Escalating Crackdown

The NRC and CAA

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a registry intended to document who is recognized as a citizen of India. In Assam, the NRC has a particularly contentious history because of the state’s large population of migrants from Bangladesh, with which it shares a border. The NRC was first introduced in Assam in the 1950s to document the immigration status of people living in the state. Many migrants arrived after East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) declared independence from West Pakistan on March 25, 1971, beginning the Bangladesh War of Independence. Subsequent waves of migration took place in the following decades.

In 2019, the Indian government updated Assam’s NRC for the first time in an effort to determine who could provide sufficient documentation to establish Indian citizenship. The process was highly controversial, with millions of people required to produce documents proving their eligibility. The final list excluded 1.9 million people, a significant portion of them Muslim.

Those excluded from the register were given 129 days to appeal and provide proof of citizenship before a Foreigners Tribunal, which would decide their cases. However, the cost of filing a legal claim, administrative errors, and illiteracy among parts of the Assamese population made it difficult for many to obtain effective legal recourse. Those whose petitions were rejected could be classified as “illegal foreigners” and risk being placed in one of the state’s mass detention centers.

As a result, as many as two million people in Assam were left at risk of becoming stateless in their own country — a predicament that could deprive them of basic rights, including property ownership, healthcare, political participation, and employment.

The NRC’s results also alarmed Hindu supremacist groups. The RSS and other Hindu supremacists raised an outcry over what they called a “flaw” in the NRC: a “large number” of those excluded from the citizens’ register were Hindus. Rather than questioning the exclusion process itself, they argued that the NRC had failed to sufficiently target Muslims.

The BJP responded with the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was passed by Parliament on December 11, 2019. The CAA provided a loophole for those struck from the NRC: people could apply for fast-tracked citizenship if they had been excluded from the register, as long as they were Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christian. Muslims, however, were entirely excluded from this pathway.

This meant that the NRC and CAA functioned together to create sharply different consequences for people excluded from the citizenship register based on their religion. Non-Muslims were given an expedited path to citizenship, while Muslims — particularly Assam’s Bengali Muslim population — were left without the same recourse. The CAA was therefore the first citizenship law in India to explicitly make religion a criterion for eligibility.

The passage of the CAA sparked widespread protests across India, as well as intraparty dissent and opposition from some political allies and ethnonationalist groups. Yet the BJP moved forward with the law. BJP supporters attempted to portray the CAA as a refugee measure intended to protect non-Muslim minorities from persecution in countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. However, the wording of the CAA itself does not mention refugees, and the law excludes Muslim refugees — including the Rohingya — from its expedited path to Indian citizenship.

Anti-CAA, NRC Protests Across India

The CAA sparked historically large, and distinctly Muslim-led, protests across India. Civil unrest erupted from Assam to West Bengal to Tamil Nadu, both in the form of protests as well as a storm of criticism on social media. Resistance took a particularly strong hold in New Delhi, as student-led protests at Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia gained worldwide notice.

Reporter Elizabeth Puranam described the scene for Al Jazeera:

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The Indian flag was everywhere: Painted on people’s faces; being flown from street lights; children held small flags; the adults waved large ones… As is often the case in India, people insisted we have something to eat even after we said no. A chai wallah, or tea vendor, walked into our shot while I was talking to the camera, holding out his tray of steaming hot paper cups of masala tea, asking ‘chai, madam?’ I was happy that made it on air because incidents like those – random acts of kindness – summed up the atmosphere at Jamia to me.

One historic protest emerged out of Shaheen Bagh, a Muslim-majority, working-class neighborhood in Delhi. Women of all ages — from children, to housewives, to students, to the elderly — took to the streets to participate in a 101-day sit-in protest along a major roadway. Anthropologist Sophia Abbas described the energy of the Shaheen Bagh protest in an article for the Society of Cultural Anthropology:

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A movement that was spearheaded initially by these women had now gained momentum and had grown to a crowd of thousands from near and far. Muslims, non-Muslims, students, activists, artists, academics, and many others constantly flocked in and out of the protest venue. The entire area was covered in quotes, graffiti, and images of Gandhi, anti-caste leader B. R. Ambedkar, Maulana Azad, James Baldwin, and other anti-colonial leaders. The sounds of a fierce speech by a young protestor, asserting not to move an inch (Hum hatenge nahi yahan se) from the sit-in until the CAA was revoked, echoed in one corner. The noise quickly traveled to merge with softer sounds of poems and songs of revolution. Somewhere in the background, chants of Aazaadi, aazadi (freedom, or freedom from this fascist regime) could also be heard. Shaheen Bagh, once invisible, erased, or non-existent to the rest of the city, was now alive and visible with dissent and the demands for recognition and belonging.

