Naik, 29, is the founding father of HindutvaWatch.org, one of the strong real-time knowledge units of human rights abuses on the planet’s largest democracy. Utilizing video and film proof submitted by a community of Indian activists, together with information aggregation, the location tracks hate crimes by Hindus towards Muslims, Christians and members of the lower-ranked castes. Since its founding in April 2021, it has catalogued greater than 1,000 situations of violent assaults and rhetoric. (Hindutva refers to political ideology that advocates for Hindu supremacy.)
It’s possible an undercount, Indian political specialists mentioned. Nonetheless, the web site has angered the more and more authoritarian authorities of right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which critics cost promotes the concept that the Hindu majority is superior and tolerates lethal crimes towards Muslims and Christians.
A minimum of 11 occasions, Naik mentioned, the federal government or Indian legislation enforcement have petitioned Twitter to droop its account or take down a few of its content material, considered one of its most necessary venues for publicizing its findings. As of Sunday, its Twitter account stays energetic.
Till he agreed to an interview with The Washington Put up, Naik, who’s Muslim, ran each the location and its Twitter account anonymously from Cambridge, Mass., the place he settled after fleeing India in 2020.
With Twitter now within the palms of Elon Musk, his work has turn into extra difficult. In India, the third-largest marketplace for Twitter, Musk has fired almost 90 % of the employees, in line with information studies. Hindu extremists have been allowed again onto the location, and hate speech has soared. Naik worries that Musk would possibly acquiesce to the Modi administration’s makes an attempt to stifle Hindutvawatch.
Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Regardless of that, he has determined to make his work public, hoping to construct his homegrown web site into a significant operation aimed toward warning the Indian authorities that its human rights violations are being catalogued.
“Sooner or later, it turns into essential so that you can come out within the public and look into the attention of your oppressor,” Naik mentioned in an interview with The Put up. To say: “I’m watching you, no matter you’re doing. And preserving proof.”
Preserving proof of hate crimes
After gaining independence from the British Empire in 1947, India aspired to be a secular nation the place folks of all faiths might reside in peace. However non secular tensions have repeatedly flared hardly ever with as a lot vitriol as beneath Modi.
Since Modi took management in 2014, hate crimes towards minorities in India have skyrocketed by 300 %, in line with a 2019 research by Deepankar Basu, an economics professor who research South Asian politics on the College of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Since then, Modi’s celebration has solely turn into stronger in India’s parliament, however up to date hate crime statistics are arduous to search out, a number of specialists mentioned. After 2017, India’s crime bureau stopped gathering knowledge on hate crimes, information studies present.
Modi’s workplace didn’t return a request for remark.
The cease has created a gaping void of data, the students added, and most makes an attempt to report on hate crimes in India have shortly been shut down or disappeared.
Enter Naik. He was born in Kashmir right into a household of modest means and spent a lot of his youth getting ready to turn into an engineer. However that each one modified as soon as he received into faculty and have become a journalist reporting on the injustices towards Kashmiri Muslims unfolding round him.
Naik recounts how his ardour for the work traces again to a single second in 1997, when he was approaching 4 years outdated.
It was the spring. Protests had been roiling Naik’s neighborhood in Kashmir, a Himalayan and majority-Muslim area claimed by India and Pakistan. Mistakenly believing Naik’s dad was a sympathizer with Muslim insurgents, navy males got here and took his father away. He returned after three days, crushed and bruised.
In faculty, Naik received a style for journalism after volunteering to cowl occasions in Kashmir for a small web site whereas learning political science. The job uncovered him to the plight of Muslims within the area, he mentioned.
In 2019, Naik’s work started to attract wider consideration. Modi stripped the disputed areas of Jammu and Kashmir of autonomy, sparking violent protests. Modi responded with a curfew and an web shutdown.
Naik was considered one of just a few journalists capable of report on the unrest, submitting dispatches for the Globe Put up from the earliest days. Quickly, Naik recalled, Indian intelligence officers had been haunting his mother and father’ residence in Kashmir.
After being questioned by Indian intelligence officers 3 times in August 2019, Naik mentioned he spoke with folks from organizations such because the Committee to Defend Journalists, who urged him to go away. They purchased him a aircraft ticket to New Delhi, the place he spent weeks bouncing from sofa to sofa.
Shortly after, Naik determined to go the USA after an American-based charity group invited him come to present lectures about his expertise. At a type of talks, he mentioned, an activist approached and talked about that he had bought the area title HindutvaWatch.org to trace Hindu hate crimes. The positioning was not energetic, and the activist didn’t have time to work on it.
Firstly of the pandemic, Naik returned to his mother and father’ residence in Kashmir after his dozens of talking occasions within the U.S. wrapped up. Quickly, Indian intelligence officers had been ringing his cellphone, and Naik determined it was time to go away for good.
In August 2020, he got here again to the USA on a vacationer visa and later utilized for a particular work visa. He lived in Mississippi for roughly a yr earlier than settling in East Cambridge round August 2021, the place he stayed with a good friend who labored in biotechnology.
With loads of free time on his palms, his ideas turned to Hindutva Watch.
