When Religion Becomes a Weapon

Image by Gemini AI

Social media was meant to connect us, but in recent years it has become a powerful amplifier of sectarian anger and abuse in India. I have chosen to lie low on Facebook, the only platform I used actively. I have an X account meant for blogging-related activities. My Instagram account is used only to connect with my former students. These platforms are all dreadful places, that’s why I chose to sit in the shadow.

The kind of language people use on these platforms to uphold their religion and gods and their “glorious ancient culture” is alarmingly shocking. Apart from the abusive and crude language are the various kinds of distortions. Often the context is removed or altered in order to make someone’s utterance sound antinational or anti-Hindu. There’s a lot of doctored media circulating in these spaces. Specific persons and communities are identified and attacked.

Who benefits out of all these? As far as I understand, only politicians of a particular party and religious community benefit; they use these to consolidate a base using fear and intimidation.

From 2014 onwards, India has been using politics to spread hatred against non-Hindus. Modi’s BJP has been wielding the ideology called Hindutva to portray Muslims and Christian as outsiders or threats. This framing has now moved from fringe rhetoric to mainstream political discourse, shaping how voters and partisans see each other.

In 2024, parliamentary election year, 266 anti-minority hate speeches by senior BJP leaders – mostly in the April-June election period – were live-streamed on YouTube, Facebook, and X via official party/leader accounts. High-profile leaders including Modi, Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath have leveraged their massive digital following to amplify exclusionary, fear-based narratives.

In 2024, the BJP organised 340 hate-speech events, a 580% increase from the previous year. The party was behind one-third of the hate-speech incidents, a near sixfold rise from the previous year. Most of these events took place in Maharashtra, UP, Assam, Bihar, and Delhi.

Of 1,165 hate-speech events in 2024, 995 were first uploaded or livestreamed on social media. In the following year, 1,278 of 1,318 events were shared online. Facebook topped the statistics.

What’s frustrating is that most of the hate-speeches are delivered by Union/state ministers, governors, or elected representatives. When leaders in power reiterate tropes like Muslims as infiltrators and Christians as converters, it legitimises prejudice and embeds discriminatory rhetoric in mainstream discourse.

Imagine a union government pursuing or enforcing laws and policies meant to disenfranchise its own people who belong to minority communities. And that’s just what the Modi government did in the name of CAA, NRS, UAPA, anti-conversion and cow-slaughter laws.

Human Rights Watch reports that the BJP governments in various states have vilified religious minorities, cracked down on critics, pressured media to self-censor, and carried out unlawful demolitions targeting Muslims.

It is at once shocking and farcical that everything in India today – from stone to animal – has a religion. Religion is the biggest killer in India now! Social media is the battlefield of these killers.