Religious violence in India

Religious violence in India comprises attacks, riots, persecution, and other coercion motivated by or organized around religious identity. It has involved different communities, periods, regions, and political settings.

Partition of India: The 1947 division of British India into India and Pakistan, accompanied by mass migration and widespread communal violence. Partition-era massacres and displacement remain among the largest episodes of religiously marked violence in the subcontinent.
Communalism (South Asia): A political ideology that organizes social and political life around supposedly unified religious communities in South Asia. Communal politics can frame local disputes as conflicts between entire religious communities.
British India: The territories of the Indian subcontinent governed by Britain before the creation of independent India and Pakistan in 1947. Colonial institutions and political arrangements shaped the setting in which modern communal identities developed.
Internal displacement in India: The movement of people within India who are forced to leave their homes but do not cross an international border. Communal attacks have forced families to flee while often leaving them without durable rehabilitation.
Caste violence in India: Violence in India directed at people because of caste identity or used to enforce caste hierarchy. Caste and religion can overlap, but caste violence follows distinct systems of status and domination.
Anti-Sikh riots: The organized killings of Sikhs in India, especially those following Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. The 1984 violence followed the assassination of a prime minister by her Sikh bodyguards and targeted Sikh communities.
Communal violence: Collective violence in which people are targeted or mobilized as members of religious, ethnic, or other communal groups. This broader concept includes religious riots and organized attacks across India’s varied settings.
Partition of Bengal (1947): The division of Bengal in 1947 between India and East Bengal, which became part of Pakistan. The partition produced mass migration and communal violence in eastern India and the new Pakistan.
Communalism in Indian politics: The use of religious community identities as a basis for political organization and competition in India. Episodes of violence have reshaped electoral strategies and debates about national identity.
Naxalite–Maoist insurgency: An armed Maoist movement in India that challenges the state and seeks revolutionary social change. Its principal organizing ideology is revolutionary communism, not religious identity.

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