‎ Experts Warn of Widening Gap Between Constitutional Promise and Ground Reality
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‎GENEVA, (Unib Rashid) __ Speakers at a side event held on the sidelines of the 61st Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, have demanded immediate access for UN Special Rapporteurs to Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi riot-affected areas, and Manipur, citing grave human and religious rights violations.
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‎The seminar titled “Religious Persecution in India” was organized by World Muslim Congress (WMC) in collaboration with the Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR) and attended by distinguished human rights defenders, legal experts, and scholars.
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‎The speakers stated that the so-called world’s largest democracy was actively engaged in the persecution of its religious minorities, noting that the increasing communal violence in India reflects a systematic pattern rather than isolated incidents.
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‎”There is a shocking pattern of systematic persecution of religious minorities and the destruction of their right from Manipur to Kashmir”, they highlighted.
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‎They highlighted harrowing incidents, such as the burning of 200 churches in Manipur with security forces nearby and the demolition of a Muslim family’s shop in Haryana amid cheering neighbors, emphasizing that these acts constitute systematic destruction rather than collateral damage.
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‎ Speakers also highlighted a widening gap between India’s secular constitutional guarantees and a ground reality marked by bulldozers, mob violence, and laws that weaponize citizenship itself”
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‎About Legislative Architecture of Exclusion, the seminar detailed how the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) codified religion as a criterion for citizenship for the first time since independence—explicitly excluding Muslims—while the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) threatens statelessness for millions.
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‎Panelists characterized this mechanism as “demographic engineering” rather than immigration policy.
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‎They pointed out that the machinery of persecution was evident across several Indian states, where “anti-conversion” laws criminalize interfaith marriages—specifically targeting Muslim men under the accusation of “love jihad”. Similarly they said that churches in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka are routinely raided
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‎ They cited the documentation of over one hundred deaths from cow vigilantism since 2015, with virtually no convictions, as evidence of inverted justice, where “victims become the accused and perpetrators enjoy political protection
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‎Specific attention was devoted to Jammu and Kashmir, where the unilateral revocation of Article 370 in August 2019 was followed by an eighteen-month internet blackout—the longest in any democracy.
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‎The speakers described actions such as banning Friday prayers, detaining religious leaders, and altering domicile laws to facilitate settler influx as “systemic domination” against the Muslim-majority population, amounting to the crime of apartheid: “inhuman acts that enforce religious domination.”
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‎They also highlighted intersectional persecution affecting Christian communities in Manipur, Sikh communities facing surveillance in Punjab, and Dalit communities enduring temple entry prohibitions.
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‎THe speakers demanded a review of bilateral agreements with India containing human rights clauses, utilizing conditionality as accountability rather than interference; protection for religious sites under imminent threat, specifically naming the Gyanvapi Mosque, Jama Masjid in Srinagar, and churches in Manipur as “living places of worship for living communities”; and formal recognition of the pattern by the international community—moving from individual incidents to data to evidence to action—including acknowledgment of the apartheid framework in Kashmir as legal reality and structural persecution in mainland India.
‎They advocated for a pluralistic Indian state where a Muslim can pray without fear, where a Christian can build a church without permit harassment, where a Kashmiri can call their land home without demographic replacement.
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‎The event was moderated by Mr. Altaf Hussain Wani, Chairman of KIIR and Permanent Representative of WMC to Geneva.
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‎Panelists included Professor Alfred de Zayas, former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of an Equitable International Order; Robert Fintina, writer and human rights defender from Canada; Ms. Saba Ghulam Nabi, Research Associate at CISS AJK; Mrs. Shamim Shawl, Representative of IMWU/APHC and Ms. Marry Scully, human rights defender from the USA.