India’s politics of hate exploded for all the world to witness. Hindus and Muslims clashed violently in a region in the outskirts of Indian capital Delhi where they have lived integrated for years in the National capital region (Nuh region of Haryana). Law and order collapsed. The police was paralyzed and complicit. As the mayhem settled down it became absolutely clear that it was Muslims who were essentially being terrorized in an organized and deliberate matter and in the end they bore the burnt of law enforcement as their buildings were bulldozed a new way of state repression. The police simply as usual stood by, either from shocking ineptitude or willful participation. Reports of hate-crime cases, many involving “cow vigilantes,” have spiked since Narendra Modi’s party came to power in 2014.
The new data from IndiaSpend, which tracks reports of violence in English-language media. The data shows that Muslims are overwhelmingly the victims and Hindus the perpetrators of the hate crime cases reported. The government of India does not record religious-based hate crimes as separate offenses and so does not provide data on the category. The government does monitor incidents of communal violence — such as riots between religious communities which have spiked since 2014 onwards. Most of the violence in the reported cases centers on cows because Hindus — nearly 80 percent of India’s population — believe the animals are sacred, and many states have laws that protect them from slaughter. Violent “cow vigilante” groups patrol the roads, beating and lynching those suspected of smuggling beef. Prime Minister Modi has said that state governments should punish these vigilantes and that his administration is committed to upholding the law, but critics say his party has emboldened Hindu extremists across the country.
Harsh Mander, director of the Center for Equity Studies in New Delhi, said the perpetrators film these lynchings and post online to communicate a threatening message to the victims, who are often minorities or from lower-caste communities. The Prime Minister Modi’s career has been shadowed by allegations of religious intolerance since 2002, when he, as the chief minister of the state of Gujarat, was accused of failing to do enough to stop Hindu-Muslim riots that killed more than 1,000. For this, he was denied a visa to visit the United States on religious-freedom grounds, making the trip only after he became prime minister in 2014 and was granted temporary immunity by the American state department. In an interview with The Washington Post in 2012, Modi showed little regret for what happened in Gujarat. “I have not done anything wrong,” he said, “and I am committed to the human cause.”
Now, in a string of incidents, his party members have been accused of supporting or even inciting violence against Muslims, leaving many in the country’s Muslim community of 172 million — the third largest in the world — fearful. In some of the lynching cases, members of Modi’s party or its right-wing affiliates incited or organized the mobs or praised the killers after the fact. The rising incidents of majoritarian violence as identity-based, populist politics dominate the Indian country’s landscape. As liberal democracies witness a steep rise in the incidence of ethnic or religious majorities rallying together on the basis of “identity”, the political groups selectively mobilise genuine religious devotion to manufacture both offense and a sense of being offended- or offendedness. It is this “making” of offense that is exacerbating communal tensions and dividing an already polarised polity in India along religious lines. The main objective of hate speech is met when the support base is widened, a divisive narrative is created, and people are mobilised around a political agenda. The media, meanwhile, are caught in reporting incidents when they happen, or else inadvertently serving as a vehicle for politicians who use hate speech as a tool for identity politics The media often lose sight of the manufactured quality of hate spin, especially where the line between hate speech and free speech are blurred.
In the Campaign speeches a high toned sense of majority persecution is highlighted to unite Hindus politically—deepening ideological, religious and communal divides. It is tempting to place this within the paradigm of the Clash of Civilisations (Samuel Huntington)that made a case for religious fault-lines, particularly between Christianity and Islam as the new frontier of post-Cold War conflict in the late 20th century. Indian Muslims argue that this “Otherisation” is “not an overnight phenomenon but a slow process adopted by the Congress and maximised by the BJP. It first distanced physically, then alienated mentally and is now demonising emotionally. India’s Constitution clearly outlines the right to be treated as equal citizens irrespective of religion, caste or gender. However, secular politics in India has been marked by the mainstream Indian National Congress and regional groupings targeting different categories of minorities for political gain. In fact, Hindu nationalism is often seen as a direct response to the fractiousness that has led to the consolidation of identity politics into the violent strain that is seen today.
The BJP’s rise as a national party over four decades from 1980 has been marked by its commitment to religion-based ‘Hindu’ Nationalism that seeks to define Indian identity and culture purely in terms of ‘Hindu’ values and leave no room for any other. This process has, in turn, led to a sustained polarisation around religion and political ideology that takes offense at perceived historical injustices and on that basis, demonises present-day minorities. In fact, victims of right-wing hate are no longer just their political opponents or outspoken critics, but also more moderate voices from within their own ranks alarmed by the virulent abuse circulating today. Vitiated, ideologically polarised and aggressive politics is fast becoming a cauldron of victimhood and rage.
While posts which may lead to violence are seemingly commonplace, there is a case to be made that the gravity of such eruptions on social media, often brushed aside as “spontaneous”, “simple” religious disputes that extend to the abuse of free speech—is in fact being underestimated. Hatred and violence are certainly not the domain only of the majority, but India’s over 80-percent-strong Hindu population, with their sheer numbers, have the power to spread narratives that paint minorities as the “enemy”. Political leaders preying on a sense of persecution and offense, who exploit religion for electoral gain, and claim to speak on behalf of the majority, are able to mobilise their supporters online and offline with ease. Without a clear legal framework to address hate speech and hate crimes in India, what is potentially today the largest, daily criminal activity in the country goes virtually unchallenged and unpunished. Violence perpetrated and condoned by the majority—i.e. majoritarian violence—fuelled by the spread of right-wing populism in the digital age has posed a complex challenge to India’s social fabric: one that is premised on the nation’s intrinsic, national values of tolerance and diversity. For seven decades, India has been held together by its constitution, which promises equality to all. But Narendra Modi’s BJP is remaking the nation into one where some people count as more Indian than others. The ruling party in India under prime minister Narendra Modi, has been remaking India into an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist state.
