks a deepening of communal authoritarianism in contemporary India—one that endangers minority rights and undermines the secular, democratic foundations of the Constitution.

The Regional Geography of Mobilisation: Spatial clusters, localised idioms, and the federal life of hate

The six-month dataset shows that AHP–RBD’s mobilisation is not uniform across India. It is spatially strategic. Events cluster in states where demographic anxieties, political incentives, and weak institutional checks come together. Each state reveals a distinct pattern of hate mobilisation, shaped by its own history, politics, and social structure.

Uttar Pradesh is the epicentre. The volume and aggression of AHP–RBD events are highest here. UP’s large Muslim population, history of communal violence, and increasingly majoritarian state machinery create a permissive environment. Leaders use UP platforms to deliver the most direct threats—calling for violence, monitoring interfaith couples, and enforcing social boycotts. Police often stand alongside AHP speakers, giving hate speech an aura of official sanction. In UP, the line between state power and vigilante action is blurred.

Gujarat functions as the ideological centre. Many of Togadia’s longest, most doctrinal speeches—on demographic war, civilisational supremacy, and global conspiracies—are delivered here. Gujarat’s political ecosystem, shaped by 2002 and deep institutional alignment with Hindutva, enables a more elaborate and ritualised form of mobilisation. The tone is less about street-level confrontation and more about sweeping historical claims and grand narratives of Hindu civilisation.

Maharashtra shows a dual pattern. In cities like Mumbai, Thane, and Pune, AHP focuses on rhetoric of “security,” appealing to middle-class anxieties. In semi-urban and rural belts—Jalgaon, Nashik, Dhule, Vidarbha—mobilisation becomes more militant, involving trishul distribution, Shastra Puja, and weapons demonstrations. Shivaji iconography and Maratha pride blend easily with AHP’s narrative of Hindu power and historical grievance.

Assam presents a different dynamic. Here, AHP taps into long-standing regional fears around migration and citizenship. The rhetoric of “Bangladeshi infiltration” dominates. Muslims of Bengali origin are framed as illegal occupiers rather than religious minorities. AHP simply amplifies anxieties already sharpened by the NRC, Foreigners Tribunals, and decades of political debate. The result is a powerful fusion of local ethnic fears and national Hindutva narratives.

Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan serve as logistical hubs. These states host training camps, weapons rituals, and “awareness” programmes. The geography—forests, small towns, dispersed settlements—allows AHP to conduct paramilitary-style activities away from media scrutiny. The events may be less dramatic, but they are organisationally vital, producing cadres, distributing weapons, and building networks.

In Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, and Jammu, the mobilisation takes on distinct urban and border-specific tones. Delhi and NCR adopt a language of “national security,” framing hate as patriotism. Punjab’s smaller mobilisation focuses on anti-conversion rhetoric targeting Christian communities. In Jammu, AHP flattens the region’s complex social fabric into a simple Hindu–Muslim divide, feeding nationalistic grievance.

Taken together, these regional patterns show that AHP–RBD does not operate through a single model of mobilisation. It adapts to local fears, political opportunities, and cultural idioms. It can present itself as a militant outfit in one state, a cultural organisation in another, a devotional group elsewhere, or a community policing force where it faces little resistance. This spatial flexibility gives the organisation resilience and reach. It allows hate politics to be localised, normalised, and embedded in everyday life.

Understanding this spatial architecture is essential. It reveals that AHP–RBD is not just an ideological movement but a multi-scalar ecosystem—national in message, regional in form, and local in execution. This adaptability is what makes it both potent and difficult to regulate through conventional legal and administrative frameworks.

Electoral effects and the radical flank mechanism

AHP–RBD’s six-month mobilisation cannot be understood in isolation from India’s electoral landscape. Although the organisation is not seen formally part of the BJP–RSS structure, its activities consistently reinforce the BJP’s broader political strategy. Real and organisational connections also probably exist though these have not been publicly flaunted. The relationship is best explained through the “radical flank effect”—a social movement theory concept that describes how extremist groups shift public norms, allowing more “moderate” groups to appear reasonable while advancing a shared ideological agenda.

In practice, AHP–RBD performs the role of the radical flank. Its open calls for violence, its vigilante actions, and its demonisation of minorities create a political climate saturated with fear. Once such fear becomes ambient, the BJP’s own rhetoric—often couched in coded terms—appears centrist in comparison. When AHP demands expulsion of Muslims from certain areas, the BJP’s policies of strict policing or exclusionary welfare seem moderate. When AHP–RBD cadres raid prayer gatherings or harass interfaith couples, the BJP’s strong law-and-order posturing appears lawful rather than coercive. This triangulation enables the BJP to benefit from the emotional climate created by extremism without openly endorsing it.

Electoral data and field patterns show that regions with intense AHP–RBD activity often see heightened Hindu electoral consolidation. This shift does not require explicit coordination. It arises organically from the affective environment created by sustained hate mobilisation. When public discourse is filled with messages of demographic threat, “love jihad,” conversions, or “jihadist infiltration,” voters gravitate toward the party they perceive as the defender of Hindu security. Fear becomes the emotional engine of communal voting.

AHP–RBD’s activities also directly affect minority political participation. The intimidation of Muslim and Christian communities suppresses voter turnout, discourages public meetings, and deters grassroots organising. In regions with politically active Christian electorates—such as Goa, Kerala, Mizoram, and parts of the Northeast—the targeting of prayer gatherings and church-related activities has measurable political consequences. Fear reduces both visibility and voice.

The organisation also shapes elections by dominating local discourse. Its rallies receive disproportionate coverage in local media, creating a sense of tension even where none existed. Communal narratives crowd out issues like unemployment, inflation, agrarian distress, and welfare delivery. Once the baseline of public conversation shifts, secular concerns struggle to regain ground. Elections become referendums on identity rather than governance.

Finally, AHP–RBD acts as an ideological incubator. Themes it promotes aggressively—population control laws, campaigns against conversions, temple “reclamation,” policing of interfaith relationships—often migrate into mainstream party agendas or media debates. The journey from fringe to centre is gradual but unmistakable. Over time, these ideas stop appearing extreme and begin to seem like common sense.

The cumulative effect is a rightward shift of the entire political spectrum. Opposition parties find themselves forced to respond to issues defined by extremist actors. Centrist figures adopt majoritarian language to avoid appearing “anti-Hindu.” The space for dissent contracts. Minority political participation shrinks. Hate normalises itself within democratic life.

In this way, AHP–RBD’s impact is not limited to specific constituencies or elections. It reshapes the broader architecture of electoral politics. It alters what counts as legitimate speech, permissible demands, and acceptable public sentiment. It reconfigures the emotional and ideological terrain on which elections are fought. It changes the grammar of Indian democracy.

Legal Analysis: Hate speech, vigilantism, arms violations, and constitutional breaches

The six-month dataset reveals a consistent pattern of conduct that amounts to repeated, systemic, and often explicit violations of Indian criminal law and constitutional guarantees. These are not accidental excesses or spontaneous eruptions; they are central to AHP–RBD’s mode of mobilisation. Understanding their legal significance requires situating them within four frameworks: (1) hate speech and criminal incitement under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), (2) vigilantism and due process violations, (3) illegal weapons display and training under the Arms Act, and (4) breaches of fundamental rights under the Constitution.

Hate speech and incitement: Indian hate speech jurisprudence—through Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan, Amish Devgan, S. Rangarajan, and the Delhi High Court’s rulings on inflammatory rhetoric—draws a clear distinction between offensive speech and speech that actively threatens public order or incites enmity. AHP–RBD’s rhetoric consistently falls in the latter category.

Statements urging violence against Muslim men, portraying Muslims as territorial invaders, or suggesting that Hindu women are targets of organised conspiracies constitute direct criminal incitement. Allegations that Muslims intend to “capture territory,” “eradicate Hindu civilisation,” or “control Hindu women” invoke the exact categories of prohibited speech under BNS provisions relating to public tranquillity and enmity between groups.

The dataset reveals a striking enforcement vacuum. Police presence at events where this rhetoric is openly delivered suggests not neutrality but deliberate non-enforcement. This institutional reluctance enables the normalisation of hate—from legal violation to public common sense—and marks a failure of the state’s constitutional obligation to ensure equal protection of the law.

Vigilantism and violations of due process: AHP–RBD repeatedly assumes policing functions: detaining individuals, interrogating alleged offenders, conducting raids on prayer gatherings, and enforcing communal boundaries. These actions strike at the core of Articles 21 and 22, which guarantee personal liberty and protection from arbitrary detention.

The Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in Tehseen Poonawalla (2018) imposes a positive duty on the state to prevent vigilante violence and prosecute perpetrators. Yet the dataset shows the opposite pattern—police inaction, presence without intervention, and in some cases, tacit collaboration. This creates a regime of dual policing:

• one legal, constitutional, and equal (in principle);
• the other informal, communal, and majoritarian (in practice).

Such a regime violates the constitutional commitment to secularism and the rule of law—principles recognised as part of the Basic Structure Doctrine. Vigilantism thus becomes not merely unlawful conduct but a challenge to constitutional sovereignty itself.

Illegal weapons display and training: AHP–RBD’s mobilisation features widespread use of weapons—swords, tridents, and firearms—through Shastra Puja, Trishul Deeksha, public marches, and explicit weapons training camps. Under the Arms Act, the display of many of these weapons in public or the provision of combat training requires stringent licensing.

The documented events violate these norms on multiple fronts. Weapons are not incidental accessories—they are ritual objects, identity markers, and instruments of political signalling. The religious consecration of weapons grants moral cover to acts that would otherwise attract immediate criminal sanction.

The legal concern is compounded by state inaction. When police stand by as weapons are worshipped, circulated, or used in training sessions, the constitutional principle that the state holds the exclusive right to deploy legitimate force becomes diluted. India’s long-standing policy of keeping arms out of civilian political mobilisation begins to erode, replaced by a permissive environment for private militias.

Violations of fundamental rights: The cumulative effect of AHP–RBD’s actions is a sustained infringement of the constitutional rights of religious minorities.

• Article 14 is violated through targeted discrimination and differential protection.
• Article 15 is breached when segregation, exclusion, or targeted hostility is encouraged.
• Article 19(1)(b) is compromised when minorities face intimidation from peaceful assembly or public expression.
• Article 21 is infringed through threats, coercion, and erosion of dignity.
• Article 25 and 26 are directly violated when prayer meetings are raided, religious practices disrupted, or Christian and Muslim institutions are targeted.

These violations operate not as isolated incidents but as a pattern of parallel sovereignty, where a non-state actor informally asserts the authority to regulate religion, intimacy, public space, and personal liberty. The most profound injury is to the principle of secularism, a core element of India’s basic structure. When the state tolerates a majoritarian organisation exercising coercive power, secularism becomes formal rather than substantive—its guarantees present in doctrine but eroded in lived reality.

