Hate crime tracker Hindutva Watch blocked in India ahead of national vote. After its X account was blocked, the website too has become inaccessible, two months before national elections and amid growing censorship concerns, according to a report by Al Jazeera.
The report says The website of , a United States-based independent research project that documents hate crimes against religious minorities in India, is no longer accessible in India, days after government officials warned its founder that they might block it.
The website of India Hate Lab, another initiative dedicated to exclusively tracking hate speech in the country, can also no longer be accessed in India even though both platforms are available outside the country.
We received communication from MEITY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) under the IT Act last week regarding the potential blocking of India Hate Lab and Hindutva Watch,” Raqib Hameed Naik, the founder of both projects, told Al Jazeera, referring to India’s Information Technology (IT) Act.
On January 29, Naik was informed by users in India that both websites had become inaccessible on multiple servers, he said. “Currently, I am exploring legal options,” Naik added.
The government issued notices for blocking the websites under section 69A of the controversial IT Act, which empowers authorities to prevent the public from accessing information citing the “interest of sovereignty, integrity, and security” of India. The Supreme Court of India in 2022 had struck down another section of the IT Act that allowed the government to prosecute people for sending “offensive” messages online – multiple governments, across political parties, had used that section to arrest everyday civilian critics, from a cartoonist to a chemistry teacher.
Al Jazeera reached out to India’s IT ministry for comments but has not yet received a response.
Naik, a Kashmiri journalist living in the US since 2020, launched the Hindutva Watch website in April 2021. He is joined by 12 volunteers, spread across five countries, who work through different time zones to keep up with the documentation of rising hate crimes in India.
Since its launch, Hindutva Watch has grown into a rare database that documents hate speech and violence against India’s religious minorities, which have escalated everywhere from major cities to smaller towns, yet often receive little mainstream press coverage in the country or outside it. The project has been documenting two to four hate events daily, nearly double the number of reported incidents from a year ago.
Its critics, however, accuse Hindutva Watch, Naik and their coverage of being driven by a bias against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its political ideology, called Hindutva.
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