One of the important findings of our research team over the last two years has been the identification, mapping, and tracking of Hindutva groups in Aotearoa New Zealand. These groups have been present in Aotearoa New Zealand for over two decades, in the form of organizations aligned with the Hindutva ideology (see the presentation with Richa Sharma) and digital platforms circulating the Hindutva ideology.
This interplay of digital platforms and brick-and-mortar organizations makes up the disinformation and hate ecosystem of Hindutva.
The interplay simultaneously enables multi-layered messaging and targeting strategies. For instance, the attacks carried out by Hindutva extremists digitally, targeting Dalits, gender-diverse communities, Muslims, and dissenting voices online offer the communicative infrastructure for targeted attacks by brick-and-mortar organizations. The brick-and-mortar organizations draw on the narrative structures crafted by digital Hindutva extremism.
The anonymity offered by digital platforms means that the digital campaigns are virulent, violent, accelerated, and extreme. Our team's analysis of Hindutva extremism in the diaspora depicts that the disinformation is often first planted digitally, then magnified multifold by networked campaigns, and mobilized through sexually violent and physically violent messages.
This magnified and violent infrastructure of extremist Hindutva hate then is picked up by brick-and-mortar organizations building on the disinformation produced digitally to carry out attacks through the institutional processes and structures of democracies. Take for example the targeted attacks on the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) and me that has been orchestrated digitally and carried out by a wide range of Hindu community, religious, cultural and art organizations in Aotearoa. The flow of disinformation from the digital spaces of Hindutva hate to the brick-and-mortar organizations in the diaspora renders visible the networks of Hindutva that Hindutva organizations work hard to create ambiguity around. For instance, Hindutva-aligned organizations in Aotearoa often present themselves publicly as messengers of peace, social cohesion, and unity, creating a public profile that speaks of harmony while privately mobilizing around the Islamophobic ideology of Hindutva. Events such as the targeting of CARE, our research team, our activist partners and me by Hindutva renders legible this critical linkage.
Hindutva extremism threatens social cohesion through the narrative infrastructure of Hinduphobia. As a communicative inversion, turning materiality on its head, Hinduphobia is a narrative account for the frame, "The Hindu is in danger" that is organized by Hindutva to dehumanize Muslims and target them through violence. Hindutva extremism crafts events through this narrative frame of "Hindu is in danger (Hindu khatre mein hai)."
Consider for instance the recent robbery at a dairy in Aotearoa New Zealand that led to the death of a dairy worker. The robbery is part of a broader pattern of such incidences and is situated historically. In the contemporary context of Aotearoa, as communities struggle with poverty and hardships, we have witnessed across communities incidences of robberies and violence connected to them. Moreover, the incidences of violence in communities must be read in relationship to the intertwined forces of colonialism and capitalism in Aotearoa.
For Hindutva extremists, the death of a dairy worker, who is Indian and whose name suggests he is a Hindu, is an opportunity for seeding disinformation and hate. The incidence is framed as a religious-motivated attack and the violence is framed as a hate crime. The framing of the violence as religious-motivated hate crime seeds and propels the Hindutva disinformation ecosystem around the event, working to conjure up the false narrative of Hinduphobia, catalyzing the communicative infrastructure around "Hindu is in danger."
Let's examine here the communicative strategy deployed by Hindutva extremists in the region to misframe the dairy attack and turn it into a piece of disinformation for catalyzing hate. The frame deploys labeling, labeling the violence and the death as "race-religion hate crime." This mis-framing takes opportunistically an incidence of violence and casts it as hate crime, and further as, "race-religion-motivated hate crime." Such scavenging opportunism forms the communicative infrastructure of Hindutva. Hindutva extremists online continually are in search for events in India and events across the Indian diaspora globally to craft the frame.
Note also the working of the frame that continually obfuscates the experiences of Indians and the experiences of Hindus. An Indian dairy worker being attacked in the robbery turns into the implication that Hindus are under attack.
Note here also the inter-referential framing structure of the narrative. The digital extremist hate and brick-and-mortar campaign that was directed at me, CARE researchers, CARE, Massey University, and activists challenging the presence of Hindutva in Aotearoa is drawn upon and placed as the cause of the attack. Notice here how scholarly work and activism challenging the Islamophobic hate of Hindutva is framed as a risk to Hindus and Indians. This continued misframing, turning critiques of the fascist ideology of Hinduism as a risk to Hindus is the basis for the campaigns targeting academic freedom across Western democracies that have been organized by Hindutva extremists globally. My employer, Massey University, continues to be the target of Hindutva extremists digitally as well as on brick-and-mortar spaces because of its support for the academic work challenging the hate propelled by Hindutva.
The disgusting opportunism that is evident in this tweet by a Hindutva-espousing white yogini speaks to the interlinked networks of Hindutva and the interplays between the offline and online. A brick-and-mortar incident in Aotearoa, situated within the broader interplays of violence, capitalism, colonialism, and precarization of communities, is turned into a religiously-motivated hate crime. This grotesque opportunism works alongside the deployment of both white supremacy and Hindutva supremacy that targets Māori communities under the "tough on crime" narrative, calling for greater police, security, and carceral measures.
The disinformation and hate propelled by Hindutva extremism are existential threats to social cohesion in Aotearoa. Salient here is how Islamophobia is being deployed in Aotearoa by Hindutva, by digital infrastructures of Hindutva in Aotearoa, by digital hate accounts in Australia seeding and disseminating the Hindutva ideology and connected to the inter-communal violence in Leicester, and by Hindu and Indian community leaders and organizations (that position themselves as representing Hindus and Indians) propagating the hateful extremist ideology of Hindutva in Aotearoa. The Christchurch terrorist attack offers us a powerful reminder that Islamophobic hate, perpetuated through discourse, underlies the material violence of Islamophobic terrorism. What, if anything at all, are our security and intelligence community doing to address the proliferation of digital Islamophobic extremism targeting our communities here in Aotearoa New Zealand?