Democratic risks and the normalisation of anti-minority governance

AHP–RBD’s six-month mobilisation points to a deeper institutional and cultural shift in India’s democratic landscape: the movement from a pluralist constitutional democracy to a majoritarian quasi-democracy, where minority rights exist formally but are systematically hollowed out in practice. This degradation does not occur through the formal suspension of rights or emergency powers. It occurs gradually, through the normalisation of communal hostility, which reshapes public behaviour, institutional norms, and the emotional structure of citizenship.

The first democratic risk arises from the de-legitimisation of constitutional norms. When communal mobilisation saturates public life, principles such as equality, religious freedom, and secular governance come to be seen not as foundational commitments but as obstacles to majoritarian will. Hate speech, demographic alarmism, and ritual militarisation generate an affective climate in which constitutional protections appear indulgent or even dangerous. In such a climate, minorities internalise fear, withdraw from public spaces, limit political participation, and experience democratic life on unequal terms. Electoral politics, too, becomes distorted: communal consolidation strengthens the majority vote, while minority voting becomes fraught with risk and reduced in impact.

A second democratic risk lies in the erosion of institutional neutrality. The dataset records repeated instances of police presence at events where inflammatory or openly violent rhetoric is delivered. The appearance of state authorities alongside vigilante actors produces a symbolic convergence between law and majoritarian sentiment. Law enforcement shifts from being an impartial guarantor of rights to an instrument of communal policing. When institutions fail to enforce constitutional norms, they lose legitimacy, and alternative power centres—majoritarian groups acting as de facto police—step into the vacuum.

The third democratic risk concerns the cultural redefinition of citizenship. AHP–RBD’s discourse fuses Hindu identity with national identity, constructing Muslims and Christians as conditional citizens whose loyalty must be proven and whose rights may be restricted. Citizenship becomes implicitly ethnoreligious, not civic. Such a transformation strikes at the core of the Indian constitutional order, which deliberately rejects indigeneity, religious majoritarianism, and racialised belonging as bases for citizenship. When minorities are framed as perpetual suspects, their participation in democratic life becomes precarious, and the republic shifts toward graded membership.

The final democratic risk is long-term polarisation. Hate mobilisation produces enduring harms: intergenerational fear, mutual distrust, and hardened communal identities. This polarisation is not limited to politics—it reshapes everyday life. Markets segregate, schools become communally divided, workplaces grow tense, and neighbourhoods fracture into hostile enclaves. Over time, these micro-segregations accumulate into structural separation, weakening the social cohesion that democracy requires. A society fragmented by fear cannot sustain collective governance, universal rights, or shared public institutions.

Together, these dynamics illustrate how AHP–RBD’s activities create not just immediate threats but a systemic democratic recession—a gradual hollowing of constitutional citizenship, institutional neutrality, and pluralist democracy.

Conclusion- The architecture of hate as parallel sovereignty

AHP–RBD’s events and the collated data reveals a sophisticated, multi-layered architecture of hate—one that operates not as episodic violence but as an emergent political order. This order is parallel to the constitutional state, majoritarian in ethos, and vigilante in practice. Through demographic panic, gendered control, ritual militarisation, territorial revisionism, anti-minority surveillance, and the normalisation of extra-legal punishment, AHP constructs a rival normative universe—a universe in which communal identity determines legitimacy, violence becomes moral obligation, and constitutional authority is displaced by militant religiosity.

This phenomenon is not merely a danger to India’s minorities. It is a profound challenge to the foundations of democratic life. When an organisation can redefine belonging, police intimacy, weaponise devotion, rewrite history, and regulate public space—often with the tacit tolerance or visible presence of state authorities—the very idea of citizenship becomes contingent. The rule of law fades into selective enforcement. The secular, civic character of the Republic becomes fragile, overshadowed by ethnoreligious belonging.

India is witnessing a deeper cultural shift:

—from pluralism to purity,

—from rights to obedience,

—from law to spectacle,

—from coexistence to conquest.

No democracy can survive the institutionalisation of hate as common sense. No constitutional order can endure when non-state actors are permitted to wield coercive power with impunity. No society can remain cohesive when its people are divided into protectors and threats, insiders and intruders, pure and polluted.

The challenge before India is therefore greater than the task of curbing a single extremist organisation. It is the task of reclaiming the constitutional imagination. This requires the restoration of institutional neutrality, the impartial enforcement of criminal law, renewed political commitment to equality and dignity, and a cultural repudiation of the politics of fear. It requires civil society vigilance and political courage that refuses to normalise hate.

AHP–RBD’s mobilisation is not the story of a fringe group. It is the story of a parallel polity—one that is emerging, expanding, and asserting influence. Whether this parallel polity becomes embedded in India’s future depends on how institutions, courts, political parties, and citizens respond to the early warning signs documented in this dataset.

The Constitution’s text remains intact. Its lived reality, however, is under deep strain. Even reduced to a hollow shell, some would argue.

The trajectory revealed here is not inevitable—but it is unmistakable. To confront it is not merely an analytical task for scholarship. It is a democratic imperative, central to safeguarding India’s identity as a plural, secular, constitutional republic.

Reference:

The Radical Flank Effect in Social Movements: Evidence from India

Hindutva Radicalisation of the Indian Youth and Its Impact on Freedom of Religion

The Hindu Far-Right and the Indian State: A Study of Vigilante Justice

Ideology and Organizational Strategy of Hindu Nationalism

Inequality, elections, and communal riots in India

The Political Economy of Religious Conflict in India

A Critical Study of Religious Polarization and Its Impact on the Secular Fabric of Indian Society

Profile: Pravin Togadia and the Rise of the Hardline

The Unimportance of Being Pravin Togadia: An Organizational Analysis

CJP moves NCM over Pravin Togadia’s communal oath at ‘Trishul Diksha’ event

Sheath the swords, while there is still time! (Report on AHP’s ‘Trishul Diksha’)

Hate Watch: Pravin Togadia administers communal and anti-minority oath in Haryana

RSS, Togadia decide to work together to ‘unite’ Hindus

India’s ‘love jihad’ conspiracy theory turns lethal

VHP releases over 400 alleged ‘Love Jihad’ cases; to launch awareness against religious conversion

How a ‘love jihad’ case was manufactured in India’s Uttar Pradesh

Hundreds In Mumbai March Against ‘Love Jihad’, Demand Anti-Conversion Laws

Nanded police book Pravin Togadia for hate speech

India Hindu leader in ‘hate speech’ row (2014 report on property eviction call)

Election Commission directs FIR against Pravin Togadia for ‘hate speech’

Togadia’s ‘hate speech’ video under EC scanner

Maharashtra Police registers case against VHP leader Praveen Togadia for hate speech

Pravin Togadia’s claim of being targeted by Modi govt not new

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/maharashtra/violence-erupt-in-nagpur-during-hindu-outfits-protest-for-removal-of-aurangzebs-tomb/article69341949.ece

https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2022/Jun/14/bajrang-dal-to-hold-nationwide-protest-against-violence-over-remarks-against-prophet-vhp-2465507.html

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/allahabad/tension-erupts-in-myorabad-area-over-alleged-religious-conversion-activities/articleshow/125662303.cms

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/arunachal-pradesh/rally-for-anti-conversion-law-held-in-arunachal-pradesh/article70178964.ece

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/vhp-demands-central-law-against-conversion/article35803107.ece

https://www.csohate.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Hate-Speech-Events-in-India_Report_2024.pdf

https://www.pudr.org/publicatiosn-files/2023-04-17-Jahangirpur-%20communal-incident.pdf

https://sabrangindia.in/karnataka-bajrang-dals-sanjay-nalvade-three-others-arrested-murder-muslim-teen/

https://sabrangindia.in/bajrang-dal-members-booked-for-hurting-religious-sentiments-in-malad-accused-of-deliberate-provocation/

[1] A look at the analyses of hate speeches here (https://sabrang.com/cc/archive/2003/may03/index.html), Togadia, then squarely with the Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP) declares his/and organizational hate and harm-filled intent: to generate anarchy and anti-minority violence (civil war) in every village of the country. Neither logistics not resources have stymied this cancer surgeon who’s Dhanwantri Hospital in Ahmedabad was also noted for its refusal to treat patients belonging to the mass-harmed Muslim minority in February-March 2002. (https://sabrang.com/cc/archive/2002/marapril/hospital.htm, https://sabrang.com/tribunal/vol2/pubspace.html)

The post Rituals of Fear, Politics of Hate: How AHP’s national network rewrote the boundaries of democracy and citizenship appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The report identifies the reported disappearance and killing of journalist Mukesh Chandrakar in Bastar in early January as emblematic of the dangers faced by those who speak truth to power. Chandrakar had reported on poor-quality road construction in the region shortly before he went missing; his body was later found in a septic tank. The FSC notes that this incident set the tone for a year in which nine people were killed for exercising their right to free speech, including eight journalists and one social media influencer. It underscores that violence against journalists—particularly those working in rural and semi-urban districts—remains one of the most visible and brutal forms of silencing.

Journalists as primary targets

The FSC report records 40 attacks on free speech actors in 2025, of which 33 targeted journalists. It notes that reporters covering local corruption, illegal mining, liquor mafias, and administrative failures were especially vulnerable. In several cases, the police initially attempted to attribute killings or deaths to personal disputes, accidents, or intoxication, even when the journalists had recently published sensitive stories. The report highlights the case of Uttarakhand-based YouTuber Rajeev Pratap, whose body was recovered from the Bhagirathi, river days after he aired a video exposing liquor consumption inside a local hospital. Despite colleagues raising serious doubts, police claimed he had driven into the river while drunk.

The FSC further draws attention to the continued incarceration of journalists Irfan Mehraj and Rupesh Kumar under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, noting that their prolonged detention without trial exemplifies the use of counter-terror laws to suppress journalism. Threats and harassment accompanied physical violence: at least 14 of 19 harassment incidents and 12 of 17 recorded threats were directed at journalists engaged in professional work. The report cites, as illustrative, a threat by TDP MLA Gummanur Jayaram to force journalists “to sleep on railway tracks” if they published allegedly false information about him.

The return of sedition and criminal lawfare

One of the most troubling findings of the report is the resurgence of sedition prosecutions, despite repeated assurances that colonial-era speech offences had been rendered obsolete under the new criminal codes. The FSC documents multiple sedition cases filed in 2025 against satirists, journalists, and political commentators for online posts questioning state action.

The report details how satirists Neha Singh Rathore, Madri Kakoti (Dr Medusa), and Shamita Yadav (Ranting Gola) were charged with sedition for social media commentary following the Pahalgam attack. It flags the Allahabad High Court’s rejection of Rathore’s anticipatory bail as a significant departure from earlier judicial reluctance to allow sedition prosecutions for speech. The FSC also records the filing of sedition FIRs by Assam police against the leadership and columnists of The Wire, including founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan and consulting editor Karan Thapar, as well as against journalist Abhisar Sarma for a YouTube programme that relied on publicly available judicial observations.

According to the report, these cases exemplify “lawfare”—the strategic use of criminal law not necessarily to secure convictions, but to intimidate, exhaust, and silence critical voices through prolonged legal processes.

