India's slide into the routine normalisation of hate speech reached a harrowing peak in 2025, exposing how grief over terror can be swiftly weaponised into communal venom.

On April 22, 2025, in the serene Baisaran meadow near Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir, gunmen from The Resistance Front (TRF)—widely regarded as an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba—unleashed a merciless assault on tourists.

The attackers reportedly segregated victims by religion, demanding recitation of Islamic verses; those who failed were shot at point-blank range. The massacre claimed 26 lives—mostly Hindu men, including tourists, locals, and even a honeymooning naval officer whose young bride was left widowed—and injured over a dozen others.

This barbaric act, one of the deadliest civilian-targeted attacks in Kashmir in decades, provoked national shock, outrage, and India's subsequent ‘Operation Sindoor’ military strikes.

Tragically, the India Hate Lab (IHL) report—Hate Speech Events in India 2025, published by the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate (CSOH)—reveals how this horror was rapidly repurposed as fuel for nationwide anti-Muslim incitement.

The India Hate Lab assessed hate speech using the United Nations’ definition, treating ‘dangerous speech’ as a more severe form that can incite violence. It argues that such speech in India is often politically engineered, targets minorities through dehumanising rhetoric and conspiracy theories, and is evaluated using the UN’s Rabat Plan of Action.

In the critical 16-day window from April 22 to May 7, 2025, preceding the India-Pakistan military hostilities and a fragile ceasefire, 98 in-person hate speech events erupted across the country. The month of April alone saw 158 incidents, many of which were intertwined with Ram Navami processions and retaliatory rallies.

The report labels this “rapid and nationwide anti-Muslim mobilisation,” illustrating how a genuine security tragedy was instrumentalised to paint an entire community as complicit or inherently threatening, rather than fostering unity or the pursuit of justice.

Hate speech as governance: The data behind the shift

This episode encapsulates the larger crisis chronicled in the 115-page report. The IHL documented 1,318 verified in-person hate speech events targeting religious minorities—mainly Muslims and Christians—across 21 states, one union territory, and Delhi's National Capital Territory.

Averaging four events per day, this represents a 13 per cent rise from 1,165 in 2024 and a 97 per cent surge from 668 in 2023.

The year marked a ‘profoundly disturbing phase,’ where hate speech has morphed from fringe outbursts or election-season tactics into a ‘normalised and continuously deployed mechanism of political governance’—a perpetual tool for Hindu far-right mobilisation, sanctioned top-down from ruling party leaders to local organisers.

The ideological foundation is unyielding: Muslims are depicted as ‘perpetual outsiders’ and an existential peril to Hindu-majority India. Nearly 50 per cent of speeches (656) propagated conspiracy theories—'love jihad,’ ‘land jihad,’ ‘population jihad,’ ‘thook (spit) jihad,’ ‘education jihad,’ ‘drug jihad,’ and ‘vote jihad’—a 13 per cent increase from 2024.

These falsehoods sustain a narrative of perpetual Hindu victimhood, legitimising anti-conversion laws and other discriminatory policies weaponised against minorities. Baseless claims are repackaged as incontrovertible truth, granting political cover for systemic harassment.

The escalation toward explicit danger is alarming. 23 per cent of speeches (308) delivered overt calls for violence (19 per cent increase from 2024), with 136 urging calls to arms. Around 120 speeches advocated social or economic boycotts of minorities (8 per cent rise), while 276 demanded removal or demolition of places of worship—mosques, shrines, churches—with Uttar Pradesh's Gyanvapi Mosque and Shahi Idgah Mosque most repeatedly targeted.

Dehumanising rhetoric infected 141 speeches, branding minorities as ‘termites,’ ‘parasites,’ ‘insects,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘mad dogs,’ ‘green snakes,’ or ‘bloodthirsty zombies.’

Geographic patterns align starkly with political control. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 266 events, followed by Maharashtra (193), Madhya Pradesh (172), Uttarakhand (155), and Delhi (76). Around 88 per cent of incidents (1,164) occurred in BJP-governed states or union territories—a 25 per cent increase from 2024—while opposition-ruled states recorded a 34 per cent decrease (from 234 to 154).

This disparity signals permissive environments under ruling-party dominance.

Maharashtra highlighted ‘dangerous speech’ peril, logging 78 incidents (up from 64), with nearly 40 per cent involving explicit violence calls—the highest state proportion. Maharashtra minister Nitesh Rane ranked among the top five for such incitement, branding Muslims as “jihadis” and “green snakes,” proclaiming Hindu primacy in a ‘Hindu Rashtra,’ and threatening bulldozers on madrasas and dargahs.

