On the politics of fear

Muslims, India’s largest minority group, have often found themselves excluded from the country’s mainstream political power circles. The historically constructed clash between Muslims and Hindus has been used by the members of the far right – such as the Rāṣtriya Svayaṃsevak Saṇgh (RSS) or the Viśva Hindū Pariṣada (VHP) – to present the Muslim community as outsiders and ill-intentioned others with a view to subjugating the Hindu majority. There has been a notable rise in majoritarianism since the Bhāratiya Janata Party (BJP) rose to power in 2014. Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, many BJP and RSS members made overtly racist remarks and incited violence against the Muslim community. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have exacerbated this religious polarisation that has been gradually intensifying since Narendra Modi (BJP) won a landslide re-election victory in May 2019. Fears surrounding the pandemic have rapidly fuelled societal divisions, as well as hyper-nationalism and religious extremism targeted at Indian Muslims. A tarnished social fabric would have obvious long-term ramifications, specifically relating to stigmatisation, stereotyping and violent attacks. In this paper, the author will attempt to examine the role of BJP politicians in stoking Islamophobia. The author will address the question of whether the COVID-19 pandemic has been politicised against the Muslim minority. Are politicians primarily responsible for stoking intercommunal fear and hatred? What roles have state actors played in fomenting sectarian discord during COVID-19? This article tackles these and other salient questions pertaining to the politicisation of the coronavirus outbreak and mounting hate speech authorised by the ruling party in India. The article concludes by suggesting that Hindutva-driven Islamophobia, supported by the BJP government, may have permeated the Hindu mainstream but cautions that this claim still needs empirical validation. This article informs readers of the specific process of Islamophobic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic which remains a largely understudied phenomenon in India. My interpretation is partially based on spending two months doing fieldwork, mainly in New Delhi, in February and March 2020 during the coronavirus outbreak.

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Analysis on Construction of Science Culture and De-extremization of Religion

World Journal of Social Science ◽

10.5430/wjss.v8n1p43 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 43

Author(s):

Peixiao Qi

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Game ◽

Stable Node ◽

Science Culture ◽

Evolutionary Equilibrium ◽

Religious Extremism

This paper first discusses different development periods of science culture and religion culture and elaborates forms of religious extremization. At the same time, by solving the evolutionary game strategy between science culture and religious extremization, it explores the important role of science culture in eliminating religious extremization. It found that science culture and religious extremization can reach an evolutionary equilibrium after a long-term game, and converge to a stable node; strengthening science culture construction can effectively eliminate the phenomenon of religious extremization. Finally, this paper puts forward some suggestions that it should continue to strengthen science culture construction in China and apply it to eliminate religious extremism.

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Saffronizing the periphery: Explaining the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in contemporary Assam

Studies in Indian Politics ◽

10.1177/2321023020918064 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 69-84

Author(s):

Smitana Saikia

Keyword(s):

Northeast India ◽

The State ◽

Cultural Symbols ◽

Political Issues ◽

Bharatiya Janata Party ◽

General Elections ◽

Political Opportunity Structures ◽

Building Project

The remotely located and relatively marginalized states of northeast India have historically been a Congress bastion, despite posing continued challenges to the nation-building project through many insurgency movements. The success of the grand old party depended on creating ‘umbrella coalitions’ with diverse ethnic groups to sustain power. However, since General elections 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has successfully challenged the dominance of Congress, particularly in the state of Assam. In this context, this paper seeks to discuss recent shifts in electoral dynamics in Assam and its implication for a region hitherto considered peripheral. The paper situates the BJP’s emergence as the new locus of power in the long-term processes of party politics in Assam and discusses the resultant shifts in social alignments, cleavages and political issues in the multi-ethnic landscape of the state. It also explores the role of the RSS in negotiating its larger ideological interests with local political realities of the state and its ability to appropriate local cultural symbols. The paper concludes that the unprecedented rise of the BJP, which is a result of the changing political opportunity structures in Assam, will nevertheless be tested severely due to the state’s multi-ethnic character and complex, localized social fault lines.

