Explained : Genocide Watch Sounds Preparation Stage Alarm as India’s Politics of Fear Deepens > Kashmir Media Service and Its Impact

There are moments in history when violence does not begin with a gunshot, but with a sentence.

In its recently released instalment of the Ten Stages of Genocide in India series, the Washington-based human rights organisation Genocide Watch argues that India has entered what it terms “Stage Seven: Preparation”, the phase in which mass violence is no longer spontaneous but rehearsed, normalised and rationalised. It is a grave contention. It deserves scrutiny, not dismissal.

The framework developed by Genocide Watch’s founder, Dr Gregory Stanton, has been applied retrospectively to genocides from Nazi Germany to Rwanda. The “Preparation” stage, as defined in the organisation’s model, involves planning of violence, use of euphemistic language to mask intent, mobilisation of militias, and public rehearsal of hostility under the guise of self-defence.

India today is not Nazi Germany, nor Rwanda in 1994. Historical comparisons demand intellectual sobriety. Yet the architecture of communal violence has recognisable features. It requires a narrative in which minorities are transformed into existential threats, in which citizenship becomes conditional, and in which grievance is ritualised into spectacle.

Since 2014, when NarendraModi assumed office, public discourse surrounding India’s Muslim minority has hardened. Hindutva, a political ideology distinct from the diverse theological traditions of Hinduism, has moved from the margins to the centre of power. Anti-Muslim rhetoric, once largely confined to fringe platforms, now frequently appears at rallies and across mainstream digital channels.

The conspiracy trope known as “Love Jihad” exemplifies this drift. The claim that Muslim men deliberately seduce Hindu women to alter India’s demographic balance has shaped legislation in several states despite a lack of empirical substantiation. When myth migrates into statute, prejudice acquires institutional form.

The signs identified by Genocide Watch as “Preparation” are not confined to rhetoric. Youth wings aligned with Hindutvaorganisations, including the Bajrang Dal, have conducted training camps and public ceremonies distributing trishuls, sharpened tridents of religious symbolism, to young men pledging to defend “Hindu society”. In isolation, ritual objects are benign. In an atmosphere thick with communal suspicion, their mass distribution carries a different resonance.

Recent Ram Navami processions have seen swords brandished, mosques vandalised and neighbourhoods torched in several states. Routes passing through Muslim-majority areas have intensified tensions in already polarised districts. Arrest patterns following such clashes have frequently drawn criticism for perceived imbalance. These episodes do not constitute genocide. They do, however, suggest a society in which confrontation has become choreographed. In a speech at a rally in 2023, T. Raja Singh, a suspended BJP legislator from the state of Telangana, threatened to castrate Muslim men. “If any circumcised [Muslim] indulges in Love Jihad, oh son, you are half-cut, we will cut you completely.”Such violent rhetoric is pervasive on online media platforms.

The digital sphere intensifies the danger. Following Pehlgam incident in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, incendiary content calling for collective retribution against Muslims proliferated across social media platforms, attracting large viewership before removal. When algorithms monetise outrage, extremism acquires an economic engine.

None of this demonstrates a centrally coordinated blueprint for extermination. It would be intellectually reckless to claim so without incontrovertible evidence. The more insidious risk lies in incremental conditioning. The slow habituation of a majority to language that casts a minority as a demographic threat. The gradual militarisation of festivals. The steady erosion of constitutional neutrality.

Genocide Watch’s report is, at its core, a warning rather than a verdict. Its argument is that preparation is as much psychological as logistical. It is about priming populations to accept, justify or ignore acts that would once have provoked universal revulsion.

India’s Constitution promises equality before the law and freedom of faith. That covenant remains the republic’s moral backbone. To dilute it through polarising rhetoric and selective enforcement is not merely a policy error. It is a betrayal of the founding compact.

The burden of response lies first with India’s own institutions. Political leaders must repudiate incitement without equivocation. Law enforcement must apply the law with visible impartiality. Social media companies must recognise that in volatile contexts, moderation is not censorship but civic responsibility.

International observers should engage with care, avoiding the pitfalls of selective indignation. Yet disengagement is no virtue when credible early-warning frameworks raise alarms.

Preparation rarely announces itself as such. It comes cloaked in the language of self-defence, cultural revival and demographic anxiety. It persuades majorities that dominance is survival.

The choice before India is not between pride and shame, nor between sovereignty and scrutiny. It is between reaffirming a plural constitutional order or allowing the grammar of exclusion to harden into something darker.

History’s bleakest chapters did not begin with mass graves. They began with words rehearsed until they felt normal.

The question is whether India will heed the warning while it is still a warning, and not a lament.