This Website Tracked Hate Crimes in India. Then the Government Took It Offline
This Website Tracked Hate Crimes in India. Then the Government Took It Offline
With weeks to go until the start of national elections, India’s right-wing government has forced X and ISPs to block Hindutva Watch.
India, the world’s largest democracy, prepares to kick off its election season in just a matter of weeks. But activists and experts worry that the government is cracking down on platforms and internet service providers to silence critical voices, and tighten its grip on the information ecosystem.
On January 16, Raqib Hameed Naik, an Indian journalist and founder of the website Hindutva Watch, received a notice from X, formerly Twitter, that the website’s account had been blocked, by order of the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). “I received frantic messages from people in India saying they cannot access the Hindutva Watch Twitter,” says Naik
Hindutva Watch, along with its sister site, the India Hate Lab, tracks incidents of religiously motivated violence perpetrated by supporters of the country’s right-wing government, helmed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Press freedom declined under Modi, leaving fewer spaces for those reporting critically of the government and the impact of its policies on the country’s minorities. In the lead up to elections, where Naik predicts a “surge in hate crimes,” Hindutva Watch’s information may be more critical than ever.
Yeah no shit. Modi is also a member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization. He wants create a ethnostate and that's clear as daylight. Fuck that guy and his government.
72hindu is an ethnicity?
did not know that
-2Nah, it's a religious group. But a state where only a particular religious group is given dominant control, power, resources etc is still called an ethnostate, there's no distinct term. See Northern Ireland for example, many scholars considered it an ethnostate because historically Protestants were given dominance, as opposed to the Catholics who faced many discriminatory and biased policies. It's not nearly as bad these days tho. And as for Israel, it's definitely an ethnostate, but it extends far beyond just religion.
8
Conservatives will do anything to support hate crimes. It's just part of their nature.
51Don't call them conservatives. It's a term used to denote the entire right wing, including the center right. This is the extreme right wing. Extremists would be a better description.
-7It's not the "extreme" when it is the majority of them. In the U.S. the vast majority of conservatives very consistently vote for fascists, racists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes and other conservative bigots.
Conservatives consistently choose these vile pieces of shit as their best representatives. Consistently and overwhelmingly. It's very obviously the norm, not the extreme.
12
Modi is equally scum as trump, we want to remove him but alas, he inaugurated a temple this year and will most probably win due to that
42And guess where that temple was! In a controversial place where once a mosque was. It was attacked and destroyed. Then the Supreme Cock Suckers aka the Supreme Court decided it should be given to the Hindus for temple construction. What a load of bs.
It's a real shame. There are many things about India, it's history, culture and linguistics that I really love. I'd love to visit one day, but that's not happening when it's run by a scums like that.
34
This is why we need resources like the Fediverse where content cannot be dictated so easily by governments and corporations.
18The government has a massive block list and an army of rabid online trolls. Platforms like the fediverse are safe only as long as they are not popular. It won't survive once it catches the attention of their propaganda machine.
4i think it could be dictated? like what if a government sends notice to the website owner/instance owner to take down something? are they obliged to take it down? or else will they face any legal actions?
1No, the Indian government can't do anything to a website that isn't based in Indian territory.
A good example is a recent giant investigation by Reuters into an Indian hacker-for-hire company, and the man who founded (and made hundreds of millions of dollars off of) it. The man sued Reuters over it, and an Indian court found the article "indicative of defamation." I believe Reuters is appealing, or there is something ongoing. In the meantime, they took the article down worldwide. Why? Because they have offices in India, and employees there, and the Indian government could punish those branches if the article stayed online in other parts of the world.
In this case, they've deployed similar tactics to pressure international companies to block the website.
Meanwhile, the New Yorker and The Daily Beast have large articles up based on the Reuters investigation, because they have no branches in India, and thus give no fucks about what their courts say. The original Reuters expose is also still available on the Internet archive.
6
How did India get like this? I imagine it's the TV and news and now internet sites that pushed a large potion of the population into this extreme right wing?
16The answer isn't that simple. India always had its share of bigots. But until a decade ago, the same level of hate speech would have ended them up in jail.
The ruling party back then (congress) was a bit corrupt and the opposition back then (BJP, the current ruling party) used it to dethrone them. So you would expect the BJP to be less corrupt? No - they are much worse. But the BJP's strategy was to subvert any institution that could challenge them - media, judiciary, CAG, investigation agencies..
Eventually the bigots realized that hate speech received no punishment. Meanwhile, BJP ensured that critical media was severely punished and oppressed. This is what led to the spread of bigotry in the media. While the crimes of their opponents are often exaggerated, their own crimes are rarely even mentioned. In true Nazi style, people were exposed to lies and half truths over a decade.
21From independence this movement has been there. One must remember Gandhi was killed by them.
9Wow thanks I had not realized this.
2
This is the oldest trick in the book: Scream 'victim' while doing horrible shit.
5It's all the fault of anteeefa! /s
1
Greed.
4The idiocracy is spreading everywhere, the idiots around the world like idiocracy. See india, trump, orban, brexit boris, putin, ans other so called "right wing illiberal"-s. BTW orban was actually a commie back in those days... and still he is, see the govermental prices, everything centralised government, goverment success propaganda and demonization, etc, he work exactly like his commie predecessors, except of saying about himself "i am anticommunist right wing conservative". He also voted down 24 times the opening of the communist agent files...
4If India is like every other country on Earth, most of its population are mouth breathing morons.
4
Ahh that fucking pos
12Fuck you Gautamdas
8Ah, that is unfortunate. I used to read Hindutva Watch everyday at Lunch.
8Gotta learn from the neighbors
3India, the world's largest democracy
I'd laugh but even a heavily flawed democracy is better than a hybrid regime or a dictatorship.
-4it's an electoral autocracy ...according to BBC atleast
3