A retelling of what’s happening
On the Fourth of July 2022, Naik awakened bleary eyed and sick. However then a Twitter message popped up on his pc.
An activist despatched him a video of a bunch of males in India beating a Muslim man, squatting on the street bare. Naik tried to confirm if it was actual and requested a journalist contact who lived close to the village to analyze. Native police denied the incident, saying the Muslim man was mentally sick. However a number of native residents confirmed it.
Lower than a day later, Naik posted the video and police response on Twitter and his web site, etching an incident into digital historical past.
“We need to ensure that the proof is correctly preserved,” he mentioned.
That video is considered one of tons of Naik has labored to confirm and doc: scenes of police beatings, properties being bulldozed, Hindu nationalist rallies that flip hateful and racist, even members of Modi’s celebration calling for “Muslim genocide.”
Day-after-day, Naik and a band of six activists the world over scour social media, messaging apps and chatrooms in search of hateful movies, textual content and speech within the Indian language press, Twitter, Reddit, Telegram and WhatsApp. Activists and journalists additionally ship them movies that should be verified.
The group holds digital conferences a number of occasions every week, the place they talk about the studies and movies that should be verified. Hindutva Watch works with people on the bottom who can assist nameless to allow them to report and confirm with out worry of retaliation. English subtitles are placed on movies in native Indian languages.
Up to now, Twitter has taken down a few of its content material on the request of Indian officers, Naik mentioned.
One of many web site’s volunteers, who spoke with The Put up on the situation of anonymity for safety causes, joined Hindutva Watch final yr after his personal Twitter account received banned for causes which can be nonetheless not clear, he mentioned. He had been monitoring hate crimes as an activist, however with out Twitter he was misplaced.
“You will need to doc hate crimes,” he mentioned, as a result of the mainstream media is “not exhibiting this.”
Different organizations have executed what Hindutva Watch does, with various ranges of success. In 2017, the Hindustan Occasions, a distinguished nationwide newspaper in India, began a hate crimes tracker on violence towards Muslims and lower-caste Indians that had been typically coded as homicide or assault.
However the initiative stopped, which information studies point out might have been attributable to authorities stress. The paper’s editor in chief, Bobby Ghosh, who spearheaded the initiative, resigned shortly after. He declined to remark.
Citizen’s Non secular Hate Crime Watch, a knowledge monitoring venture, additionally operated with an analogous mission, however it shut down in 2019 with out clarification, a number of students mentioned.
The Indian information group NDTV retains observe of hate speech from politicians, and a company known as Doto maintains a list of abuses which Hindutva Watch typically cites. Altnews is a distinguished fact-checking information web site.
Khaled Beydoun, a world Islamophobia scholar at Wayne State College in Detroit, mentioned it’s essential that Hindutva Watch exists, as a result of winners write historical past.
“Ten years from now, the historical past of what’s happening beneath the Modi years will probably be totally authored by the Modi regime,” he mentioned. “However this [site] gives a retelling of what’s happening with Muslims in real-time.”
Rana Ayyub, an investigative journalist who additionally writes for The Put up, mentioned hate crimes “have utterly disappeared from our mainstream publications. … Hindutva Watch is documenting hate crimes, assaults on minorities and persecution that has in any other case been normalized by the mainstream media.”
Hindutva Watch has additionally proved to be helpful proof to some Indian lawmakers. Asaduddin Owaisi, a Muslim lawmaker within the decrease home of the Indian Parliament, mentioned he has spent years attempting to persuade opposition lawmakers that Muslim hate crimes are occurring. The visible proof can assist.
“Whether or not it modifications their minds or not is a unique factor,” he mentioned in an interview. “However undoubtedly, if you see a video of beatings … how can anybody deny it?”
‘If Twitter goes down’
Lately, Naik’s father, who additionally spoke on the situation of anonymity for safety causes, mentioned he chats together with his son sporadically and principally retains tabs on him on Twitter.
In a WhatsApp cellphone name, he mentioned he’s apprehensive about his son’s future and would have most popular if Naik caught together with his authentic plans to be an engineer.
“We’re tense and apprehensive on a regular basis due to what occurs to journalists,” he mentioned, referring to reporters being jailed. “If he comes residence, they might do something.”
In the meantime, as Naik, who moved elsewhere on the East Coast a number of months in the past, ran HindutvaWatch.org anonymously, he at occasions reported on the rise of the Hindu proper in America beneath his personal title.
In April 2021, a report he wrote for Al Jazeera about how coronavirus funds had been steered to “Hindu right-wing teams” in the USA prompted dying threats and have become a part of a wider defamation lawsuit filed by the Hindu American Basis, an influential lobbying group searching for to form the picture of Hinduism in the USA. The case was dismissed by a federal court docket in December.
And now, with Musk main Twitter, Naik worries the billionaire’s needs to open the location as much as all types of speech has repercussions for India. It’s more likely to stoke anti-minority sentiment that already runs excessive on the web site, he mentioned.
If the location turns into overrun with hate speech, he mentioned, it’s extra dire.
“If Twitter goes down,” Naik mentioned, “it will significantly impede our work.”
