There has, in the recent past, been a debate as to whether the persecution of Hindus is best defined by the suffix “phobia” or “misia” – which is to say – should Hindus be using the word “Hinduphobia” or “Hindumisia” to define their historical and ongoing persecution based on their religious identity. This is, by no means, a trivial debate. Semantics and linguistic accuracy are always of paramount importance. We believe that Hinduphobia most accurately defines the historical and ongoing persecution of Hindus in the traditional meaning of the words, the semantic change that the word ‘phobia’ has undergone over the years and also, if one considers the psychological relationship between fear and hatred.
When we analyse hate crimes, there are 3 basic emotional components which lead up to hate crimes – fear, hate and aversion.
The word “phobia” used as a suffix encompasses all three psychological states, even in the traditional meaning of the word, disregarding the semantic change the word itself has undergone over the years.
The traditional definition of ‘phobia’ according to Merriam-Webster is “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation”. The noun-combining form of ‘phobia’ – which means phobia used as a suffix along with a different noun to make one word – changes the meaning to include exaggerated fear, intolerance or aversion.
Aversion in and of itself means strong dislike and ‘hate’ as a noun or a verb means a strong dislike as well.
Therefore, in the traditional meaning of the word, ‘phobia’ as a noun-combining word is equally valid when we talk about religiously motivated hate crimes driven by fear, hate, animosity or aversion.
As for the psychological reasoning for considering the noun “phobia” to mean hate as well as fear – it is well established that hate is a secondary emotion, the primary being fear. Hate is a derivative with fear being the root/primary emotion driving hatred.
Semantic changes hold profound importance in the linguistic world. There are 5 broad kinds of semantic changes – narrowing (self-explanatory), broadening (self-explanatory), amelioration (when a negative term changes to have positive connotations), pejoration (when a positive term changes to have negative connotations), and semantic reclamation (when an oppressed people reclaim a word previously used as a pejorative against them).
The most appropriate type of semantic change that the word ‘phobia’ has gone through is broadening. Broadening is the process in which the meaning of a word becomes more generalised over time. In other words, the word/phrase can be used in more contexts than it could originally. This is sometimes referred to as semantic generalisation.
The semantic change that the word ‘phobia’ has gone through in and of itself (without the definition change when used as a combining noun) has generalized the meaning of the word, from the narrow medical definition of an anxiety disorder driven out of fear alone. Phobia has now generally come to be an acceptable term for any behaviour driven by fear, hate, animosity or aversion.
The semantic change is evident from even the context in which it is used to describe different kind of identity-driven crimes. Homophobia has widely come to mean prejudice against the LGBT community – that prejudice can be born out of fear, aversion or hatred (a secondary emotion of fear). Islamophobia widely means fear and hate of Islam/Muslims.
Misia, on the other hand, comes from the ancient Greek word Misos and is fairly new in terms of usage. Misia also limits the definition to ‘hatred’ alone, not taking into account aversion, prejudice and subversion.
For that reason, the Hinduphobia Tracker has decided to stick to the term ‘Hinduphobia’ as opposed to ‘Hindumisia’.
Further, as a group/entity, Gavishti Foundation or Team Hinduphobia Tracker is not principally against the usage of the term “Hindumisia”. If some wants to use ‘Hindumisia’ for their own efforts/documentation, team Hinduphobia Tracker is by no means delegitimizing the usage.
This is true. ‘Love Jihad’ is one of the most searched terms as far as the hate crime database is concerned, however, Hinduphobia Tracker has not used the term ‘love jihad’ to define this category of religiously motivated hate crimes against women. Hinduphobia Tracker, however, does document these cases under the primary category ‘crimes against women in relationship and other sexual crimes’.
The term ‘love jihad’ was first officially used by the Kerala High Court while rejecting the anticipatory bail of two Muslims from the Popular Front of India (now a banned terror outfit) Shahan Sha A and Sirajudeen M in 2009. In the case, the two were accused of several crimes including unnatural sex and forcing one Hindu and one Christian girl to convert to Islam after trapping the Hindu girl in a relationship. The judge had asked if there is a campaign called ‘love jihad or Romeo jihad’, observing that “Every citizen of India is entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion as enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution of India. This right does not extend to the right to compel a person professing a religion to convert to another religion. Compulsion is alien to the right conferred under Article 25 of the Constitution of India. The freedom of one man should not entitle him to encroach upon the freedom of another”.
