- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
While India Hate Lab documented 668 incidents of hate speech targeting the minority community in 2023, 255 of them occurred in the first six months, 413 in the next six.
By: Shubham Ghosh
IN an alarming revelation, a research group in Washington DC has said that hate speeches targeting Muslims in India rose by 62 per cent in the second half of 2023 compared to the first.
The group also said that the ongoing war in Gaza played a key role in the rise of such speeches in the last three months.
India Hate Lab (IHL) documented 668 incidents of hate speech targeting the minority community in 2023. Two hundred and fifty five of them occurred in the first six months while 413 in the next six, the group said in a report that was released on Monday (26).
The report also added that 75 per cent or 498 of the incidents took place in states that are governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister Narendra Modi. The big states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh accounted for most such speeches.
Read: Anti-Muslim hate speech incidents rise in India during elections: report
The IHL report pointed out that between October 7, when the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel and triggered the conflict in the Gaza Strip and Israel retaliated and December 31 last year, 41 instances of hate speech against Muslims in India mentioned the war. It accounted for nearly 20 per cent of the hate speeches made in the last three months of 2023.
Read: Hate speech against Hindus growing online, danger looms in real world: US university report
The group said it used the United Nations’ (UN) definition of hate speech — prejudiced or discriminatory language towards an individual or group based on attributes including religion, ethnicity, nationality, race or gender.
Rights bodies have alleged that Muslims in India have been mistreated in the era of Modi who assumed the office in 2014 and is widely predicted to return to power in this year’s general elections.
They have mentioned a 2019 citizenship law that the UN human rights office called “fundamentally discriminatory”, an anti-conversion legislation that challenges the constitutionally protected right to freedom of belief; and the 2019 revoking of the Muslim majority Kashmir’s special status.
Demolition of Muslim properties in the name of removing illegal construction and a ban on wearing the hijab in classrooms in the southern state of Karnataka when the BJP was in power there have also come under the scanner.
Modi’s government denies the presence of minority abuse and says its policies aim to benefit all Indians.
IHL said it tracked online activity of Hindu nationalist groups, verified videos of hate speech circulated on social media and compiled data of isolated incidents that have been reported by Indian media.
(With Reuters inputs)