Elizabeth Puranam also described the atmosphere of Shaheen Bagh for Al Jazeera:

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Huge posters hung from the overbridge, which spans the main road. People were proud of what they had created – a community centre facilitating discussion on what is happening in the country. There was a tent offering free medical care. Hundreds of books were stacked up in tents serving as free book depositories. A chai wallah was making fresh tea, as people gathered around for a cup on a cold night. We walked inside the largest tent, where hundreds of women and children listened to speakers. The older women sat at a long table at the front of the tent. There were men and women of different faiths. An old man sat holding a Hindi-language bible in his hand.

Several student leaders gained national — and in some cases international — prominence due to their roles in organizing the protests, and in some cases, for giving speeches demanding accountability from the Modi government. Among them were Delhi University graduate Gulfisha Fatima, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) student Safoora Zargar, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) student Sharjeel Usmani, and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, and Afreen Fatima — the majority of whom would be arrested under India’s draconian anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Despite the many scenes of interfaith solidarity at these protests, the backlash from the government and its Hindu supremacist supporters was swift and violent.

Delhi Pogrom

The Modi government responded to the protestors with police brutality, arrests, and social media censorship. BJP officials also called for violence against the protestors, including through the viral slogan “shoot the traitors to the nation.” Amnesty International reported:

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From union ministers like Anurag Thakur to chief ministers like Yogi Adityanath, elected representatives have called for people to shoot down ‘traitors’ and take revenge. It is shocking that since December 2019, not even a single elected representative has been prosecuted for advocating hatred and violence. In February 2020, a minister in Karnataka called for a law to be passed allowing police to shoot protesters at sight.

As a result of these calls to violence, in February 2020, Hindu militant mobs unleashed violence in India’s capital city, New Delhi, targeting Muslim neighborhoods, burning down shops, breaking into homes, and vandalizing mosques. Armed Hindu mobs also took to Delhi’s streets in search of Muslims while shouting Hindutva slogans, including “Jai Sri Ram” (Glory to Ram) and “Shoot the traitors to the nation”. Muslims were beaten with iron rods and crowbars, forced to remove their clothing to check for circumcision, and lynched, including by being burned alive. One doctor reported seeing hundreds of victims with “gunshot wounds… stabbings, acid burns and mutilated genitalia.” In total, 53 people were killed, the majority of them Muslim.

In a Guardian article titled “Inside Delhi: beaten, lynched and burnt alive”, Hannah Ellis-Peterson shares the testimony of Mohammad Zubair, a Muslim whose image went viral after he was photographed mid-assault by a Hindu mob:

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The blows kept raining on my head, hands and back,” said Zubair, 37. “I did not ask them to stop beating me. I became silent, tried to hold my breath and stiffen my body. As he spoke, tears rolled down his face. “First I asked, ‘Why are you attacking me? What wrong have I done?’ But they did not listen to my words and went on hitting me from all sides. They were shouting maro shaale mulleko [kill the bastard Muslim] and jai Sri Ram [a Hindu nationalist slogan]. There were many other men who stood by who did not come to save me.” The photo of Zubair being ruthlessly beaten in broad daylight in the streets of Delhi by a mob of young Hindu men was one of the most shocking images of the brutal religious riots that engulfed Delhi…

Another victim, street hawker Imran Khan, shared his story:

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Some of them forced me to pull down my trousers,” he said. “They started beating me violently as soon as they became sure that I was Muslim. Armed with iron rods, crowbars and metal pipes, the Hindu mob beat Khan unconscious. When he came to hours later, he found that the attackers, assuming he was dead, had tied a rope around his neck and dragged him into a gutter.