The court had also said, “There are indications that several similar instances took place in the State of Kerala. It is stated that there is a movement or project which is called “Romeo Jihad” or “Love Jihad” conceived by a section of the Muslims. The idea appears to be to convert girls belonging to other religions to Islam. Muslim boys are directed to pretend love to girls of other religions and get them converted to Islam. A lot of money is available for executing the project. There are men whose help is available at any time. Organisations are also there to implement the project”.
Essentially, the seeds that germinated the term and popularized it as a class of hate crimes against women was this case in 2009. The term had also been used by the Church to define the conversion of Christian girls by Islamists even before the court had made its observations in this case.
Such cases were and are rampant. There is also a marked shift from what it was thought to be in 2009 and what it is now. In 2009, the court had considered how radical organisations were running this campaign for the purpose of conversion. However, as the years have passed, it has been observed that along with the organized cartel and links to extremist organisations, there are hundreds of cases where such links did not emerge, but the crime itself was in line with the contours of the apprehension expressed in 2009.
Perhaps due to the lack of more popularly evolved terminology then, the term ‘love jihad’ was adopted, linking it to men luring women into relationships with the implicit purpose of converting them to Islam. However, since then, the contours of the crime have expanded, given our deeper understanding of the issue.
While conversion to Islam remains the central focus, the contours of crime have expanded from simply luring Hindu women into relationships and converting to far more heinous and violent threads. Several aspects like force-feeding beef, rape and sexual assault, threat, abduction, grooming etc have emerged in such cases.
With the use of the word “love” to define these cases, we believe it is far easier for the global community to underplay these crimes, claiming that this phenomenon is merely a conspiracy theory against inter-faith marriages and/or relationships. The semantics of the term ‘love jihad’ could potentially imply, for those who wish to look away from these religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindu women, that the Hindu fold is attempting to criminalise and stigmatise consensual relationships between Hindu women and Muslim men, which is not the case. For example, there is a popular term globally called ‘Romeo pimping’. Romeo Pimping essentially covers crimes where men lure women into romantic relationships and then push them into flesh trade and prostitution. Romeo Pimping has no necessary component of religious animosity. It is a class of crimes which involves prostitution and sex trafficking, without any necessary religious animosity as the motivation for the crime. Love Jihad or Romeo Jihad – which potentially tangentially draws on Romeo Pimping for terminology, risks downplaying the central motivation of such crimes – religious animosity.
These are crimes that are specifically directed against women with a specific religious identity (Hindus for the purpose of this tracker), with the purpose of conversion and subversion of the woman’s religious identity. Further, these crimes have extremely violent elements to the crime like force-feeding beef, rape, sexual assault, abduction and in many cases, even murder.
We believe the use of accurate terminology which defines the contours of the crime in terms of universally accepted language to define religiously motivated hate crimes lends credibility to the campaign of Hindus defining and documenting their persecution. The term “Love Jihad” is open to misinterpretation and makes it easier for bad-faith actors to include simple and consensual inter-faith marriages, delegitimizing genuine cases of religiously motivated hate crimes under this category.
For that purpose, Hinduphobia Tracker is using the phrase “hate crimes against women in relationship and sexual crimes” to define cases which are popularly clubbed under the term “Love Jihad”.
The purpose of the Hinduphobia Tracker is to ensure that religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus and their ongoing persecution is documented accurately, as far as possible. The purpose also is to minutely define every category and kind of hate crime that Hindus suffer, explaining the exact elements of the hate crime which categorise these cases as religiously motivated hate crimes and differentiate them from other kinds of crimes. For this purpose, we have kept the parameters that a case has to fulfil to be documented as a hate crime extremely strict.
There are multiple reasons these cases have not been added to the hate crime database.
Nikita Tomar, for example, was tragically murdered in 2020. The Hinduphobia Tracker has currently only documented cases from 1st January 2023. When we work our way backwards and add cases year-wise, Nikita Tomar’s case would be added to the hate crime database. It also must be noted that this database is not comprehensive – which is to say that there are several cases that we may have missed. We urge our readers to submit cases if they think we may have missed documenting a case in the given date range.
