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India’s Hindu-Muslim hate crimes are being tracked, by self-exiles Modi’s BJP want silenced
- From their bases in North America and Europe, Hindutva Watch’s members say they want to remedy India’s ‘clear vacuum’ of reporting on hate crimes
- The multicultural group of social-media sleuths are now being targeted by Modi’s Hindu-nationalist BJP – as they warn India faces its ‘darkest days’
In Nuh district, a mere 90-minute drive from the nation’s parliament, cars were set ablaze, shops were ransacked and the crackle of gunfire filled the air. By Sunday last week, six people had been killed – right on New Delhi’s doorstep.
![Burnt-out vehicles are seen in Haryana’s Nuh district this month following communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims. Photo: Reuters](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2023/08/12/4de3b911-130b-4e1b-8392-f2d420562308_e2077168.jpg)
The scoop marked another in a long line of hate-crime exposés by the group, which calls itself Hindutva Watch (HW) in reference to the Hindu-nationalist ideology that seeks to make Hindu culture dominant throughout multicultural India.
For two years, HW has chronicled unreported hate crimes, speeches and violence against India’s religious minorities – including those being committed in remote towns and villages far away from the mainstream media spotlight.
The notices sent to HW by X, and reviewed by This Week in Asia, set forth Indian government authorities’ insistence that content shared by the group be taken down for “violating India’s Information Technology Act”, without providing further details.
This Week in Asia reached out to X for a comment, but did not receive a response.
In June, police in the western state of Maharashtra filed a complaint against HW, accusing the group of “promoting enmity between different religious groups” and “injuring or defiling a place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class” after it posted a video showing a Hindu nationalist giving a speech calling for Hindus to “unite” to protect Hindu families, amid tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the area.
The charges carry a maximum term of five years in prison, in addition to a fine.
“The Modi government has declared a war on us,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, HW’s Washington DC-based founder. “We are staring at a suspension or our account being withheld in India.”
![Riot police from India’s Rapid Action Force patrol along a street in Nuh on August 2 following the deadly communal clashes. Photo: AFP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2023/08/12/d8281d3e-c032-49a9-8354-c51089931d83_a789cb1a.jpg)
Hate-crime information ‘vacuum’
But it’s becoming ever harder to track religious hate crimes in India. Two databases that had attempted to do so – one run by the Hindustan Times newspaper and the other, Hate Crime Watch, started by data-focused publication IndiaSpend – stopped operating in 2017 and 2019, respectively. Both had come under sustained criticism from Hindu nationalists, with Modi’s ruling BJP reportedly unhappy at their tracking efforts.
“The databases have been shut down and the mainstream media has largely abandoned their role in highlighting hate crimes and the whole Islamophobic ecosystem that operates behind it,” said Samar Halarnkar, founder and editor of civil-liberties news website Article14 and formerly editor of the Hate Crime Watch tracker before it closed.
Halarnkar said there was now “a clear vacuum” when it came to reporting on hate crimes in India. “Also, if no one is tracking them, it’s easy for the government to dismiss them as isolated incidents,” he said.
If I was in India, I would have been behind bars right now
HW’s Naik cited this lack of readily available information as a major driver behind his group’s efforts to create “a wall between the government’s denial of the persecution of minorities and the reality” on the ground.
Documenting hate crimes “runs contrary to the government’s narrative that centres around this denial of the persecution”, he said, further asserting that “journalistic accuracy” was at the core of HW’s work.
Naik said every post the group puts out needs to have been confirmed by two separate sources of information, with the team monitoring the social-media accounts of hundreds of known Hindu nationalists across different states. Often, the hate speech and violence is live-streamed: something other outlets tend to overlook.
“We have also developed a network of people across India who send us videos and photos of such events – including, often, local journalists who say their organisations won’t let them report on the incident,” Naik said.
![Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government crackdown on critical media outlets spurred Naik to move to the US. Photo: AFP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2023/08/12/338aa7d0-e96c-4b2f-b903-682405bb75c5_b3671c9a.jpg)
Modi’s media crackdown
“If I was in India, I would have been behind bars right now,” said Naik, explaining why he had chosen to establish HW in the US.
His team – “all Indians, an equal mix of Hindus and Muslims, who deeply care about what is happening in India” – choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution and are all based outside the country.
But physical distance isn’t always enough. Members of Naik’s family back in Jammu and Kashmir have repeatedly been “hounded” by local police, he said, while HW’s X account is routinely targeted by organised groups of Hindu nationalists who seek to get it taken down by mass reporting alleged abuses.
And now with the police complaint, plus stiff government opposition, Naik knows the road ahead will not be easy.
His team are braced for the worst – an enforced shut down of their X account, with its more than 71,000 followers. Naik said he plans to mount a legal challenge through the US courts if Musk’s social media company takes any action against it.
The team would carry on regardless, he said, and continue with its work of building a database of religious hate crimes in India. HW is slated to release its first-ever research report soon on the broader trends surrounding violent Hindu nationalism, even as it regularly publishes video evidence of hate crimes from across the country.
“These are some of the darkest days in the history of India,” Naik said. “We need to archive these visuals closely.”
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