Hate Speech and the Plight of the Minorities in India
India, under the rule of BJP-RSS, has turned hate speech into one of its primary tools to incite violence against the Indian Muslims and other minorities. The government of India is systematically cornering its minorities and paving the way for a genocide.
The rise of the Hindu nationalists to power has increased the insecurities of the Indian minorities; they are being asked to accept the cultural discourse of the majority community as the national way of life of all the Indians. In case of disagreement, the individuals of the minority communities are being ridiculed, threatened, and even lynched. This process of hate preaching has undermined the self-respect and self-confidence of the minorities and will to preserve their distinct identity and advance their material interests. This article will attempt to understand the process of hate preaching, its targets, and its impact on the minorities.
Hate speech reflects that there exist conflicts among different social groups within and across societies. In a competitive sociopolitical polarized environment, the religious, linguistic, and racial groups feel internally insecure and externally threatened from each other about the survival of the essential elements of their particular identity. In this polarized environment, hate speech is an expression that advocates incitement to commit harm in any shape of discrimination, hostility or violence against a specific opposite social group. This expression is not simply limited to a speech that advocates, threatens, or encourages violence rather, in the age of social media any comment, reaction, or visual image can be interpreted as offensive and may produce violent consequences. Thus, in this politics of hate, both intent and implication are important and the success of the instigator is to popularize the divisive narrative that in turn helps mobilize the in-group and sharpens the fault lines among the groups. In the modern nation-state system, the elite-middle of the majority sociopolitical groups has used this instrument of hate to establish their supremacy over the nation-building process. The majoritarian elite-middle class group attempts to make their vision of the self as a national identity through the extinction of the other (the minorities), with whom they have a long history of contact and close mixing. In this violent process of hate, they try to divide fellow citizens into friends and foes through defining minority groups as the enemy and generating fear of them into the majority community of their threat of the dilution of the majoritarian identity. To protect the majoritarian identity, the elite-middle class seeks complete sociocultural annihilation of the minority and demands from them to surrender unconditionally to majoritarian dogmatic and intolerant political agenda with no room for diversity. This hyperpolarization makes the ghastliest violent act normal for the masses, that is why most of the inhuman crimes are committed by normal people and not necessarily by psychopaths or sadists.
India is a diverse nation at all social, geographical, language, and religious levels. According to the 2011 census, it has 79.8 percent of the Hindu population practice Hinduism in various sects and denominations, while followers of Islam are 14.2 percent and the remaining 6 percent follow other religions like Christianity at 2.3 percent, Sikhism at about 2 percent, Buddhism, Jainism and some indigenous religions. It has the Secular Republic with a liberal democratic constitution that promises to treat all its citizens as equal, irrespective of religion, caste or gender. The maximum time of its existence, the Indian National Congress, regional and caste parties had dominated the polity of the Indian Secular Republic and had targeted different minority groups for political gains. Congress used the rhetoric of secularism at the center of the republic to convince minorities, especially the Indian Muslims and Christians, as their only protector while at the constituencies levels it presented itself as the promoter of the Hindu interests through championing the causes for the protection of the cow, development of the Hindi language and refusal to accept Urdu as the second language. In the Congress version of majoritarianism, every aspect of Indian sociopolitical life, such as secularism, socialism or democracy, was interpreted and reinterpreted in accordance with the ethos of the Hindu majority. Simultaneously, it did create a space for the minorities, minoritarianism, in which they articulated their issues such as the preservation of the Muslim Personal Law and promotion of the Urdu language. Therefore, Congress, in the name of secularism and liberal democracy, promoted and balanced communalism in India. The Hindu nationalists, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its Sangh Parivar, termed this policy as an appeasement of minority communalism for their votes at the cost of the majority right to govern India according to their Hindu ethos. During this period, the communal rhetoric was used to discriminate against the minorities and incite violence against them; around fifty major Hindu-Muslim riots took place from the 1967 Ranchi-Hatia riots to the 1997 Coimbatore riots. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first Minister of Home Affairs, suspected the loyalty of the Indian Muslims and removed all Muslim officers from important positions in his ministry.
Hate propaganda of the RSS is disseminated by its foot soldiers in media through national and local languages and then distributed in the streets of villages and cities throughout India. Sandesh, a Gujarati-language newspaper, has played a significant role in sensationalizing, twisting, mangling, and distorting the news to provoke anti-Muslim prejudices. On February 28, 2002, for example, a day after the Godhra incident, a Sandesh front-page report read: Avenge Blood with Blood.
It further repeatedly propagated that the Muslims were destroying their community through slaughtering cows and making Hindu girls elope. Beneath these organizations laid a vast institutional edifice of specialized, regional, and local wings to spread the message of hate and perpetuate violence.
