Report: Modi’s party involved in most hate speech in India

WASHINGTON: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party and affiliated groups have been implicated in the majority of hate speech incidents in the first half of this year, according to a report highlighting the “growing trend” since Modi’s ascent to power in 2014.

A report released on Monday by Hindutva Watch, a Washington DC-based research organisation tracking hate speech and crimes against minorities in India, revealed that around 80 per cent of the 255 documented cases of hate speech against Muslims occurred in states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), reported Bloomberg.

The report said that under the BJP’s leadership, India’s Muslim population has faced discrimination and religious persecution, part of a broader agenda they say aims to marginalise Muslims and establish India as a Hindu-dominated nation.

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The report marks the first of its kind to record instances of anti-Muslim speech since India’s crime bureau stopped collecting hate crime data in 2017.

Hindutva Watch relied on open-source online information to compile data, employing data scraping techniques to identify verified hate crime videos. The team then conducted thorough investigations with the assistance of journalists and researchers, following their outlined methodology.

The report revealed that over half of the documented incidents this year were linked to the ruling BJP and its affiliates, including the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and Sakal Hindu Samaj.

Meanwhile, the report indicated that these groups have connections to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the far-right ideological inspiration behind the BJP, which drew inspiration from Nazi Germany.

The report also highlighted that Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat experienced the highest number of hate speech incidents. Significantly, one-third of the documented cases occurred in states slated for legislative elections this year.

Hindutva Watch, which monitored activities in 15 states and two union territories, also noted that approximately 64 per cent of the events promoted anti-Muslim “conspiracy theories.”

Bloomberg reported that Abhay Verma, a senior member of the BJP in New Delhi, dismissed Hindutva Watch’s findings as “completely baseless” in an interview, stating, “We do not divide the country and its people based on their religions. There is no support from the BJP for hate speech.”