Tracking incitement and serious hate speech against religious minorities in India, in the lead up to upcoming General Elections in 2024, with a view to developing data on intensity, severity and content of hate speech, over time and geography, and reporting trends.
UPDATE | General Elections | 16 March – 31 May, 2024
| Total number of top and intermediate-level hate speeches | 380 |
| Top and intermediate-level hate speeches by senior BJP leaders | 287 (76%) |
| Increase in hate speeches by senior political leaders compared to the 2019 GE period (when 40 hate speeches were documented) | +600% |
| Top and intermediate-level hate speeches by other Hindu nationalist religious and political leaders | 93 (24%) |
| Top offenders (and number of documented hate speeches) | Yogi Adityanath (73), Narendra Modi (61), Amit Shah (43), Himanta Biswa Sarma (22), Pushkar Singh Dhammi (10) |
India has just concluded its marathon, seven-phase General Election (GE) to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament), with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerging as the party winning the largest number of seats, although falling short of a parliamentary majority on its own. As we feared when we began tracking hate speech by senior political and religious figures (in August 2023), the 2024 GE provided the pretext for a dramatic upsurge in hate speech against minorities.
Incendiary rhetoric that demonised and dehumanised India’s Muslims – and accused opposition parties of conspiring against India’s Hindu majority on behalf of Muslims – formed the core of the BJP’s messaging during the GE period. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the tone and led this attack, assisted by other members of the BJP’s senior leadership, in their quest for re-election. These speeches occurred despite specific legal prohibitions on, inter alia, making religious appeals, promoting enmity between different communities, and publication of false statements, for the furtherance of electoral prospects.
India’s once-vaunted Election Commission (ECI), which oversees the enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) – a set of minimum standards of conduct during election campaigning and polling that all political parties have agreed to abide by, which includes prohibitions on appealing to communal sentiments while seeking votes – largely acted like an arm of government, refusing to take decisive action against BJP leaders for hate speech, while acting with more alacrity against opposition leaders for less severe offences. India’s courts, including the Supreme Court, also refused to act, asking petitioners to approach the ECI instead.
Key findings
- Between the dates the 2024 GE was officially notified (16 March) and the end of campaigning (29 May), we documented 380 instances of hate speech by senior political and religious figures. (see chart above) Of these, 72 (19 per cent) appeared to meet the UN’s threshold for ‘top’ level hate speech. These are prohibited by international law, constituting direct incitement to hostility, discrimination or violence. 308 (81 per cent) met the threshold for ‘intermediate’ level hate speech, which may be prohibited by states – and are prohibited by India – to protect the rights or reputations of others, or for the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals. All 380 speeches thus appear to violate India’s domestic laws, including the Representation of the People Act (RPA), other hate speech provisions in the penal code, as well as provisions of the voluntary MCC. (Other appeals to religion, such as references to the recently consecrated Ram Temple, are also prohibited by Indian law, but are not classified as hate speech in this analysis.)
- Senior BJP leaders accounted for 287 hate speeches (76 per cent) during the 2024 GE period, a 600 per cent increase from the 2019 GE period, when we had documented a total of 40 hate speeches. Top offenders included Prime Minister Narendra Modi (61 speeches), Home Minister Amit Shah (43 speeches), as well as Yogi Adityanath (73 speeches), Himanta Biswa Sarma (22 speeches) and Pushkar Singh Dhammi (10 speeches), the Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and Uttarakhand, respectively. (These numbers are likely to be significant undercounts – each leader is known to have delivered similar speeches at multiple locations every day, while our analysis is limited to those that were captured on video and catalogued by Hindutva Watch and other media sources). The ECI has, so far, not been reported initiating action against any of these individuals.
- Other Hindu nationalist leaders, all aligned to the BJP, accounted for 93 hate speeches (24 per cent of the total). Of these, 61 (66 per cent) were ‘top’ level hate speeches, including instances of direct incitement to violence against Muslims and Christians. These speakers belonged to affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), including religious militant groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal (BD), among others. The BJP is the political wing of the RSS. Despite multiple instances of these extremists making direct calls to vote (for the BJP) based on religion, a clear violation of the RPA, the ECI is not known to have initiated any action against such speakers.
