Citizens for Justice and Peace in India published an annual report titled ‘A Year of Othering and Violence for Religious Minorities in India,’ which documented several incidents of hatred directed at minority communities across the country.
According to the report, there will be repeated instances of hate crimes, hate speeches, discrimina-tion, and assaults on the life and liberty of Indians belonging to religious minorities through the year 2022.
The perpetrators were either “members of an unnamed mob belonging to the majority community”, or, equally and often identified with organisations affiliated to supremacist Hindutva, read the report.
“Such incidents were reported from various parts of the country: a visible trend in all these incidents is that religion atrocities are often state sanctioned, and perpetuated amidst a prevalent culture of impunity,” CJP said.
A calculated silence from senior elected officials and those in government has influenced law en-forcement to delay or deter the accountability and justice process: delayed filing of FIRs (criminal complaints that launch an investigation), a passivity in the face of intimidatory rape and genocide threats to actually allowing the quick release of perpetrators, and their felicitation, in the rare situations of arrest.
To witness such brutal and demoralising inci-dents, committed against innocents, should shock the conscience of all Indians.—KMS
