Rita Manchanda Talking points Substantive root causes of contemporary conflicts involving minorities South Asia region spans : 8 countries: largely constitutional democracies with fundamental rights chapters. These states are comprised of a mosaic of ethnicities and religions…challenges of pluralism are huge and so too is the gap in the constitutional promises made: especially in the contemporary context of ascendant extreme ethno religious nationalism which has reinforced structural marginalisation of minority communities: i.e. structural inequality, discrimination, institutionalised exclusion and state complicity in the targeted persecution and repression of minorities amidst a culture of impunity--- It is an ‘othering’ of minority communities –produced by deficits of democracy, development and justice. Minority Crisis in several of the countries has reached a new threshold --pick out three developments 1) In India practices of religious discrimination, prejudice and persecution have got formalised into state laws and policy --manifest in a slew of laws : Freedom of Religion Acts, Prohibition of Conversion laws, Cow Protection Acts and Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) which introduced for the1st time a religious clause into the secular framing of citizenship law. 2) Explicit targeting of minority communities : stigmatization and disproportionate persecution and violent assaults, the spread of anti-minority hate speech with impunity -here single out role of the state agencies and especially state driven narratives in the othering and positioning of entire communities as suspect rendering them vulnerable to mob violence: anti minority spin has become default narrative : Covid and stigmatization of minorities 3. Aggressive silencing of any counter narrative: stifling independent civil society fact finding efforts, reports of journalists and lawyers are suppressed and activists and victimss are harassed, assaulted and charged with a battery of violations including anti security laws while likely perpetrators roam free. The crackdown on civic and human rights movements has disproportionately impacted marginalised communities SA has become a region in which -peaceful protest gets conflated with violent politics, and ethno-nationalist and ethno-religious struggles get conflated with ‘terrorism’ .