Bengaluru, India – As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a grand Hindu temple within the northern Uttar Pradesh state on January 22, a crowd of about 100,000 devotees gathered at a mausoleum almost 2,000km (1,242 miles) away.
The sombre congregation at Mulabagilu, a small city within the Kolar district of the southern state of Karnataka, was known as to mark the Urs (demise anniversary) of the Twelfth-century Sufi saint Hazrat Baba Haider Ali, revered primarily by Muslims but additionally by different communities within the space. A procession taken by the city, about 100km (62 miles) from the state capital Bengaluru, is the spotlight of the annual five-day occasion.
Shaikh Jaffer Sadiq, who runs a resort in Mulabagilu, and his buddies had been making ready for the procession this 12 months after they realized a couple of photograph of the mausoleum – known as a dargah in Urdu and Persian – morphed with photos of the Hindu god Ram and a saffron flag doing the rounds on social media.
“Considered one of my buddies advised me concerning the social media submit which had angered the Muslim group. It was a deliberate try to harm the feelings of Muslims,” Sadiq, 39, advised Al Jazeera. A younger Hindu man was accused of being behind the incident.
To defuse mounting tensions, Sadiq and his buddies met the members of the mausoleum’s administration and suggested them to file a police criticism in opposition to the accused man. “After a police criticism was filed by the dargah members, the Hindu boy was known as to the police station and given a strict warning earlier than being let off,” he stated. The police made the accused delete the social media submit.
The incident made Sadiq, born and raised in Mulabagilu, bear in mind a distinct, extra peaceable time in his hometown, when Hindus and Muslims lived collectively in obvious concord. That spirit of coexistence, he says, has cracked lately with the rise of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP), particularly after the right-wing occasion returned to energy nationally in 2019.
As India votes once more in an extended drawn-out common election, Sadiq needed to do what he may to fight hate speech and makes an attempt to polarise the society. Elements of Karnataka voted on April 26, and the remainder of the state goes to the polls on Tuesday.
In February, Sadiq went to Bengaluru to attend a workshop of Hate Speech Beda, or Marketing campaign Towards Hate Speech, a collective based in 2020 by a bunch of attorneys, teachers and activists to trace, establish, catalogue and struggle incidents of hate speech.
The collective approaches authorities, urging them to behave on their complaints. It additionally does advocacy and conducts workshops to coach individuals in figuring out and reporting hate speech.
Its members know they face an uphill battle – particularly in a state that has witnessed a spike in inter-religious rigidity, and the place the BJP has been accused of pushing Islamophobic tropes through the nation’s ongoing election.
How the collective works
When Sadiq reached the workshop held in a decrepit Bengaluru constructing, he noticed about 50 different attendees huddled on plastic chairs in a corridor. A big display on one of many partitions learn: “Methods to struggle hate speech?”
Hate Speech Beda representatives kicked off the day with a quick tutorial and panel dialogue on what hate speech is, who spreads it and why, the way it drives non secular tensions and its social, political and financial influence on Muslims in addition to different marginalised communities.
Among the many viewers had been members of varied rights and Muslim organisations in Karnataka and different Indian states, together with Gujarat, the place official data say greater than 1,000 individuals, most of them Muslims, had been killed in a days-long bloodbath when Modi was the state chief minister in 2002. Estimates by unbiased teams recommend near 2,000 individuals had been killed within the riots. Modi has denied any accountability for the killings and India’s Supreme Courtroom has exonerated him.
“If not stopped, hate will disintegrate the nation,” stated Mohammed Yusuf Kanni of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Karnataka, a outstanding Muslim organisation, as he addressed the workshop.
Mujahid Nafees, the convener of the Gujarat-based Minority Coordination Committee, stated that as hate spreads, so does ghettoisation. He cited the instance of Juhapura, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest metropolis, the place the group grew to become additional ghettoised after the 2002 violence.
Nafees lives in Juhapura. “Folks desire to remain in ghettos for his or her security. It has its benefits but it surely pushes for an additional marginalisation of Muslims,” he stated.
Mamatha Yajaman, a ladies’s rights activist in Karnataka, stated hate speech disproportionately impacts ladies, particularly from weak Muslim and Dalit communities. Dalits fall on the backside of India’s complicated caste hierarchy and have confronted centuries of discrimination.
