By Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar
Economist, Editor, and Researcher at the Cato Institute

            Hate speech is a terrible thing that can make life hell for those attacked on the grounds of religion, ethnicity, or any other divide. The explosive growth of social media has enormously magnified the ability of hate mongers to reach millions. Given the propensities of human nature, lies and hate seem to attract much larger audiences than mundane truths, and so the speech shared over social media has amplified hate on a scale unimaginable just years earlier.

            How should we check it? Well-meaning intellectuals may be tempted to advocate for ever stiffer laws to combat ever stronger hate messages. Since the time of Plato, such intellectuals have advocated for the empowerment of idealistic guardians of society to guard against evil forces. But Plato could never answer the question---who, then, will guard the guardians?

            India has vividly demonstrated the perils of stiff anti-hate laws. It has a constitution that is secular and guarantees equal right for minorities. The population is 80% Hindu, 14% Musim, and 2% Christian, but it is not formally a Hindu state. However, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a Hindu nationalist one. It formally accepts the secularism enshrined in the constitution;  but in practice it seeks a Hindu-dominant state. It has an army of trolls that castigate secularism as “sickularism” and spreads hate against Islam. It paints Muslims as murderous invaders that killed Hindus and destroyed Hindu temples, although virtually all Muslims are converts from Hinduism, not invaders from outside. The BJP has enacted citizenship laws that discriminate against Muslims and could, if realized, make many of them stateless.

            Historically, the courts, police and other institutions have done a reasonable job in checking communal hate. Muslims have been the main sufferers in many communal riots, but almost all political parties till recently have been secular in outlook and sought communal peace. But since the BJP came to power in 2014, it has promoted Hindu nationalism with such success that the whole country has become more communal. This has affected even the media, which in earlier times acted as a check on hate speech, but have now mostly joined the Hindu bandwagon. Indeed, the supreme court recently noted that TV anchors have become peddlers of hate.

            Hindu majoritarianism, once condemned widely as violation of the constitution, has now become mainstream. It has been sanctified by voters giving large majorities to the BJP. In states ruled by the BJP, the police have to follow the party line, and have been charged with targeting  minorities while protecting Hindu hatemongers.

            Even the judiciary can no longer be relied on for impartiality. One of the most heated communal disputes has been over a mosque built by the Mughal emperor Babar in the city of Ayodhya. The BJP claimed this site was the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. The mosque was demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992. The Supreme Court held the Hindu mob guilty, yet awarded possession of the land to Hindus to build a temple to Ram. 

            India has long had stiff laws to discourage communal hate. Anybody promoting “disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will” can be jailed. So can anybody who “insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs” of others. In past decades, these laws were used to cool tempers after clashes between religious or caste groups. But they are now being misused to target non-Hindus who speak out against Hindu hate. This is now interpreted as attacking Hinduism and hence worthy of criminal prosecution.

            The most extreme case is that of Azam Khan, a politician who in 2012-2017 was Home Minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, as a member of the secular Samajwadi Party. He was always a powerful spokesman for Muslim rights in a state long riddled with communal tension. But after the BJP came to power in 2014 it launched dozens of cases against Khan. For speaking out against Hindu communalists, he was accused of hate speech. A lower court has convicted him, though he has appealed. Thus a law aimed at protecting minorities from hate has been turned against those very minorities. 

            In the Hindu-Muslim riots of Delhi in 2019, Sharjeel Imam and seven other student leaders were arrested for breaking laws on sedition, unlawful activities and hate speech. After four years in jail, they were released on bail by a judge declaring, “prosecutions cannot be launched on the basis of conjectures and surmises and chargesheets cannot be filed on the basis of probabilities.” Even while the Muslim students were incarcerated, no action was taken against top BJP leaders who made remarks including, “kill the traitors and enemies of the nation.” 

            In the state of Tamil Nadu, a lawyer, L. Victoria Gowri, was accused by fellow lawyers of hate speech against Muslims. Yet she has now been promoted to high court judge. Critics fear that such judges will protect rather than check hate speech.

Ultimately, every society will have to find its own path to communal harmony. India shows that enacting draconian laws is the wrong path.

(The writer is a Research Fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, The Cato Institute).

Biography

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar is graduate of St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi and Magdalen College, University of Oxford. He is currently a Consulting Editor for The Economic Times and a research scholar at The Cato Institute.