Religious minorities in India faced a rise in hate speech last Year.
India Hate Lab(IHL), a US-based think tank said on Monday that hate speech incidents against Muslim and Christian minorities marked a staggering rise of 74%.
The number surged from 668 hate speech incidents in 2023 to 1165 in 2024.
The report came days before Modi ‘s visit to United States where he will meet United States President Donald Trump.
This increase is very much connected with the rise of Hindu nationalism in India under Modi. Hindu far right organizations and religious figures with the agenda of Hindu nationalism remained involve in such hate speeches.
In past, Modi and his party members professed their Anti-Muslim believes openly.
Modi won the third term in last year’s election; thus, the hate speech followed an alarming trajectory in 2024. Critics say Modi wants to turn a secular India into a homeland for Hindu majority.
Hindu nationalists are appointed at top position in government to make changes in law to unfairly target minorities.
India’s ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shared a long history for hate speech against Muslim with RSS ideology in the core.
According to the reports, these ruling Hindu elite reinforced in their hate speeches that Muslim and other minorities are infiltrator to their land. They portrayed them as outsiders who lack a legitimate right to belonging in India.
Thus, minorities in general and Muslims in particular are Vulnerable and fearful of hate crimes in India.
In 2019, the ruling party BJP under Prime Minister Modi also revoked the article 370 and removed the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Thus, targeting the Muslim of Jammu and Kashmir.
