Incendiary narratives are being brought up by the authorities even at the highest level. This is very problematic, Prof Nicolas Levrat said at a Congressional briefing
WASHINGTON, DC — India “very obviously” failed to live up to its international obligations to protect Muslims from a wave of hate crimes following the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam in South Kashmir, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Prof Nicolas Levrat said at a Congressional briefing here on Wednesday.
The briefing brought together human rights experts, legal scholars, and policymakers to shed light on the escalating “repression” of Muslims in India and the urgent need for international attention and accountability.
Referring to Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which India has ratified, Levrat said at the briefing that, “There is a concrete duty which bears upon India as a signatory state, as a party to this convention, to make sure that no coercion happens against the exercise of freedom of religion.”
“As far as we can see, there are incendiary narratives being brought up by the authorities even at the highest level. This is very problematic,” he added.
It is to be mentioned here that the rights watch group Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), a prominent Indian legal aid group, has documented that 106 of the 184 hate incidents are directly related to the Pahalgam attack.
The APCR said hate incidents occurred across 19 states within six days of the terror attack in Kashmir. These included murders, arson, and physical assaults.
The Congressional briefing, titled “Increased Attacks on Muslims After Pahalgam,” was organised by a coalition of 18 global rights-based organisations.
“There is a concrete duty which bears upon India as a signatory state, as a party to this convention, to make sure that no coercion happens,” Levrat said, joining the briefing from his base in Geneva. “And again, very obviously, the State is not properly protecting Muslims in India. And as far as we can see, there are incendiary narratives being brought up by the authorities even at the highest level. And this is very problematic.”
He continued: “It seems obvious in this specific situation that India is not living up to its international commitment.”
The official also emphasised that while international mechanisms such as the UN Human Rights Council offer monitoring and accountability, the primary responsibility for protecting religious minorities lies with India’s national institutions.
“The main protection should come from the national legal system which should implement these principles which are to be found in international treaties to which India, as many other countries, is committed,” he said. “Naturally, the law should protect the individual…. The authorities have to be held accountable, but first and foremost in front of national jurisdiction, where victims or the family of victims can bring their claim.”
Prof Levrat noted efforts to engage with India’s diplomatic mission in Geneva had proven unproductive. “India is a very difficult country to work with,” he said. “Diplomatic channels exist, but they are not producing meaningful outcomes. It’s not working, I’m sorry to say.”
Prashant Bhushan, Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of weaponising the Pahalgam terror attack to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment ahead of domestic elections.
“The BJP has been using the Hindu-Muslim issue in India, as well as the India-Pakistan issue, for their domestic politics to try and polarise public opinion in India on Hindu-Muslim lines,” Bhushan said. “Almost all the instances of hate crimes in India are in BJP-ruled states.”
Bhushan said India’s government made “no serious attempt” to identify the terrorists. “There was no attempt to explain the security failure or the intelligence failure that led to the attacks. But immediately the focus was shifted to bashing Pakistan and bashing Indian Muslims.”
Suchitra Vijayan, Executive Director of The Polis Project, and Chair, International Human Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association, said India’s anti-Muslim violence was not spontaneous but orchestrated. “It’s a system that is coordinated, it is state-tolerated and enabled,” she said. “We are seeing laboratories of violence perfected and created in various places across the country.”
Elected officials and religious leaders were “openly calling for the arming of Hindus, expelling, targeting Muslims, and often this very proud rhetorical demand to replicate what Israel is doing in Palestine, to be replicated not only in Kashmir, but against Indian Muslims,” she added.
Apoorvanand, a noted academic and columnist in India, warned that Indian Muslims were not just attacked but also silenced: “They [Muslims] don’t have a right to express their opinion. It leads to a chilling effect, affecting especially Muslim scholars and Muslim young men and women.” He cited the arrest of Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a Muslim academic, last month, who was jailed for criticising India’s war rhetoric. “This sets a dangerous precedent,” Apoorvanand said. “Muslims speaking or thinking Muslims become a very dangerous thing in present-day India.”
The briefing was co-sponsored by Indian American Muslim Council, Genocide Watch, World Without Genocide, Hindus for Human Rights, New York State Council of Churches, The Polis Project, The Religious Nationalisms Project, Muslim Public Affairs Council, American Muslim Institution, The London Story, Association of Indian Muslims of America, India Labour Solidarity, South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (Canada), CAIR, 12 Ummah, NRI Affairs, The Humanism Project, and the Centre for Pluralism.