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Hate Contagion: Measuring the spread and trajectory of hate on social media

10.31234/osf.io/b9qhd ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

John D Gallacher ◽

Jonathan Bright

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Hate Speech ◽

Positive Association ◽

Vulnerable Groups ◽

Valuable Insight ◽

Far Right ◽

Counter Measures ◽

Group Environment ◽

Media Platform

Online hate speech is a growing concern, with minorities and vulnerable groups increasingly targeted with extreme denigration and hostility. The drivers of hate speech expression on social media are unclear, however. This study explores how hate speech develops on a fringe social media platform popular with the far-right, Gab. We investigate whether users seek out this platform in order to express hate, or whether instead they develop these opinions over time through a mechanism of socialisation, as they interact with other users on the platform. We find a positive association between the time users spend on the platform and their hate speech expression. We show that while some users do arrive on these platforms with pre-existing hate stances, others develop these expressions as they get exposed to the hateful opinions of others. Our analysis reveals how hate speech develops online, the important role of the group environment in accelerating its development, and gives valuable insight to inform the development of counter measures.

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THE ROLE OF MOSLEM SOCIETIES’S LEADERSHIP IN PERSPECTIVE OF NATIONAL INTEGRATION: A CASE STUDY IN PEGAYAMAN VILLAGE, BULELENG DISTRICT, BALI

KULTURISTIK Jurnal Bahasa dan Budaya ◽

10.22225/kulturistik.3.2.1216 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 86

Author(s):

I Nyoman Mardika

Keyword(s):

Cultural Identity ◽

Religious Identity ◽

Minority Group ◽

Muslim Community ◽

National Integration ◽

Disintegration Process ◽

Muslim Communities ◽

The Village

Muslim communities which is located in Pegayaman Village, in Buleleng Regency, have a unique and ambivalent position. Nationally, they are part of the majority Muslim communities in Indonesia. However, since they located at Buleleng regency which is a Hindu majority, the communities certainly becomes a minority group. The Muslim community of Pegayaman can live in harmony and be able to integrate with other community as a minority. In the national integration of the Muslim Pegayaman community is able to blend with other communities without losing their cultural identity. This is inseparable from the system of values, beliefs amd cultural (religious) identity and leadership in the village. The concept was able to bring the Pegayaman Muslim community to maintain national intehration and keep them away from disintegration process.

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Dialogue as a Way of Being

Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogues for Global Peacebuilding and Stability - Advances in Religious and Cultural Studies ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-7585-6.ch003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 50-78

Author(s):

Tzofnat Peleg-Baker

Keyword(s):

Conflict Transformation ◽

Social Environments ◽

Relational Dynamics ◽

Social Fabric ◽

The Social ◽

Destructive Conflict ◽

The Individual

The rapidly changing world we live in is fraught with increasing divisions and destructive conflict. Consequently, a resilient social fabric becomes crucial for people to feel included and benefit from their differences. The quality of relationships and the social environments, within which they are constantly being formed, are critical for successfully addressing divisive challenges and the destructive conflicts they might spawn. This chapter proposes a framework of three considerations for transforming conflict: 1. The mode of relationship- how the Self relates to the Other, 2. The understanding of conflict, and 3. The social environment and the role of leadership. Revisiting assumptions pertaining to these considerations can support a shift from the unit of the individual (typically characterizes Western cultural and scientific traditions) to the relational unit. This shift is viewed as a premise for long-term conflict transformation from adversarial interactions into dialogic relation. The latter is suggested as a constructive mode of relationship: a way of being with one another that diminishes destructive relationship while generating the conditions for benefiting and learning from conflict. The chapter concluded with an example of relational transformation as a combination of both micro efforts- consciousness raising to relational dynamics, and macro work—restructuring social context and advancing systemic changes in education.

