India’s National Crime Records Bureau, a government agency that collects and analyses crime data, doesn’t keep records on targeted violence against communities. It said the average number of annual riots with communal origins had fallen about 9% between 2014 and 2022 as compared to the previous nine years, when the Congress party ran India.
But independent experts, opens new tab at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington-based think-tank, have documented a significant increase in anti-Muslim hate speech, from 255 incidents in first half of 2023 to 413 in the second half of 2023. BJP politicians and affiliate groups were key to the trend, the think-tank said.
Reuters has previously reported about how right-wing “cow vigilantes,” some of whom have ties to the BJP, have led lynch mobs against Muslims.
Modi, while campaigning in April for a third term as premier, attacked Muslims as “infiltrators” who had “more children,” implying they were a threat to India’s Hindu majority.
The BJP’s Siddiqui added that Modi was referring to undocumented immigrants like Rohingya Muslims whom he alleged “are living in India and are also weakening India.”
When previously asked about alleged anti-Muslim bias, the BJP government has said it does not discriminate and that many of its anti-poverty programs have benefited Muslims, who are among the poorest groups in India.
The BJP could only form a fragile coalition government after national election results were announced in June. In the immediate aftermath, at least eight anti-Muslim lynching incidents were reported, the non-governmental Association for Protection of Civil Rights said on July 5.