Caste-Based Persecution Drives Migration from India

Photo: Indía - Mílton Jung

India's caste system — despite formal abolition of untouchability under the Constitution of 1950 — continues to produce systematic, widespread persecution of Dalit communities and Adivasi (indigenous) peoples, driving thousands to seek refuge abroad.[1] Dalits, comprising approximately 17% of India's 1.4 billion population, face caste-based violence, economic exclusion, sexual violence, and denial of access to public resources in patterns documented by the National Crime Records Bureau, the United Nations, and leading human rights organisations. State protection mechanisms are systematically undermined by the caste affiliations of law enforcement and judicial personnel.[2]

Legal Framework and Its Failures

India's legal architecture ostensibly prohibits caste discrimination. The Constitution abolishes untouchability (Article 17), and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 — strengthened in 2016 — criminalises a range of caste-based abuses with enhanced penalties.[3] However, implementation is systematically flawed. Police — who are predominantly from upper-caste communities in most states — routinely refuse to register First Information Reports (FIRs) from Dalit complainants, misclassify caste atrocities as ordinary crimes, and actively collude with perpetrators. Courts acquit in the overwhelming majority of atrocity cases, with conviction rates averaging 15–20% nationally.

Violence Against Dalit Women

Dalit women occupy an intersectional position of extreme vulnerability, subjected to caste-based and gender-based violence simultaneously.[4] Rape and gang rape of Dalit women by upper-caste men — frequently with the complicity or inaction of local police — is a documented tool of caste enforcement and collective punishment. The 2020 Hathras gang rape and murder case — in which the body of a 19-year-old Dalit woman was cremated by police in the middle of the night before her family could claim it — illustrated the complete denial of justice that typifies such cases. Perpetrators in the Hathras case, as in hundreds of similar cases, faced minimal legal consequence.

"For a Dalit woman, violence is not an aberration — it is a structural expectation imposed by caste. And the police are not a resource; they are part of the threat."
National Dalit Movement for Justice, Report on Sexual Violence, 2023

Manual Scavenging and Caste-Based Labour Exploitation

Manual scavenging — the practice of manually cleaning human excrement from dry latrines and sewers — remains practised in India despite being banned by the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act (2013).[5] This occupation is practised almost exclusively by Dalits from specific sub-castes, who are compelled by economic desperation and caste coercion. Deaths in sewers and septic tanks — from asphyxiation and toxic gas exposure — are frequent. The government's own data records over 350 deaths in sewers since 2017, with advocates estimating the true figure is far higher. Workers are typically denied safety equipment and paid below poverty wages.

Adivasi and Tribal Persecution

India's 104 million Adivasi (Scheduled Tribe) population faces a distinct but overlapping pattern of persecution — land dispossession for mining and infrastructure projects, displacement by security forces under counter-insurgency operations, and denial of rights under the Forest Rights Act.[6] In central and eastern India, Adivasi communities are caught between Maoist insurgents (Naxalites) and state security forces, both of whom commit serious abuses. The UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) is routinely used to prosecute Adivasi rights defenders as "Maoist sympathisers," with pre-trial detention lasting years.