Hate Speech Events in India: Annual Report 2025
The India Hate Lab and CSOH share a founder (Raqib Hameed Naik), and each organization cites the other as an independent source. This relationship is more visible than in the CSOH India Hate Ecosystem report but still not disclosed within individual publications. The circular citation loop between IHL, CSOH, and Hindutva Watch is the core source independence problem for all three organizations.
What This Report Is
India Hate Lab published its annual report in 2025. The report tracks hate speech events targeting Muslim and minority communities in India. It uses keyword-based social media monitoring to find and count those events.
What We Looked At
How a study is done determines whether you can trust what it found. The Citation Integrity Dashboard (CID) evaluates methodology — which means how the research was conducted. We do not evaluate conclusions — which means what the research found. We classified this report as an Incident Tracker. That means it collects and counts individual events over time using media or social media monitoring.
What We Found
The biggest problem: nobody checked the checkers. Classification Rigor measures whether events are sorted into categories in a reliable, repeatable way. This report scored 2 out of 10. India Hate Lab does not publish inter-coder reliability data. Inter-coder reliability means testing whether two people, given the same events, would sort them the same way. Without that test, readers cannot know if the counts reflect real patterns or one team’s judgment calls. The number of people classifying events is not stated in the report.
The organizations checking each other’s work are run by the same person. Source Independence measures whether a report’s data comes from genuinely separate sources. This report scored 3 out of 10. India Hate Lab and the Center for Study of Organized Hate share a founder, Raqib Hameed Naik. IHL cites CSOH data. CSOH cites IHL data. A third organization, Hindutva Watch, is also part of this loop. Each citation looks like independent confirmation. It is not. It traces back to the same network. The relationship is visible on organizational websites but is not disclosed inside the reports themselves.
Year-over-year trends are uninterpretable without a denominator. Case Capture and Sampling measures whether the data collection process can support the claims being made. This report scored 5 out of 10. When India Hate Lab reports over 3,000 hate speech events, it does not say how many total posts it scanned. Without that number — called a denominator — readers cannot tell if hate speech increased or if the monitoring got wider. More search terms, more platforms, or more staff could all produce higher counts with no actual change in hate speech.
The report monitors hate in one direction only. Coverage Symmetry measures whether a report’s actual scope matches what it claims to cover. This report scored 4 out of 10. India Hate Lab tracks hate speech targeting Muslims and minorities. It does not track anti-Hindu hate speech. That scope choice is legitimate on its own. The problem is the “Lab” branding, which implies scientific coverage of hate in India broadly. The report does not acknowledge single-direction monitoring as a limitation.
The Bottom Line
India Hate Lab’s 2025 annual report scored 3.9 out of 10. That places it in the Advocacy-Grade band (2.0 to 3.9), which means it functions as advocacy material rather than independent research. No non-compensatory cap was applied — which means the score was not reduced by an automatic penalty rule. The report reached this grade on the raw numbers alone. This score reflects methodology only. The report’s findings about hate speech in India may be accurate even though the methods used to produce them have significant gaps.
Citation Context
How this report's findings have been cited or applied after publication. Severity reflects the gap between what the report establishes and how it was represented.
What was claimed: Reported that anti-minority hate speech in India 'rose by 13% in 2025' with 1,318 instances, attributed to a 'US research group', with no explanation of how IHL defines or counts a hate speech 'event' (e.g., whether one rally with multiple speakers counts as one or many events, how video verification is conducted, or whether the dataset represents the universe of events or only those captured on social media).
What the report actually says: IHL documented 1,318 verified in-person hate speech events at gatherings (political rallies, religious processions, protest marches, and nationalist events) where anti-minority rhetoric was delivered. IHL's methodology relies primarily on video evidence sourced from social media, cross-referenced with at least two independent sources. The count reflects events IHL was able to verify — not a census of all hate speech in India.
Reuters article by Kanishka Singh (January 13, 2026) reported the 1,318 figure on the same day IHL published its report (https://www.reuters.com/world/india/anti-minority-hate-speech-india-rose-by-13-2025-us-research-group-says-2026-01-13/). The only methodology context offered was: 'India Hate Lab says it uses the UN's definition of hate speech.' No description of the event-counting methodology, data collection process, selection criteria, or known limitations (e.g., dependence on social media availability, geographic coverage gaps, single-organization verification). The 13% increase figure was presented as a factual trend without noting that growth in IHL's count could reflect improved monitoring capacity rather than an actual increase in events. This framing by a major wire service likely propagated methodology-free citations throughout downstream outlets.
What was claimed: Reported 1,318 hate speech events and juxtaposed IHL data in the same article with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's 2025 Early Warning Project ranking India fourth globally among countries at risk of mass atrocities — without distinguishing the methodological basis, scope, or independence of these two separate data sources.
What the report actually says: IHL's 1,318 figure counts verified in-person hate speech events (public gatherings with anti-minority rhetoric captured on video). The US Holocaust Memorial Museum Early Warning Project uses a probabilistic statistical model for mass atrocity risk — a structurally distinct metric. The two datasets measure different phenomena.
