State of exception: On India, the UN CERD report

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed "grave concern" about reports of law enforcement violence against minority groups, Dalits, and non-citizens in India during its first review since 2007. Despite ratifying the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1968, India has not provided detailed and updated information on inquiries and sanctions arising from such violence.

The Committee noted that caste bias is not considered racial discrimination under Article 1 of the convention, although it has allowed all forms of discrimination based on inherited status. Other concerns include manual sewer cleaning despite a ban, hate speech, poor living conditions for Rohingya Muslims, citizenship deprivation, electoral roll revisions, misuse of anti-terror laws, and exemptions from consultative decision-making.

The lack of disaggregated data on disenfranchised communities and the implementation of "special measures" based on outdated Census data has hindered independent checks on claims of fighting discrimination. CERD's concerns may lead to the downgrade of India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) following the appointment of police officers to investigative roles and a lack of pluralism.

The road ahead includes restoring the NHRC's independence, criminalizing hate speech, collecting and publishing disaggregated data, improving electoral roll revisions, and strengthening enforcement. However, if the government attempts to keep issues affecting 200 million Dalits as a domestic matter and dismiss CERD's concerns as politically motivated, it will be up to civil society to exert influence in multilateral forums and resist discriminatory government actions.