His rhetoric exemplified how ministerial authority normalises vitriol beyond elections.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami led as the most prolific actor, delivering 71 speeches. He mainstreamed ‘love jihad,’ ‘land jihad’ and ‘thook jihad,’ portraying Muslims as demographic and cultural threats. His administration oversaw punitive demolitions of Muslim properties under ‘illegal encroachment’ pretexts, blending executive power with hate dissemination.

Other figures included Antar Rashtriya Hindu Parishad chief Pravin Togadia (46 speeches) and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay (35). Hindu monks and religious leaders participated in 145 incidents—a 27 per cent increase—bestowing pseudo-religious legitimacy. Over 160 organisations engaged, with Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal tied to 289 events (22 per cent), followed by Antar Rashtriya Hindu Parishad (138).

Anti-Christian hate speech also rose sharply to 162 incidents (12 per cent of total), up nearly 41 per cent from 115 in 2024—explicit in 29 cases, alongside Muslims in 133—often accusing Christians of ‘forced conversions.’

Social media amplified the ecosystem: Videos from 1,278 events (97 per cent) were first shared or live-streamed online—Facebook (942 uploads), YouTube (246), Instagram (67), X (23). Platforms' enforcement failures fostered ‘digital impunity,’ transforming local poison into national contagion.

Interestingly, throughout 2025, far-right leaders also invoked Israel’s military actions in Gaza as a model to emulate. On May 25, at an event organised by the Savarkar Vichar Manch in Navi Mumbai, Pushpendra Kulshrestha praised the destruction in Gaza, framing it as justified revenge and urging similar action in India.

Institutions of impunity: State, courts and platforms

Unfortunately, the Union government responded to the rise in political hate speech with what critics describe as institutional evasion.

In March, when Samajwadi Party MP Daroga Prasad Saroj raised the issue in the Lok Sabha and sought data and legal measures to address hate speech by politicians, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju declined to provide figures, deflecting responsibility to state governments by invoking ‘public order’ and ‘police’ as state subjects.

This abdication at the Centre was mirrored at the state level, where anti-minority hostility increasingly surfaced within legislative spaces.

In the Rajasthan Assembly, BJP MLA Gopal Sharma repeatedly referred to Muslim legislator Rafeek Khan as a ‘Pakistani’ during a floor debate, while in Gujarat, BJP legislators made openly derogatory remarks against the Muslim community.

Such legislative incitement was reinforced by institutional inaction: in March 2025, the Bombay High Court was informed that the BJP-led Maharashtra government had denied sanction to prosecute former BJP state vice-president Vikram Pawaskar in two hate speech cases, effectively shielding him from criminal proceedings.

Ironically, the Supreme Court of India, having previously demonstrated judicial activism, exhibited a noticeable shift toward judicial restraint in 2025. In November, a Supreme Court bench stated it was “not inclined to monitor every incident of hate speech” nationwide, directing petitioners to the High Courts and local police.

Conversely, a different Supreme Court bench earlier in May had affirmed that hate speech cannot be misconstrued as a fundamental right while issuing notices to a group of comedians for allegedly making insensitive jokes targeting people with disabilities on their YouTube show India’s Got Latent.

Even the rollout of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) by the Election Commission of India in 2025 became immediately and intrinsically tied to the ruling party’s ‘infiltrator’ narrative, transforming what should have been a routine bureaucratic exercise into a tool of political mobilisation and public anxiety, particularly in states that went to the polls in 2025 and those like West Bengal and Assam headed for elections in 2026.

In Bihar, the SIR process led to the deletion of nearly 6.8 million voters, raising serious concerns about the scale and fairness of the revisions.

Although the stated objective of SIR is to ensure that all eligible Indian citizens are included in the electoral rolls and that no ineligible names remain, BJP leaders, most prominently Home Minister Amit Shah, consistently framed it as a necessary measure to ‘detect, delete, and deport illegal immigrants,’ specifically accusing opposition parties of protecting these ‘infiltrators’ to secure their vote bank.

This narrative has resulted in a pervasive climate of fear among minority and marginalised communities, especially Muslims, who view SIR as a backdoor implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Consequently, the exercise led to reports of mass self-disenfranchisement, with activists alleging that the onerous documentation requirements were intended to disproportionately exclude poor and vulnerable citizens from the electoral roll.

