Mujahid Nafees, the convener of the Gujarat-based Minority Coordination Committee, said that as hate spreads, so does ghettoisation. He cited the example of Juhapura, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s biggest city, where the community became further ghettoised after the 2002 violence.
Nafees lives in Juhapura. “People prefer to stay in ghettos for their safety. It has its advantages but it pushes for a further marginalisation of Muslims,” he said.
Mamatha Yajaman, a women’s rights activist in Karnataka, said hate speech disproportionately affects women, especially from vulnerable Muslim and Dalit communities. Dalits fall at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy and have faced centuries of discrimination.
And a report by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) in January said at least 84 instances of religious conflict occurred in Karnataka’s coastal districts last year, 44 of them listed under hate speech.
In February, a report by the India Hate Lab, a United States-based research group, documented about 700 hate speeches in the country in 2023.