The Neha Hiremath case was a tricky one. She was tragically murdered in April 2024. In this case, the father of the victim specifically said that his daughter, Neha, was targeted because of her religious identity of being a Hindu. He also said that there was a conspiracy afoot where Muslim men target Hindu women, force them to convert to Islam, and when they refuse, they are mercilessly killed like Neha was. While this statement from the father would ordinarily be enough to classify a case as a religiously motivated hate crime, this case has a few more layers. The father later apologised to the Congress state government for his statements claiming that he had made the statements questioning the government in a fit of grief and rage. The CID, which the father has reposed his faith in has claimed that there was no ‘love jihad’ angle in the case and the father has not denounced the findings of the CID so far.
Owing to the changing statements of the father, team Hinduphobia Tracker decided to add this case to the ‘undecided’ database and not the hate crime database. With the victim deceased, the father’s statement to determine whether the case is a religiously motivated hate crime becomes paramount. The father, however, changed his statement and hasn’t reaffirmed his original assertion that it was a religiously motivated hate crime. In the absence of the victim’s statement and any other evidence indicating the nature of the crime, the lack of the father’s statement makes it difficult to add the case to the hate crime database. While the case has been added to the undecided database, if in the future, the father affirms his initial claim, it will be moved to the hate crime database.
Now, let us take the Shraddha Walker case, for example. The case was gut-wrenching. Shraddha Walker was a Hindu woman in a relationship with a Muslim man called Aftab Poonawala. She was in a live-in relationship with the man and owing to a dispute (as was revealed at the time), Aftab Poonawala killed her and chopped her body into multiple pieces. As a people who see persecution on a regular basis, it is obvious to conclude that Shraddha’s religious identity played a role in Aftab murdering and dismembering her. However, if one looks at the case dispassionately, one realizes that Shraddha was in a consensual relationship with Aftab, knowing his religious identity fully well before the commencement of the relationship, thereby eliminating the question of the Hindu woman being misled into the relationship for the purpose of conversion.
Further, there was no accusation of grooming and/or forced conversion, or statements speaking to Aftab’s religious motivations by the family of the victim – the only people with the agency to speak to the facts of the relationship with the victim dead. The father of Shraddha Walker did suspect that it could be a case of “love jihad, however, the team took a decision to not add the case to the hate crime database based on that statement. The reason for that is that even the father expressed ‘suspicion’ however, made no specific allegations like forced conversion, religious pressure or any discord owing to religious differences unlike in the case of Nikita, where the family made specific allegations about pressure to convert.
There is certainly a strong possibility that the motive of Aftab was religious in nature. However, in the absence of such details, the argument that the murder was religiously motivated is unsubstantiated. To add the case based on suspicions would be doing disservice to the cause of documentation of community persecution.
This is, of course, not to blame the victim. However, consent is an important ingredient of such crimes and if the woman was indeed in a consensual relationship with no information regarding forced conversion attempts or information on how her religious identity was used to profile her as a potential victim, the crimes don’t, on the face of it, quality to be called religiously motivated hate crimes.
In many cases, even though strong suspicions arise about the religious motivation of the crime, we have attempted to ensure the sanctity of the tracker by not adding cases to the database where statements and/or evidence speaking to the religious motive of the perpetrator are lacking.
To cite another example, there was a case where Muslim kids damaged a Lord Hanuman idol while playing cricket. Now, are there suspicions that they did so owing to religious animosity and prejudice? Absolutely. But is there also a possibility that the children were playing and damaged the idol by mistake? Yes. This Hinduphobia Tracker team took a measured view and added this case to the ‘undecided’ database. The undecided database does not form a part of the hate crime database, however, it documents cases where there could be a suspicion of a religious motive but there is a lack of evidence/indication sufficient to add it to the hate crime database. the
We believe being conservative in our approach will ensure the authenticity of the database itself and therefore, not just the Shraddha Walker case, but several such cases would either be missing or found in the ‘undecided’ database instead.
