Hate Speech is Everywhere, but how to counter it?

Take a look around you. What seems to be thriving in our media and society today, is not a mere coincidence of events. Rather, a brewing process that has started long before, if we are willing to open our eyes to it and identify it. Standing by that fact, hate speech does not need an introduction.

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Illustrated by Ann Suzane

Hate speech is not only a matter of taking jibes at another community. Its nature is much more complex. It can be so powerful that it can result in the genocide of a whole community. Yes, the infamous example that comes to mind is Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Researchers and scholars have studied it for years and broken down genocide into Ten Stages, of which hate speech plays a massive role; a fuel to the fire if you will.

If history taught us anything, it is to be able to identify common patterns in the present so as to not repeat them. Is our country manifesting some of these signs? According to Genocide Watch, we are. So what can common folk like you and I do in countering hate speech?

Hate Speech Beda is a local collective that has been working towards countering hate speech and helping others do the same.

“We’re a group of activists, academicians, students, researchers and lawyers- a collective.” says Manavi Atri from Hate Speech Beda. A fairly new campaign that gained momentum after the problematic coverage of CAA protestors, Hate Speech Beda has been working towards two things:

1) Countering hate speech and

2) Making the media accountable for their reportage on issues.

In order to counter hate speech, we need to first understand and identify it. In conversation with Manavi Atri, she breaks down the types of hate speech and the methods to counter it:

“As a campaign, we’re currently looking at hate speech in three forms: One, Criminally Actionable- that which needs to be countered with criminal action. Two, that which does not attract criminal laws but would be required to counter through Self Media Regulation. Three, that which does not elicit a response in terms of media regulation or criminal law, but to counter with Counter Speech.”

What qualifies for the first kind, she says: economic and social sanctions, when there’s incitement of violence from different communities and there’s fuelling enmity between them, and when it harms national interest or when public property is involved. The Indian penal code: Section 153 A, 153 B, 295 A, 295 B, 298- all of them provide, in different degrees, a criminal response law where we can file complaints and ask for FIRs to be registered.​

Apart from that, there’s also the IT Act which helps when provocative speeches are made, when any sort of sentiments are being hurt or when misinformation has been propagated.

“The IT Act in itself is a bit insufficient because we don’t know how far along it goes, and what we did know has been overridden and read down by the court saying it’s unconstitutional in terms of 66A - it gave police the power in terms of any post that was released, take action against anybody who made that post without any clear criterion if they thought it had any sort of elements that would create public unrest.”​

The second kind which is media regulation, deals with three types: Broadcast media, Print Media and Social Media. For broadcast media, there is a self-regulatory system that is in place which is the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA). Channels voluntarily enter into this self-regulatory body and if there are any complaints against these channels, NBSA can be approached. For filing complaints, they have an online complaint form which is very easy to use, a drop-down menu shows a list of channels that are a part of the NBSA that you choose to file complaints against. The challenge with NBSA is that it’s a voluntary body, so channels that are excluded from them are instead regulated by the district and state monitoring committee. Unfortunately, these committees have not been very active. Manavi says:

“As a campaign right now we’ve been filing complaints and trying to engage, we’ve filed RTIs to understand what action they’ve taken in terms of the complaints we have filed because we were getting no response from them. So they’re still in limbo and they need to be made functional and made to be accountable.”

Concerning social media, there are options to report hateful content within the media itself. But depending on the nature of the content, you can file FIRs. “You can also look at collating the kind of content that is hateful.” says Manavi. This can be done by filing Cyber Complaints which are very easy to do and can be filed by anyone. “It’s an online form that you have to fill with screenshots of the content and why you think it requires to be taken action against.”

The third kind of speech, is ones that hurt sentiments but doesn’t cause any significant harm to society. They’re the type that makes you uneasy and uncomfortable.

“These are the kind of speeches that need to be countered with more speech because at the end of the day, freedom of expression is a very important cornerstone.” says Manavi.

Admittedly, freedom of speech is a grey area. By clamping down on one kind of speech, it affects the activism regarding freedom of speech itself.

It is fair to think how liable this is, given the little faith people have in our institutions, but Hate Speech Beda shared a touching story about Gujarat and its fight against hate speech:

They documented a total of 813 FIRs, 1712 arrests, and 843 social media account suspensions regarding the Tableeghi Jamaat incident. This was all done by people across Gujarat, who were the victims of hate speech themselves. A group of lawyers and activists need only give them the push, and the rest was history.

“Instead of making it a formal process they decentralized the whole process and made very simple drafts and they made them accessible in Hindi, Gujarati, and English. They basically said just start communicating with your local police officers and say this is something I found on my Whatsapp, Facebook, or Twitter and I’m not okay with it, can you please do something about it? And that’s how simply the campaign began.” Manavi mentioned.

​Even though people were apprehensive in the beginning, this increased their faith in the police and vice versa. What was amazing was that out of 813 FIRs, leaving about three or four, all of them were registered by the police themselves; so no person had to be named as a private complainant. The immediate and timely response to the complaints also resulted in the Gujarati media shying away from reporting the Tableeghi Jamaat in a communal light, because journalists were aware of what was going on, on the ground. This was a huge success story for Hate Speech Beda, given the communal tension in a place like Gujarat.

It is not too late for us to take action against hate speech ourselves. When we curb one thing, we curb many others just like the Gujarat story has proven. If we are to prevent another catastrophe like genocide, we must work as a collective.

“These are all battles we can’t fight alone, we need a very big community engagement and a larger collective to fight these systemic scenes that the media and the government through different means are propagating.

This fight has to be fought together.”