AFTER over 12 years of BJP rule, minorities in India — particularly its Muslims — face fascist thuggery at the hands of Hindutva zealots, while the state, too, is deploying legal instruments to disenfranchise them. The latest in a series of deplorable events is the mass voter purge in various Indian states before local elections. Three UN special rapporteurs have raised the issue with New Delhi, asking it to probe claims that up to 52m voters have been arbitrarily deleted from the rolls. They had brought up the issue in a letter dated May 1, details of which have just been reported. While other communities have also been targeted, the vast majority are Muslims. The Indian election commission has undertaken the process under the guise of the ‘Special Intensive Revision’. It is quite apparent that prejudice is the motivation behind the move as officials claim they are ‘purging’ the electoral rolls. In one West Bengal constituency, 95pc of deleted voters were Muslim. Voters have been disenfranchised even while possessing valid documents, with officials often dismissing them as ‘Bangladeshi illegal immigrants’.

In the past, the BJP-led government has used similar legal tools to strip Indian Muslims of their citizenship. The Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens are prominent examples of these. These latest moves once again contradict the Indian claim of being the ‘world’s biggest democracy’. Democracies do not disenfranchise citizens on religious and ethnic grounds. It seems these moves are designed to transform India into a Hindu rashtra, where Muslims and other minorities can exist as inferior beings, excluded from the national mainstream. The UN and the international community must follow up on this massive deletion of Muslim voters. Stripping Indian Muslims of their citizenship and voting rights leaves them even more vulnerable to abuse by the state and extremist forces, as they are excluded on religious grounds.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2026