(RNS) — In mid-May, the world watched in horror as Indian authorities detained around 40 Rohingya refugees across the country: in shackles, blindfolded, and according to some reports, subjected to beatings and sexual harassment. Indian naval officers then threw them into the sea off the coast of Myanmar with nothing but life jackets.
Among those forced into the waters were children, women, the elderly and even a cancer patient. These refugees were compelled to swim back to a country that had carried out one of the worst genocides against their community in the 21st century — a country they had fled nearly a decade ago in search of safety, only to face renewed persecution in India.
This horrifying incident is not an isolated episode. It is part of a systematic campaign by the Indian government to criminalize, dehumanize and expel the Rohingya, a majority Muslim people, millions of whom who have been stateless since fleeing a 2017 massacre in their homeland in Myanmar. India’s brutal campaign reflects the broader goals of Hindu nationalism under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party. What we are witnessing is not a policy failure, but a deliberate strategy to weaponize vulnerable refugee populations as political scapegoats.
The unprecedented cruelty of the deportations last month drew international attention and condemnation, including from Tom Andrews, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, who called India’s actions “inhumane,” “cruel,” and “outrageous.” Yet, accountability remains elusive.
India’s treatment of the Rohingya has long flouted international norms and basic human decency. With an estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees living across multiple Indian states, their daily reality has been shaped by detentions, destruction of shelters, vilifying rhetoric and unlawful deportations.
The BJP’s persecution of the Rohingya is inseparable from its project of disenfranchising India’s 200 million Muslims. Through hate speech, detentions, demolitions and now forced expulsions, the Rohingya have been transformed into fodder for majoritarian fear-mongering, electoral gain and deflection from government failures.
The May incident itself is a prime example of this phenomenon. In the weeks before, anti-Muslim hatred and violence skyrocketed across India in the wake of a terrorist attack that killed 25 tourists in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which the Modi government blamed on Pakistan. As tensions escalated between the two countries, BJP leaders deflected attention from their government’s own intelligence failures by vilifying Islam and casting all Muslims — Indians and refugees alike — as enemies of the state.
In the name of “revenge,” Hindu nationalist supporters carried out a wave of attacks targeting Muslims. One Rohingya survivor told the Indian news outlet Scroll that he and others were beaten by Indian naval officers who accused them of being linked to the Pahalgam attack and of “killing Hindus” before they were thrown overboard, a brutal result of this state-sponsored scapegoating.
This is not the first time that the Rohingya have been dragged into the BJP’s political battles. In 2024, as the BJP attempted to polarize voters in the run-up to India’s general and state elections, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate recorded 118 in-person hate speech events targeting the Rohingya that year alone, comprising over 10% of the total 1,165 recorded hate speech events.
The Rohingya were vilified as threats to Hindu livelihoods, accused of stealing jobs, land, assets and even women.
The abuse of Rohingyas is not limited to speech. Across BJP-ruled states, coordinated crackdowns on Rohingya refugees are a regular occurrence, sometimes detaining hundreds of refugees at once. Inhumane detention camps hold hundreds of Rohingya across India, with one report estimating that 50% of detainees are women and children. Stories emerging from these camps detail individuals detained for more than a decade, tear gas fired at those who try to escape and a couple forced to bury their baby while in handcuffs.
Those who aren’t locked up fare little better. Indian authorities regularly demolish their makeshift settlements, rendering hundreds of families homeless. Some Rohingya have reported settlements being set inexplicably on fire. Families live in constant fear of police brutality and deportation, forcing thousands to either go into hiding or take a perilous journey to find refuge in other countries.
Disturbingly, this campaign of expulsion now carries the weight of judicial endorsement. Earlier this year, Rohingya petitioners asked India’s Supreme Court to recognize their right to constitutional protections against deportation, citing their refugee status under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The government countered by claiming that, since India is not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention, such protections are irrelevant.
On May 8, the Supreme Court sided with the government, ruling that Rohingya should not be treated as refugees but merely as “foreigners.” Justice Dipankar Datta went so far as to declare, “You do not have a right to settle here.”
In a country with no comprehensive refugee law and where the BJP’s Citizenship Amendment Act explicitly excludes Muslims from fast-tracked citizenship, the supreme court’s ruling leaves Rohingya refugees with no legal protections, no path to safety and no defense against a state that wants them gone. In this legal vacuum, and amid a broader climate of anti-Muslim violence, the court’s decision is not merely inhumane, but a judicial stamp of approval for the Modi government’s tragic campaign.
The Indian Supreme Court must revisit its recent ruling and reaffirm the constitutional protections guaranteed to all individuals residing in India, regardless of their citizenship status. It must also follow international law, whose precedents the court has frequently relied upon as a matter of judicial interpretation. The court must not apply international standards selectively, especially when doing so undermines India’s democratic and pluralistic values.
Likewise, the Indian government must acknowledge that, though it is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, it is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which clearly affirms the right to seek asylum and the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the return of individuals to countries where they risk persecution.
Prime Minister Modi often speaks of vasudhaiva kutumbakam — the idea that “the world is one family.” That vision must extend to the treatment of vulnerable communities, including refugees.
International human rights bodies, the U.S. government, the European Union and global civil society must use sustained diplomatic pressure to compel the Indian government to halt illegal deportations, repel the Citizenship Amendment Act and uphold its obligations under international refugee conventions and human rights law.
It is far past time for the international community to stop the unfolding of another humanitarian crisis in the world’s largest “democracy” against the world’s largest stateless population.
(Rasheed Ahmed is executive director of the Indian American Muslim Council. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)