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Monitoring anti-minority rhetoric in the Czech print media

Journal of Language and Politics ◽

10.1075/jlp.13.1.07sla ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 152-170 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Tess Slavíčková ◽

Peter Zvagulis

Keyword(s):

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Minority Groups ◽

Hate Speech ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

News Story ◽

Far Right ◽

Content Type ◽

Long Term Study ◽

Media Monitoring

This paper describes selected outcomes of media monitoring for anti-minority hate speech in the Czech Republic. In keeping with the agenda of critical discourse analysis, we aim to integrate historical, linguistic and cultural specificities with their linguistic manifestations in news articles about minorities, and here we present findings from a long-term study devoted to tracking xenophobia against two of the main minority groups. The AntiMetrics project, of which the work described here is one part, is designed to detect signs of anti-minority rhetoric in a society, with a view to taking steps to prevent such indicators from developing into more embedded prejudice and ultimately inter-group violence. The paper aims to provide a snapshot of what is a broad, long-term interdisciplinary project. Using a critical discourse toolkit, we analyse a sample news story about the Roma community, and identify a number of discursive and linguistic features that indicate the entrenchment of “new racism” in media at some levels. The toolkit also seeks to go beyond lexical signs to identify more implicit rhetorical devices, such as framing and (de-) contextualization of news events, and to quantify lack of balance in the selection of witnesses and other primary definers. Our ongoing content survey indicates the embedding of linguistic patterns that raise concern about leakage of far right discourse via media into everyday communication.

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Beyond Clicktivism: What Makes Digitally Native Activism Effective? An Exploration of the Sleeping Giants Movement

Social Media + Society ◽

10.1177/20563051211035357 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 205630512110353

Author(s):

Yevgeniya Li ◽

Jean-Grégoire Bernard ◽

Markus Luczak-Roesch

Keyword(s):

Hate Speech ◽

Secondary Data ◽

Peer Production ◽

Far Right ◽

Physical Presence ◽

Strategic Framing ◽

Method Approach ◽

Shed Light ◽

Do So

This article explores how successful digitally native activism generates social change. Digitally native movements are initiated, organized, and coordinated online without any physical presence or pre-existing offline campaign. To do so, we explore the revelatory case of Sleeping Giants (SG)—an online movement that led more than 4,000 organizations to withdraw their programmatic advertising spend from Breitbart, a far-right publisher. Analyzing 3.5 million tweets related to the movement along with qualitative secondary data, we used a mixed method approach to investigate the conditions that favored SG emergence, the organizing and coordinating practices of the movement, and the strategic framing practices involved in the tuning of the movement’s language and rhetoric toward its targets. Overall, we contribute to research on online movements and shed light on the pivotal role of peer production work and of language in leading an impactful online movement that aimed to counter online disinformation and hate speech.

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Undoing Gender Stereotypes in Hindi

Linguistik Online ◽

10.13092/lo.21.1068 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Anjali Pande

Keyword(s):

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Language Use ◽

Indian Society ◽

New Delhi ◽

Basic Premise ◽

Social Fabric ◽

Context Specific ◽

Rules Of The Game ◽

Basic Prerequisite

The basic prerequisite for using any language is the willingness of the speaker to follow the rules of the game. Socially defined norms of language use then tend to set the limits within which one can express oneself using this language. Whether these norms set the speaker free or whether they act as constraints in a free expression of Self, is a question that will be raised in this article. Using examples from Hindi, the paper highlights the role of such norms of language use in perpetuating gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes get constructed as part of a broader process of social differentiation but the site of this construction is to a large extent the normal everyday discourse. A normal classroom discussion amongst university students in New Delhi thus shows how deep rooted such stereotypes are and how effectively they get perpetuated through language and linguistic norms in Indian society. The basic premise in this paper is that meanings are context-specific, they are not fixed and they get created in discourse. But since language use is one thread in social fabric, it serves as an instrument to construct and perpetuate gender stereotypes. The paper is more of an essay on issues that became obvious about gender stereotypes during two classroom discussions. It should not therefore be taken as a study into the deeper aspects of gender representation in Hindi.

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