Hindu community and their faith mocked by anti-Hindu Indian politician in Kerala
Kerala, India 
18 February, 2026
Case Summary
On 19 February 2026, in Kerala, the Hindu faith and community were mocked by General Education Minister V Sivankutty, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) politician, through a degrading social media post amidst debate over the upcoming film "The Kerala Story 2: Goes Beyond", which portrayed Hindu women as victims of religiously motivated hate crimes in interfaith relationships with Muslim men. In a Facebook post, Sivankutty wrote in Malayalam that while others might choose to "eat cow dung," Keralites would eat whatever they preferred, including beef, mutton, and chicken. He stated, "When you eat cow dung, we in Kerala will eat whatever we like: beef, mutton, chicken, and so on." The comment quickly drew online attention and intensified the political atmosphere around the film's release. Earlier that day, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan posted a similar remark on the social media platform X against the movie. He described the film as "hate-mongering" driven by a communal agenda. He rejected the suffering of Hindu victims depicted and labelled it a political narrative containing blatant lies. Notably, The Kerala Story 2 was a sequel to The Kerala Story, which documented mass conversions, brainwashing, and harassment of Hindu victims by Muslim perpetrators and Islamic State recruitment. The original won two 71st National Film Awards: Best Director for Sudipto Sen and Best Cinematography for Prasantanu Mohapatra. Directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah under Sunshine Pictures, the sequel was scheduled for theatrical release on 27 February 2026. According to the makers, the sequel featured three parallel narratives of Hindu women facing coercion and religious conversion after relationships with Muslim men. The storylines spanned Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Kerala.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been selected under the primary category - Hate Speech against Hindus. The subcategory selected is- Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus, with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem from inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith; therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. This case represented a blatant instance of religiously motivated hate speech, as General Education Minister V Sivankutty viciously denigrated the Hindu community and mocked their sacred faith by sneering that Hindus eat "cow dung" while Keralites proudly consume beef, mutton, and chicken. For Hindus, the cow is a sacred animal honoured as a revered maternal figure; its byproducts like dung, urine, and milk hold profound religious sanctity in rituals from purification ceremonies to devotional offerings, embodying generations of spiritual reverence and non-violent harmony with nature. Sivankutty's cruel jibe deliberately trampled this deep-rooted devotion by labelling Hindus "cow dung eaters", a notorious anti-Hindu slur long weaponised to dehumanise and vilify them, equating their piety with filth while exalting beef-eating as superior, a calculated provocation designed to wound the soul of every devotee who cherishes the cow's holiness. By gloating over consuming beef, directly defiling Hinduism's core tenet of cow protection, he bared his malicious intent to humiliate and provoke, igniting religious sentiments with contemptuous precision. This venomous ridicule, steeped in an infamous slur that reduces sacred practices to grotesque mockery, exposed his festering hatred for Hindu traditions, transforming a casual post into a public assault on their identity and Hindu beliefs, unequivocally marking it as hate speech fuelled by religious animosity. The timing amplified this hatred, as Sivankutty unleashed his barb amid buzz over "The Kerala Story 2", a film exposing brutal crimes against Hindu women in interfaith relationships, lured by Muslim men, sexually exploited, and coerced into conversion due to their faith, just on the same day as Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's attack on the movie. By deriding Hindus as "cow dung eaters" during this charged moment, he sought to fan flames of division, piling scorn on a community already highlighting their daughters' torment while shielding the very prejudices the film condemned. His words did not merely mock; they dehumanised Hindu suffering, belittling Hindu faith and rituals tied to cow sanctity as laughable backwardness to undermine the movie's urgent truths about targeted violence. This deliberate alignment with denialism revealed a unified front of contempt, where he gloated over beef to drown out cries of Hindu women ensnared in religiously profiled traps, cementing his outburst as hate speech that revelled in Hindu pain and emboldened aggressors against their faith. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate speech, it is added to the hate crime database of the tracker.
Case Status
Unknown
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
State and Establishment
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
