To document the incidents of hate crimes against Hindus in India and abroad, a Hinduphobia Tracker has been launched. The anti-Hindu hate tracker has been launched by an NGO named Gavishti Foundation, which is headed by Nupur J Sharma and Rahul Roushan – the editor-in-chief and CEO of OpIndia respectively.
The Hinduphobia Tracker’s stated goal is to document religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus, create awareness about the persecution of Hindus, release research papers and advocate for human rights for Hindus. The project aims to transparently and accurately record religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus, in order to effectively represent the ongoing persecution of Hindus, raise awareness and advocate against the prejudices against the community.
The Hinduphobia Tracker has published a database of religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus, with an accompanying explanation for each case as to what makes the case a hate crime, driven by religious animosity. The tracker has divided these crimes into 8 primary categories.
- Hate Crimes against women in relationships and sexual crimes
- Attack not resulting in death
- Attack on Hindu religious symbols
- Restriction/ban on Hindu practices
- Hate speech against Hindus
- Predatory Proselytisation
- Hindu Men attacked for being associated with non-Hindu women
- Attacks resulting in death
All categories have been meticulously defined using international conventions and standards and parameters set for how crimes would be evaluated under each category, to determine if the case is a religiously motivated hate crime.
Hinduphobia as a term has evolved over the years to encompass a wide range of negative emotions, attitudes and actions against Hindus based on their religious identity, which has also led to religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus. The Hinduphobia Tracker has released a working definition of the word Hinduphobia.
Hinduphobia is any action and/or speech, written or spoken (academic, institutional, political and/or random), violence and/or discriminatory action/attitude, which is born out of hatred, fear, prejudice, animosity, hostility and/or bias against Hindus (people following Sanatan Dharma and/or various sampradayas of Hindus and/or various Panths under the Dharmic fold), as individuals, groups of a class of people, the faith they profess (Hinduism), their cultures, traditions, forms and methods of worship, scriptures, tenets and civilizational values and beliefs.
Hinduphobia can be directed towards individuals and/or their property, toward the Hindu community as a whole, Hindu institutions, Hindu religious facilities (including temples and temporary religious structures), symbols of the Hindu faith, the native and civilizational land of Hindus conceived as a Hindu collectively owing to religious prejudice, animosity, hostility and hatred.
Hinduphobia includes any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative, discriminatory or violent language with reference to Hindus, Hinduism, elements of the religious identity of Hindus as individuals or as a religious, ethnic group, stemming from bias, prejudice and/or religious and/or cultural animosity leading to dehumanization, stigmatization, scapegoating, stereotyping, calls to violence and in many cases, violence.
Hate speech against Hindus often includes the denial and/or mocking of historical and/or ongoing persecution, subversion of scriptures, promotion of and/or call for direct/indirect violence, support for targeted and directed violence, calls for the eradication of sections of Hindus using ideological euphemisms, glorification of perpetrators of religiously targeted hate crimes against Hindus, dog-whistling against Hindus – individuals or groups of Hindus, doxxing based on religious identity and/or opinions, caricaturing groups and/or sects of Hindus to legitimize their stigmatization/dehumanization/large scare violence, mocking and/or denigrating symbols and/or representatives of faith, fake news targeted against Hindus with the aim to stigmatise Hindus, misrepresentation/fake news to paint Hindus as the perpetrators/aggressors based on bias and/or prejudice and more.
At release, the Hinduphobia Tracker database has recorded 1,314 religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus since 1st January 2023. The tracker is not an exhaustive list and they have also documented 191 ‘undecided cases’ (crimes which are suspected to be hate crimes but the religious motivation is not proven). Moreover, 589 cases have been tagged as pending review.
The database is a work in progress and aims to document as many religiously motivated hate crimes as possible, to make it an accurate representation of ground realities.
The database is available for public scrutiny with a provision for people to raise disputes and also, submit hate crimes for the team to analyse and add to the hate crime database. Here is how the portal can be used to access the database, and also to submit hate crimes against Hindus for inclusion in the database.
The homepage of the website features a Hate Crime Map, where each crime recorded in the database has been marked on the place of the crime on an embedded Google Map. Hate crimes are indicated on the map by various symbols, based on the category of the crime. Each symbol is a clickable button, which opens a summary of that crime on the left side of the map. This includes a link to the details of that specific crime.
While the map is centred on India, it can be zoomed out and panned to view anti-Hindu hate crimes in other countries.
Scrolling down the homepage, basic statistics about the recorded hate crimes can be viewed, including visual representations of the data in the form of charts. Below that, the homepage has links to various important articles regarding the Hinduphobia tracker and the hate crime database.
The Hinduphobia database can accessed by clicking the ‘Hate Crime Database’ on the navigation bar on the top of the website. It displays the live number of crimes recorded under various categories, and a table listing every crime recorded in the database.
Users can select hate crimes for a particular category by selecting that category from the drop-down list. Anti-Hindu hate crimes can be searched by typing keywords in the search box given in the page, and crimes that took place during a specific period can be displayed by selecting from and to dates.
The table below displays the hate crimes based on the filter applied, and each row in the table can be clicked to view the details of the specific crime. The details open in a new tab in the browser, which displays the case summary, and an explanation on why it has been listed as a hate crime.
Each page has an option that allows users to either submit additional information related to the crime, or raise a dispute regarding the case. One can click the button titled ‘Submit Additional Information/Raise a dispute’ for this purpose, which opens a new page where the required information along with supporting documents can be submitted.
Each case has been assigned a specific case ID, displayed on the top of the page, and this Case ID needs to be submitted while submitting additional information or disputes.
The ‘Undecided Cases’ option on the top navigation bar opens a page similar to the Hate Crime Database, with the same options to view the recorded crimes, and submit additional information or dispute. These cases have not been listed as hate crimes because all the required information of the crime to be listed as a hate crime, for example the identity of the attackers, the motive of the attack, etc are not available yet.
Users can submit hate crimes not included in the database by using the ‘Report Hate Crime’ option on the top navigation bar. Clicking this option opens a form, where the details of the crime can be submitted, supporting documents can be uploaded and relevant categories for the crime can be selected.
Images, videos, or pdf files containing more information such as newspaper clippings, video clip of TV news report, FIR copy, etc can be uploaded as supporting evidence for the crime being reported. Users are required to provide their names and email IDs while submitting new anti-Hindu hate crimes. After such a case been submitted, the Hinduphobia Tracker team will review the case and add it to the database if it qualifies as a hate crime based on the stated parameters.
Currently, the tracker is documenting cases in or after January 2023. However, the database will be expanded soon.
