The Architecture Of Hatred: Identity Threat, Psychological Radicalisation, And The Constitutional Limits Of Hate-Crime Law In India
Animesh Singh, Assistant Professor, Law, Babu Banarasi Das University
ABSTRACT
Hate crimes in India have intensified alongside communal polarisation, digitally accelerated misinformation, and the normalisation of identity-based rhetoric in public life. Existing scholarship examines this phenomenon predominantly through constitutional, criminological, or sociological lenses, leaving the psychological mechanisms that convert prejudice into criminal violence comparatively unexamined within Indian legal literature. This paper asks why only a small subset of prejudiced individuals become violent offenders, what psychological processes drive that transformation, whether Indian criminal law recognises these dynamics, and how criminal psychology might inform prevention without compromising constitutional guarantees. Adopting a doctrinal, comparative, and interdisciplinary methodology, the paper traces a continuum from identity threat and cognitive bias through moral disengagement, dehumanisation, and group polarisation to organised or spontaneous violence, drawing on social identity theory and Moghaddam's staircase model of radicalisation. It situates this psychological account within India's constitutional framework (Articles 14, 19, 21, and 25), the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita's hate-speech and mob-lynching provisions, and Supreme Court jurisprudence in Tehseen Poonawalla, Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan, and Amish Devgan. Comparative analysis of the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and Canada reveals a growing, if uneven, integration of behavioural science into hate-crime prevention. The paper concludes that Indian criminal law remains reactive and behaviourally uninformed, and proposes a constitutionally compatible, psychology- informed framework for investigation, sentencing, and community-based deradicalisation that treats criminal psychology as a preventive and evidentiary tool rather than an independent ground for restricting liberty.
Keywords: Hate Crimes; Criminal Psychology; Radicalisation; Social Identity; Dehumanisation; Constitutional Criminal Law; Digital Extremism.