Slurs form one of the most important indicators to identify a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus especially when the trigger of the violence was trivial. For example, a Muslim perpetrator beating up a Hindu man over a trivial issue would appear to be an average crime and not a crime motivated by religious animosity. However, if religious slurs were hurled while the crime was in progress, it can safely be concluded that a large part of the motivation to the crime, which led to violence over a trivial trigger, was religious animosity. In some cases, the religious animosity manifests itself in the form of caste slurs. It can be argued that a caste-specific slur is aimed at her micro identity of belonging to the Dalit section of the Hindu community and not her Hindu identity itself. However, as far as Abrahamic religions are concerned, the micro identities of caste, region, and language are secondary. It is the religious identity that drives the animosity of the perpetrator against the Hindu victim. While the immediate trigger of the violence could be trivial, the fact that caste slurs are hurled at the victim by the perpetrator makes it a religiously motivated hate crime against the victim.
It is also pertinent to understand that the popular understanding in academic circles is that when non-Hindus hurl caste slurs at disadvantaged groups, it is their historic, ingrained ‘Brahmanism’ that leads them to harbour animosity towards these classes, specifically Dalits. Essentially, the blame for the animosity harboured by non-Hindus is also shifted onto the Hindus – the victims. The Hinduphobia Tracker, however, does not subscribe to this theory.
There have been documented instances where the non-Hindu groups are known to demonise not only the disadvantaged groups like Dalits, but also Brahmins, Vaishyas and Rajputs.
Muslims, for example, have often attacked the macro identity of Hindus and the micro identities of various groups within the Hindu hold – including Dalits, Brahmins, Vaishyas and Rajputs. There are documented cases where Muslims have hurled anti-Dalit caste slurs, called Brahmins ‘beggars’, Vaishyas ‘greedy’ and Rajputs ‘cowards’. There are also documented cases where Hindus, regardless of their micro identities have been physically attacked and assaulted based on their religious identities – while the slurs have been caste specific.
Khalistanis as well are known to demonise all sections of the Hindu community with similar slurs.
It is, therefore, evident that non-Hindu perpetrators harbour religious animosity towards Hindus regardless of their micro identity even while in some cases, the slurs used may be caste specific.
As far as inter-caste violence within the Hindu community is concerned, in which caste slurs are hurled and the motive of the crime is established as ‘caste’ itself, they are not added to the hate crime database. The reason for not adding those cases to the Hinduphobia Tracker is because the base motivation of those crimes is cultural conflict within the Hindu society and does not stem from animosity towards the religion itself. Every community has intra-community conflicts of varying degrees and kinds, however, religious animosity by those belonging to a different religion is a class of hate crimes in and of itself. This is substantiated if the community is changed as well. For example, if one talks about the Muslim community, Sufis and Ahmaddiyas are often discriminated against and persecuted by Sunnis. The Ashrafs (upper caste Muslims) also discriminate against lower caste Muslims. Sufi shrines are regularly desecrated. There is also an ongoing historical conflict between Shias and Sunnis. However, none of these intra-religious group conflicts are branded “Islamophobia”. Similar logic is extended to caste conflicts within the Hindu community as well.
The purpose of the Hinduphobia Tracker is to track hate crimes against Hindus owing to their Hindu religious identity from perpetrators who harbour animosity towards the macro religious identity of Hindus and the faith they profess.
There are several cases where the police and/or investigating agencies deny “communal angle” even though the religious motivations of the perpetrator are either glaringly clear or there is ample local testimonies hinting at the religious motivation of the perpetrators.
The police, in many such cases, where the motive behind the crime is obvious but not explicitly mentioned, deny that the crime committed was in any way motivated by a religious bias or say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to the crime. Several factors are generally at play here.
Many a time the police downplay incidents of low-level communal crime because it is their jurisdiction that comes under question.
The police also often say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to a crime when there was one because they wish to ensure that owing to the crime already committed, there is no further flare up in the area.
Likewise, the Left media and the leftist elite are also inclined to emphasise this “no communal angle” trope, especially wherever the victim of the crime is a Hindu.
However, only a police statement or a media report, for instance, cannot be enough to determine whether there is a communal angle present in the crime that has been committed. In fact, to determine whether the crime is communal in nature or not, we need to give emphasis to the ground realities – especially when there is dissonance between the version of the law enforcement agencies and facts revealed by locals.