Mass censorship and platform control

The largest category of violations documented by the FSC in 2025 relates to censorship and internet control, with 11,385 instances recorded. The report highlights mass government takedown requests to social media platforms, particularly X (formerly Twitter). In May and July 2025 alone, over 10,000 accounts were withheld in India. Citing X’s submissions before the Karnataka High Court, the report notes that the platform received 29,118 takedown requests from the Indian government between January and June 2025 and complied with the overwhelming majority of them.

The FSC identifies the Sahyog portal as a key institutional mechanism enabling decentralised censorship by allowing state agencies, district officials, and local police to issue takedown notices directly to platforms. Following the Pahalgam attack, numerous accounts belonging to journalists, news organisations, and international media outlets—including The Wire, Maktoob Media, Reuters, and many senior journalists—were withheld without public disclosure of reasons. The report notes that the Karnataka High Court’s decision upholding the Sahyog portal effectively legitimised large-scale, opaque censorship of online speech.

The ‘Hidden Hand’: Self-censorship and corporate influence

Beyond formal orders, the FSC report devotes significant attention to what it terms the “hidden hand” of censorship: informal pressures, verbal directives, and institutional intimidation that rarely leave a documentary trail. The report cites instances of journalists receiving “friendly calls,” media houses quietly dropping stories, and investigative platforms being financially crippled through regulatory action, such as the revocation of The Reporter’s Collective’s tax-exempt status.

Corporate power, the report notes, increasingly intersected with state censorship. It documents the September 2025 ex-parte injunction obtained by Adani Enterprises leading to the takedown of over 200 pieces of online content critical of the company, as well as sustained attempts to suppress reporting on the Vantara wildlife project linked to Reliance Industries. Even where courts later set aside gag orders, the report observes that the chilling effect on media coverage persisted.

Academia, cinema, and the right to think

The FSC records at least 16 serious instances of censorship in academia, including the cancellation of conferences, denial of permissions, deportation of visiting scholars, and the revocation of OCI status of academics critical of the government. In Kashmir, the report notes, authorities banned 25 books on the region’s history and politics and raided bookstores.

In cinema, the report documents excessive cuts, prolonged certification delays, and outright denial of certification to films addressing caste violence, state abuse, or social injustice. It notes that even internationally acclaimed films and centenary classics were barred from screening, underscoring how certification had become a tool of prior restraint rather than classification.

An uneven judicial response

While acknowledging some notable judicial interventions in favour of free speech, the FSC concludes that the judiciary’s overall response in 2025 was inconsistent. The report contrasts strong Supreme Court observations protecting poetry, satire, and art with orders that imposed gag conditions, endorsed expansive censorship mechanisms, or demanded apologies from artists. This inconsistency, the report argues, has failed to provide a stable constitutional shield for free expression.

A shrinking democratic space

In its concluding assessment, the Free Speech Collective warns that the cumulative impact of violence, lawfare, mass censorship, corporate pressure, and regulatory overreach has fundamentally altered the conditions under which speech is exercised in India. The report cautions that free expression has not been extinguished outright, but increasingly conditioned, surveilled, and constrained, creating a climate in which self-censorship becomes a rational act of survival.

As the report starkly concludes, the “hidden hand” shaping India’s speech landscape in 2025 is no longer subtle—it has become structural.

The complete report may be read here.

Related:                                                            

The ‘Shastra Poojan’ Project: How the ritual of weapon worship is being recast as a tool of power and hate propaganda

MP, Odisha, Delhi, Rajasthan: Right-wing outfits barge into 2 churches ahead of Christmas, attack vendors selling X’mas goodies, tensions run high

No right to live, or die: Christians in Chhattisgarh, and India under attack

Kerala: Protests erupt after RSS-BJP man’s alleged attack on children’s Christmas carol group in Palakkad

‘Brutal intimidation of Christians’ all India condemned: Bombay Catholic Sabha

The post Free Speech in India 2025: What the Free Speech Collective report reveals about a year of silencing appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, according to the report of LiveLaw, was visibly enraged as it confronted the record of the case. Justice Mehta rebuked Assam Police for what the Court described as a shocking and indefensible lapse: “This is appalling! Two years you are not filing a chargesheet and the man remains in custody? Whatever the stringent provisions may be, the UAPA does not authorise illegal detention. You consider yourself to be a premier investigative agency?”

The petitioner had been apprehended in July 2023 with ₹3.25 lakh and later taken into custody through a production warrant. The chargesheet surfaced only on 30 July 2025—well past the outer limit of 180 days, which itself requires a reasoned judicial extension under Section 43D(2) of the UAPA.

As per the LiveLaw report, the Supreme Court stressed that default bail is not a discretionary indulgence but an “indefeasible right” under Article 21, crystallizing the moment statutory timelines lapse: “By no stretch of imagination can custody extending beyond 180 days without a chargesheet—and without any valid extension order—be regarded as lawful. The detention is unconstitutional.”

The Gauhati High Court Order- What the Supreme Court found wrong

The Gauhati High Court’s December 20, 2024, order in Tonlong Konyak v. State of Assam rejected the petitioner’s plea for bail in a UAPA case by resting its decision almost entirely on the finding that he was a foreign national from Myanmar who had entered India illegally. The petitioner had been arrested on 26 August 2023 in connection with Sapekhati P.S. Case No. 29/2023, registered for offences under the IPC and multiple provisions of the UAPA. He argued that the State had failed to file its investigation report within the statutory period mandated under Section 173(2) CrPC / Section 193(3) BNSS, and therefore he had acquired an indefeasible right to default bail. Relying on Article 21 and key Supreme Court precedents, he submitted that co-accused had already been released and that neither the FIR nor the forwarding report contained any concrete incriminating material linking him to the alleged offences.

The State opposed the bail plea by placing the case diary before the Court, asserting that the petitioner was an active linkman for ULFA (I), facilitating extortion networks across Charaideo district. According to the prosecution, he was apprehended by Assam Rifles on 29 July 2023 with ₹3.2 lakh in extortion money, was in constant touch with persons aiding the banned organisation, and was responsible for carrying ransom amounts across the India–Myanmar border. The State further contended that he lacked any travel documents or passport, proving illegal entry, and argued that releasing him would result in an almost certain risk of absconding.

Justice Manash Ranjan Pathak’s order reproduces at length the allegations from the FIR and the case diary: the extortion demands made by ULFA (I), the pattern of ransom payments collected from tea-estate owners, and the role of intermediaries based in Charaideo. The Court recorded that the petitioner had allegedly contacted several linkmen arrested in the case, provided details of businessmen to ULFA (I), and transported extortion money to the organisation’s hideouts in Myanmar. It also noted that the petitioner faced additional cases in Borhat and Mon, and concluded that the materials showed active involvement with banned groups.

The crux of the High Court’s legal reasoning, however, turned on Section 43D(7) of the UAPA, a non-obstante clause that prohibits grant of bail to foreign nationals who enter India unauthorisedly, unless “very exceptional circumstances” are shown. The Court held that this provision overrides the default-bail regime under CrPC/BNSS. Since the petitioner was indisputably a foreigner who entered India without authorisation, and since he had not demonstrated any exceptional circumstances, the Court held that he was categorically barred from seeking bail—even default bail.

In effect, the High Court treated illegal entry as a complete statutory bar that extinguishes the default-bail right. It reasoned that the gravity of allegations, the petitioner’s foreign nationality, and his alleged cross-border activities “amply justified” continued custody. Without examining whether the investigating agency had obtained any valid court order extending the statutory investigation period to 180 days, or whether the failure to file a chargesheet rendered custody unlawful, the Court concluded that statutory protections under Section 167 CrPC / 193(3) BNSS do “not apply” to such a foreign national accused under UAPA.

Ultimately, the High Court held that the petitioner could not claim the benefit of default bail due to the overriding effect of Section 43D (7), and dismissed the bail application. This reasoning—treating nationality and illegal entry as grounds to deny a constitutionally recognised procedural safeguard—became the central point of contention before the Supreme Court, which later corrected the position by holding that no statutory non-obstante clause can override the default-bail right when the State itself violates statutory timelines.

Where the High Court went wrong (and why the SC could not have upheld it):

1. The HC collapsed two distinct bail regimes—default bail and regular bail—into one: Section 43D (7) restricts regular bail to foreign nationals who have illegally entered India, unless very exceptional circumstances exist. But default bail is not regular bail.
   Default bail does not depend on:

• gravity of allegations
• nationality
• risk of absconding
• case diary materials
• exceptional circumstances

It depends only on whether the State complied with statutory timelines. The HC treated a constitutional right as if it were a discretionary privilege.

2. The HC placed Section 43D (7)’s non-obstante clause above the Constitution: The HC held that the 43D(7) non-obstante clause overrides the right to default bail.
   This is plainly contrary to the Supreme Court’s consistent jurisprudence (Uday Mohanlal Acharya, M. Ravindran, Rakesh Kumar Paul), which holds:

• Default bail arises directly from Article 21.
• No statutory non-obstante clause can override a constitutional guarantee.
• Once the right accrues, it is absolute.

The HC’s interpretation effectively allowed the State to nullify constitutional default-bail protection by merely alleging illegal entry, which is impermissible.

3. The HC relied extensively on allegations in the case diary—irrelevant for default bail: The attached order spends multiple paragraphs reproducing police allegations: alleged ULFA(I) links, extortion networks, border crossings, ransom collection, etc. These may be factors in a merits-based bail hearing, but they have zero bearing on whether the 90/180-day period expired without a chargesheet.

Default bail entitles the accused to release even if the allegations are grave, credible, or proven, because the right is triggered by State failure—not by innocence.

4. Illegality of entry cannot justify illegality of detention: The HC repeatedly asserted that the petitioner’s “unauthorised entry” bars him from bail. However:

• Illegal entry is a separate offence.
• It cannot legitimise detention that violates statutory timelines.
• The State cannot defend one illegality (custody) on the basis of another alleged illegality (entry).

5. The HC never examined whether there was a valid extension order under Section 43D(2): A fatal omission as the law requires:

• Written application by the Public Prosecutor,
• Detailed reasons showing progress of investigation,
• A judicial order extending time up to 180 days.

The HC’s order shows no such extension existed—yet it still rejected default bail. This omission could alone renders the order unsustainable.

The complete order of the Gauhati HC may be read here:

Why the Supreme Court intervened so strongly

The Supreme Court focused on the most fundamental issue: the petitioner’s detention was per se illegal, irrespective of nationality or the gravity of allegations. The Court’s reasoning reflects three constitutional anchors:

1. UAPA’s severity does not permit investigative complacency: The Act’s stringency heightens, not relaxes, the burden on the State to maintain strict procedural discipline.
2. Nationality is constitutionally irrelevant to default bail: The right protects any person in custody. Article 21 does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens.
3. Default bail is a constitutional protection against State abuse: It exists precisely to prevent the scenario seen here: endless incarceration without trial.
4. Courts must not allow non-obstante clauses to amputate constitutional rights: The Supreme Court restored the correct position: Statutes cannot override the Constitution—ever.