Yet another victim, a 20-year-old Muslim woman who was eight months pregnant, was left in critical condition after she was attacked by a Hindu mob:

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They threw me to the ground, kicked my stomach and my whole body,” she whispered. “I pleaded with them not to harm my baby, I said ‘please, please’ over and over, but they kept kicking.

In the aftermath of the pogrom, the Modi government denied any role in facilitating the violence. Meanwhile, several student leaders — including, most notably, Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam — were charged under the UAPA over accusations that they had conspired to orchestrate the Delhi violence. As of August 2026, Khalid and Imam remain in prison.

‘Corona Jihad’ Propaganda: Historic Hate Speech and a New Medium

When the coronavirus pandemic rocked India in March of 2020, the Modi government quickly came under fire for a staggering death toll, rapidly-filling crematoriums, a slow vaccine rollout, and lack of oxygen tanks. Despite Modi himself being described as a “super-spreader” by the National Vice President of the Indian Medical Association, the state and its Hindu supremacist supporters singled out and scapegoated Muslims as the primary spreaders of the virus.

Far-right politicians, conspiracy theorists and social media accused the Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic missionary organization, of intentionally spreading Covid-19 after holding a mass congregation in Delhi. The backlash included cries of “Corona jihad,” “Corona terrorism,” and “population jihad” — a conspiracy accusing Muslims of biological warfare against Hindus. Online rhetoric carried real-life consequences, as Muslims once again became the targets of economic and social boycotts, violence, and rampant discrimination. In Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, extremist mobs attacked Muslim Gujjars, a semi-nomadic group, for selling milk. Perpetrators spread rumors that sellers had violated lockdown orders and were selling contaminated products — accusations that impacted the livelihoods of several families.

The rhetoric of “Corona Jihad” and its harm to Indian Muslims reached the attention of several global organizations, including the World Health Organization. Human Rights Watch described these Islamophobic Covid-19 myths as a threat to already-endangered religious freedoms in the country and accurate perceptions of disease transmission and risk.

Hate Speech Along the Election Trail: Modi Takes Third Term

In June 2024, Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third term as prime minister after a BJP coalition — comprised of 14 regional parties — won 293 seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament). While many middle class voters cast their ballots in hope of greater economic parity, what rode on the election trail was a tidal wave of anti-minority rhetoric and violence.

Hateful rhetoric was a prominent feature of Modi and the BJP’s campaign ahead of the 2024 elections, with 75% of hate speech incidents taking place in BJP-governed states. Human Rights Watch reported that at least 110 out of 173 campaign speeches made by Modi contained “Islamophobic remarks apparently intended to undermine the political opposition,” and often played up Islamaphobic conspiracy theories, claims of crimes against Hindu women by Muslim men, communalism, and false accusations of privilege. Some quotes from election rallies by BJP leaders include:

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You have a problem of rampant cow slaughter here. Give Modi a third term and we will fix these cow killers (Muslims).

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No one dares to even pray namaz (salah) on our roads. The mosques have removed their mics. In the next five years people will forget about screams (adhan) from mosques.

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How many Afzals (Muslims) will you kill? You will find [a Muslim] in each household. Wherever [a Muslim] comes out, we will enter that house and kill him . . . In [Modi’s] third term, all these diseases would be treated.

At a rally in Banswara, Rajasthan, on April 21, 2024, Modi accused his main political rival, the Indian National Congress (INC), of planning to redistribute Hindu possessions among Muslims, who were referred to as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children.” This inflammatory comment not only polarized religious communities, but also gave a platform to the conspiracy theory of “population jihad” and the portrayal of Abrahamic faiths as estranged from Indian civilization. Numerous other remarks delivered by Modi and the BJP throughout that year’s election cycle also accused the Congress of a pro-Muslim bias, often framing basic human rights for Muslims as a threat to Hindus.

This rhetoric transcended an electoral strategy, giving rise to a fresh wave of anti-Muslim violence across the country. Comments endorsed mosque demolitions, intercommunal violence and genocide against Muslims. These mirrored the type of rhetoric long endorsed by the BJP since it increasingly gained political legitimacy between the late 1990s and 2010s. Earlier, in the aftermath of the deadly Delhi pogrom, BJP politician Pooja Shakun Pandey told his followers in 2021 to “be ready to kill millions of Indian Muslims —” a statement that Genocide Watch and Early Warning flagged as an indicator of genocide risk.