India's Hate Ecosystem: Mapping the Networks

What This Report Is

The Center for Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) published this report in 2023. It claims to map 312 “hate organizations” across 14 Indian states. The report uses data from India Hate Lab and Hindutva Watch, which it describes as independent sources.

What We Looked At

How a study is done determines whether you can trust what it found. The Citation Integrity Dashboard (CID) evaluates methodology — meaning how the research was conducted — not conclusions — meaning what the research claims is true. We classified this report as an Incident Tracker, which means it collects and counts individual events over time. That classification determines which of our eight scoring dimensions (the specific areas we evaluate) apply and how much each one counts toward the final score.

What We Found

The sourcing problem is the headline. We scored Source Independence — which measures whether a report’s evidence comes from truly separate organizations — at 1 out of 10. Here is why. The report cites India Hate Lab and Hindutva Watch throughout as independent confirmation of its findings. All three organizations share the same founder. IRS 990 filings (tax documents nonprofits must file publicly) confirm this. The report never discloses the connection. Not in the text. Not in author bios. Not in acknowledgments. 73 percent of the report’s citations trace back to this single founder’s network.

The classification system is a black box. We scored Classification Rigor — which measures whether outside researchers could sort events the same way the authors did — at 1 out of 10. The report published no codebook (a document that spells out exactly how to classify each event). It reports no reliability testing (checks that show different people would classify the same event the same way). The number of people who did the classifying is not stated. A reader has no way to check whether the 312 organizations were sorted correctly.

Coverage runs in one direction. We scored Coverage Symmetry — which measures whether a report applies equal scrutiny to all sides of the issue it claims to study — at 1 out of 10. The report monitors organizations and incidents on one side of documented communal conflicts. It does not apply the same methods to opposing groups. It does not acknowledge this as a limitation. A report that claims to map “hate” but only looks in one direction has a scope problem.

The numbers lack context. We scored Counter-Evidence — which measures whether a report engages with its own limitations and with criticism — at 3 out of 10. Pages 12 through 34 cite percentages without telling the reader how many events those percentages are based on. Without that denominator (the total number the percentage is drawn from), the figures are uninterpretable. The report contains no limitations section.

The Bottom Line

This report scored 2.1 out of 10 and received an Advocacy-Grade rating. That grade band (score range) means the report functions as advocacy material rather than independent research. A non-compensatory cap was applied — which means the circular sourcing problem was severe enough to place a ceiling on the score no matter how well the report performed elsewhere. The raw weighted score before the cap was 2.8. This score reflects methodology only. The report’s conclusions about hate networks in India may be correct — but its methods do not provide the evidence to confirm or deny that.