490% spike in hate speeches, 90% by BJP leaders, perpetrators promoted to key posts: Report

In an unusual exercise, a premier national TV news channel, NDTV, has estimated that there has been a 490% spike in hate speeches over the last four years of the Narendra Modi government. Collated from public record and analysed by Nimish Jaiswal, Sreenivas Jain and Manas Pratap Singh, their analysis is based on 1,300 articles and their cross references such as Documentation of the Oppressed and Amnesty International's Halt the Hate Tracker, and recent tweets.
Defining hate speech as statements that are "clearly communal, casteist, or calls to violence", the report focuses two time periods -- the four years from 2014 until now of the Modi government, and the five years from 2009 to 2014, under the second Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. The data, it says, suggest that, "from May 2014 to the present, there have been 124 instances of VIP hate speech by 44 politicians, compared to 21 instances under UPA 2, an increase of 490%".
The report says, "90% of hateful comments made during the NDA's current terms are by BJP politicians", adding, "During the NDA period, a total of 44 political leaders made hateful comments. Of them, 34 politicians, or 77%, are from the BJP. 10 leaders, or 23% of the offenders, are from other political parties, including the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal."
On the other hand, it adds, "During UPA-2, 21 political leaders made hateful comments, of which 3 or 14 % were from the Congress, which anchored the coalition. From the opposition, politicians from the BJP took the lead, recording seven instances of hate speech." As for the remaining 11 instances of hate speech from 11 political leaders under UPA-2, these were from "politicians from the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, and the Shiv Sena".
According to the report, of the 44 leaders responsible for hate speech since the Modi government came to power, only in five cases (4% of all instances) politicians were being reprimanded or cautioned, or they issued a public apology. In 96% of the time, the 'VIP hater' faced no consequence. "Cases were registered only against 11 of the 44 politicians", it adds.
Pointing towards how partial the authorities have acted, the report states, "In November, just four days before Suraj Pal Amu, the BJP's chief media coordinator at that time, offered a bounty for beheading actor Deepika Padukone, the Haryana police had driven 360 km to arrest a 19-year-old, Shaqib, for posting an offensive image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi."

Underlining how hate speech appears to have paid off, the report says, "Yogi Adityanath, the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, was MP from Uttar Pradesh when, in November 2015, he said, 'There is no difference between the language of Shah Rukh Khan and that of Hafiz Saeed'." Then, "In September 2014, he ascribed the rise in riots in Western UP to the population growth of a minority community".
It adds, "In all, there are six such instances of hate speech by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. All were made before he was promoted to his current office".
In yet another instance, the report says, Anant Kumar Hegde, a BJP MP from Karnataka, made a similar comment in March 2016 when he said, "As long as we have Islam in the world, there will be no end to terrorism. If we are unable to end Islam, we won't be able to end terrorism." In September 2017, he was promoted as Union Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

The report states, "We found that at least 21 political leaders (or 48%) had recorded more than one instance of hate speech. They were not reprimanded for their hateful comments, nor did they issue apologies." Prominent amongst them are T Raja Singh, a BJP MLA from Telangana, ex-BJP MP Vinay Katiyar, Governor of Tripura Tathagata Roy, Cchattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh, BJP MPs Sakshi Maharaj, Subramanian Swamy and Choudhary Babulal.

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