The Hindu nationalists disagree with the concept of the Secular Republic and define it as a state based on an alien idea to rob the Hindus of their rights. They wished to construct the
Hindu rashtra (nation) and remodel India as a Hindu state, Bharat, where Hindu people and their ethos dominated the entire spectrum of national life. The resurrection of the Hindu way of life with Brahmans and their values as the essential source of inspiration for the construction of the
rashtra was the main plank of the Hindu nationalist ideology – Hindutva. It was argued that the outside invaders, first Muslims and later Christians, of Bharat, had diluted and destroyed the pure and original Hindu traditions and it was now the Hindu nationalists’ duty to restore them through the instrument of
Ram Rajya (Ram’s rule). Thus, the Hindu nationalists wish to mobilize the majority Hindu community on their projected historical injustices, and on this basis, demonize present-day highly socioeconomically marginalized minority religious communities. They considered both Christianity and Islam as non-Hindu religions whose holy places were outside India, and accordingly, it is the main reason that the followers of these religions look outside for emotional attachments. Since India is not a holy land for these religious minorities, their loyalty to India cannot be trusted. Furthermore, the Hindu nationalists argued that these non-Hindu minorities wanted to change the demographic balance in India, and in this regard, they were using financial incentives to convert poor Dalits to Christianity and Islam. Additionally, the Indian Muslims were increasing their population through polygamy:
Hum paanch, hamare pachees (we five, our twenty-five) was the slogan used to mock the Muslim community. It was argued that Congress had ruled India with just thirty percent votes and with this ratio of increasing population, the Indian Muslims would soon be in a position to elect a Muslim majority government in India. Similarly, the Hindu nationalists launched a sustained campaign against the Christian missionaries and their welfare activities, even Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu and her Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata were targeted. The anti-minorities campaign of the Hindu nationalists created a polarized environment that resulted in the demolition of Babri Masjid and many churches in Kandhamal, Karnataka, and Gujarat.
In the post-Masjid demolition period, the Indian government established the Srikrishna Commission to investigate the causes of communal violence; the Commission concluded that it was the result of a deliberate and systematic effort to incite violence against Muslims.
The RSS has evolved a very elaborate infrastructure of a specialized affiliated organization,
Sangh Parivar, to unify the majority Hindu community against the minorities in their comprehensive program for the construction of the Hindu nation. The
Sangh Parivar functioned as the institutional framework of hate; it preached hatred to the children and youth of the majority community against their vulnerable countrymen of the minorities. The top tier of the
Parivar consists of the political party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a religious wing, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a militant youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, and a student’s union, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). These are the organizations that have led the campaigns against the Indian secular constitution, minorities' rights, the Babri Masjid, Christian missionaries and churches, and the Hindunization of education through revising history books and coercing students to perform Hindu prayers in state-sponsored schools. In these textbooks, all the references to the minorities' contributions to the Indian civilization were omitted and the RSS anti-Muslim view was presented as the historic truth. Based on this constructed history, the VHP asserted that India was a Hindu country with only one pious religion of Rama and Krishna and any conversion from it was a sin. It further repeatedly propagated that the Muslims were destroying their community through slaughtering cows and making Hindu girls elope. Beneath these organizations laid a vast institutional edifice of specialized, regional, and local wings to spread the message of hate and perpetuate violence. It includes the Vidya Bharati (or the Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Siksha Sansthan – Indian knowledge), which was created to organize the educational activities of the RSS and its network of schools to produce a generation of committed Hindutva youth. Additionally, it has Ekal Vidyalaya (Foundation of Solo Schools) that function in rural and tribal areas. It also used night schools and Sanskar Kendras (cultural centers) to spread its message beyond regular school time. To completely penetrate the society, RSS has created a youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (Indian People Youth Front), and a similar wing is working for the women as well, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti (National Women Volunteers Committee). The Bajrang Dal has also created a violent women wing, the Durga Vahini (Army of Durga). In the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, the local Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM – Forum for Hindu Awakening), an offshoot of the Bajrang Dal, played the main role of mobilizing Hindu goons and committing acts of genocide.
Though the brand Modi represents nothing new in the Indian politics, rather a continuation of the capitalist reforms that were initiated under the Rajiv Gandhi period and perpetuation of the majoritarian rule with more ideological content of the Hindutva philosophy, but in the absence of any strong figure in the opposition, he has emerged as the dominant political personality.
Hate propaganda of the RSS is disseminated by its foot soldiers in media through national and local languages and then distributed in the streets of villages and cities throughout India.