For example in the case of Rinku Sharma, the Bajrang Dal activist who was mercilessly stabbed in his house in front of his family members in Delhi’s Mangolpuri area in the year 2021, the leftist media and the leftist ecosystem had tried to peddle that there was no communal angle to the crime. Even the police denied that the crime was communal in nature. However, Opindia spoke to several people who are on the ground with the family of Rinku Sharma and we were told that the communal tension in the area is palpable. The family of Rinku Sharma has said that the Muslims of the area held a grudge against Rinku ever since he celebrated the Ram Mandir verdict.
Like the case of Rinku Sharma, those cases where even if the police have denied a communal angle or the leftist media have gone on an overdrive to peddle the ‘no communal angle’ trope, the ground reality, like the victim’s family or relative’s testimonies, make it clear that there was an obvious religious bias that led to the crime, will be documented in this tracker.
Let us take another example of Deepak Sonawane from Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra – a Dalit man who was forcefully circumcised, tortured and converted to Islam by his Muslim wife and the family of the Muslim wife. This case does not involve the police saying that there was no communal angle but the judiciary.
Sana had lured Deepak into a relationship and later forced him to convert his religion to Islam. Deepak was also tortured and humiliated for money by the family members of the accused who got constant support from the influential local MP Imtiaz Jaleel at every step in this matter.
Deepak Sonawane studied mechanical engineering at the Marathwada Institute of Technology in Sambhajinagar. Sana was his classmate. Both first became friends and then fell in love with each other. She later lured the former into marriage and asked him to embrace Islam and read Namaz.
The victim then met her parents and told them that he was a Dalit and that he had no intentions to convert his religion to Islam. He also said that he loved Sana but would not change his religion for marriage. “They assured me that they will explain their daughter properly and that I should not worry,” Deepak said.
According to Deepak then, the family members of Sana abducted him and tortured him. They urinated on him and performed his forceful circumcision (Khatana). The accused said that they would make Deepak Muslim before he would marry Sana. They also threatened Deepak saying that they would kill his family and make his video of circumcision viral over the internet.
Deepak Sonawane had also given a detailed account of how he was extorted by these Muslims and how they hurled casteist abuse at him. He said in his complaint that “Sana and his mother asked for Rs 11 lakh and threatened to defame me on the internet. I sent a total of Rs 11 lakh, but they demanded another Rs 25 lakh from me. I refused them as I did not have money at that time.”
Later, as per the complaint filed by Deepak, Sana registered a fake rape case against him as he refused to give Rs 25 lakhs. He also mentioned in the complaint that he was beaten and threatened by AIMIM leader Imtiaz Jaleel and his bodyguards about the case. “I was beaten up there, they threatened to kill me and demanded money, and hurled casteist abuse at me. All this has been going on for the last two years,” he had said.
This case had all the markers of a religiously motivated hate crime, however, the Bombay High Court dismissed all that had been inflicted on Deepak to claim that he was in a relationship with the Muslim woman. Shockingly, the court said that this could be a case of “pure love”. Saying this, the accused woman and her family were given bail.
While courts have the highest authority to adjudicate such cases and police statements are of paramount importance, Hinduphobia Tracker evaluates cases subjectively since authorities have a propensity to dismiss and/or underplay, either due to lack of understanding or extenuating compulsions, the persecution of Hindus and the elements of hate crimes in such cases. This is also because the authorities base their investigation on CrPc and IPC, however, there are no laws meant to specifically combat hate crimes against Hindus. Because of the lack of targeted laws, several components of hate crimes against Hindus specifically are not recorded, underplayed or dismissed. The case of Deepak Sonawane is from 2022, and therefore, would be added as we expand our database, however, in the database itself, even if the police/courts deny communal angle, however, circumstantial evidence/victim testimony/locals’ testimony points towards a religiously motivated hate crime, these cases would be included.
The Hinduphobia Tracker project is dedicated specifically to tracking, analysing, documenting and research religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus and therefore, we do not document cases of hate crimes against any other religious denomination.
