Extermination in India: The Ninth Stage of Genocide
- Genocide Watch
- 20 minutes ago
- 4 min read
In part nine of our Ten Stages of Genocide in India Series, we explain how the ninth stage/process of
genocide, Extermination, is occurring in India.
A policeman looks on as a row of shops burns in Ahmedabad during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Credit: AFP
India has a history of genocides, including between 200,000 and two million killings during Partition in 1947. At this stage, the killing legally defined as genocide occurs. Perpetrators do not view their victims as fully
human. The term “extermination” captures the dehumanization in this genocidal process.
In genocides, killers think of their victims as diseases, insects, predators, or traitors who need to be exterminated to purify or “cleanse” the society. That is the origin of one of the most popular euphemisms for genocide – “ethnic cleansing” – a term invented by Milošević’s Serbian propagandists to deny the Bosnian Serb genocide of Muslims in Bosnia. The term was even adopted by the International Court of Justice in its erroneous decisions, Bosnia v Serbia and Croatia v Serbia. “Ethnic cleansing” has become a commonly used term among journalists and governments to deny and avoid using the term, Genocide.
Genocides do not have to be destruction of a whole group. The Genocide Convention defines genocide
as the intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in whole or in part.” Most
genocides are intended to destroy only part of a group. Genocides may also be gradual not sudden.
Frequently, men and boys of fighting age are murdered, as they were at Srebrenica, Bosnia. Educated
members of a group may be targeted, as in the genocide of educated Hutus in 1971 in Burundi. Women
in a group might be raped and forcibly impregnated to alter the genetic offspring of a group, as in Darfur,
Sudan and many other genocides.
Current genocide in India is mainly by Hindus against Muslims. It takes the form of organized mob
murders, often euphemized as “communal riots or communal violence” to make one-sided massacres
appear two-sided. It is motivated by the Hindutva ideology of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It
includes lynching and torturing Muslim men and boys, gang-raping Muslim women and girls, and
destroying cultural and religious sacred places such as mosques.
Two thousand Muslims were murdered in the 2002 Gujarat pogroms while Narendra Modi was Chief
Minister of Gujarat. The 2002 massacre was India’s most deadly anti-Muslim pogrom since 1947. In
February 2002, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims returning from a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya was
attacked by a mob of Muslims and set on fire near Godhra, Gujarat. 58 Hindu passengers were burned to death.
Organized Hindu mobs reacted to the Godhra massacre by killing, torturing and raping Muslim men,
women and children across Gujarat. 100,000 Muslims fled into displaced persons camps. Gujarat police
did not intervene to stop the killings. Following the pogrom, only Muslims were arrested and tried.
Human Rights Watch reports that in the 2002 Gujarat massacres, Hindu men were provided with
weapons and encouraged by Hindutva political and religious leaders to kill Muslims and rape Muslim
women. Genocide Watch has published two reports documenting the 2002 massacres and the
prevalence of rape during the 2002 pogrom. The prevalence of rape during genocidal massacres is motivated by the goal of destroying the target group’s reproductive autonomy. Mass rape is aimed at dominating a group’s genetic future. It is literally Gene-ocide.
The 2020 riots in Delhi killed at least fifty people, mostly Muslims. The pogrom happened during protests
against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), legislation that welcomed refugees from neighboring
countries, but excluded Muslims. Modi’s Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had just suffered an
electoral defeat and Hindu leaders were angry.
In this volatile environment, Kapil Mishra, a BJP politician, delivered a speech that called for the forceful
removal of peaceful anti-CAA protestors from the streets of Delhi. Riots against Muslims followed. Hindu
thrown into the faces of Muslims. The police actively participated in the attacks. Police especially targeted
female anti-CAA protestors. Hindu mobs attacked journalists covering the riots, burning their vehicles
and equipment. Victim testimonies assert that police prevented ambulances and medical assistance from
reaching Muslim neighborhoods.
A group of men, chanting pro-Hindu slogans, beat Mohammad Zubair, 37, who is Muslim, during protests sparked by a new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, February 24, 2020 [Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]
During genocidal massacres, only rapid intervention by police and armed forces can stop killing.
However, in India, the government and police have refused to intervene and have encouraged and
participated in the pogroms and riots. The lack of accountability for those who commit these crimes
against humanity is evident in the number of acquittals of Hindus who carried out the Gujarat massacres
in 2002. Such impunity will only lead to more pogroms and more genocide against Indian Muslims.
Genocide Watch recommends:
Indian police forces should be trained to respond to mob violence with non-violence.
India should create independent oversight bodies to investigate complaints against police.
Indian prosecutors should investigate and try crimes without regard to religion.
Indian police should aggressively prosecute rapes and, with civil society, support rape victims.
All Indian political parties should denounce hate speech and incitements to genocide.
Leaders who use hate speech and incite genocide against Muslims must be prosecuted.
The U.S should ban visas for Indian leaders who support Hindutva attacks against Muslims.
The U.S should impose targeted sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act on Indian leaders
implicated in crimes against humanity and incitements to attack Muslims and other minorities.
Read Part One of the series here : The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Classification
Read Part Two of the series here : The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Symbolization
Read Part Three of the series here : The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Discrimination
Read Part Four of the series here : The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Dehumanization
Read Part Five of the series here: The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Organization
Read Part Six of the series here: The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Polarization
Read Part Seven of the series here: The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Preparation
Read Part Eight of the series here: The Ten Stages of Genocide in India - Persecution
