Incitement to violence / Hate

An apology has come from the Gopalakrishna Temple Trust in Tekkar village of Belthangady taluk in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, to Muslims who were hurt by the alleged hate speech made by Belthangady MLA Harish Poonja during a temple programme on May 3, The Hindu reported.

https://thewire.in/communalism/karnataka-temple-trust-issues-apology-to-muslims-after-bjp-mlas-inflammatory-speech 

Poonja, an MLA of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had reportedly delivered a provocative speech during the temple’s Brahmakalashotsava function in which he allegedly blamed a section of the Muslims for damaging some tube lights put up by the organising committee of the event. 

15/05/2025

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kunwar Vijay Shah on Thursday (May 15) moved the Supreme Court challenging the Madhya Pradesh high court order directing action against him over his remarks on Colonel Sofiya Qureshi. https://thewire.in/communalism/high-court-orders-fir-against-mp-minister-over-derogatory-remarks-against-col-sofiya-qureshi 

The high court had ordered a police case to be filed urgently against the Madhya Pradesh cabinet minister over his recent derogatory remark against Colonel Qureshi, who held a series of media briefings on Operation Sindoor last week.

A division bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Anuradha Shukla on Wednesday (May 14) initiated a suo motu case against Shah, calling his remarks against the Colonel “dangerous”.

15/05/2025

For the past few years, the ruling establishment and right-wing organizations have been brazenly and openly carrying on the politics of caste/religious hatred. Hate speech, religious slogans, caste/religious or violence are used at capital level. Most of the participants are completely surprised. No action is taken against them. The only objective is to destroy differences of any kind. Even if the differences are based on ethnic/religious issues, they are being twisted that way. Apart from this, new laws like anti-conversion law, public safety law etc. have been created.
For the last few months, rallies organized by Sakal Hindu Samaj, near the airport, Ram Navami Mirvanuk and Nitesh Rane and other persons have been making hate speeches. There would have been religious violence in Malad during Eid and during the inauguration of Ayodhya temple last year, there would have been Meera Roadwar violence.
Similarly, incidents of hate speech and violence have occurred on a large scale in Maharashtra, Nagpur, Malvan, Parbhani etc. People's houses and shops are being destroyed illegally using bulldozers. The police do not take any action against the gathering and they are given complete freedom to resort to violence. The situation is getting worse day by day in terms of ethnic/religious polarization, violence and discrimination. On the other hand, by changing the law or by the decision of the Supreme Court to ban further demonstrations against the students of institutions like TISS, Kunal Kamrachya case and Azad Maidan, the democratic way of showing protest has come to be restricted. Many examples can be given but this is not the purpose of the appeal.
After the brutal massacre in Pahalgam, Hindutva forces are using power or influence to create more Islamophobia - leading to violence against Muslims in Mumbai and Maharashtra in general.

Gayatri Singh, Sitaram Shelar,

Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh accounted for 47% of all hate speech events across the country last year. https://thewire.in/communalism/74-rise-in-hate-speech-in-2024-bjp-and-its-allies-behind-most-report 

f the 1,165 recorded instances of anti-minority hate speech, 98.5% targeted the Muslim community either explicitly or alongside Christians, while nearly 10% targeted Christians either explicitly or alongside Muslims, the research group said in a report published on Monday (February 10).

Nearly 80% of the hate speech events took place in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), or in Union Territories where the police and public order is under the BJP-led Union government. In contrast, the opposition-ruled states accounted for 20% of hate speech events last year.

11/02/2025