US rights group condemns BJP leaders’ anti-Muslim hate speeches in India
Islamabad: Dangerous Speech Project, a rights group based in the United States, has raised concerns as leaders of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) continue to make hate speeches targeting Muslims during election rallies across India.
According to Kashmir Media Service, in a statement, the group specifically mentioned the controversial remarks made by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Rajasthan’s Banswara during the election rally on 21 April in which he had called Muslims “infiltrators” and “the people who have many children”.
“This clearly demonstrates a hallmark of dangerous speech that we call ‘Threat to Group Integrity or Purity’. It’s a tactic used by speakers to assert that members of another group can cause irreparable damage to the integrity or purity of one’s own group,” the statement said.
It added: “In his speech, Modi frames Muslims as ‘infiltrators’, who seek to steal the ‘hard-earned money’ of Modi’s audience, in a classic example of this hallmark.”
The group pointed out that hate speeches targeting Muslims have risen dramatically.
Quoting the observations made by one of its researchers, Vishnu Porithiyil, the statement asserted: “India has become a de facto Hindu theocracy, where institutional protections for democracy have been permanently damaged and made subservient to the interests of fundamentalists in power.” This context is crucial in understanding how the overwhelming amount of hateful and dangerous speech spread by Modi and his party goes largely unchecked, it said.
The group also mentions a report by the Washington-based group India Hate Lab, a sister organisation of Hindutva Watch, which documented 668 cases of hate speeches in 2023. It specifically mentioned the case of Telangana BJP legislator T. Raja Singh who had made the highest number of hate speeches while 75% of the speeches were made in the BJP-ruled states.
