A newly released report has documented 1,318 hate speech events targeting religious minorities across India in 2025, marking a 13 percent increase from the previous year and a staggering 97 percent surge from 2023, when 668 such incidents were recorded. The findings underscore what researchers describe as the deep entrenchment of sectarian rhetoric as a routine feature of India’s political and social landscape.
The India Hate Lab (IHL) report, which tracked verified instances of in-person hate speech at political rallies, religious processions, protest marches, and nationalist gatherings across 21 states, one union territory, and the National Capital Territory of Delhi, found that such events occurred at an average rate of four per day throughout the year.
The sustained intensity of hate speech in 2025, the report notes, was anchored in the majoritarian ideological project of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allied Hindu nationalist organizations. The high-stakes Delhi and Bihar state elections and local body polls served as key catalysts for the surge, functioning as new theaters for the repeated deployment of exclusionary and fear-mongering narratives.
Sharp Rise in Anti-Christian Hate Speech
While Muslims continued to face most hate speech incidents, Christians experienced a particularly alarming increase in 2025. Hate speech targeting Christians showed a nearly 41 percent surge, with 162 incidents recorded, accounting for 12 percent of all documented events. This represents a sharp escalation from the 115 anti-Christian hate speech incidents documented in 2024, marking one of the steepest year-on-year increases in targeted hatred against any religious minority.
Dr. John Dayal, veteran human rights activist and spokesperson of the All India Catholic Union, responded to the findings with sharp criticism when speaking to Christian Today. “To us as victims, it does not seem that such speech is the product of some angry person who we have rubbed the wrong way. This seems a part of state policy in how it is condoned and normalised by government agencies,” he said. “The 41 percent surge in anti-Christian hate speech is not an aberration but shows that the ruling party, and its mother the RSS, benefit from this hate in their electoral process of strengthening their Hindu vote bank and consolidating their vice-like hold on Parliament, state legislature assemblies all the way down to rural local self governments.”
Of the 162 anti-Christian incidents, 29 cases explicitly targeted Christians alone, while 133 cases grouped Christians alongside Muslims in the hate speech narrative. The report reveals that the content of these speeches drew on well-entrenched fear-mongering and scapegoating narratives depicting Christians as disloyal, anti-national, and a demographic threat to Hindu-majority India.
The report highlights how conspiracy theories formed a central component of anti-Christian rhetoric. The narrative of mass forced conversions by Christians emerged as a dominant theme, with speakers alleging organized campaigns to convert Hindus. These baseless theories, the report notes, have been rebranded as fact to provide political leverage for the passage of highly restrictive anti-conversion laws in several states where the BJP holds power.
The researchers found that these laws, supposedly designed to prevent forced conversions, have been “instantly weaponized to target and harass members of Indian minority religious communities,” with Christians bearing the brunt of legal action and social persecution.
Dr. Dayal warned of the broader implications. “When conspiracy theories about forced conversions become the justification for laws that instantly weaponize against Christians, we are watching the systematic dismantling of constitutional guarantees in real time,” he said.
The anti-Christian hate speech formed part of what the report describes as a broader rhetorical apparatus strategically designed to manufacture an environment of perpetual Hindu victimhood. This, in turn, enables the passage of anti-minority laws to ostensibly address imagined threats. The report states that this entire system is “strategically designed to provide the political and social justification necessary to institutionalize the systemic persecution of Muslim and Christian minorities through policy changes, legislative action, and state power.”
Rev. Vijayesh Lal, General Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, emphasized the broader implications of the findings when speaking to Christian Today. “As Christians, we are deeply concerned by the growing climate of hostility and suspicion directed at minority communities. This is not merely a minority issue. It is a national one,” he said. “Societies are judged not by the power of the majority, but by how faithfully they protect the dignity and safety of all.”
Among the 276 speeches that called for the removal or destruction of places of worship documented in the report, churches featured prominently alongside mosques and shrines. The explicit targeting of Christian houses of worship in hate speech represents a direct threat to religious freedom and the safety of Christian communities across the country.
Muslims Continue to Face Majority of Hate Speech
Muslims bore the primary brunt of the documented hate speech, with 1,289 speeches, or 98 percent of all events, targeting the community either explicitly or alongside Christians. This represents an increase of nearly 12 percent from the 1,147 instances recorded in 2024.
The report found that 656 speeches, nearly 50 percent of all documented events, referenced conspiracy theories including “love jihad,” “land jihad,” “population jihad,” “thook (spit) jihad,” “education jihad,” “drug jihad,” and “vote jihad.” This represents a 13 percent increase from the previous year.
