Mourners carry the body of Amir Khan, 30, who was killed by a Hindu mob during anti-Muslim riots in north-east Delhi on 29 February 2020. The proliferation of online hate speech in India has resulted in a wave of anti-Muslim attacks in recent years. Amir’s body and that of his brother, Hashim Ali, 19, were recovered from a drain.
Yati Narsinghanand, the head priest of a powerful temple in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, first made national headlines in 2019 when a local TV station devoted a news item to the weapons training he conducted on temple grounds for Hindu youth and boys.
His dramatic rise as a poster boy for ‘Hindutva’, India’s reigning anti-Muslim political ideology, was fuelled by the inflammatory videos he subsequently began sharing on social media platforms, where they garnered millions of views. In December 2021, Narsinghanand was the main organiser behind a religious assembly known as Dharam Sansad in Haridwar, an Uttar Pradesh city, where along with other leading priests, he openly called for the genocide of Muslims.
Narsinghanand may be one of the most conspicuous hatemongers, but there are scores of religious preachers in India who stoke hate against minorities online. Muslims, which account for 14.2 per cent of India’s population according to a 2011 census, making them India’s largest minority, have especially been targeted.
Just across the border, in Pakistan, online hate speech has also been flourishing. Here Hindus, who form just 1.9 per...
Read Full Story: https://www.equaltimes.org/across-south-asia-online-hate
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