Sandesh, a Gujarati-language newspaper, has played a significant role in sensationalizing, twisting, mangling, and distorting the news to provoke anti-Muslim prejudices. On February 28, 2002, for example, a day after the Godhra incident, a
Sandesh front-page report read: Avenge Blood with Blood. To train its members, the local wings of the RSS have regular
boudhik (intellectual) sessions where they teach their imagined history. In some of the sessions, the historical events are depicted in a dramatized form; here the members regularly enact the re-conquest of Kashmir through battles and demolition of Babri Masjid. The RSS and its
Sangh Parivar, through these activates, have created an environment of suspicion and distrust among the various communities of India where, with little provocation, communal violence can be staged. The Hindu nationalists’ campaign against the Babri Masjid had resulted in some of the major violent communal clashes. In the post-Masjid demolition period, the Indian government established the Srikrishna Commission to investigate the causes of communal violence; the Commission concluded that it was the result of a deliberate and systematic effort to incite violence against Muslims. The repeated communal violence highlighted the faultlines among the communities and helped the Hindu nationalists to increase their Hindu vote bank, its political wing, BJP, increased its representation in the legislature from two seats in 1984 to 85 in 1989, 120 in 1991 and 161 in 1996, with its percentage of votes rising from 7.7 percent to 20.3 percent. In 1998, it formed a coalition government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with 182 seats and 25.6 percent votes.
In 2014, BJP came to power for the first time in India, it won 282 seats and received 31 percent of the vote; its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won a total of 336 seats. This victory was attributed to the charismatic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi. Narendra Modi had started his career in the politics of Gujarat as a devout Hindu nationalist and a dedicated
pracharak of the RSS. As the Chief Minister of Gujarat state, he promoted the Hindutva polity through unifying and mobilizing all castes and classes of the Hindus under the banner of the
Hindu Rashtra against the Muslims and Christians. He presided over the pogrom of 2002 in which, allegedly, his administration cooperated with Hindu militants from Bajrang Dal, VHP, and RSS, in the killings of Indian Muslims. It was his hasty, irresponsible, and unsubstantiated statement after the Godhra incident which initiated the violence – he claimed that it was a terrorist attack by Pakistan’s intelligence agency and local Muslims. His aggressive Hindutva rhetoric elevated the BJP and
Sangh Parivar to their most forceful populist position. The RSS, which in the past avoided the promotion of any personality cult, decided to use his personality for political gains. He was branded as the defender of the Hindu faith and was projected as the Hindu
Hriday Samrat (King of Hindus’ Hearts) in the electoral campaigns. Though the brand Modi represents nothing new in the Indian politics, rather a continuation of the capitalist reforms that were initiated under the Rajiv Gandhi period and perpetuation of the majoritarian rule with more ideological content of the Hindutva philosophy, but in the absence of any strong figure in the opposition, he has emerged as the dominant political personality. The Hindu nationalists have used his personality and political power to advance their agenda. In his first term in power, they followed the strategy of soft Hindutva and avoided the implementation of core Hindu nationalists plan. In this period, the Hindu nationalists’ completed rewriting of the text and history books project of the Vajpayee government, providing generous funding to Hindutva institutions and appointed Hindu nationalists to all core positions, from the economy to education. The Hindu nationalists mainly promoted three programs in the soft Hindutva period,
Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad, and
Gau Raksha. In Ghar Wapsi (Coming Home), they wanted to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, the Indian Muslims perceived it as a program to erase their history and identity. To stop interfaith marriages, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS-Committee for the Hindu Renaissance) raised the slogan of
Love Jihad or Romeo
Jihad in which Muslim men were blamed for targeting Hindu women for conversion to Islam. The Bhartiya Gau Raksha Dal (Indian Cow Protection Organization) led a violent movement for the protection of the cow, with the patronage of the Modi government, they wanted to enforce a ban on slaughtering of cows and consumption of beef. In this violent campaign, cow vigilantes lynched 44 Muslims, seriously injured 280 Muslims, and destroyed over five thousand small businesses.
The final nail in the coffin was the hate speech of BJP politician, Kapil Mishra, that led to a communal clash in which 53 individuals lost their lives. This tragedy did not stop the Hindu communalists and they continued their hate campaign on social media and threatened to convert Shaheen Bagh into Jallianwala Bagh.
In a three-day conference in the city of Haridwar, 150 miles north of New Delhi, the Hindu nationalists are again making hate speeches to kill Muslims; the speakers of the conference asserted that two hundred of them should become soldiers and kill two million Muslims to protect their sanatana dharma (Hinduism). As usual, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his administration, and the police are silent on these threats of genocide to the Indian Muslims.