The Wire article (January 15, 2026) by Shruti Sharma (https://m.thewire.in/article/communalism/india-saw-1318-hate-speech-events-in-2025-98-of-them-targeted-muslims-india-hate-lab-report) placed the IHL 1,318 hate speech events count alongside the Holocaust Museum's atrocity risk ranking for India in consecutive paragraphs, creating a narrative of escalating danger. The combination implies a causal or evidential relationship between hate speech counts and mass atrocity risk that neither IHL nor the Holocaust Museum report establishes. No methodology context for IHL's event-counting was provided. This is a mild but consequential conflation: IHL's count becomes circumstantial evidence for genocide risk claims it was never designed to support.
What was claimed: Reported 1,318 hate speech events as evidence of 'hate spiraling in India' with experts asserting the statistics signify 'heightened escalation in the religious animosity that minorities in India have faced since the BJP assumed power in 2014.' Article characterized events as 'primarily orchestrated by Hindu nationalist groups and the ruling BJP.'
What the report actually says: IHL documented 1,318 verified in-person hate speech events using video evidence and social media monitoring. The report attributes 88% of events to BJP-governed states and identifies BJP leaders and affiliated organizations as frequent participants — but IHL's scope is limited to in-person events captured on video and does not assess intent, coordination, or state-level orchestration as a causal conclusion.
Al Jazeera feature (January 14, 2026) by Kunal Purohit (https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/1/14/as-hate-spirals-in-india-hindu-extremists-turn-to-christian-targets) cited IHL data extensively and quoted CSOH Executive Director Raqib Hameed Naik directly. The article provided no methodology context for how IHL counts events. It added commentary from political analysts (Ram Puniyani, John Dayal) stating the hate speech count reflects deliberate BJP strategy since 2014 — a claim that goes beyond what the IHL report's methodology can establish (event documentation is distinct from proving centralized orchestration). The description 'primarily orchestrated by Hindu nationalist groups and the ruling BJP' is partly sourced from IHL but presented as an established fact rather than a finding of a single advocacy-adjacent research project.
What was claimed: IAMC's January 16, 2026 weekly monitor cited the IHL 1,318 figure accurately. IAMC's February 2026 Annual Report independently described India as exhibiting 'systemic as well as interpersonal violence,' a 'growing risk of genocidal violence against Muslims and Christians,' 'campaigns of terror,' and minorities being 'pushed toward the precipice of mass violence' — without citing IHL data for these claims.
What the report actually says: IHL documented 1,318 verified in-person hate speech events. IHL's own conclusion is that minorities are 'increasingly vulnerable to systemic harassment, discrimination, hostility, and acts of physical violence' — which is itself an escalated characterization of a documented count of speech events.
Two separate IAMC documents are relevant. (1) IAMC Weekly India Human Rights Monitor (January 16, 2026) (https://iamc.com/iamc-weekly-india-human-rights-monitor-january-16-2026/) cited IHL's 1,318 events accurately and without distortion, in same newsletter as US Holocaust Museum atrocity risk ranking — creating proximity-based escalation without explicit causal claim. (2) IAMC 2026 Annual Report (February 10, 2026) (https://iamc.com/indias-human-rights-religious-freedoms-in-crisis-through-2025/) did not cite IHL data but independently invoked 'growing risk of genocidal violence,' 'campaigns of terror,' and 'pushed toward the precipice of mass violence' — language that far exceeds any individual data source in the ecosystem. IAMC President Mohammed Jawad stated: 'This report makes clear that religious minorities in India are being pushed toward the precipice of mass violence by Hindu extremist forces.' The annual report also invokes USCIRF's CPC recommendation as corroborating evidence. When the IHL 1,318 figure is read alongside IAMC's genocide-risk framing (both from the same advocacy ecosystem), downstream actors encounter a reinforcing narrative that converts documented hate speech events into evidence of imminent mass violence.
What was claimed: Published an extended analysis of the IHL 2025 report characterizing the hate speech event count as evidence that 'hate speech is no longer confined to election campaigns' and that documented speech events constitute 'permission — permission to harass, exclude, attack, and deny belonging.' Framed the events as reflecting 'a routine instrument of mobilisation' with 'continuous institutional consequence.'
What the report actually says: IHL documented 1,318 verified in-person hate speech events. The IHL report itself makes similar escalation claims, describing minorities as 'vulnerable to systemic harassment, discrimination, hostility, and acts of physical violence,' but presents this as an analytical conclusion drawn from event documentation.
CJP's analysis (January 15, 2026) (https://cjp.org.in/india-hate-lab-report-2025-how-hate-speech-has-been-normalised-in-the-public-sphere/) closely tracked IHL's own framing and largely quoted IHL's report directly. The escalation is minor — CJP added rhetorical intensity ('When such language becomes familiar in public life, it does not remain speech. It becomes permission...') without making materially different empirical claims. CJP's analysis was itself quoted by International Christian Concern (persecution.org), illustrating how secondary commentaries on IHL data circulate as interpretive authorities. ICC quoted CJP's characterization — 'anti-Muslim incitement remains the ideological core of this ecosystem, hate against Christians is being normalised more openly and more frequently' — without noting that CJP is itself an advocacy organization, not an independent analytical body.
3 additional citations tracked. View full citation context →
Organization Response
India Hate Lab has been invited to respond to this assessment. If a response is received, it will be published here in full and without editing.
Status: Pending