Conclusion: A powerful reassertion of liberty in the UAPA era

The Supreme Court’s order is a striking reminder that even under the most severe national-security legislation, the State cannot suspend procedural safeguards. The ruling not only restores the petitioner’s liberty but also implicitly corrects the Gauhati High Court’s overly broad reading of Section 43D (7), which had the effect of collapsing the distinction between default bail and regular bail.

By granting bail and condemning the prolonged pre-trial incarceration, the Court reinforces a key constitutional principle: When the State violates statutory timelines, detention becomes illegal—no matter who the accused is, or what the allegations are.

Related:

Punjab & Haryana High Court refuses anticipatory bail to journalist accused of provocative, communal statements against Purvanchal community

Six Days Behind Bars After Bail: Patna High Court orders ₹2 lakh relief, flags state-wide pattern of illegal detention

A Terror Case Without Evidence: Allahabad High Court’s ‘heavy heart’ acquittal After 28 Years

A New Silence: The Supreme Court’s turn toward non-interference in hate-speech cases

The post Supreme Court restores Article 21 safeguards, calls 24-month UAPA custody without charge sheet illegal; sets aside Gauhati HC’s reliance on Sec 43D(7) appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A broad comparative reading of speeches, videos, rallies, slogans, media patterns, complaints, and reports reveals something deeper than mere rhetorical excess. It reveals a political order that increasingly depends on the manufacture of an existential threat. The political message has fused with social fear. Social fear has fused with administrative paralysis. Administrative paralysis has fused with electoral advantage. In this fusion, the very meaning of democracy is being reconfigured: elections no longer offer competing futures but competing hatreds; political legitimacy no longer flows from representation but from the ability to summon and sustain anger.

In this transformed landscape, hate speech functions as infrastructure. It builds worlds. It shapes consciousness. It reorganises neighbourhood markets, influences police behaviour, triggers vigilante assertion, and fractures interdependence at the most micro levels. It is not ephemeral. It is lived, circulated, absorbed, and enacted. In addition, its long-term damage is not only to India’s minorities, but also to India’s democratic capacity itself. Hate becomes not only an electoral weapon but also a method of governance; not only a tactic of polarisation but also a technique of population management.

This article takes stock of this new political order. It examines the imagery and stereotypes deployed across electoral contexts; the fears they stoke; the patterns of mobilisation they generate; the administrative silences that empower them; the media networks that amplify them; and, most importantly, the differential ways in which states like Maharashtra, Delhi, and Bihar adapt this infrastructure to their own socio-political terrains. In Bihar especially, hate speech became a tool to reorder caste configurations—an extraordinary strategic shift with profound implications for the state’s political future.

The fundamental objective of this “Architecture of Polarisation” is two-fold: first, to successfully consolidate a majority (read Hindu) vote bank through the construction of an existential threat narrative; and second, to systematically blur socio-economic realities and caste equations—particularly in states like Bihar—by substituting governance failures with religious conflict. This piece argues that electoral hate speech has evolved from fringe outbursts into an essential, multi-stage campaign strategy, aiming to consolidate a majority vote bank by constructing a fear-driven narrative of existential threat to the majority community.

Notably, along with the article, documents containing communal and provocative speeches delivered during Delhi, Maharashtra and Lok Sabha elections has been attached separately.

CJP’s Election Hate Watch operates as a specialised monitoring system designed to track, document, and challenge hate speech that corrodes the fairness of India’s electoral process. During election cycles, CJP’s conduct daily scans of speeches, election rallies, roadshows, religious gatherings, local WhatsApp circulation, hyperlocal events, and media broadcasts. Every instance of communal incitement is timestamped, transcribed, archived, and assessed against the Model Code of Conduct, RPA, and hate-speech jurisprudence. The process is meticulous: the team captures not only explicit slurs or violent calls but also dog-whistles, coded conspiracies (“love jihad,” “land jihad,” “vote jihad”), ritualised slogans, vigilante mobilisation, and election-season communal rumours. The emphasis is on understanding how hate operates as a political technology—where it originates, who amplifies it, how quickly it spreads, and how it shapes the emotional climate of the constituency.

A core function of the Election Hate Watch is formal accountability. Each verified violation is filed with the Election Commission as a structured MCC complaint—supported with evidence, legal references, URLs, transcripts, and explicit analysis of how the speech violates electoral norms. As complaints accumulate, CJP identifies deeper patterns: repeat offenders who face no consequences; fringe groups that act as advance agents of polarisation months before polling; the transition of hate speech from local agitators to star campaigners; the silence or selective inaction of District Magistrates; and the seasonal spike in anti-minority mobilisation whenever elections approach. The Hate Watch therefore does more than document abuse—it exposes the systemic, cyclical nature of hate-mongering during elections and highlights how institutional indifference enables its escalation.

The National Template of Hatred: How stereotypes become strategy

Across every state examined—Maharashtra, Delhi, Bihar, and during the Lok Sabha campaign—one encounters a startlingly consistent repertoire of imagery. It is a set-piece performance, travelling effortlessly from district to district, from rallies to WhatsApp forwards, from street-corner speeches to prime-time studio screens. The central character of this repertoire is the Muslim figure cast entirely outside the domain of citizenship: the eternal infiltrator, the calculating seducer, the demographic schemer, the territorial conspirator, the economic parasite, the cultural invader.

Protagonists employed to spew this hatred by the ideological majoritarian formation that most benefits from it, the RSS led-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are the constitutional CEOs of the party’s most polarised states (Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Uttarakhand). The carry forward or trickle down circulation of this hate is then by local level, recognised functionaries of far right formations, closely allied with the regime.

The term “infiltrator” is the axis around which this ecosystem revolves. It appears not merely as an insult but as a political doctrine. Hatred does not operate by merely expressing dislike; it operates by constructing the “Other” as an enemy so dangerous that even constitutional protections must bow before national survival. The infiltrator trope achieves this by collapsing legal categories—foreigner, migrant, refugee, citizen—into a single undifferentiated target. A Muslim man walking with his daughter to school becomes indistinguishable from a Bangladeshi terrorist. A Muslim vendor selling tomatoes becomes indistinguishable from a Rohingya infiltrator. This collapse is not a misunderstanding; it is a deliberate political intervention that renders all constitutional protections fragile.

Alongside the infiltrator, we see the proliferation of “jihad” conspiracies. These conspiratorial logics—love jihad, land jihad, population jihad, vote jihad—are a masterstroke of rhetorical engineering. They allow entirely ordinary, mundane aspects of life—love, marriage, land purchase, childbirth, voting—to be reinterpreted as part of a sinister plan. The beauty of a conspiracy theory is not that it is credible but that it is expansive. It can absorb anything, interpret everything, and justify whatever violence follows. For electoral actors, this is strategic gold.

This vocabulary is supplemented by dehumanising metaphors: termites, snakes, demons. Dehumanisation functions as the precursor to violence, lowering the psychological barrier between rhetoric and action. The use of such animalistic vocabulary across Maharashtra and Lok Sabha speeches shows a clear attempt to create a moral universe in which harming the target feels like cleansing, not cruelty.

Then there is the linguistic architecture of purity and contamination. In Delhi, vendors are forced to display saffron flags or publicly assert their Hindu identity. The underlying claim is that Muslim bodies carry impurity—social, cultural, or even culinary. If a Muslim vendor hides his identity, he is framed as deceitful; if he reveals it, he is ostracised. It is a no-win situation designed to make minority livelihoods precarious.

The repetition of identical metaphors across states shows a powerful truth: hate is being standardised.

The thematic trinity of existential threat

The communal campaign strategy relies on a narrow but potent set of themes, which are tailored locally but consistent nationally. These themes function to dehumanise the minority community, primarily Muslims, and position them as a singular, monolithic threat that transcends local governance issues.

1. The ‘Infiltrator’ and Citizenship Trope: Stoking demographic fear

Across Bihar, Maharashtra, and the Lok Sabha campaign, the core message is that the opposition parties are enabling “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and “Rohingya refugees” to undermine the nation’s security and steal local resources.

• Commonality- The threat to resources and identity: The core claim across all these elections is that “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and “Rohingya refugees” are being enabled by opposition parties to usurp local resources, jobs, and land, thereby changing the demography of border districts. This rhetoric is deployed to stoke the fears of demographic replacement and economic dispossession.

• Top-down amplification: This is not limited to local functionaries; it has been mainstreamed by the highest-ranking “Star Campaigners.” The Prime Minister, for instance, used the term ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) in Bihar, alleging demographic changes in border districts and announcing a mission to deport them to prevent the theft of livelihoods and resources from the youth of Bihar. In the Lok Sabha campaign, the same narrative was used to claim the opposition planned to redistribute the country’s wealth to these “infiltrators”.
• Targeting indigenous communities (Jharkhand): In Jharkhand, this narrative was explicitly used to divide and mobilise the Adivasi and indigenous communities. BJP leaders accused the ruling JMM-Congress coalition of enabling these “infiltrators” to settle illegally, thereby “stealing” resources, jobs, and land from the Adivasis. The rhetoric successfully frames the election not as a choice on development, but as a defense of indigenous culture and territory against an external Muslim threat.
• Delhi and Maharashtra: Local leaders in Delhi utilised the same language, warning residents that if the opposition won, the city would “turn into Dhaka” and that the opposition was busy making Aadhaar cards for these “Bangladeshis”. In Maharashtra, the demand for NRC/Janta NRC was raised with the promise to throw out all Bangladeshis/Rohingya.

The fear stoked: This theme directly stokes the fear of demographic replacement, economic dispossession, and national security compromise, making the electoral choice one of survival rather than policy.

2. The ‘Jihad’ Conspiracy Matrix: Fuelling moral panic and segregation

The term ‘Jihad’ is weaponised as a prefix to various social and economic activities to generate a state of perpetual moral panic within the majority community.

Certain instances of hate speech targeted Muslims in Bihar are as follows:

1. Raghunathpur, Bihar

Assam CM & BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma says, “Before I came to Raghunathpur, I thought I would see Lord Ram, Lord Lakshman and Goddess Sita, but I was told that there are many Ram, Laxman and Sita here and there is also Osama. So I asked, who is Osama? This Osama is like the earlier Osama Bin Laden. We have to ensure the elimination of all Osama Bin Ladens in the state. What was Osama’s father’s name? He was called Shahbuddin…”

2. Keoti, Darbhanga, Bihar

Top themes from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s campaign speech: “Bihar’s security is being compromised by letting ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) into Bihar’s land — these are the same people who divide you on caste lines, invite ghuspaithiya (infiltrators), play with your faith, and then work to undermine national security. We must not allow these ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) to enter. Just as Article 370 was ended in Kashmir and Pakistani elements were pushed out, we will remove ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) from our border areas, seize the property of anyone involved in criminal activities, and distribute that property among the poor — the NDA government will do this. Elect NDA candidate Shri Murari Mohan Jha again; do not allow any element that shelters ghuspaithiya (infiltrators), breeds anarchy, or insults Mithila’s culture during festivals and celebrations.”

