Hate speech targeting religious minorities surged across India in the aftermath of the country’s border conflict with Pakistan last year, according to a new report by an American think tank.
Researchers documented a sharp rise in rallies and speeches portraying Muslims as “internal enemies” in 2025, suggesting external security crises were utilised to justify attacks against India’s own minority communities.
This link was especially evident after a terror attack targeting Indian tourists in the Kashmiri village of Pahalgam on 22 April, in which 26 people were killed. India accused Pakistan of harbouring the gunmen who carried out the attack, and responded by launching air strikes against targets inside Pakistan. Fierce clashes at the border and between the two countries’ air forces followed, ending in a ceasefire agreement after four days.
According to a new report from the India Hate Lab (IHL), a project run by the Washington DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate, at least 1,318 hate speech events targeting Muslims and Christians were recorded across India last year. This translates to an average of four incidents a day, and a 13 per cent increase on 2024. It is nearly double the number documented in 2023.
The report identified a concentrated burst of hate speech in late April and early May, after the Pahalgam terror attack and in the days preceding the India-Pakistan hostilities. In the 16-day period between 22 April 2025 and 7 May 2025 alone, 98 in-person hate speech events were recorded nationwide, pointing to what researchers described as coordinated anti-Muslim mobilisation during a period of escalating regional tension.