An increasingly disturbing pattern that promotes ‘Hinduphobia’ is becoming more and more visible on social media at the global level. The impact of this trend shouldn’t be underestimated as it is getting manifested in violence against Hindus.

There are two significant studies which have dealt with this issue and gauged the extent of the rise of digital Hinduphobia. One of these studies was published last year. Titled “ HP-BERT: A framework for longitudinal study of Hinduphobia on social media via language models" and conducted by Ashutosh Singh and Rohitash Chandra, this study extracted Hinduphobic tweets and curated a dataset using the X (Twitter).

This dataset covers the period from April 2020 to January 2024. The study focused to a large extent on capturing Hinduphobia in context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study analysed tweets that included terms such as Covid, Covid-19, or coronavirus, establishing a clear relationship between the pandemic and the Hindu community.

It employed targeted keywords and hashtags to identify negative (Hinduphobic) and positive/neutral sentiments associated with Hinduism. “The negative terms such as ‘Hindu superspreaders’ (referring to the Kumbh Mela Hindu festival), ‘Hindu rituals causing Covid’ (related to temple gatherings), and derogatory references such as “piss drinker" (associated with cow urine and dung) were used to malign and blame the Hindu community for the spread of Covid-19. Notable hashtags promoting Hinduphobic content included #HindusSpreadCorona, #HinduCOVIDConspiracy, #COVID19HinduHate, and #COVIDHindutva."

The systematic data collection in this study employed stratified sampling across temporal (early pandemic, Delta variant peak, post-vaccine periods), geographic (six countries with significant Hindu populations: Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United Kingdom to ensure comprehensive regional coverage), and content-type dimensions (news, personal opinions, official statements).

“We collected approximately........

© News18