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Hindutva, hate, and rape culture: The communicative inversions that whitewash



The political ideology of Hindutva is built on the infrastructure of hate, and in turn, holds up the circulation of hate. 

The hate that is circulated on digital platforms is created, produced, and funded by brick-and-mortar organizations. In this sense, the hate that is rendered viral through digital platforms is rooted in material presence. 

The online world is sustained by and held up by the offline world. 

Digital infrastructures are integral to the consolidation of Hindutva hegemony.

The digital armies of Hindutva deploy social media infrastructures to circulate hate. 

These social media infrastructures pick their targets, draw on their networks to create campaigns, and continue to amplify the messages of hate.

Threats of sexual violence are key tools in this infrastructure of hate. An overarching rape culture produces the threat of rape, amplifying toxic messages of othering. The recent targeting of the nine-month-old daughter of the captain of the Indian cricket team with rape threats after India lost a match to Pakistan is reflective of this rape culture.

What is particularly salient about the rape threat targeted at Kohli's daughter is the profile of the person issuing the threat from a troll account. 

A graduate from the elite Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), a software engineer who was headed to a graduate programme in a US university before he was arrested. Worth noting are the strategies of seeding hate tied to Hindutva. When the rape threat was called out on Twitter, the account handle was changed to appear as a Muslim account, projecting itself as a Pakistani cricket fan. These communicative inversions, directed at seeding and circulating hate, form the infrastructures of Hindutva.

Also salient is the narrative of the family, suggesting that the threat was posted as an accident.

As with the family denying the sexual violence, Hindutva organizations profiting from the hate forsake ownership of the digital hate. 

After having directed the armies of trolls to circulate the hate, they will tell you, "We have nothing to do with the online hate." Even better, they will put up statements such as "We denounce all forms of online trolling." The denial of ownership of the hate while actively feeding the armies of digital hate is communicative inversion, propping up the rhetoric of Hinduism preaching the oft-parroted slogans, "The whole world is one" and "Diversity in unity." The inversion is further perfected through the turning of the blame on the target, with statements suggesting the target brought the hate on themselves.

One of the most traumatizing features of the attacks targeting me has been the threats/narratives of sexual violence, deeply embedded in Islamophobia. 

These narratives seek to produce the silencing effect that is complementarily organized through letter-writing campaigns, petitions etc. The digital infrastructure of hate is based fundamentally on the disinformation that forms the communicative structure of the letters, petitions etc. 

The emails shared below originate from an account with an Islamophobic fake name, embodying the communicative devices used by Hindutva trolls.



For Hindutva organizations, this digital hate is conveniently obfuscated through a wide range of communicative inversions. While giving legitimacy to the disinformation and feeding off it, Hindutva organizations will claim they have nothing to do with these digital infrastructures of hate. This erasure forms the basis of communicative inversions performed by Hindutva, where Hindutva forces perform the narrative of grievance while spreading and feeding hate through their disinformation infrastructures.

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