India’s religious minorities have faced a “staggering” rise in hate speech over the past year, including from top leaders of the ruling Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to a report released Monday.
The number of hate speech incidents targeting Muslim and Christian minorities rose to 1,165 in 2024 from 668 the year prior, a 74% increase, according to a report from the Washington-based research group, India Hate Lab. The majority of these, around 98%, targeted Muslims, either explicitly or alongside Christians.
“Hate speech in India in 2024 followed an alarming trajectory, deeply intertwined with the ideological ambitions of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the broader Hindu nationalist movement,” the report said.
Modi, who won a third term in last year’s elections, has long been accused by critics of fueling religious tensions and inciting violence against Muslims and other minorities since assuming power more than a decade ago.
His Hindu nationalist party has sought to turn India – a nation constitutionally bound to secularism – into a Hindu rashtra, or homeland for the Hindu majority, critics say, at the expense of the millions who profess minority faiths.
Modi and his BJP have repeatedly said they do not discriminate against minority groups.
The BJP’s national spokesperson, Jaiveer Shergill, condemned the report on Monday, saying it was published to malign India’s image.
According to the report, hate speech last year reinforced “longstanding Hindu nationalist tropes” such as the portrayal of Muslims and Christians as “outsiders,” “foreigners” and “invaders” who lack a legitimate claim to belonging in India, the report said.
It found that the BJP organized around 30% of last year’s hate speech events, a nearly six-fold increase from the year prior, with its party leaders delivering 452 hate speeches, a 350% rise from the previous year. The majority were recorded during the general election campaign.
Modi has in the past been accused of making Islamophobic remarks in speeches on the campaign trail.
“These high-profile hate speeches (by Modi and powerful regional leaders) were further amplified and reinforced by an arsenal of local BJP leaders, Hindu far-right organizations, and religious figures, who spread similar rhetoric at community and grassroots levels,” the report found.
Muslims make up roughly 200 million of India’s 1.4 billion population, with the population of Christians at roughly 27 million.
Under Modi’s leadership, Hindu nationalists have been appointed to top positions in key government institutions, giving them the power to make sweeping changes to legislation that rights groups say unfairly target Muslims. Textbooks have been rewritten to downplay the history of India’s former Islamic rulers, cities and streets with Mughal-era names renamed and Muslim properties have been demolished by authorities for illegal encroachment on government land and as punishment for alleged rioting.
In 2019, Modi removed the special autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority state – bringing it under the direct control of New Delhi. That same year, his administration passed a controversial citizenship law that excluded Muslim migrants, sparking deadly riots.
India prohibits hate speech under several sections of its penal code, including a section that criminalizes “deliberate and malicious acts” intended to insult religious beliefs.
However, some experts say hate speech has proliferated in India as a result of the judiciary’s reluctance to recognize hate speech offenses.
Anas Tanwir, a lawyer and founder of the Indian Civil Liberties Union, said the judiciary has failed to take concrete action against hate speech “despite clear prohibitions under various laws in India.”
The India Hate Lab, a project under the Washington, DC-based think tank Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), releases annual data on hate speech in the world’s largest democracy. They define hate speech by the United Nations framework which looks at any kind of communication in speech, writing or behavior that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language based on a person’s religion.