Not yet. The ultimate aim of the Hinduphobia Tracker is to document each crime dating back 20 years and follow the judicial process for each case, however, due to paucity of resources, that process would take time. As of now, the documentation is based on media reports and some judgements that has been reported. In the later phases of the tracker, we would be attempting to track the judicial process of the cases documented as well.
There is a possibility that the details of a case documented in the Hinduphobia Tracker, in the later stage of the investigation, turns out to be different from what has been reported. It is also possible that someone may believe that a case documented in the Hinduphobia Tracker does not have the elements of a hate crime and therefore, should be removed from the database. For that purpose, we have ensured that there is a “raise a dispute” option. Our audience has the option for “raise a dispute” and explain to us why they believe a case must not be added to the database. The Hinduphobia Tracker team will review the dispute and decide whether the dispute raised is valid. If the dispute is valid, we will remove the case from the database. If we believe the case still has the components of a hate crime and must be included in the database, we will resolve the dispute and give our explanation as to why we disagree with the dispute.
The vast expanse of religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus makes it almost impossible to make the database comprehensive. Having said that, the aim of the database is to document as many religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus from across the globe. Team Hinduphobia Tracker aims to go back at least 20 years (at least) to document hate crimes against Hindus. However, as one can imagine, this would take time. But we will get there. For details on how we are collecting cases and the parameters we are using, you can read our methodology.
We have ensured that the same is clear in cases we record. However, there could be some in the real world where a perpetrator is not explicitly announcing the motive, for example, cases where a Hindu man is killed by the Muslim partner’s family.
In some of these cases, the motive for the crime isn’t laid out explicitly, and it may argued that it is possible that the crime was not motivated by religion, and as such, it should not be included in this tracker.
In several cases where a Hindu man is in a relationship with a Muslim woman, the family of the Muslim woman ends up assaulting or murdering the man because of their disapproval of the relationship. In such cases, the relationship is consensual and the man and woman are with each other knowing each other’s identity fully well. Such cases are often called ‘honour killings’ and are seen in associations across religions, castes, economic strata etc.
In several cases, the motivations are stated and clear. For example, in some cases, the perpetrators would clearly mention what their main motivation to commit the crime was that the partner was economically weaker, from a different caste or religion.
In some cases, however, the motives are not stated and/or reported.
To determine whether such cases are religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of a clearly stated motive, one has to understand what could possibly be the main factor which the perpetrator’s family would believe diminishes the family’s ‘honour’, leading to the crime.
For the purpose of this tracker, we would only be looking at cases where the determining factor of the crime is religion – which is to say that the man belongs to the Hindu faith and the woman to a non-Hindu faith.
In such cases, even if the motivation is not stated, it can be said that the determining factor or at least one of the main considerations leading to the crime would be the religious identity of the man, especially if the woman in the relationship is a Muslim.
In the Islamic faith, a marriage is deemed illegitimate if the non-Muslim partner does not convert to Islam. For those who practice the faith, when their daughter marries a Hindu man without the man converting to Islam, the difference in religions followed becomes the main point of disapproval for the family of the Muslim woman. Because of the ingrained element of religious supremacy in Islam, even if the motivations are not explicit, it can reasonably be concluded as one of the determining factors of the assault or murder committed by the Muslim family against the Hindu man.
In several cases of hate crimes, victim testimonies, local testimonies, eyewitness testimonies hold great significance in determining whether the crime was committed owing to religious animosity. Contextual understanding of the cases is important when trying to determine religious motivations of crimes where the driving trigger may not be explicitly stated.
A hate crime is essentially an act of violence, threat, harassment, intimidation or insult which is born out of prejudice, bias and/or animosity against an individual or a group’s identity marker – for example – race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. For the purpose of the Hinduphobia Tracker, we are focusing on the Hindu identity being the marker for violence against the individual or the group.
By the definition itself, it is clear that the intent of the crime forms the heart of understanding a hate crime rather than the trigger which led to the crime. Therefore, while the trigger may be trivial, it is the intent behind the violence which is paramount in deciding whether a crime is a religiously motivated hate crime or not.
Let us take the Hauz Qazi case of 2019, for example.