Top Offenders
- NARENDRA MODI (Prime Minister of India): In the initial stages of the GE (before Phase 1 of polling), PM Modi’s speeches seemed to be focused on portraying the opposition as enemies of Hinduism. On at least one occasion, he described the opposition Congress Party’s election manifesto as resembling that of the Muslim League, the political party that in pre-Independence India had advocated for the establishment of Pakistan, as a Muslim homeland. The conclusion of Phase 1 of polling (19 April) marked a significant change in Modi’s messaging (see Chart 2) – on 21 April, at a speech in Banswara (Rajasthan), Modi launched a direct attack on India’s Muslims, referring to them as ‘infiltrators’ and ‘those with more children’, and accusing the Congress of conspiring to ‘snatch’ wealth from Hindus with the intention of distributing it to ‘infiltrators’. This narrative (a direct attack, demonising Muslims and the opposition conspiring on behalf of the group) set the tone for the rest of the GE period, with senior BJP leaders, including Modi himself, travelling across the length and breadth of the country and delivering similar speeches in poll-bound states. Other highlights from Modi’s speeches (which were repeated by other leaders) included characterising the GE as a choice between ‘vote jihad’ and ‘Ram Rajya’ (the reign of the Hindu god Ram), and referring to Muslims as the ‘jihadi vote bank’. On multiple occasions, Modi also appeared to be giving credence to discredited anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, such as ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’. Modi also accused ‘these people’ of particularly targeting women and indigenous peoples. At least one of Modi’s reported speeches appeared to carry undertones of violence. (‘We have to clean up such people one by one.’)
- AMIT SHAH (Home Minister of India): In the initial stages of the GE, Shah made multiple (and prohibited) references to the Ram Temple while seeking votes. After Modi’s speech in Banswara, Shah too changed his tone, closely aligned with Modi’s narrative, and openly referring to Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ and ‘vote jihadis’. On multiple occasions, he referred to the opposition-led provincial government in West Bengal as one of ‘mullahs, madrassas, and mafia’. At least one speech by Shah appeared to have undertones of violence. (‘Give Modi a third term and we will fix these cow-killers.’)
- YOGI ADITYANATH (Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh): In the initial stages of the GE, Adityanath made multiple references to the Ram Temple while seeking votes. After Modi’s Banswara speech, Adityanath’s narrative was closely aligned to Modi’s, referring to Muslims as infiltrators. On multiple occasions, he accused Muslims of being supporters of Pakistan, being a burden on India, of eating beef to insult Hindus, and of seeking to establish sharia law in India. On multiple occasions, Adityanath appeared to celebrate his provincial government’s violent record against Muslims. (‘We deal with them so harshly that their descendants will remember’)
- HIMANTA BISWA SARMA (Chief Minister of Assam): Sarma’s speeches too closely mirrored those of Modi, Shah and Adityanath, while exhorting the anti-Muslim policies and measures his provincial government has initiated. On multiple occasions, he claimed that ‘36 per cent of Assam’s population’ (the share of Muslims in the state total) were ‘infiltrators’, and that those ‘infiltrators’ would be ‘kicked out someday’. At least one other speech by Sarma contained threats of violence. (‘We will just break their legs once and no one will do love jihad again.’)
Other influential Hindu extremist speakers not officially affiliated to the BJP continued to incite discrimination, hostility and violence against India’s Muslims and other religious minorities. Recurring figures included Yati Narsinghanand (a Hindu priest who had previously gained notoriety for openly calling for the genocide of Muslims; in May, he was quoted saying that Modi’s recent speeches provided credence to Narsinghanand’s own rhetoric), Pravin Togadia (chief of the Antarashtriya Hindu Parishad), and Dhananjay Desai (chief of the Hindu Rashtra Sena), among many others.
It bears repeating that all these speeches were made in public settings, including as part of election campaigning, attended by thousands of people. Videos of many of these speeches were broadcast on television, in addition to being shared widely online, garnering hundreds of millions of viewers across platforms. For India’s minorities, particularly Muslims, these speeches have violent, real-life implications, with attacks on minorities including lynchings and other murders, social and economic boycott, state reprisal and larger violence targeting minorities, continuing unabated. (see recent edition of the India Persecution Tracker here for details).
The proliferation of these events and speeches, mostly involving recurring individuals and organisations, have continued despite Supreme Court directives to state police forces to take suo motu action in cases of hate speech and incitement. India’s election laws too are clear: any person who ‘in connection with an election’, ‘promotes or attempts to promote on grounds of religion, race, caste, community or language, feelings of enmity or hatred, between different classes of the citizens of India’, is guilty of an ‘electoral offence’ that entails criminal liability and a jail term of up to three years (Section 125A of the RPA). Additionally, the ‘promotion of enmity between different communities’ for the furtherance of electoral prospects, as well as the publication of false statements (Section 123.3 of the RPA), are both ‘corrupt practices’ that are grounds for declaring an election to be void, and for the disqualification of the candidate. These provisions must be applied not just to the senior leadership of the BJP, but also to every candidate they campaigned for. In the absence of such action, with the BJP having the first claim to form a governing coalition, the very legitimacy of India’s next government would be under question.