The researchers documented 69 hate speech events that targeted Rohingya refugees, while 192 speeches invoked the “Bangladeshi infiltrator” trope, frequently used to stigmatize Bengali-origin Muslims as foreigners.
Dehumanizing language appeared in 141 speeches, with minorities described using terms such as “termites,” “parasites,” “insects,” “pigs,” “mad dogs,” “snakelings,” “green snakes,” and “bloodthirsty zombies.”
The report highlights a dramatic geographical pattern. Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of incidents with 266 events, followed by Maharashtra (193), Madhya Pradesh (172), Uttarakhand (155), and Delhi (76). Of the 1,318 total events, 1,164 incidents, or 88 percent, occurred in states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), either directly or with coalition partners. This represents a 25 percent increase from the 931 incidents recorded in BJP-governed states in 2024.
Seven opposition-ruled states recorded 154 hate speech events in 2025, a 34 percent decrease from the 234 incidents documented in these states in 2024.
April emerged as the month with the highest spike, recording 158 hate speech events coinciding with Ram Navami processions and hate rallies organized in response to the Pahalgam terror attack. In a particularly intense 16-day period between April 22 and May 7, following the Pahalgam attack and preceding active hostilities between India and Pakistan, 98 in-person hate speech events were documented, indicating what the report describes as rapid and nationwide anti-Muslim mobilization.
The report documented 308 speeches, or 23 percent, that contained explicit calls for violence, while 136 speeches included direct calls to arms. Maharashtra recorded the highest number of dangerous speeches with 78 incidents, up from 64 in 2024. Nearly 40 percent of the state’s 193 hate speech events involved explicit calls for violence, the highest proportion recorded for any state.
The researchers found 120 hate speeches explicitly called for social or economic boycotts of minority communities, primarily Muslims, reflecting an 8 percent increase from 2024. A further 276 speeches called for the removal or destruction of places of worship, including mosques, shrines, and churches. The most frequently targeted sites in 2025 were the Gyanvapi Mosque and the Shahi Idgah Mosque in Uttar Pradesh.
The report identifies a highly organized ecosystem behind the hate speech events. The year 2025 saw what the report describes as the consolidation and cementing of a trend where top-level national BJP leaders moved to the forefront of hate speech propagation, establishing a top-down sanction for engendering communal hostility that flowed all the way down to the level of grassroots organizing and politics.
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal emerged as the most frequent organizers, linked to 289 hate speech events (22 percent), followed by Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad (138 events). More than 160 organizations and informal groups were identified as organizers or co-organizers in 2025.
The report documented 71 hate speeches by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami in 2025, the highest number attributed to any individual, followed by Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad chief Pravin Togadia (46) and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay (35).
Hindu monks and religious leaders were involved in 145 hate speech incidents, a 27 percent increase from 2024, continuing to provide what the report describes as religious legitimacy to anti-minority rhetoric.
Social Media Amplification and Platform Failures
Social media platforms played a critical role in amplifying the hate speech, according to the report. Videos from 1,278 of the 1,318 hate speech events were first shared or live-streamed on social media platforms. Facebook accounted for 942 of the first uploads, followed by YouTube (246), Instagram (67), and X (23).
The report sharply criticizes what it describes as the documented failure of platforms to enforce anti-hate policies, creating an environment of digital impunity. Despite platform policies that purport to prohibit hate speech, live streams of such speeches facilitated their nationwide dissemination. The researchers note that the majority of hate speech events documented in 2025 were captured in videos that originated or circulated widely online, with platforms showing a conspicuous lack of institutional will to enforce their own community standards, routinely substituting meaningful action with empty rhetoric and cosmetic interventions.
The report describes the current situation as representing a new and perilous era of entrenchment and institutional normalization of hate speech in India. It states that the political project of Hindu nationalism has fully absorbed hate speech into its operational machinery, legitimizing it as a necessary and intrinsic part of political discourse and public life.
Rev. Lal called for a fundamental shift in approach. “What we are witnessing is not a series of isolated incidents but a steady erosion of restraint in public life. When hateful speech is normalised, it weakens the moral fabric of society and places vulnerable communities at risk,” he said. “A confident nation does not require the demonisation of minorities. It requires leadership that upholds dignity, the rule of law, and equal citizenship for all.”
The researchers note that the strategic deployment of hate speech functions to systematically polarize the electorate, consolidate the Hindu majoritarian base, and manufacture consent for further exclusionary policies, rendering India’s Muslim and Christian minority communities increasingly vulnerable to systemic harassment, discrimination, hostility, and acts of physical violence.
