Hate speech against religious minorities up 13 pc in India: Report

In 2025, hate speech against religious minorities, mainly Muslims and Christians, rose by 13 per cent from 2024 and by 97 per cent from 2023, with a majority of the incidents occurring in states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), according to an India Hate Lab report released on Tuesday, January 13.

The report said the increase in hate speech observed in 2025 indicated the normalisation of “narrow-minded rhetoric” in India’s political and social landscape. “Such rhetoric now functions as a round-the-clock instrument for Hindu far-right mobilisation on the ground,” the report read.

It alleged that hate speech in 2025 was led by the “majoritarian ideological project” of the ruling BJP and its allies in Hindu nationalism, who have moved to the centre stage for spreading hate speech.

Hate speech was fueled by religious figures, political parties and nationalist groups creating fear-mongering narratives around religious minorities, depicting them as “anti-national, dangerous, disloyal to the state and demographically threatening,” the report said.

Such narratives, which were once motivated in private, soon spilled into public discourse, now even shaping how elections play out and how security and national identity are debated on a national level.

The report’s findings outline that the hate speech at in-person events in 2025 showed the same pattern of core Hindu nationalist tropes – “centrally, the idea of Muslims as perpetual outsiders and an existential threat to the Hindu-majority nation.”

On average, four hate speech events occurred per day

As many as 1,318 hate speeches were targeting religious minorities in 2025 across India, with an average of four hate speech events taking place per day, the report documented.

With the number of hate speech events crossing 1,000, about 266 of them were reported in Uttar Pradesh, followed by 193 in Maharashtra and 172 in Madhya Pradesh – states ruled by the BJP or BJP-led coalitions.

Ninety-eight per cent of hate speeches were explicitly targeted at Muslims in 1,156 cases, and alongside Christians in 133 cases.

Hate speech targeting Christians was recorded in 162 incidents, which is 12 per cent of all events, and a 41 per cent increase from the 115 cases documented in 2024. While 1,164 hate speech incidents took place in BJP-led states or its coalition partners, seven Opposition-ruled states recorded 154 incidents of hate speech. This marks a 34 per cent decrease from the 234 cases documented in these states in 2024.

Periods of spikes in hate speech

“April recorded the highest monthly spike, with 158 hate speech events coinciding with Ram Navami processions and hate rallies organised in response to the Pahalgam terror attack,” the report stated.

According to the report, the 16 days between April 22 and May 7, after the Pahalgam attack, 98 hate speech events were recorded, showing a nationwide anti-Muslim mobilisation.

Moreover, 656 speeches, approximately 50 per cent, used conspiracy theories like “love jihad,” “land jihad,” “population jihad,” “thook (spit) jihad,” “education jihad,” “drug jihad” and “vote jihad,” revealing a 13 per cent increase from 2024.

Additionally, 275 speeches called for the removal of religious places, including churches, shrines and mosques. Minorities were also described in dehumanising language using terms such as “parasites,” “insects,” “pigs,” “mad dogs,” “snakelings” and “bloodthirsty zombies.”

Uttarakhand CM among the major hate speech actors

The most frequent organisers were reported to be Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal, having been associated with 289 hate speech events overall, followed by Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami was ranked as the “most prolific hate speech actor,” with 71 speeches in 2025, followed by Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad chief Pravin Togadia and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay.

Hindu religious leaders were also involved in 145 hate speeches, the report said, “continuing to provide religious legitimacy to anti-minority rhetoric.”

The report’s data further revealed that Rohingya refugees were targeted in 69 hate speech events, and 192 speeches “invoked the Bangladeshi infiltrator trope,” which was often used to label Bengali-origin Muslims as aliens.

Out of the 1,218 total hate speech events, videos of 1,278 were either shared or live-streamed on social media.