There is also a larger question here, of anti-minority hate and dangerous speech in India, and the lack of effective response by authorities to enforce domestic laws and procedures, whether the Election Commission of India given the context of elections currently, as well as of the criminal justice system, overall. International observers, including United Nations bodies have, for sometime, been raising these concerns, most recently at the start of current elections. The experience of the 2024 GE, documented in this report, only confirms the utter lack of any domestic effort.
Previous UPDATES
INTRODUCTION
The Hate Speech Monitor began in July 2023 to track incitement and serious hate speech against religious minorities in India, in the lead up to upcoming general elections in 2024. The research aimed to developing data on intensity, severity and content of hate speech, over time and geography, and reporting trends. It uses the UN Hate Speech Guidance and Rabat Plan of Action to monitor top and intermediate levels of incitement across India, in physical rallies and events, and from select online accounts on X.
Through the past 9 cycles of the fortnightly monitor, hate speech and incitement in public rallies and events by influential speakers has grown by 230%. This increase has directly corresponded with legislative election campaigns in multiple Indian states through the year. The mid-year incitement speeches were mostly made by Hindutva leaders connected with the Rashtra Sawayamsevak Sangh, the ruling party BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Dal) ideological parent. However, during election campaigns, many inciteful speeches were made by senior BJP ministers and leaders.
LEVELS OF INCITEMENT
TRENDS
Rise in incitement in public rallies and events during electoral campaigning – In November alone, more than 60% of the inciteful speeches were made in states headed to polls. Over 50% of these were made by BJP senior leaders and ministers during campaigning. 47% of the incitement speeches by BJP leaders met the threshold for ‘top level’ incitement, including calls to violence, discrimination and hostility against India’s religious minorities. The ‘intermediate level’ speeches included threats to minority identities on the basis of their shared characteristics and as political scapegoats to polarise the electorate, as well as denial of equity and non-discrimination to Indian Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.
Online incitement to keep anti-minority sentiments high, and to mobilise during manufactured episodes of religious violence1 – There was a peak in online incitement by the accounts being monitored on X during July-August violence in Haryana’s Nuh district, which disproportionately impacted Muslims in the region. Beyond this incident, the inciteful posts by these accounts mostly met the Intermediate-level threshold. Even in cases where these leaders were making top-level inciteful speeches in public, their social media seemed pared down, focused more on spreading false conspiracy theories and disinformation against religious minorities.
SPEAKER
The speaker’s position and influence are important to understand the reach and impact of the incitement. Of the top 12 speakers with the highest frequency of inciting speeches, five are from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and include the Home Minister and two Chief Ministers. They also account for a majority of the inciteful speeches made by individual speakers, with a rise in such speeches during election season. For reference, see here, here and here.
The Hindutva leaders are aligned with right-wing groups such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Hindu Sena, Antarashtriya Hindu Parishad, among others. These groups fall under the ideological umbrella of Hindu ethno-nationalism espoused by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, similar to the BJP. Their leaders have immense influence and gain wide traditional and social media coverage. Many of them are repeat offenders with multiple hate speech cases against them, and continue to have platforms to advocate for top-level incitement against religious minorities. For examples, see here, here and here.
HOTSPOTS
CONTENT AND FORM
KEY TRENDS IN CONTENT AND FORM
- Alleging demographic change by minorities – through either alleged forced conversion of Hindu or manipulation through romance part of the false conspiracy of ‘love jihad’; or through false claims of drastic rise in minority population to soon overwhelm the Hindus.
- Alleging illegal occupation of land by minorities, now called ‘land jihad’ – of state land or mosques and shrines being built over temples.
- Allegations of minorities being illegal Infiltrators – especially Muslim refugees, such as Rohingyas, as well as Indian nationals that speak Bengali language.
- Claiming Hindus and Hinduism are under attack and villainizing minorities – by blaming the entire community for acts by specific individuals, through false propaganda and disinformation.
CONCLUSION
It is imperative with India’s upcoming elections in 2024, for the international community to pay attention to the country’s democratic and diverse socio-polity. As the same speakers, including political leaders, continue to make multiple inciteful speeches with no repercussions, it is crucial for India to be held accountable for failing its responsibility to protect its religious minorities. Our research highlights the escalation of serious instances of hate speech and incitement across the country and the need to counter the tide before it leads to targeted mass violence around the general elections.
RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
- Senior leaders and officials must publicly and unequivocally condemn anti-minority hate and incitement. Their silence enables it!
- Ensure urgent implementation of all Supreme Court guidelines to curb mob violence and hate speech, prioritising the registration of FIRs in all cases of ‘intermediate’ and particularly ‘top’ level hate speech, followed by speedy investigations and prosecution.
- Enact comprehensive legislation, modelled after the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, extending protections against hate crimes and hate speech to all religious minorities, integrating the core ideals of the Rabat Plan of Action, the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, and all other relevant international standards. This will entail collecting and publishing disaggregated data on hate speech and hate crimes. Ensure in-built provisions to ensure that the law in question is not used to further marginalise and target minorities, or to curb acceptable free speech.
- Initiate an urgent public messaging campaign highlighting the dangers of religious hatred, and launch deradicalisation programmes at the grassroots level.
- Commit social media platforms operating in the country to adopt policies and protocols to identify and curb hate speech, including via enhanced investments in content moderation, including in local languages, while ensuring that such protocols are not be misused to crack down on free speech and dissent.
- Allow independent media and civil society to carry on their activities, within the confines of the law, without any obstacles.
FOR THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
- Closely monitor and track anti-minority hate speech in India specifically Islamophobic, anti-Christian, anti-Dalit and anti-women, in the lead up to the 2024 general elections, as a tool of prevention to identify trends and warning signs for escalation of threats to minorities; and support relevant stakeholders in preventing violence and protecting the vulnerable groups.
- Urge the Indian government to regulate hate speech and targeted attacks on religious and other minorities, through laws, policies and practices.
- Urge the Indian government to prosecute those accused of making and spreading anti-minority hate speech online, including government officials, politicians, religious leaders, TV channels and social media platforms, to fulfill its international obligations under ICCPR and ICERD.
- Demand that social media companies meet the UN OHCHR Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, in the context of their operations in India, and work towards more effective implementation of their Community Guidelines and policies for protection of minority groups in India against hate speech.
- Long term, foster multi-stakeholder efforts to identify the root causes, drivers and actors of hate speech, targeting vulnerable groups, such as minorities and others, and enable partnerships to address these. Role of civil society groups of the vulnerable groups or those working for the group, would be crucial in this effort to engage with stakeholders.
- Encourage citizens’ interventions to counter anti-minority hate speech, through challenging disinformation and building bridges.
FOR CIVIL SOCIETY AND TARGETED COMMUNITIES
- Continue grassroots-level efforts to build cross-community dialogue and understanding, and highlighting the dangers of religious intolerance, emphasising the values of diversity and inclusion.
- strengthen monitoring and reporting mechanisms to track, document, and disseminate findings about the proliferation of hate speech in online and offline spaces.
- Continue safely collaborating with international human rights mechanisms and other international actors acting in good faith to ensure that the Indian government meets its international legal obligations vis-a-vis human rights.
We will monitor and report hate speech and incitement, as defined by UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, against religious minorities in India, through monitoring and analysing (i) published sources, for offline and online speech, as well as (ii) online content and messaging from X accounts of select state and non-state actors.
The United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech covers three categories or levels of unlawful and lawful expression:
- AT THE TOP LEVEL, “direct and public incitement to genocide” and “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” are
prohibited under international law. - AT THE INTERMEDIATE LEVEL, certain forms of hate speech may be prohibited, but only if restrictions are provided by law, pursue a legitimate aim (e.g. respect of the rights of others, or
the protection of public order) and are necessary and proportionate. - AT THE BOTTOM LEVEL, legal restrictions should not be imposed on the dissemination of lawful expressions that are, for example, offensive, shocking or disturbing.
hate speech and impact
Monitor and report ‘top’ and ‘intermediate’ level incitement and hate speech, as defined by UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, against religious minorities in India, made in public by influential state and non-state actors.
A subordinate dimension of this component will be to monitor incitement in high-risk micro-geographies, offline and online, and their consequences, producing from-the-ground case studies, to provide depth to the research.
Data Collection and Analysis
-> Secondary sources: Hate speech and incitement from public-facing (physical) events, and their dissemination via social media and news, accessed through trusted sources such as Hindutva Watch on X/Twitter
-> Scan those on a regular basis, to identify speech that meet ‘top level’ and ‘intermediate level’ hate, including speech that is not direct / is masked, using this preliminary Glossary of terms
-> Primary sources: Hate speech and incitement from public-facing (physical) events as shared through trusted networks on the ground.