In 2019, the Hindus of Hauz Qazi, Delhi came under attack. The fight was, according to local Muslims, triggered because of a parking dispute. The local Hindus, however, had a different story to tell. They said that the immediate trigger of the violence was a parking dispute but it was merely an excuse to target the Hindus of the area. The Hindus were living in a narrow lane surrounded by a majority Muslim population. They said that the majority Muslim population often targeted the Hindus of the area to affect an exodus, in order to change the demography of the area. During the violence, the Durga Mandir in the lane was desecrated by the Muslim mob, idols were broken and urinated upon, according to the local Hindus.
In this case, the trigger of the violence was trivial – a parking dispute. However, the violence itself was directed specifically towards the Hindus by the mob which held animosity towards the religious identity of the Hindus. This underlying animosity is evidenced by the religious identity of the group which became a target of the violence, the acts of violence which included the desecration of a temple and the testimony of the victims talking about how they were repeatedly targeted by the dominant Muslim population of the area. These assertions are also substantiated by historical precedence of non-Hindus attacking Hindus based on their religious identity once they attain numerical strength in any area. This case is a classic example of how violence, sparked by a trivial trigger, actually had underpinnings and markers of a religiously motivated hate crime, manifesting in the violence itself.
In such a case, it would be easy for the police to dismiss the incident by claiming that there is “no communal angle” to the violence and that the conflict was triggered because of a parking dispute. In Hauz Qazi, the local Hindus had also questioned the police for their attempts to cover up the religiously motivated violence against Hindus since they had attempted to change damaged idols and glass of the temple overnight. However, despite even if the police had denied a ‘communal angle’, facts of the case and ground realities would dispute their claim.
There are several cases like the Hauz Qazi one where the religiously motivated violence had a trivial trigger, however, several manifestations of the religious animosity was observed during the violence.
In such cases, a holistic view of the incident has to be considered before deciding whether it was a religiously motivated crime against Hindus or not.
Well, no. This is one of the main ethical considerations when it comes to maintaining a Hinduphobia Tracker. While documenting thousands of cases where Hindus have been victimized, we recognize it is easy to broad-brush all inter-religious crimes as religiously motivated hate crimes. There has to be a component of the crime which indicates the underlying religious motive of the crime explicitly or implicitly for an incident to be documented as a hate crime.
Let’s take an example. Let us assume that a non-Hindu motorist gets into an argument with a Hindu motorist after a minor road accident. The non-Hindu perpetrator, in the heat of the moment and as the argument escalated, the slaps the Hindu motorist. So far, there is no indication that the slap itself was motivated by the non-Hindu motorist’s religious bias, prejudice or animosity towards the Hindu motorist. Essentially, we have to assume here that the non-Hindu motorist would have got into a physical altercation with an opposing motorist regardless of his religious identity. Now, let us assume that the non-Hindu motorist calls the Hindu motorist a “Kafir” while slapping him. A ‘Kafir’ is a derogatory term used by Muslims against non-Muslims. The moment this term is used, the incident is painted in a communal colour. The assumption speaking to the motivation of the motorist then shifts. Once a religious slur is hurled, we understand that the physical altercation was in whole or in part motivated by the prejudice and animosity that the non-Hindu motorist harboured against the Hindu motorist based on his religious identity. In this case, the incident would be categorized as ‘hate speech against Hindus’. Now, let us go a step further. Let’s assume that the non-Hindu motorist makes a phone call while having a verbal argument with the Hindu motorist and within moments, a mob of his co-religionists gather to physically intimidate and harm the Hindu motorist. The mob beats up the Hindu motorist, hurls abuses and then leaves the scene of the crime. The fact that the non-Hindu motorist escalated the verbal argument into violence by calling a mob of co-religionists to assault a Hindu motorist gives the incident a communal colour. Now, lets take this a step further. If the non-Hindu motorist calls his co-religionists and while screaming slurs, beheads the motorist. In all of these scenarios except the first one, while the trigger of the incident is trivial, the matter escalated into a religiously motivated crime, which would be documented in the hate crime database.
Hinduphobia Tracker has meticulously defined each primary category and secondary categories of religiously motivated hate crimes. This has been done to ensure that the parameters set are strict and have tangible and discernable components to establish whether a crime is a religiously motivated hate crime or not. This is done specifically to ensure that the database is as authentic as possible.
