In June 2025, over 40 Hindu families in Chhota Pura, Azamgarh, quietly began posting ‘House for Sale’ signs. These posters were not simply transactional, they were declarations of despair. Behind them lay stories of sustained harassment, growing fear, and a slow erosion of confidence in the local state machinery. The immediate trigger, a disturbing incident of harassment of Hindu women during a wedding ceremony, highlighted a deeper pattern. It was not an isolated act of misbehavior but a symbol of targeted intimidation. Such gendered harassment forms part of what can only be called criminally aggravated communal coercion, wherein sexual and social intimidation is used to destabilize and demoralize a specific group [See, AIR 1997 SC 3011].
Looking Back
Azamgarh does not stand alone. India’s post-independence history has repeatedly seen such forms of slow communal displacement, Kashmiri Pandits (1989–90), Kairana (2016), parts of Mewat and Nuh (2023–24). In each case, a chillingly consistent method unfolds: harassment, economic boycotts, gender-based violence, state apathy. The victims are worn down not by one cataclysmic event, but by cumulative hostility. Despite this, India lacks any jurisprudential recognition of such displacement.
There is no codified term for “internal communal displacement,” nor has the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) addressed this collective coercion. This results in judicial silence where law should be the loudest.
The Law’s Silence
The Indian legal system, while structurally robust, remains woefully under-equipped to handle communal targeting as a criminally aggravated phenomenon. Under the new BNS 2023, Section 113 criminalizes acts intended to promote enmity between groups, replacing the old IPC Section 153A. However, even this reformed provision fails to address sustained group intimidation. Similarly, while BNS Section 124 penalizes acts outraging religious feelings (akin to IPC 295A), it still lacks teeth to prosecute systemic communal harassment.
BNS Section 147 penalizes criminal intimidation, yet still does not account for communal motive as an aggravating factor. Unlike the UK’s Crime and Disorder Act, 1998 or the U.S. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 2009, the BNS lacks a framework for group-specific persecution.
Indian courts remain tethered to individualized mens rea and overlook the structural intent of communal coercion. A woman harassed in Azamgarh may find recourse under BNS Section 73 (relating to sexual offenses), but the larger context of targeted gendered violence as a tool for community intimidation is ignored. This blinds the judiciary to the communal pattern that converts individual crimes into collective persecution.
Legal scholars like Upendra Baxi and Flavia Agnes have long emphasized the need for context-sensitive legal responses [Baxi, “The State and the Right to be Human” (1987); Agnes, “Law and Gender Inequality” (1999)]. The new BNS does not yet heed this call.
Constitutional Promises and Constructive State Failure
Article 21 guarantees the right to life with dignity. The Supreme Court, in Francis Coralie Mullin v. Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi (1981 AIR 746), extended this to include freedom from fear. Similarly, in Tehseen Poonawalla v. Union of India (2018) 6 SCC 72), the Court declared the state’s duty to prevent targeted group violence. Yet in Azamgarh, repeated pleas to local authorities went unheeded.
This recurring negligence must be understood as constructive state failure, a legal doctrine that recognizes prolonged inaction in the face of communal targeting as a constitutional breach. Unlike simple administrative failure, constructive state failure carries culpability under Articles 14 and 21. Its jurisprudential contours can be drawn from international human rights law and Indian precedent on state accountability.
What the Data Doesn’t Tell Us
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has no category for displacement caused by communal fear. It does not log the number of families who leave their villages due to intimidation or sexual harassment. This gap contributes to what philosopher Miranda Fricker terms epistemic injustice, denial of recognition as bearers of knowledge and experience [Fricker, “Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing,” 2007].
The invisibility in data leads to invisibility in law. And the absence of empirical visibility means these communities cannot access affirmative legal remedies or compensation. The silence of state records becomes complicity.
International Parallels
The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (1998), endorsed though not legally binding, mandate that states protect citizens from persecution-induced displacement. The European Court of Human Rights, in cases such as D.H. and Others v. Czech Republic (2007 ECHR 57325/00), has emphasized the role of structural discrimination and cumulative harm. India, despite being a signatory to the ICCPR (1966), has failed to incorporate these standards into domestic law.
Countries such as South Africa and Canada include motive-based discrimination in their constitutional frameworks, enabling stronger statutory protection. India, by contrast, lacks both recognition and remedy for communal displacement.
What Must Be Done
- Define and Penalize Communally Aggravated Crimes: BNS must be amended to define displacement caused by communal hostility as a distinct offense, with aggravated sentencing provisions.
- Institutional Monitoring: A National Commission for Internal Communal Displacement must be established to document, recommend relief, and monitor patterns.
- Develop Doctrine of Constructive State Failure: Courts must recognize prolonged state inaction in communal contexts as a constitutional violation, actionable under Articles 14 and 21.
- Empirical Vigilance: NCRB must be mandated to record displacement linked to communal threats, and publish yearly reports to inform policy and litigation.
- Training and Accountability: Law enforcement officials must be trained to identify cumulative communal harm, and failure to act must carry punitive consequences.
From Silence to Structure
The Azamgarh exodus is not a law-and-order incident, it is a constitutional alarm. It compels a shift from reactive policing to proactive jurisprudence. In a country where the law is quick to punish theft but slow to recognize communal eviction, justice remains partial.
To protect the secular, plural ethos of India, we must recognize communally aggravated crimes not as aberrations, but as urgent legal realities. The law must evolve to catch patterns, not just incidents, to listen not only to the letter of the BNS, but to the lived reality of fear.
Until India recognizes the crime of displacement by design, we will remain blind to the violence that is too quiet to be noticed but too loud to be denied.
This research insight is prepared by the NDV Legal Policy and Research Division. All citations and authorities referenced herein are traceable through published judgments, statutes, and global human rights instruments.