Report flags politically driven communal violence pattern in India’s Telangana

NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — A fact-finding report by the civil rights group Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) has concluded that recent incidents of communal violence and social unrest in the southern Indian state of Telangana are not isolated clashes but part of a broader, politically driven pattern marked by polarization, institutional bias and administrative failure.

The report, titled Belonging, Coexistence & Fractures: Documenting State Atrocities and Fractured Coexistence in Telangana, draws on field investigations, survivor testimonies, interviews with residents and activists, and a review of official records across several districts, including the state capital Hyderabad and communally sensitive towns such as Bhainsa and Nizamabad.

According to the findings, many flashpoints initially emerged from routine local disputes — including disagreements over land use, religious practices, noise or administrative decisions — but were later transformed into communal confrontations through organized political mobilization, misinformation and provocative public actions. The report says these escalations were especially visible during politically sensitive periods, such as elections.

APCR attributes a central role in this process to right-wing organizations and their local networks, which the report says have systematically reframed ordinary disputes into religious conflicts, often targeting Muslim communities alongside other historically marginalized groups such as Tribal populations and communities historically placed at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy.

A key conclusion of the report is that state institutions have frequently failed to act as neutral arbiters. In multiple cases documented by APCR, members of Muslim and minority communities faced delayed police responses, disproportionate use of force, fabricated criminal charges, custodial abuse or pressure to withdraw complaints.

Oversight bodies, including the National Human Rights Commission and the SC/ST Commission, were described as largely inaccessible or ineffective at the local level, contributing to what the report characterizes as a “climate of impunity”.

Beyond violence itself, the report argues that communal narratives are increasingly used to divert attention from structural issues such as land dispossession, unemployment, declining public services and unequal access to welfare. 

It notes that Muslim, Tribals and oppressed-caste communities — despite facing similar economic vulnerabilities — are being positioned against one another through identity-based mobilization, weakening prospects for collective resistance.

The findings stop short of portraying Telangana as uniformly divided. The report documents several instances in which communities resisted polarization, maintained everyday coexistence and intervened to prevent violence. 

Civil society groups, women-led initiatives and youth networks are cited as playing a crucial role in supporting victims and de-escalating tensions where state responses were absent or inadequate.

APCR national secretary Nadeem Khan said the investigation found little evidence of spontaneous communal hostility. Instead, he said, local disputes were repeatedly “manufactured into flashpoints” through political intervention, selective law enforcement and misinformation.

The report calls for independent investigations into alleged custodial deaths and staged police encounters, accountability for hate speech and inflammatory mobilization, protection of land and housing rights, and reforms to ensure equal treatment by police and administrative authorities.

APCR said the report is intended to prompt wider public scrutiny and institutional accountability, warning that communal violence in Telangana increasingly functions as a political strategy rather than a reflection of social reality — with marginalized communities bearing the cost of engineered division.