3. Hajipur, Vaishali, Bihar

Top themes from Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s campaign speech delivered virtually at a public rally: “Should ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) have the right to be on Bihar’s electoral rolls? I know your answer — it should not be. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took out a ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao’ yatra in Bihar, because all these parties fighting elections against us see these ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) as their vote bank. And I believe these ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) are snatching jobs from our youth, taking a share of the poor’s grain, and making the country insecure. Rahul ji, hold as many ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao’ yatras as you want — we will pick out every infiltrator from Bihar and the country and send them out, and we will also work to remove their names from the electoral rolls. This is the decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party, this is the decision of the NDA.”

4. Harsidhi, Purvi Champaran, Bihar

Top themes from CM Pushkar Singh Dhami’s campaign speech: “We have taken strict action against counterfeiters, religious conversion, riots, and against ‘love jihad,’ ‘land jihad,’ and ‘thook jihad.’ Additionally, to curb the operation of illegally functioning madrasas and religious extremism, we have decided to dissolve the Madrasa Board in Uttarakhand. In the coming days, only those madrasas in Uttarakhand that teach the syllabus prescribed by our education board will operate. After winning Bihar, these same measures will be implemented here to ensure its safety. Who do you stand with? Will you stand with the BJP-NDA that puts the national interest above all, or will you stand with those who support ghuspaithiya (infiltrators)? Will you stand with the Uniform Civil Code, or with those who bring Shariat laws and openly give license to the oppression of women?”

5. Chapra, Saran, Bihar

Key themes from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign speech: “Remember this — the RJD and Congress, drowned in appeasement and vote-bank politics, can do nothing except protect ghuspaithiya (infiltrators). These ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) have become their maai-baap (masters). They have invested all their political strength in saving them.”

This matrix directly translates into violence against vulnerable sections and the enforcement of social and economic apartheid. A BJP Councillor in Delhi, for instance, not only demanded a Muslim vendor display his name but also installed saffron flags on Hindu vendors’ stalls to facilitate identity-based commerce, explicitly propagating the slur that the “other community” spits on food.

3. Dehumanisation and Direct Incitement: The slur-to-violence pipeline

The final, most dangerous thematic stage involves the deployment of dehumanizing language that makes violence against the target community palatable and justified.

• Dehumanising slurs: Instances include a BJP member inside the Lok Sabha using Islamophobic and threatening slurs like “terrorist” and “pimp” against a Muslim MP. A BJP leader in Maharashtra, Nitesh Rane, threatened to burn someone and other leaders openly called for gruesome violence, threatening to “kill you like Insects” and chanting, “Danda uthao, Lande baghao“.
• Incitement to violence: Rallies in Maharashtra, led by figures like BJP MLA T Raja Singh, have featured anti-Muslim slurs and direct incitement. In one instance, a leader threatened to “burn someone,” while others openly chanted, “we will also cut people here and throw them in drains”. Another leader explicitly threatened, “we will kill you like Insects”. The CM of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, while delivering a speech in Bihar, likened a person to “Osama Bin Laden” and explicitly called for their “elimination”. This constant use of extreme rhetoric (e.g., “cut people here and throw them in drains”) serves to normalise a climate of hostility, making actual violence against vulnerable sections an anticipated outcome. This rhetoric aims to condition the public to accept violent elimination as a righteous act.

The Emotional Infrastructure of Fear: How hate speech manufactures threat

Hate speech may appear to be about anger, but its true currency is fear. Anger mobilises crowds; fear sustains movements. Across states, four carefully constructed fears appear repeatedly.

The first is economic fear. In poor, agrarian states such as Bihar—or in working-class belts of Maharashtra—the rhetoric focuses on infiltrators stealing government benefits, occupying land illegally, taking jobs, receiving welfare they do not deserve. This rhetoric is powerful because it taps into real economic frustrations but diverts them away from structural inequality and towards minorities. It converts legitimate anger over unemployment or deprivation into communal resentment.

The second is cultural fear. This fear takes the form of a narrative of civilisational decline. Hindu culture is portrayed as under siege; traditions are framed as endangered; festivals are depicted as battlefields. Rituals like Chhath Puja—once shared by communities—become arenas of policing and communal signalling. What was once a festival of rivers and devotion becoming a theatre of antagonism.

The third is demographic fear. It appears most explicitly in national-level speeches during the Lok Sabha campaign. By exaggerating Muslim fertility and framing demographic change as a Muslim conspiracy, politicians create a sense of population panic. Demographic fear is one of the most potent tools of ethnic majoritarianism globally—it transforms the majority into a frightened minority in their own imagination.

The fourth is sexual fear. Women’s bodies become sites of communal anxiety. “Bahu-beti ki izzat” rhetoric casts Muslim men as sexual predators and Hindu men as protectors. It converts women’s autonomy into a communal battlefield and legitimises violent moral policing. This fear is especially weaponised in Maharashtra, where love jihad rhetoric saturates both street-level speeches and high-profile rallies.

Together, these fears produce a moral panic in which majoritarian self-defence becomes not only political strategy but civic virtue.

The operational playbook of mobilisation and division

The communal escalation follows a meticulous, three-stage operational pattern designed to build momentum while providing plausible deniability to the main political party.

The three-stage escalation model: A remarkable consistency emerges across state after state: hate speech follows a three-stage escalation pipeline. This pipeline is not theoretical. It is empirically visible across the Maharashtra file, the Delhi dossier, and Bihar’s hate-speech archive.

In the first stage, fringe actors begin the work of seeding hatred. These actors are often small, semi-obscure organisations—vigilante groups, local religious fronts, hardline cultural outfits. They operate without restraint, testing the boundaries of permissible speech. Their role is to sow the initial seeds of anxiety.

In the second stage, local political leaders elevate these narratives. Their speeches are strategically targeted, naming places, identifying supposed threats, and calling for exclusion or boycott. They do the work of translating fringe slogans into electoral messaging.

In the third stage, national leaders adopt the same rhetoric. This is the most crucial moment, where language becomes law-like, carrying the weight of authority. When senior ministers repeat terms like “infiltrator”, they confer legitimacy on the entire ecosystem. What begins as street-level rumour becomes a central campaign theme.

This pipeline ensures that hate speech does not remain marginal. It becomes mainstream political messaging, producing a nationwide vocabulary of resentment. (Read: Elections 2024: The lead up to the first two phases of voting have seen far right leaders deliver anti-Muslim hate speech across India and April: CJP’s hate watch campaign analyses several hate incidents reported across the country in the last week)

Stage 1: Fringe elements get active (the groundwork)

The process begins 3-4 months before the elections with dedicated far-right organisations laying the groundwork.

• In Maharashtra, groups like the Sakal Hindu Samaj and Hindu Janjagruti Manch organise Hindu Jan Akrosh rallies, peddling the most extreme versions of the ‘Jihad’ conspiracies, including calls to take up arms. In Bihar, it was the “I Love Mahummad” campaign that led to chaos and violence.
• In Bihar, groups like the Bajrang Dal and VHP host events where convenors openly reject slogans of communal harmony and urge Hindus to take up weapons (shastra) to defend their identity. This fringe content serves as an ‘out-of-syllabus’ test balloon for later, more moderated main-party rhetoric.

Instances from Bihar:

1. Gaya, Bihar

Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), Matrushakti, and Durga Vahini conducted Durga Ashtami and Shastra Poojan (weapon worship) programs at multiple locations. During the event, women brandished weapons and raised religious slogans.

2. Kaimur, Bihar

Bhagwati Shukla, national president of Rashtriya Sanatan Sena, speaking at a religious conference organised by the group, promoted the anti-Muslim conspiracy theory of “love jihad” and falsely claimed that over 3 lakh Hindu girls are killed every day in its name. He also declared that they will cut those who slaughter cows.

3. Bettiah, West Champaran, Bihar

During a Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) Foundation Day event, leader Ambarish Singh made anti-Muslim remarks, claiming Muslims seek separate laws and identity. He said those who refuse to say “Bharat Mata ki Jai” “may be citizens but are not our brothers,” mocked slogans of communal harmony, and linked the VHP’s mission to ending “love jihad,” cow slaughter, and religious conversions.

4. Bhagwanpur, Vaishali, Bihar

At a Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) Sthapna Diwas event, Bajrang Dal state convenor Prakash Pandey rejected slogans of communal harmony and spread anti-Muslim conspiracy theories around “love jihad,” “land jihad,” religious conversions and cow slaughter. He also urged Hindus to take up weapons (“shastra”) to defend their identity.

Stage 2: Local leaders build-up (the designated agitators)

The next stage involves “designated agitators”—one or two individuals per state who consistently make hateful statements. These leaders test the boundaries of acceptable rhetoric and generate the initial media traction.

Instances:

1. Maharashtra- Nitesh Rane peddles conspiracy theories and threaten violence in Dongri. Caught on camera threatening to burn someone and peddled conspiracy theory of ‘land jihad’

https://cjp.org.in/nitesh-rane-peddles-conspiracy-theories-and-threaten-violence-in-dongri-thane

2. Maharashtra- CJP files complaint before Maharashtra Police against serial hate offender Kajal Hindustani. In complaint, CJP urged to take strict action and seek prosecution under sections 196, 197(1), 352 and 353 of the BNS, 2023 for communal, hate speech

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-complaint-before-maharashtra-police-against-serial-hate-offender-kajal-hindustani

3. Maharashtra- CJP lodges additional police complaints against Nitesh Rane and Ashwini Upadhyay for hate speeches. Incendiary remarks by Nitesh Rane and Ashwini Upadhyay span multiple locations in Maharashtra

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-lodges-additional-police-complaints-against-nitesh-rane-and-ashwini-upadhyay-for-hate-speeches

4. Maharashtra- Hindu Jan Akrosh rally in Mumbai sees conspiracy theories being peddled against Muslims. Leaders like Nitesh Rane, made speeches calling out ‘Jihadis’ and accusing people of bringing in ‘Bangladeshis’, and ‘Rohingya’ to conduct riots

https://cjp.org.in/hindu-jan-akrosh-rally-in-mumbai-sees-conspiracy-theories-being-peddled-against-muslims

Stage 3: Star campaigners take over

Once the ground is polarised and the themes are established, the main national leaders (PM Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Yogi Adityanath) step in, adopting the subtext of the hate speech—shifting from local incitement to national security and resource threat—to legitimize the narrative and reach a mass audience. This also involves the tactic of “catching” one or two Maulanas to make statements that fit the narrative, ensuring the rhetoric is framed as a response to minority aggression (e.g., the use of Imran Masood’s statement in Bihar).

Blurring caste equations and weaponising Dalits

A key analytical dimension in Bihar and the Lok Sabha elections is the calculated effort to fracture social justice coalitions by pitting Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs against Muslims. A critical function of communal hate speech is the calculated effort to blur Caste Equations/Realities and divert attention from governance failures.