The collective insisted that one of the simplest ways to struggle hate was to method the police and register felony instances in opposition to accused people. Individuals had been briefed about varied sections of the penal code underneath which instances associated to hate speech might be filed.
An hour earlier than they broke for lunch – a easy meal of rice, sambar and combined vegetable curry – the members cut up into teams to brainstorm concepts and processes to fight hate speech.
Sadiq advised Al Jazeera he joined the workshop to know the legal guidelines involving hate crimes higher.
“We’re odd individuals. Our life revolves round incomes an honest livelihood and taking care of our households. The authorities ought to struggle hate speech and hate crimes. However I can’t sit quiet and see my group being victimised solely as a result of we’re a minority,” he stated.
Activist Karibisappa M from Davanagere, town headquarters of the district by the identical identify, about 260km (161 miles) from Bengaluru, stated the rise in non secular polarisation in his district had “astonished” him.
No less than 18 incidents of communal violence had been recorded there between 2019 and 2022, in line with state authorities information. General, the state recorded 163 instances of such violence in the identical interval, when the BJP ruled it. The Congress Get together, nationally within the opposition, returned to energy in Karnataka in 2023.
“Davanagere has grow to be a communal hotbed. As a conscientious citizen, I’ve usually joined protest rallies denouncing Hindu-Muslim tensions. I didn’t know what else to do till I got here to know concerning the Hate Speech Beda. I got here right here to seek out higher methods to take care of the menace,” he advised Al Jazeera.
Why was the collective fashioned?
Hate Speech Beda member Vinay Sreenivasa stated the collective got here into being within the aftermath of nationwide protests in opposition to a controversial citizenship legislation handed in direction of the tip of 2019 by the Modi authorities, and a hate marketing campaign in opposition to Muslims through the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Tens of hundreds of individuals hit the streets to oppose the passage of the Citizenship Modification Act (CAA), which fast-tracks Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian refugees who got here to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh earlier than 2015 as a result of “non secular persecution” in these Muslim-majority international locations.
Regardless of critics saying the legislation, by holding Muslims out of its purview, violated India’s secular structure, it was enforced in March 2024, forward of the election. Many Muslims worry the legislation, coupled with a Nationwide Register of Residents proposed by the BJP, might be used to additional marginalise them.
In February 2020, Hindu mobs within the capital New Delhi attacked the anti-CAA protesters, resulting in clashes through which greater than 50 individuals, most of them Muslims, had been killed. Dozens of mosques and houses had been torched in one of many worst non secular riots within the metropolis in a long time.
Days after the riots, the world was within the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tablighi Jamaat, a outstanding Muslim missionary motion, was accused by Hindu teams and a bit of mainstream Indian media of intentionally spreading the virus, resulting in the arrest of a number of members of its members. Muslim distributors promoting greens and fruits on roadsides had been attacked for allegedly spitting on their produce to unfold the virus.
It was in opposition to this backdrop that the Bengaluru residents fashioned a collective that challenged hate. Right now, Hate Speech Beda has almost 120 members in its WhatsApp group, at the least 15 of them volunteering every day. It additionally coordinates with different progressive organisations and grassroots teams throughout Karnataka.
Lawyer Manavi Atri, a member of Hate Speech Beda, stated the preliminary days had been difficult.
“We had been new to the duty and didn’t know what to anticipate. Regardless of being attorneys, we had not engaged in such instances earlier than. There was a level of uncertainty concerning the type of aid we’d get. We needed to be affected person with the method,” she stated.
Among the many first instances the collective took up was the media vilification marketing campaign in opposition to Tablighi Jamaat. No less than three information channels had been reprimanded and fined by the authorities following the Beda’s complaints in opposition to them.
“Such instances take months. As soon as we file a criticism, we doggedly observe them up with authorities over telephone calls and emails,” stated Shilpa Prasad, additionally a lawyer and Hate Speech Beda member. She added that they offer elaborate submissions for arguments and objections when the instances attain the courtroom.
Atri stated the collective has filed a couple of dozen complaints with the police and different regulatory our bodies this 12 months. Amongst them was a case involving Hindu right-wing teams and a neighborhood information channel.
