New Delhi: Communal riots in India rose by 84% in 2024 with the Muslim population being the biggest target. In a report titled Hegemony and Demolitions: The Tale of Communal Riots in India in 2024, the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS) revealed that as many as 59 cases of communal riots were reported last year, a significant rise compared to 32 riots in 2023.
A total of 13 deaths were reported in these incidents – 10 Muslims and 3 Hindus. Maharashtra emerged as the epicenter of the conflicts with 12 out of 59 riots in the state, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reporting seven each.
“This increase in the number of communal riots belies the narrative of the state that India is free from communal riots as there are no communal tensions and the state has maintained communal harmony,” the report stated.
The CSSS’s monitoring is based on reports from Mumbai editions of five leading newspapers –The Hindu, The Times of India, The Indian Express, Shahafat and The Inquilab. The report is authored by human rights activists Irfan Engineer, Neha Dabhade and Mithila Raut.
Citing its reason for choosing newspapers instead of government data for the research, the CSSS team states, “The Ministry of Home Affairs and National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) maintains comprehensive records of communal riots in India but has stopped publishing its data regularly.”
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