• The reservation theft narrative: This is achieved by framing any potential minority benefit (like reservation for backward Muslims, as done in Karnataka) as a direct theft of resources earmarked for Dalits, Scheduled Castes (SCs), and Scheduled Tribes (STs). Senior leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah, systematically framed any potential reservation for Muslims as a direct theft from Dalits, Adivasis, SCs, and OBCs. The explicit claim that Congress would take reservations “out from the Dalits… and give it to Muslims” is designed to create a zero-sum communal conflict, fracturing the socio-political alliance built on caste-based identity and social justice.
• Diverting from joblessness and poverty: By focusing campaign energy entirely on ‘Infiltrators,’ ‘Love Jihad,’ and ‘Reservation Theft,’ the political discourse successfully diverts attention from the real issues plaguing Bihar, such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of development.

Communalising shared public and festival spaces

The strategy of division extends to hijacking shared cultural symbols and spaces.

• Festival polarisation: Festivals traditionally celebrated by both communities are being communalised, such as Chhath Puja in Bihar, where the use of VHP stickers is a new tactic to stake exclusive claim over shared cultural rituals.
• Economic segregation: The use of festivals or local gatherings to enforce economic boycotts and social separation (e.g., the paneer vendor incident in Delhi).
• Infiltrating secular institutions: Even educational institutions are being targeted, with reports of Hindutva activities like Gaushalas and Shobha Yatras being brought into college campuses like IIT-B in Mumbai, symbolically mirroring the ‘Land Jihad’ narrative in cultural and academic domains.

Targeting religious and political spaces

• Religious sites: Speeches included promises to remove mosques from Kashi and Mathura if the BJP wins a supermajority in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The destruction of the Babri Mosque was openly glorified in Maharashtra.
• Parliamentary attacks: A Muslim MP, Kunwar Danish Ali, was called a “terrorist, pimp” by a BJP member, Ramesh Bidhuri, inside India’s parliament.
• Political rivalry: Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma made a deeply communal remark in Bihar, linking a local leader to Osama Bin Laden and his father to Shahabuddin

Instances from Bihar:

1. Gaya, Bihar

At a government event inaugurating development project, Prime Minister Narendra Modi targeted those he referred to as “ghuspaithiya” (infiltrators), alleging demographic changes in Bihar’s border districts. He asserted that infiltrators would not be allowed to steal livelihoods and resources from the youth of Bihar and Indian citizens, and announced the formation of a demography mission to deport each “ghuspaithiya” from the country.

2. Barauni, Begusarai, Bihar

Home Minister Amit Shah delivered a speech targeting those he referred to as “ghuspethiya” (infiltrators). He questioned whether they should receive voting rights, be included in voter lists, or be entitled to free food rations, employment, housing, or medical aid, claiming that Rahul Gandhi prioritises them over the people of Bihar. He further alleged that “ghuspethiyas” serve as vote banks for opposition leaders and vowed to remove each one of them.

3. Dehri, Rohtas, Bihar

Home Minister Amit Shah delivered a speech targeting those he referred to as “ghuspethiya” (infiltrators). He mocked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s campaign as a “Ghuspethiya Bachao Yatra” and asked attendees whether infiltrators should have voting rights, access to free rations, jobs, housing, or medical aid. He alleged that infiltrators are receiving these benefits instead of Indian youth, warning that if the opposition wins, “every house in Bihar will have only ghuspethiyas.”

4. Danapur, Patna, Bihar

Top themes from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s campaign speech: “The INDI Alliance has started a new campaign– development vs ‘burqa’. When Bihar and its youth are talking about development, Congress and RJD are trying to expand their reach through ‘burqa’. Should they be allowed to conduct fake polling? Should ‘foreign ghuspaith’ (infiltrators) be given a free hand to rob the poor, Dalits, and citizens of Bihar? Anywhere in the world, one must show their identity and face, but they want to let anyone vote without revealing their faces.”

From Rhetoric to Rupture: How hate speech reorders everyday life

Across Maharashtra, Delhi, and Bihar, hate speech produces concrete, lived consequences. It reorganises public space. It transforms markets into segregated zones. It forces everyday interactions to become declarations of identity.

In Delhi, the pressure on Muslim vendors to display saffron flags is not simply symbolic. It is a form of coercion that destroys anonymity, exposes vulnerability, and renders economic life contingent on communal compliance. In Maharashtra, boycott campaigns led to assaults on shops, disruption of livelihoods, and humiliation of workers. In Bihar, rumours about “Bangladeshi vendors” have triggered spontaneous harassment of ordinary labourers. Panchayat resolutions in various states have attempted to exclude Muslim traders from local markets—a practice that mimics apartheid structures where economic participation becomes conditional on identity.

Violence follows predictably. Mob assaults, harassment of couples, vandalism of shops, threats to imams, surveillance of Muslim-majority localities—these are not “law and order incidents”. They are direct outcomes of a discursive environment engineered for hostility.

When hate speech saturates public space, violence becomes not a deviation but an expected response. A society trained to see neighbours as infiltrators is a society primed for confrontation.

The Systemic Enablers: Media and institutional inaction

The final, critical piece of the pattern is the widespread belief that the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) is a functionally dead instrument, a perception reinforced by consistent inaction on complaints against powerful figures. The piece must highlight that despite the existence of electoral laws and the MCC, enforcement remains critically weak, thus encouraging repeat offenses.).

1. The media multiplier and the digital battlefield

The media ecosystem acts as a critical force multiplier, ensuring maximum saturation of the divisive narratives.

• The role of media in propagation: The media acts as a critical force multiplier. The search results confirm that social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, X) are key instruments for amplifying and mainstreaming hate speech, with top BJP leaders’ speeches often live-streamed across official accounts.
• AI-generated content and deepfakes: As anticipated, the Bihar election has become a test case for the use of AI Deepfakes, hate posters, and malicious Bhojpuri songs, “blurring the line between propaganda and parody”. The attempt to create an AI Deepfake targeting Colonel Sofia Qureshi and falsely linking Trishul drills to the Bihar polls is a clear example of using sophisticated technology to manufacture a crisis narrative.
• “Paid” hardliners: A crucial pattern is noted: the existence of “paid” Muslim hardliners whose provocative clips are used by the political machinery to validate the “existential threat” narrative. This creates a false equivalence, framing the majority community’s rhetoric as a justified defensive reaction. 

2. The MCC Paradox: A functional impunity

One of the most troubling revelations across states is the consistent institutional inaction. MCC complaints filed by civil society groups in Maharashtra resulted in little to no prosecution. Delhi administrators took no meaningful action against blatant hate speech. Even where the Election Commission issued notices, follow-up was weak.

The paralysis is not bureaucratic inefficiency—it is political choice. District Magistrates, legally empowered to act suo-moto, routinely fail to intervene. Police forces often behave not as neutral protectors but as silent spectators or selective enforcers. Voting-day advertisements—clearly illegal—continue year after year with complete impunity.

The absence of enforcement does not merely fail to stop hate speech. It incentivises it. (Read: From Welfare to Expulsion: Bihar’s MCC period rhetoric turns citizenship into a campaign weapon)

• Lack of consequence for star campaigners: The most damning evidence comes from the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, where the Congress party explicitly petitioned the Supreme Court, stating that the Election Commission’s (ECI) “continued silence” on complaints of hate speech and MCC violation against the Prime Minister and Home Minister amounted to a “tacit endorsement” of their statements and was a form of “invidious discrimination”. The Supreme Court was eventually forced to direct the EC to decide on these complaints.
• The DM’s suo-moto power failure: District Magistrates (DMs) possess the suo moto power to initiate action against violations of law and order, including hate speech, without waiting for the ECI’s directive. The consistent failure of DMs to utilise this power effectively creates a security vacuum and raises a fundamental question: What is the purpose of the MCC if its own local enforcement arms refuse to exercise their legal authority?
• The silence period violation: A consistent tactical violation is the use of full-page newspaper advertisements on the day of voting—a direct breach of the legally mandated “silence period”. Complaints are filed every year, yet nothing ever happens, turning a legal restraint into a predictable, unpunished final campaign flourish. Complaints were explicitly filed against the BJP, MNS, and the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) in Maharashtra for silence period violations, specifically citing political ads in major newspapers. (Read: How BJP is accused of violating 48 Hours-Silence Period even on Poll Day?)

How MCC violations become a license for electoral hate: One of the most disturbing features of India’s contemporary electoral landscape is not merely the explosion of hate speech, but the near-total collapse of institutional response to it. The Model Code of Conduct—once regarded as a moral compass and a boundary-marker—is now little more than a symbolic pamphlet. Across Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and during the 2024 Lok Sabha cycle, repeated, documented, and widely circulated instances of explicit hate speech, communal incitement, and even direct calls for violence were flagged to the Election Commission of India with urgency and precision. Yet the ECI’s response oscillated between silence, non-committal notices, or bureaucratic platitudes. This selective inertia has effectively rewritten the MCC: instead of a code meant to regulate elections, it has become a code that politicians can violate with impunity once they understand that consequences are unlikely, uneven, or easily deflected. The absence of deterrence becomes a form of permission.

The judicial system’s response—especially from constitutional courts—has only deepened this institutional void. High Courts routinely dismiss or defer petitions concerning hate speech at election time, often on procedural grounds, or by sending complainants back to the very authorities that have already refused to act. Even more worrying is the Supreme Court’s posture, which has increasingly adopted a stance of non-intervention, repeatedly expressing “helplessness,” “constraint,” or “reluctance” to issue proactive directions. This judicial passivity is not neutral. By refusing to treat communal hate as an urgent constitutional injury, the courts inadvertently normalise its presence in electoral politics. When the highest court of a democracy signals that it cannot act unless someone else acts first, hate becomes embedded as an acceptable mode of political communication.

This institutional abdication has profound consequences for the democratic process. It creates a political marketplace in which the loudest, most inflammatory actors gain the greatest advantage. It rewards radicalisation, emboldens repeat offenders, and silences vulnerable communities who lose faith in the very institutions meant to protect them. The MCC becomes a decorative façade, the ECI a passive spectator, and the judiciary an absentee guardian. What remains is a hollowed-out electoral field where hate speech does not merely occur—it thrives under the protective cover of institutional silence. When the state signals that hate is politically useful and legally inconsequential, it corrodes not only public discourse but the constitutional foundation of elections themselves. In such a climate, communal propaganda is not an aberration; it becomes the new grammar of democratic participation.

Some of the MCC complaints sent by CJP during these four election cycles may be read here, here, here and here.

Bihar: The strategic communalisation of caste politics

Bihar stands out for a deeper, more consequential transformation. Unlike Maharashtra or Delhi, where communal polarisation has been cultivated for years, Bihar has historically been governed by caste equations. Political coalitions were built on OBC solidarity, Dalit assertion, and the arithmetic of caste-based identities. Muslims, though electorally significant, were integrated into caste-based alliances rather than positioned as central antagonists.

