The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is meant to reaffirm global solidarity with women facing oppression, exploitation, and systemic injustice. Yet, as the world turns its attention to these issues, a new Genocide Watch report exposes a deeply unsettling reality: Muslim and marginalized women in India today are facing one of the most organized, politically sanctioned patterns of gendered violence in the world. What is unfolding in India is not an accidental byproduct of social tensions—it is a deliberate strategy embedded within a rising ethno-nationalist project.

In its special report released on October 6, 2025, Genocide Watch warns that Muslim women in India are at the epicenter of escalating abuses that meet multiple criteria of genocidal intent. This is not hyperbole. When patriarchy merges with majoritarian politics, women’s bodies become battlefields. In India, patriarchy does not merely reinforce gender inequalities—it intersects with a state-backed ideological movement that frames Muslim women as enemies of a Hindu-first national identity. Under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, this toxic blend has created an environment where sexual violence, harassment, online humiliation, and physical intimidation are deployed as tools of terror.

The ideological roots are unmistakable. For years, Hindu nationalist organizations—including the RSS and political affiliates—have propagated myths portraying Muslim women as threats to Hindu purity or as demographic weapons. These narratives, born in colonial racial theories and revived by contemporary hardliners, have normalized violence and dehumanization. Genocide Watch and Justice For All Canada document how these messages translate directly into atrocities: Muslim women are targeted not because of individual grievances, but as representatives of an entire community marked for subjugation.

This pattern has been observed repeatedly. In Gujarat in 2002, sexual violence was used as a weapon during pogroms that political leaders derisively dismissed as “spontaneous reactions.” In Muzaffarnagar in 2013, communal riots followed a familiar script—rape, intimidation, and forced displacement—resulting in long-term political gains for the BJP. Delhi in 2020 witnessed Muslim women being attacked in broad daylight, their pleas ignored by police standing a few meters away. Time and again, the aftermath has been depressingly predictable: perpetrators walk free, political rhetoric sharpens, and polarization deepens.

But in today’s India, the violence is no longer confined to the physical world. Digital spaces have become new battlegrounds, where Muslim women—especially journalists, activists, and professionals—face AI-generated pornography, rape threats, and humiliation campaigns. Apps like Sulli Deals and Bulli Bai, which auctioned Muslim women online, were not anomalies; they were symptoms of a digital ecosystem shaped by hate. The objective is to silence, shame, and push Muslim women out of public life.

The Genocide Watch report goes further: it connects these gendered attacks to Dr. Gregory Stanton’s “10 Stages of Genocide,” indicating that India has crossed several thresholds. Sexual violence, the report notes, is used strategically to break communities—destroying their ability to reproduce safely, to live without fear, or to participate equally in society. Alongside the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Genocide Watch frames the treatment of Muslim women not merely as gendered abuse, but as part of a broader pattern of persecution that fits the legal framework of genocide under the UN Genocide Convention.

It is crucial to recognize that this violence does not fall on Muslim women alone. Dalit women—long subjected to caste-based atrocities—remain among the most vulnerable. Human Rights Watch reports widespread impunity for crimes against Dalit women, including custodial violence, rape, and intimidation. The intersection of caste, gender, and increasingly religion amplifies their vulnerability.

On this international day dedicated to ending violence against women, it is no longer sufficient for the world to offer symbolic solidarity. Justice For All Canada’s recommendations underscore what meaningful action looks like: raising the issue in bilateral diplomacy with India, publicly condemning the violence, initiating Magnitsky-style sanctions for officials who incite or enable it, and pushing for a UN fact-finding mission.

India’s Muslim and marginalized women now face an existential threat. Their struggle is not isolated, not accidental, and not merely cultural. It is political. It is systematic. And it is escalating. The international community must treat the Genocide Watch report as a warning that cannot be ignored. Countries that profess a commitment to human rights cannot deepen partnerships with a government under which women from minority communities are routinely brutalized, shamed, and silenced.

Until India undertakes genuine systemic reform—strengthening legal protections, holding perpetrators accountable, dismantling extremist propaganda, and restoring secular safeguards—its international partners must rethink their relationships. Credibility requires consistency. On a day dedicated to ending violence against women, silence is complicity. The world must choose accountability over convenience and justice over political expediency. Only then can the women most at risk—Muslim, Dalit, and other marginalized groups—have a fighting chance at safety, dignity, and survival.