->Identify, catalogue and preserve recordings/evidence of speeches that meet the threshold provided by the UN framework
Online Monitoring
Monitor and document ‘top’ and ‘intermediate’ level hate speech and incitement, as defined by UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, against religious minorities in India, through analysing online content and messaging from select state and non-state actors.
Data Collection and Analysis
-> Identify a small sample of social media accounts on X/ Twitter of shortlisted actors, based on speaker profile and history of hate speech online/offline)
-> Scan those on a regular basis, to identify speech that meet ‘top level’ and ‘intermediate level’ hate, including speech that is not direct / is masked, using this preliminary Glossary of terms
-> Identify, catalogue and preserve tweets that meet the threshold provided by the UN framework
Presentation of findings
- Present findings on intensity, severity, content of hate speech, based on the framework detailed in the Table below.
- Analyse the above over time and geography with map and quantitative analysis, as applicable
- The findings will be shared publicly online every fortnight
| Level | Prohibited Content |
|---|---|
| Top | Direct and public incitement to genocide |
| Top | Advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, violence |
| Top | Advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility |
| Top | Advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to hostility, violence |
| Top | Advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to violence |
| Intermediate | Threats of violence or harassment based on identity |
| Intermediate | Violating right to equality and non-discrimination |
| Intermediate | Meeting the threshold of the Rabat Plan of Action and targeting religious minorities in the run up to elections |
- Small sample - the study uses a micro sample of actors to investigate and analyse the issue
- Identifying the sample based on selected criteria - given the numbers of accounts posting similar content which can qualify as hate speech, the focus on a few accounts to allow for analysis, means the findings leave room for discretion
- Retweets/reposts without added content as hate speech made by the accounts reposting - the pilot showed that in many instances the high-profile accounts do not post top level hate speech, and instead amplify posts made by smaller accounts. For the purposes of the study, these are being counted as well, with the speaker being another 'voice' added to the amplification of the message (barring those originally made by accounts being tracked, to avoid duplication in counting)
- The classification of tweets into 'top', 'intermediate', and 'bottom' levels of hate speech in this study is based on our interpretation of the United Nations' framework and its application to the content being analysed. The interpretation of language and the context in which it is used is complex and nuanced, and alternate interpretations of the content may be possible. The study does not intend to accuse or label individuals, but rather aims to highlight patterns and trends in the evolution and manifestation of hate speech in the context of the upcoming national elections.
DISCLAIMER: The classification of tweets into ‘top’, ‘intermediate’, and ‘bottom’ levels of hate speech in this study is based on our interpretation of the United Nations’ framework and its application to the content being analysed. The interpretation of language and the context in which it is used is complex and nuanced, and alternate interpretations of the content may be possible. The study does not intend to accuse or label individuals, but rather aims to highlight patterns and trends in the evolution and manifestation of hate speech in the context of the upcoming national elections
| Terms (provided in English here, the study includes similar terms in Hindi) | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Violent terms like hit, raze, kill, rape, shoot, eliminate, erase, exterminate, wipe out. | Used in direct physical calls to violence, including sexual violence. |
| References to past episodes of violence – direct invocations such as ‘remember 2002’, or more cloaked references like ‘cauliflower farming’ (re: Ramchander Singh in Bhagalpur) . | Used to implicitly call for violence, including sexual violence. |
| Other indirect threats of physical violence, including sexual violence – like ‘we know where you live’ or references to ‘Hindu might’ | Used to implicitly threaten violence, including sexual violence. |
| Dehumanising terms like termites, pigs, cockroaches, etc. | Used to dehumanise and degrade; also to avoid direct reference to Muslim identity. |
| False Victim-perpetrator narratives to paint one community as victim, and the other perpetrator , such as 'love jihad'. | Create fear and panic amongst majority community, along with stereotyping and legitimising threats to violence against alleged perpetrators. |
| Other identity-based stereotypical, degrading, offensive, abusive terms, including sexist terms — jihadi, terrorist, anti-national, puncturewalla — and references to other stereotypes and conspiracy theories like love jihad. | Used to dehumanise, degrade, invoke fear. May often fall under ‘protected’ hate speech, but still calls for further analysis of context, etc. |
| Other abusive terms |
Pejorative or discriminatory language used to reference identity factor
Almost all the posts meeting the threshold used pejorative, demeaning and dehumanising language to denote Muslims. Terms include the following, among others:
- jihadi
- topi wale (skull cap wearers)
- aatanki (terrorists)
- vidharmi (non-believers)
- pattharbaaz (stone pelters)
- Kattarpanthi (bigot/ extremist / fanatic)
- Babar, Aurangzeb (Mughal rulers used to reference Muslims pejoratively and as a threat)