In February, the Hindu teams alleged {that a} nurse in a authorities hospital in Karnataka’s Kalburgi district had forcefully transformed a Hindu affected person to Christianity. A mob barged into the home of the lady, assaulted her and hurled casteist slurs at her. Movies of the assault had been run on a neighborhood channel, which additionally accused the nurse of spiritual conversion.
“The channel didn’t trouble to confirm details. It didn’t converse to the lady or her neighbours. The channel merely echoed the voice of the right-wing teams. By doing so, it fanned communal tensions between Hindus and Christians,” Atri advised Al Jazeera.
Atri stated the “largest wrestle” for the collective is to persuade the police to file a proper report (known as first info report or FIR) in instances involving hate speech. “We now have to persuade the police to take up the instances, which is unlucky,” she stated.
‘Victims of hate’
Karnataka is the solely southern Indian state the place the Hindu nationalist BJP has been capable of make important inroads, forming its first-ever authorities there in 2007. The occasion’s critics say that since then, the state – in any other case an financial powerhouse that’s the capital of India’s info expertise, biotech and startup ecosystems – has witnessed a surge in hate speech and assaults.
In the direction of the tip of 2021, the then BJP authorities in Karnataka banned feminine Muslim college students from carrying the hijab inside school rooms. A number of Hindu college students staged rallies to assist the ban, which stays in place even underneath the present Congress authorities, regardless of new Chief Minister Ok Siddaramaiah saying that it might be revoked.
Addressing the Beda workshop in Bengaluru, a 50-year-old Christian lawyer from coastal Karnataka – a BJP stronghold – stated hate campaigns by Hindu teams have ” created an environment of worry” within the area. He didn’t need to reveal his identify for worry of reprisal.
“I’ve been bodily attacked by right-wing goons and trolled on social media for my opinions. I desire to work quietly,” stated the lawyer who works for a kid rights organisation, which he says shall be “unfairly focused if I converse brazenly and unabashedly in opposition to the BJP’s communal politics”.
However, he added, “we will’t let our kids grow to be victims of hate”.
BJP spokesman Narendra Rangappa, an orthopaedic surgeon by career, rejected allegations that the occasion supplied tacit assist to hate speech for political beneficial properties. “It’s a political narrative formed by the Congress in opposition to us,” he advised Al Jazeera.
“We by no means assist hate speech or crime in opposition to any group, faith, caste or gender. Calling us hatemongers is an insult to Indian voters who’ve elected the BJP to energy twice since 2014,” he stated.
Rangappa added that if any BJP chief was charged with fanning non secular hatred, “the legislation ought to take its course as we don’t assist such behaviour”.
“In reality, our occasion’s motto is encapsulated in PM Modi’s widespread slogan: Sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas [unity for all, development for all, trust of all],” he stated.
However as not too long ago as Might 4, the state BJP posted an animated video on X claiming that Muslims, backed by the Congress, had been plotting to take over authorities advantages supplied to historically marginalised caste teams.
ಎಚ್ಚರ.. ಎಚ್ಚರ.. ಎಚ್ಚರ..! pic.twitter.com/Pr75QHf4lI
— BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) Might 4, 2024
And a report by the Folks’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) in January stated at the least 84 situations of spiritual battle occurred in Karnataka’s coastal districts final 12 months, 44 of them listed underneath hate speech.
In February, a report by the India Hate Lab, a United States-based analysis group, documented about 700 hate speeches within the nation in 2023.
None of that is stunning, political analyst and creator N Ok Mohan Ram advised Al Jazeera. He blamed the BJP and its politics for deepening “hatred and division”.
“A sustained damaging marketing campaign in opposition to any group, just like the one in opposition to Muslims by right-wing teams, is disastrous for the nation because it results in marginalisation, dehumanisation and violence in opposition to the focused group,” stated Ram, who can also be the creator of Alienation of Muslims within the twenty first Century.
The members of Hate Speech Beda say they won’t surrender. Throughout the Bengaluru workshop, Atri was nursing a leg damage from a street accident. She wanted a walker to maneuver round. However the ache, she careworn, was value enduring.
“Preventing hate is a critical job and it will possibly’t cease,” she stated.