In their second term, BJP, under Narendra Modi, won 303 seats and received 37.36 percent of the votes and its NDA won 353 seats. This victory emboldened the Hindu nationalists and they decided to implement their core Hindu agenda, the Muslim Personal Law was amended through the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act 2019; the Indian Supreme Court was coerced to give the entire land of Babri Masjid to the VHP for the construction of Ram Janmabhoomi (Ram Mandir); the Citizenship Act, 1955 was amended on religious basis to exclude Muslim migrants from Indian citizenship through the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019; and Article 370 was amended and the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, through the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2021, was divided into two Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The CAA provoked a strong reaction from the Indian Muslims and their women staged protests in many cities, almost 291 sit-ins took place all over India. The most famous was of Shaheen Bagh in Delhi. The Modi government completely ignored the protesters and no official visited them, rather BJP Member of Parliament, Parvesh Verma, made a hateful and abusive speech. This encouraged some Hindu nationalists to attack the protesters by raising the slogan of Jai Shri Ram (Glory to Lord Rama);
even the Home Minister who earlier termed the Muslims as termites now threatened them with a shout of goli maaro (shoot them). The final nail in the coffin was the hate speech of BJP politician, Kapil Mishra, that led to a communal clash in which 53 individuals lost their lives. This tragedy did not stop the Hindu communalists and they continued their hate campaign on social media and threatened to convert Shaheen Bagh into Jallianwala Bagh. In a similar development, social media was used to degrade prominent Indian Muslim women; around 80 Muslim women were put for sale on an app called Sulli Deals with the caption, “Deals of the day.”
Recently, BJP is faced with a tough electoral contest in the state of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and hate speech is on the rise again. In a three-day conference in the city of Haridwar, 150 miles north of New Delhi, the Hindu nationalists are again making hate speeches to kill Muslims; the speakers of the conference asserted that two hundred of them should become soldiers and kill two million Muslims to protect their
sanatana dharma (Hinduism). As usual, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his administration, and the police are silent on these threats of genocide to the Indian Muslims.
This preaching of hate is changing India, its democracy, and relations with its largest minority, the Indian Muslims. The Hindu nationalists have transformed its sociopolitical culture and may be able to change the liberal secular polity as well; a very few politicians in India are now ready to preserve its secularism. The minorities are feeling very insecure; they are more likely to be under trial, detenu, and convicts, than Hindus. Under the BJP government, the number of communal violence incidents has increased while the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has argued that 60 percent of the arrests made were unjustified or unnecessary while 75 percent of the complaints are against the police. Simultaneously, the Dharma Jagran Samanvay Vibhag, an offshoot of the RSS, plans to reconvert thousands of Muslims and Christians back to Hinduism.
India, under the rule of BJP-RSS, has turned hate speech into one of its primary tools to incite violence against the Indian Muslims and other minorities. The government of India is systematically cornering its minorities and paving the way for a genocide. The rise of the Hindu nationalists...
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The writer is on the faculty of Quaid-i-Azam University (School of Politics and International Relations).
E-mail:
mujeebir@yahoo.com
The RSS has evolved a very elaborate infrastructure of a specialized affiliated organization, Sangh Parivar, to unify the majority Hindu community against the minorities in their comprehensive program for the construction of the Hindu nation. The Sangh Parivar functioned as the institutional framework of hate; it preached hatred to the children and youth of the majority community against their vulnerable countrymen of the minorities. The top tier of the Parivar consists of the political party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a religious wing, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a militant youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, and a student’s union, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). These are the organizations that have led the campaigns against the Indian secular constitution, minorities' rights, the Babri Masjid, Christian missionaries and churches, and the Hindunization of education through revising history books and coercing students to perform Hindu prayers in state-sponsored schools. In these textbooks, all the references to the minorities' contributions to the Indian civilization were omitted and the RSS anti-Muslim view was presented as the historic truth. Based on this constructed history, the VHP asserted that India was a Hindu country with only one pious religion of Rama and Krishna and any conversion from it was a sin. It further repeatedly propagated that the Muslims were destroying their community through slaughtering cows and making Hindu girls elope. Beneath these organizations laid a vast institutional edifice of specialized, regional, and local wings to spread the message of hate and perpetuate violence. It includes the Vidya Bharati (or the Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Siksha Sansthan – Indian knowledge), which was created to organize the educational activities of the RSS and its network of schools to produce a generation of committed Hindutva youth. Additionally, it has Ekal Vidyalaya (Foundation of Solo Schools) that function in rural and tribal areas. It also used night schools and Sanskar Kendras (cultural centers) to spread its message beyond regular school time. To completely penetrate the society, RSS has created a youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (Indian People Youth Front), and a similar wing is working for the women as well, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti (National Women Volunteers Committee). The Bajrang Dal has also created a violent women wing, the Durga Vahini (Army of Durga). In the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, the local Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM – Forum for Hindu Awakening), an offshoot of the Bajrang Dal, played the main role of mobilizing Hindu goons and committing acts of genocide. 
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