The consequences of this sustained campaign have culminated in lethal street violence. On December 17, a migrant Dalit man, Ram Narayan, from Chhattisgarh, was lynched in Kerala’s Palakkad district on suspicion of theft and of being a Bangladeshi national.

The report warns of a ‘new and perilous era’ of institutionalisation. Hate polarises voters, solidifies majoritarian bases, and manufactures consent for exclusionary policies, heightening vulnerability to harassment, boycotts, demolitions, and violence for Muslims and Christians.

When chief ministers spearhead campaigns with impunity, and terror attacks fuel vilification instead of healing, India’s constitutional ideals of equality and fraternity erode.

In 2025, the data shows that while both domestic and international events continued to trigger episodic spikes in hate speech, the more striking trend was the persistence of an elevated baseline throughout the year. Unlike previous years, where hate speech tapered off outside election cycles, 2025 exhibited sustained levels of mobilisation even during non-election periods. This continuity suggests a strategic shift rather than reactive mobilisation alone.

Interestingly, among the top ten states and Union Territories with the highest number of hate speech events, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governed directly or ruled in coalition in nine states for all or most of the year.

Across all 23 states and Union Territories analysed, the BJP held power, either independently or as part of a coalition, in 16 for most of the year. This included the National Capital Territory of Delhi, where the BJP came to power in February 2025 following the Assembly elections.

While BJP-ruled states remained the primary hotspots, the data also indicates that Hindu nationalist groups and BJP leaders, as in previous years, actively mobilised and amplified anti-minority hatred in states governed by the opposition parties.

The Indian National Congress-ruled Karnataka was the only non-BJP–governed state to feature among the top ten, with 40 documented hate speech events. This represents an increase from 32 incidents recorded in 2024 and matches the 40 incidents recorded in 2023.

The trajectory—from 668 incidents in 2023 to over 1,300 in 2025—demands immediate action: rigorous enforcement of incitement laws, accountability for leaders, pressure on platforms, and renewed commitment to pluralism. Absent decisive steps, this entrenchment risks irreparable harm to India's secular democracy and social harmony.

India currently lacks a dedicated national hate speech law, instead relying on the general criminal code, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Authorities frequently deploy BNS Section 196 (penalising the promotion of enmity between groups, formerly IPC Section 153A) and BNS Section 299 (covering deliberate acts intended to outrage religious feelings, formerly IPC Section 295A).

However, the Karnataka government has introduced and passed the Karnataka Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (Prevention) Bill, 2025, in December, marking the first comprehensive state-level effort in India to systematically define and penalise hate speech.

The Bill defines hate speech as “includes any expression which is made, published, or circulated, in words either spoken or written or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic communication or otherwise, in public view, with an intention to cause injury, disharmony or feelings of enmity or hatred or ill-will against person alive or dead, class or group of persons or community, to meet any prejudicial interest.”

While it claims to make exceptions for categories like artistic expression, academic inquiry, and reporting, the definition is widely viewed as vague and loosely defined, making it highly susceptible to misuse.

The bill proposes severe penalties. A first offence warrants 1 to 7 years imprisonment and a fine of 50,000 rupees, escalating to 2 to 10 years and a fine of Rs 100,000 for repeat offences. The crimes are classified as cognisable (allowing police to arrest without a warrant) and non-bailable. The Bill also grants Executive Magistrates and senior police officers preventive powers against potential offenders.

However, there are concerns that this broad hate speech definition could be weaponised to target the very communities it is intended to protect, silencing dissent and creating a chilling effect on legitimate and constitutionally protected speech.

Furthermore, a future government could exploit the law to target and punish political rivals who originally passed the legislation. The Bill also introduces several stringent features, including organisational liability, where persons in charge are deemed guilty unless they prove due diligence, and empowering officials to order the removal or blocking of hate content online.

Normalised hate and the unravelling of the republic

In short, the findings of this report signify a perilous era of the institutional normalisation of hate. Hindu nationalism has fully absorbed hate speech into its operational machinery, rendering it an integral and, indeed, unavoidable part of public life.

Within this lax environment, ever more egregious expressions of anti-minority animosity are both implicitly and explicitly sanctioned by the nation’s most powerful political figures and radically amplified through social media platforms.

This climate has left India’s Muslim and Christian communities acutely vulnerable to systemic harassment and discrimination, and a heightened risk of routinised physical violence, including large-scale violent incidents precipitated by specific trigger or flashpoint events.

(Views expressed in this report are the author's own)

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