Mangaluru: On Thursday (June 4), while speaking at the Minority Affairs Ministry’s “Reforms Utsav” organised at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, a one-of-its-kind event by any Union ministry to mark 12 years of the Modi government, Union minority affairs minister Kiren Rijiju made a rather bold statement. “Give me one example where a person has left India because he doesn’t feel safe due to his identity or religious background,” he asked. He also dismissed persecution of religious minorities in India as nothing but “propaganda” spread by the opposition.Coming from a minority affairs minister, this wasn’t just denial. It was a blatant distortion of ground realities, where hate violence and institutional discrimination have been on the rise.Over the past decade since the BJP came to power, India’s minorities, especially Muslims and Christian converts from marginalised communities, have faced the brunt of vigilante attacks by Hindutva extremists. And this has been possible only because the state machinery has either failed or completely turned a blind eye to such blatant attacks. If that was not bad enough, the Union government and BJP-ruled states have rolled out policies that have pushed these already vulnerable communities even further to the margins.Here’s a list of the many violations of minority rights that Rijiju chose to ignore in his desperate act to whitewash his government.Cow vigilantesEven a simple Google search would have directed Rijiju or whoever wrote his speech to the list of cow vigilante violence in India post-2014. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the only government body that releases crime statistics every year, has consistently refused to categorise cow vigilantism or hate crimes separately. However, different studies carried out over various periods have documented cases of murder and injuries from different parts of the country. Wikipedia lists at least 82 such incidents. This is by no means a complete list, as several cases of vigilantism go unreported in most parts of the country. Nevertheless, it gives a very clear sense of the extent to which vigilante groups have terrorised Muslim communities across different parts of India.Hate speech targeting religious minorities Hate speech targeting religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, has shown a sharp and consistent rise in recent years. An independent project, India Hate Lab – run by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) – has meticulously tracked hate speech cases for over a decade. In 2025 alone, trackers documented 1,318 verified in-person hate speech events across 21 states, one Union Territory, and Delhi – an average of four events per day.According to the India Hate Lab study, this was a 13% rise from 2024 and nearly double the 668 incidents recorded in 2023. Around 98% of these events targeted Muslims, and the rest targeted Christians. The study also highlighted that these incidents mainly occurred in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states, often at rallies, religious processions, or public gatherings. Calls for boycotts and exclusion were common at these events.Several MPs, MLAs and cabinet ministers belonging to the BJP and its allied parties have openly indulged in hate speeches. Both the state machineries and judiciary has failed to initiate any action against them.Bulldozer injusticeThe use of bulldozers to demolish properties, often called “bulldozer justice” in right-wing circles, has disproportionately affected Muslim neighbourhoods. There is a pattern to this. Every time after a communal incident or protest, Muslim houses become an easy target.Amnesty International documented 128 such demolitions between April and June 2022 alone. In these demolitions, over 600 people, mostly Muslims, were targeted. Even after the Supreme Court’s directions in 2024 to stop punitive demolitions, drives continued in states like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and others.Much before it became a common method of delivering “justice,” especially in BJP-ruled states, the Shivraj Chouhan-led government in Madhya Pradesh had pioneered the practice as far back as 2016. The most recent documented case is from May 13, when a corporator from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) became a victim of the state’s bulldozer action. Mateen Patel’s house in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district was razed after the police alleged that he had given shelter to Nida Khan, a young tele-caller who came under scrutiny for her alleged role in Nashik’s much-publicised “TCS case.”Anti-conversion laws in IndiaOver a dozen Indian states have come up with stringent anti-conversion laws, which invariably target the Christians and Muslims. Following petitions highlighting the growing violence against Christians, in February this year, the Supreme Court agreed to review cases of “state- enabled vigilantism”, and arrests. The petitioner, the National Council of Churches in India, argued that the laws are vaguely defined and incentivize vigilante groups to file false complaints against minorities. Per reports, over 400 Christians were arrested under these laws.In October 2025, the Supreme Court dismissed multiple cases under Uttar Pradesh’s law, noting they suffered from “incurable legal defects” and appeared aimed at harassment. Despite such rulings, arrests and police interventions at prayer meetings and church services have continued, several states in North and central India.The laws have also disproportionately affected Muslims, especially in “love jihad” cases involving interfaith marriages.The ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ tropeThe narrative of large-scale “illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators”, which started in Assam, West Bengal, and BJP campaigns has now become a recurring theme in Indian politics now. In 2016, without giving any source to his claim, Rijeju, who was then the minister of state for home, had told Parliament that there were around 20 million “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants”. This claim was made even though the government has acknowledged a lack of precise data.The Bangladeshi rhetoric has had a direct impact on the lives of Muslims in India. Many Muslims, especially those working as migrant workers, in different parts of the country have had to face the mob wrath after being accused of being “Bangladeshi infiltrators”. In a detailed report published in Article 14, reporter Snigdhendu Bhattacharya has listed out several instances where Hindu vigilantes and police have forced Bengali-speaking Muslims to flee BJP states.Back in 2019, as Assam launched the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise, around 1.9 million people were excluded as being illegal infiltrators. Of them, a significant portion were the Bengali-origin Muslims. Hindus were also left out.While the minorities continue to get targeted, there is also another trend in migration that has emerged over the past years. The US-based Pew Research Center, in 2024, published a report of migration patterns in the country. The analysis showed Christians make up around 16% of Indian emigrants, and Muslims accounted for roughly 33%. Most interestingly, about 80% of people in India are Hindu, but they form only 41% of emigrants from the country, the survey on the religious composition of the world’s migrants says.The questionable SIR exerciseThe frenzy whipped in the name of “illegal Bangladeshi” also came handy as the Election Commission of India (ECI) started the SIR exercise in West Bengal. Before that, the election commission had conducted the exercise in Bihar and here too several families were left disenfranchised overnight. In both states, the SIR exercise was carried out just before the state assembly elections.The BJP has hailed SIR as an effective step to “identify” and “remove” illegal infiltrators and claimed it exposed vote-bank politics in West Bengal. Opposition parties, including the Trinamool Congress (TMC), criticised it as a “backdoor NRC” that targets genuine Indian citizens, especially Bengali Muslims and even some Hindu refugees from Bangladesh.Since the SIR rolled out in West Bengal, The Wire has reported extensively on the issue and has brought out stories of absolute helplessness, deliberate exclusion of Muslims across the state. The exercise, which was concluded just months before the West Bengal elections, saw over 90 lakh voters getting excluded through the SIR exercise. Of them, over 34% are Muslims.Underrepresentation of minorities in Parliament and governmentFor the first time in independent India’s history, Modi’s third cabinet (2024) has no Muslim minister. This continued from the later phase of the previous government when the last Muslim minister, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, lost his Rajya Sabha seat. Even the Christian representation is abysmally low. Rijiju is one of the very few from the Christian community who have made it to the parliament and is a Union minister under Modi’s government.Muslims, who form about 14-15% of India’s population (roughly 200 million people), hold only 24 seats (which is around 4.4%) in the 18th Lok Sabha elected in 2024. This is among the lowest shares in the past six decades. All 24 Muslim MPs come from opposition parties, mainly the INDIA bloc.