Most anti-Muslim hate speech in India linked to Modi’s ruling party: report
- India has seen an ‘escalating trend’ of anti-Muslim speech since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, according to a new report
- Some 80 per cent of the 255 incidents documented earlier this year occurred in BJP-ruled states and union territories, Hindutva Watch said
Researchers wrote that India has seen an “escalating trend” of anti-Muslim speech since Modi rose to power in 2014. The report found that more than half of the documented incidents this year were orchestrated by the ruling BJP and affiliates including the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Sakal Hindu Samaj. Those groups have ties to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP.
Abhay Verma, a senior member of the BJP in New Delhi, called the report “totally baseless” in an interview. “We don’t divide the country and people based on their religions,” he said by phone. “There’s no support from the BJP in favour of hate speech.”
The report is the first of its kind to document hate speech against Muslims after India’s crime bureau stopped collecting data on hate crimes in 2017. Hindutva Watch relied on social media and news outlets in gathering data.
It used data-scraping techniques to locate verifiable videos of hate speech events, and then conducted an in-depth investigation of incidents through journalists and researchers, according to an explanation of the methodology.