In the recent Bihar cycle, hate speech has been weaponised to redraw this landscape. The infiltrator narrative is used to redirect OBC and EBC economic frustrations toward Muslims. Hate speech in Bihar functions not merely as communal rhetoric but as caste engineering. By portraying Muslims as beneficiaries of welfare schemes, as land-grabbers, as demographic threats, hate speech fractures long-standing solidarities between marginalised castes and Muslim communities. The constructed rhetoric also blurs or diminishes issues of caste deprivation and discrimination of the most marginalised where the systemic exploiters are from the dominant ‘Hindu’ fold.

This transformation is visible in the communalisation of Chhath Puja, one of Bihar’s most syncretic cultural spaces. It is visible in the circulation of AI-generated videos designed to provoke OBC anger. It is visible in the increasing recruitment of Dalit and OBC youth by Hindutva groups seeking to expand their caste footprint.

In Bihar, like elsewhere, hate speech is not simply dividing communities. It is restructuring them.

Democracy in Decline: The erosion of rights, citizenship, and public reason

The cumulative effect of election hate speech is the erosion of India’s constitutional framework. Hate speech violates Articles 14, 15, and 21 by producing inequality, discrimination, and insecurity. It corrodes the idea of citizenship by creating a two-tier system: those who belong fully and those who must constantly prove their belonging.

The damage is not simply legal. It is epistemic. Hate speech erodes the ability of citizens to think democratically. The utter failure of constitutional institutions, conceived as safeguards –be it the constitutional courts or the infamous Election Commission of India (ECI) to act decisively and punitively ensures further impunity and normalisation. Result: hate speech and its impact, crowds out substantive debate, reduces governance to identity warfare, and delegitimises political disagreement. In such an environment, elections cease to be democratic practices and become theatres of domination.

Conclusion: Reclaiming democratic integrity

The analysis demonstrates that the current surge in electoral hate speech is neither random nor reactive; it is the product of a highly organised, multi-layered, and financially supported political architecture designed to achieve communal mobilization.

India’s contemporary elections reveal a political landscape where hate speech is not an aberration but an organising principle. It structures campaigns, mobilises voters, reorganises identities, and shapes governance. It transforms neighbours into enemies and turns public space into a battlefield. It reorders caste politics in places like Bihar. It destroys livelihoods in places like Delhi. In addition, it legitimises violence in places like Maharashtra.

Most dangerously, it normalises a new political order in which fear is the principal currency of power.

India now stands at a critical juncture. If hate remains the central grammar of elections, then elections themselves cease to be instruments of democratic renewal. They become mechanisms of social control. The future of India’s democracy depends not merely on recognising this transformation but on confronting it with legal, political, and moral urgency.

Hate is not a speech act.

It is a system.

Moreover, systems do not collapse on their own—they must be dismantled.

The pre-election hate machinery that turned Maharashtra into a communal battleground:

Capital city became a laboratory for pre-election communal polarisation:

2024’s election rhetoric and weaponisation of hate across India:

References:

https://www.outlookindia.com/elections/hate-speech-surges-in-bihar-polls-the-return-of-communal-and-caste-divides-in-campaign-rhetoric

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/cpim-slams-pm-modi-for-remarks-against-tamil-nadu-during-bihar-poll-campaign/article70224918.ece

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/ahead-of-bihar-polls-union-minister-and-begusarai-mp-giriraj-singh-sparks-controversy-2805440-2025-10-19?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://news.abplive.com/elections/pm-modi-speech-purnea-congress-rjd-yatra-infiltrators-bihar-election-2025-bihar-sir-1800488?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2025/Oct/22/political-islam-undermined-hindu-faith-largely-overlooked-in-history-cm-yogi

https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/09/24/indian-muslims-not-equal-abp-show-allows-hate-speech-slurs-as-ragi-vs-pathan

https://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/mumbai-hindu-groups-call-for-restricting-non-hindus-from-garba-venues-citing-love-jihad-concerns-during-navratri

https://cjp.org.in/mtra-elections-on-cjps-complaint-on-an-mcc-violation-fir-has-been-registered-against-kajal-hindustani-for-hate-speech

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-stands-against-hate-seeks-preventive-action-against-hate-driven-events-in-maharashtra

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-complaints-to-the-maharashtra-election-commission-over-communal-posters-featuring-up-cm-yogi-adityanath

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-highlights-mcc-violation-urges-maharashtra-election-commission-to-act-on-hate-speech

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-complaint-against-bjp-mns-and-ss-shinde-faction-silence-period-violations-in-maharashtra-elections

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-5-hate-speech-complaints-before-ceo-maharashtra-as-violated-mcc

https://sabrangindia.in/hindutva-enters-mumbai-college-campuses-gaushala-shobha-yatra-in-iit-b-restriction-to-freedom-of-speech-at-tiss

https://sabrangindia.in/chhattisgarh-maharashtra-sc-directs-police-to-ensure-no-hate-speech-by-bjp-mla-raja-singh-hindu-jan-jagruti-samiti-rallies

https://cjp.org.in/bjp-mla-t-raja-singh-at-mira-road-hurls-anti-muslim-slurs-incites-violence-at-rally-permitted-by-bombay-high-court

https://cjp.org.in/hindu-jan-akrosh-rally-in-mumbai-sees-conspiracy-theories-being-peddled-against-muslims

https://sabrangindia.in/is-mumbai-becoming-a-hotbed-of-hate

https://sabrangindia.in/bjp-mla-nitesh-rane-leads-hindutva-rally-in-govandi-demands-demolition-of-illegal-masjids-and-madrasa

https://sabrangindia.in/environmental-interest-converted-into-communal-tension-madras-high-court-refuses-to-quash-criminal-case-against-bjp-state-head-annamalai

https://cjp.org.in/hindu-jan-akrosh-rally-in-mumbai-sees-conspiracy-theories-being-peddled-against-muslims

https://sabrangindia.in/ground-report-protests-erupt-in-assam-after-portrayal-of-muslims-as-criminals-in-rally-by-bodoland-university

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-complaint-against-bjp-leader-nazia-elahi-khan-over-hate-speech-in-delhi/

https://sabrangindia.in/cjp-calls-for-electoral-action-against-bjp-leaders-hate-speech-at-rohini-chetna-event/

https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/01/21/denial-and-deflection-how-the-bjps-bidhuri-walked-off-when-asked-about-crude-remarks

https://www.indiatvnews.com/delhi/delhi-assembly-elections-2025-police-registers-over-1100-cases-of-mcc-violations-model-code-of-conduct-detained-35516-people-latest-updates-2025-02-07-975130

The post The Orchestrated Extremism: An analysis of communal hate speech in India’s election cycle (2024–2025) appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Blast: A scene of carnage and social shock

The factual background of the case is harrowing. On April 27, 1996, a UP Roadways bus from the Roorkee depot departed from Delhi ISBT at 3:55 PM with more than fifty passengers. It halted at Mohan Nagar Check Post, where fourteen more boarded. As the bus crossed the Modinagar Police Station in Ghaziabad around 5 PM, a violent explosion tore through its front portion. The driver died on the spot, along with nine passengers. Nearly everyone on board suffered injuries ranging from severe to critical. Post-mortem reports described multiple metal fragments embedded in the victims’ bodies; doctors confirmed that death was caused by “shock and haemorrhage due to excessive bleeding.” Forensic examination established that RDX mixed with carbon had been placed beneath the driver’s seat and detonated using a remote trigger. The blast was quickly categorised as an act of terrorism, and investigative agencies rushed to construct a narrative of conspiracy. Public anger and panic were immediate. The community demanded answers, accountability, and closure. Yet, as the High Court judgment reveals, those demands were never truly met—not for the families, not for the injured, and not for the accused.

The Prosecution’s Theory: Conspiracy, foreign links and a confession

In its case before the trial court, the prosecution framed the blast as part of a larger conspiracy orchestrated by Harkat-ul-Ansar. The State alleged that Abdul Mateen @ Iqbal, a Pakistani national, served as a “District Commander” of the organisation and had collaborated with Ilyas, who, according to prosecution claims, was indoctrinated during his travels to Jammu & Kashmir. It was further alleged that the appellant facilitated travel for operatives, participated in planning meetings, and assisted in procuring or planting the explosive. However, this theory rested heavily on a single fragile pillar: a confession allegedly made by Ilyas before a Senior Police Officer of the CB-CID, recorded on an audio cassette in the presence of his father and brother. This confession became the backbone of the prosecution’s case. Without it, the surrounding circumstantial links—two railway tickets, a diary, and speculative associations—were plainly inadequate. Yet the prosecution attempted to stretch these tenuous threads into a conspiracy narrative, despite the fact that one co-accused, Tasleem, had been acquitted by the trial court itself for complete lack of evidence. The State did not appeal Tasleem’s acquittal, nor was there any record suggesting that Mateen ever filed a challenge. As such, by the time the matter reached the High Court, only Ilyas was left defending himself against the weight of the allegations—while confined in prison.

The High Court’s Evaluation of Evidence: A prosecution in disarray

The Allahabad High Court’s decision in Criminal Appeal No. 2063 of 2013 is one of the starkest examples of the justice system confronting the collapse of a terror-investigation while simultaneously acknowledging the moral burden of acquitting an accused in a case involving mass casualties. The Bench’s analysis is structured around three pillars: (1) the complete absence of legally admissible evidence against Ilyas; (2) the statutory bar on using police-recorded confessions; and (3) the total failure of the prosecution to produce any independent incriminating material.

The Court’s reasoning is unusually candid. It acknowledges the horrific nature of the 1996 Modinagar bus blast—describing it as “diabolic”, “dastardly”, and a “terrorist act”—yet still concludes that there is no legal basis to uphold the conviction. The Bench ultimately declares: “We are recording acquittal in this case with heavy heart as the case is of such propensity that it shock the conscience of the society as 18 innocent persons lost their life in the terrorist plot”.

Below is a structured analysis of what the Court actually held, how it evaluated each category of evidence, and how it applied statutory and doctrinal principles.

I. The court’s construction of the factual matrix

The judgment begins by firmly establishing the factual horror of the blast. Relying on eyewitnesses, inquest officers, and medical professionals, the Bench holds that the explosion was undoubtedly caused by a planted high-intensity device. Post-mortem reports and FSL findings were decisive. Ten people died on the spot; more died during treatment; and 48 were injured.

The Court notes in the judgment that:

“In the postmortem report of the deceased persons, pieces of metal were found, and the cause of death was shock and haemorrhage due to excessive bleeding.” (Para 18)

“In report of FSL dated 30.04.1996, it is concluded that in the bus registration No. UP15A6693, mixture of RDX and carbon was kept, which resulted in explosion. It was kept in the front portion of the bus, above bonut or its left side.” (Para 7)

The device was placed before the bus left Delhi; therefore, no onboard passenger could have seen the planting. By laying this foundation, the Court underscores that the factum of the terrorist act is unquestionably proved—thus shifting the entire analytical burden to whether the prosecution proved who executed it.

