India Sees Surge in Anti-Muslim Hate Speech, Report Says

IQNA – A report by a US-based research group says that hate speech against Muslims in India increased by more than half in the second half of 2023, with the Israeli war on Gaza being a major factor in the last quarter.

The report, released on Monday by India Hate Lab, recorded 668 incidents of anti-Muslim hate speech in 2023, of which 413 occurred between July and December, a 62 per cent rise from the first six months of the year, Reuters reported.

The report defined hate speech as language that is prejudiced or discriminatory towards an individual or group based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race or gender, following the United Nations' criteria.

Most of the hate speech incidents, about 75 per cent, happened in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had the highest number of cases.

The report also found that the war between Israel and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas in October triggered 41 incidents of hate speech against Indian Muslims that referenced the conflict, accounting for about 20 per cent of the total in the last three months of 2023.

The report said it monitored the online activities of Hindu nationalist groups, verified videos of hate speech on social media and collected data from Indian media reports.

Modi, who came to power in 2014 and is likely to win the 2024 elections, has faced criticism from rights groups for his policies towards Muslims, who make up about 14 per cent of India's population.

They cite a 2019 law that grants citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries, which the UN human rights office called "fundamentally discriminatory"; a law that bans religious conversions by force or fraud, which critics say violates the right to freedom of belief; and the revocation of the special status of Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India, in 2019.

The government has also been accused of demolishing Muslim properties under the pretext of removing illegal construction and banning the hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women, in classrooms in Karnataka, a state formerly governed by the BJP.

Source: Agencies