Across the region--- analytically a common pattern can be identified of the roots causes that are at risk of producing the conditions that produce conflicts involving minorities -internal power seeking politics : manipulation of religion and politics by competing insecure elites jostling for power --- whether it is use of politicised religion in the effecting Great Partiton and founding of two states Pakistan and Indian or present day populist governments in Sri lanka exploiting minority politics fo regime consolidation. In SA the manipulation of religion and politics is not specific to any one faith – Islamist mobilisation in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Maldives, ascendant Hindutva right wing populist politics in India, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, etc Inter-state: In a region of kin states where the majority in one state is a minority in another, and trans- regional competitive ethno-religious nationalisms are implicated in cross border violent struggles: India: LTTE and liberation War in Bangladesh, Pakistan in Taliban . Also -where ethnic and social groups frequently spill over political borders, such violence feeds into the rhetoric of fear and social fragmentation propagated by militant religious groups–Bangladesh violence Oct 2021- spill over into retaliatory and planned violence across the border in Tripura India ---- Geo-political entanglement of the region in great power militarist projects and globalised ideological conflicts has produced a context in which local ethno-nationalist struggles and communal (religious) conflicts get conflated with global master narrative of extremism: e.g. Islamic jihad and ideology of Islamophobia . Recommendations 1. In view of the pernicious role of state driven populist narratives that construct minority communities as ‘suspect’ and a national security risk ----the importance of supporting and protecting the production and dissemination of counter narratives, in a repressive environment where critical fact dissent and fact finding is criminalised. Protect and support HRDs/journalists/lawyers from state repression and vigilante violence. 2. Strengthen rule of law and institutions necessary for protection of minority rights and countering impunity, and document the abusive practice of heaping multiple