II. Collapse of Witness Testimony: No Direct Evidence Linking Ilyas

Hostile witnesses and the rejection of the alleged extra-judicial confessions: The prosecution relied heavily on two witnesses—PW-6 Subrati and PW-9 Ahsan—as recipients of an alleged extra-judicial confession by Ilyas and co-accused Mateen and Tasleem.

But both turned hostile, they merely admitted they knew Ilyas socially. The Court notes:

“None of the witnesses of fact produced by the prosecution to establish complicity of the appellant in the offence have supported the prosecution version. The witnesses PW 6-Subrati, PW 9-Ahsan are key witnesses of prosecution who were produced to prove alleged extra-judicial confession made by the appellant and co-accused regarding their complicity in the offence but they have outrightly disowned their statements recorded by Investigating Officer under Section 161 CrPC and have given exculpatory evidence against the appellant with regard to the present offence.” (Para 77)

Regarding rejection of PW-6 statement:

“Subrati, a witness of extra-judicial confession made by the accused, has also not supported prosecution version. His evidence is also not of significance for the purpose of present case. Even if his examination-in-chief during separate trial of acquitted accused Tasleem is taken on its face value, the same cannot be read against present appellant as the appellant was not present at the time of recording of this evidence. In the Session Trial No. 1663 of 2000 the same witness i.e., Subrati has not given any statement against the appellant or any co-accused. Thus, the witness has given two statements in respect of the same offence regarding the role played by the accused persons and legally no credence can be given on his testimony in respect of present appellant.” (Para 74)

The Court stresses that even in Tasleem’s earlier trial, the same witnesses had not supported the prosecution. The Bench treats this as a fatal flaw: there is simply no living testimony pointing to Ilyas.

No eyewitness saw any accused place the bomb: The blast occurred under the driver’s seat. Passengers boarded a bus that was already primed. The Court affirms that no witness was capable of identifying the planter, making the State’s evidentiary burden even heavier.

III. The Confessional Statement: Completely Inadmissible Under Sections 24–26 Evidence Act

The prosecution’s case ultimately hinged on a single piece of evidence: a police-recorded confession of Ilyas, supposedly captured on an audio-cassette by PW-11, a Sector Officer, CB-CID.

The Court annihilates this evidence.

Absolute bar under Section 25 Evidence Act: The heart of the High Court’s judgment lies in its extensive treatment of the confession recorded by the police. Section 25 of the Evidence Act is absolute: “no confession made to a police officer shall be proved against an accused.” This statutory prohibition is a foundational safeguard against coercion, torture, or manipulation—protections that cannot be diluted even in cases of terrorism. The prosecution attempted an extraordinary argument: that the confession should be admissible under Section 15 of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), which permits confessions to be recorded by senior police officers. But the Bench dismissed this submission outright, noting that TADA had lapsed in 1995 and the blast occurred in April 1996. As the Court put it, “the special exception provided under Section 15 of TADA, which allowed police confessions to be used as evidence, was not applicable to this case.” More damningly, the prosecution did not even produce the tape recorder as a material exhibit. The judges emphasised this flaw repeatedly, stating that “the device by which the alleged confessional statement was recorded… was not produced before the court,” making the recording unreliable and legally worthless. Once the confession was excluded—a mandatory consequence of Section 25—the entire structure of the prosecution’s case collapsed instantly, leaving behind no evidence capable of sustaining guilt.

The Bench quotes Section 25’s mandatory language and concludes:

“Section 24 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 bars any confession obtained by any inducement, threat or promise. Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 creates an absolute bar on confessions made to a police officer.” (Para 81)

Regarding the tape recorder not being produced, the Court notes:

“It is noteworthy that the device by which alleged confessional statement of appellant Muhammad Ilyas was recorded in an audio cassette i.e. tape recorder was not produced before the court as a material exhibit. Therefore, even otherwise, it may be held that the confessional statement of Muhammad Ilyas recorded by and before the police is not duly proved and could not be proved in view of legal bar created by Section 25 of Evidence Act.” (Para 78)

Even the cassette itself, though produced, is useless in the absence of the device, certification, or proof of integrity.

The Statement Was Not Reproduced in Testimony: PW-11, the very officer who allegedly recorded the confession, did not reproduce the confession in his sworn deposition.

The Court remarks:

“Inasmuch as confessional statement of the accused-appellant Muhammad Ilyas are not reproduced during sworn testimony of PW11 who is main Investigating Officer, who recorded the statement of accused-appellant.” (Para 79)

Thus, even if Section 25 did not exist, the confession is legally unproved.

IV. No recovery, no discovery, no circumstantial evidence

Items recovered from Ilyas (diary + railway tickets) are dismissed as legally irrelevant:

• Travel from Muzaffarnagar to Jammu Tawi or Ludhiana “cannot form the basis that he was involved in the present offence.”
• The diary entry naming Salim Kari is “hardly sufficient to connect the appellant.”

The Court then underscores that there is no discovery under Section 27 Evidence Act:

“No discovery has been made in terms of Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 on pointing information divulged by the appellant-Mohammad Ilyas. Thus, Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 which creates an exception to Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, is not applicable.” (Para 81)

Importantly, the Court stresses that nothing incriminating was recovered even when Ilyas was in police custody under remand:

“Consequently, after excluding the confessional statement of the appellant recorded by PW11-Sector Officer, CBCID who is the main investigating officer of the case due to the embargo created by Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, no incriminating material appears against the appellant which could prove his complicity in the offence. Therefore, the trial court’s findings against the appellant for the charges under Sections 302/34, 307/34, 427/34, 120-B 121-A, 124-A IPC and Sections 4/5 of Explosive Substances Act are not found to be sustainable and prosecution has failed to prove the guilt of the appellant beyond resonable doubt due to want of legally admissible evidence against him. Thus, no chain of circumstances survives.” (Para 83)

V. The court’s assessment of conspiracy doctrine

The Bench reproduces extensive Supreme Court jurisprudence on conspiracies—including Kehar Singh, Som Nath Thapa, Paramhans Yadav—acknowledging that conspiracies are usually proved through circumstantial evidence. After excluding the barred confession, the judgment observes that no incriminating material appears, therefore prosecution has failed to prove the guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Thus, this case is distinguishable from TADA-era judgments because there is nothing left to constitute even a circumstantial chain.

“…after excluding the confessional statement of the appellant recorded by PW11-Sector Officer, CBCID who is the main investigating officer of the case due to the embargo created by Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, no incriminating material appears against the appellant which could prove his complicity in the offence. Therefore, the trial court’s findings against the appellant for the charges under Sections 302/34, 307/34, 427/34, 120-B 121-A, 124-A IPC and Sections 4/5 of Explosive Substances Act are not found to be sustainable and prosecution has failed to prove the guilt of the appellant beyond reasonable doubt due to want of legally admissible evidence against him” (Para 83)

VI. The application of the “benefit of doubt” doctrine

The Court cites Gurbachan Singh, Ashok Kumar Srivastava, Inder Singh, and even Viscount Simon’s classic admonition—but only to underscore that this is not a case of fanciful doubt.

The Court is explicit: it is not indulging technicalities; rather, there exists no admissible evidence at all.

The Court states unequivocally:

“The prosecution has miserably failed to prove the charges that the appellant conspired to plant a bomb along with co-accused to create a bomb explosion in the bus which resulted in large number of loss of lives and injuries to the passengers and damage to public property i.e., this bus. The findings of conviction recorded by the trial court and the sentence awarded to the appellant are accordingly liable to be set aside”. (Para 85)

VII. The Final Outcome: Acquittal WITH HEAVY HEART

The Bench ends with one of the most emotionally direct conclusions in recent criminal jurisprudence:

“We are recording acquittal in this case with heavy heart as the case is of such propensity that it shocks the conscience of the society as 18 innocent persons lost their life in the terrorist plot”. (Para 84)

It orders:

• Immediate release of Ilyas after nearly three decades in custody.
• Cancellation of the trial court’s conviction under Sections 302/34, 307/34, 427/34, 120-B, 121-A, 124-A IPC and Sections 4/5 Explosive Substances Act.
• Compliance reports from the trial court.

The Court is painfully aware that acquittal is the only legally permissible outcome.

28 Years in Prison: A human tragedy the court could not ignore

One of the most striking aspects of the judgment is its recognition of the human cost of prolonged incarceration. Mohammad Ilyas had been in prison continuously throughout the pendency of his appeal. Nearly thirty years passed between the blast and the High Court’s verdict—years in which the world changed technologically, socially, and politically, while Ilyas remained confined within the walls of a prison on the basis of evidence now held legally inadmissible. The judgment does not dwell sentimentally on this suffering, but it does not hide from it either. The Bench notes, almost with quiet sorrow, that “the appellant has remained in custody throughout,” an observation that resonates with the fundamental principle that justice delayed is justice denied. The tragedy is twofold: an accused lost the prime decades of his life to a prosecution that could not prove its case; and the families of the victims, who lost loved ones in the blast, were denied justice because the investigation and prosecution failed to meet the minimal standards required for a terrorism trial. Both sides—accused and victims—stand abandoned by a system that neither punished the guilty nor protected the innocent.

“The appellant is acquitted of aforesaid charges. He has been in jail custody during pendency of the appeal, therefore, a release order will be issued by the trial Court in pursuance of the present judgment immediately, to secure his release from jail custody, if he is not wanted in any other case.” (Para 87)

The Court’s Final Word: A heavy-hearted acquittal

The judgment culminates in a conclusion that is both legally inevitable and emotionally fraught. The Court states plainly that “no incriminating evidence remains on the record,” and therefore the conviction “is accordingly liable to be set aside.” At the same time, the judges acknowledge the moral weight of letting an accused walk free in a case involving eighteen deaths. With these words, the Bench affirmed the constitutional duty of courts to uphold due process, even when the consequences emotionally burden the institution itself. The Court ordered Ilyas’s immediate release, subject only to his execution of a personal bond and sureties under Section 437-A CrPC.

Conclusion: A case that demands national reflection

The acquittal of Mohammad Ilyas forces India to confront a painful truth: that in the pursuit of justice for terror victims, the criminal justice system must not commit injustices of its own. When investigations are shoddy, when evidence is not collected properly, when confessions are relied upon instead of hard proof, the guilty escape and the innocent are condemned. In this case, the victims’ families have been left without closure, and an accused man has spent nearly thirty years in prison without legally admissible evidence against him. The Modinagar–Ghaziabad blast remains one of the region’s darkest moments—but the judicial aftermath has become a second tragedy, one marked by investigative failure, prosecutorial negligence, and systemic decay. The High Court’s decision restores legality, but cannot restore time. It upholds the law, but cannot undo the suffering. It acquits with heavy heart—and it leaves behind questions India must answer.

The complete judgment may be read here.

Related:

The Architecture of Polarisation: A structural analysis of communal hate speech as a core electoral strategy in India (2024–2025)

Court Acts on Misinformation: FIR against channels for wrongly branding teacher a terrorist

Is targeting Muslims, calling them terrorists a common norm in colleges now?

State’s use of Anti-terror Laws against Dissenters also a form of Terrorism

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