The Congress party, through its official Twitter handle, has chosen to endorse anti-Hindu propaganda peddled by Hate Crime Watch (HCW). It is a multi-organisation effort headed by FactChecker.in of IndiaSpend, in collaboration with Aman Biradari and NewsClick.in.
The year 2018 saw the most hate crimes motivated by religious bias in India in a decade.
Acche din for whom PM Modi? https://t.co/ZvvbnbPUmL pic.twitter.com/UnEnHiMDqU
— Congress (@INCIndia) December 28, 2018
Readers should also remember that the founding trustee of Indiaspend, factchecker.in’s parent organization, is now the Data Analytics head of Congress party.
It is pertinent to mention that the creators of the propaganda themselves admit that they do not aspire to be an exhaustive record of all hate crimes in the country. Such an admission allows them the opportunity to cherry-pick data to peddle their narrative.
They ignore cases where Hindus are victims, they label crimes where Muslims are victims as ‘hate crime’ even though there is nothing to suggest that the crime is motivated by religion and they attempt to create a narrative that portrays Hindus as aggressors and Muslims as victims.
To give readers an idea about the manner in which factchecker.in manipulates data, when Vidharam Katheria, a Dalit, was murdered by a group of Muslims over a family dispute, IndiaSpend did not consider a hate crime claiming that there was no evidence to suggest that the crime was motivated by religious hatred. But when one Azhar Khan was murdered for fishing near a Temple, it was treated as a religious hate crime although there was nothing to suggest that the crime was motivated by religion. This is merely a single instance. There have been several occasions where factchecker.in has indulged in such malpractice.
HCW’s most recent claim is that 2018 saw the most religious hate crimes in the current decade. It is disingenuous on their part to reach such far-fetched conclusions based on data that is not exhaustive.
Journalist at Swarajya Magazine, Swati Goel Sharma, has comprehensively busted the manner in which HCW selectively manipulated data to paint Hindus as aggressors and Muslims as victims.
1. When Hs complain of intimidation and fear from M neighbours, it’s not a hate crime as “there should be a victim/victims who was caused harm or damage to him/her”
But when H outfits warn schools against celebrating Christmas without causing physical harm, its still hate crime pic.twitter.com/TxI9os4YtT
— Swati Goel Sharma (@swati_gs) December 22, 2018
We have also comprehensively exposed the manner in which factchecker.in concocts an agenda in an earlier report. But despite the obvious flaws in the data, the Washington Post had published fiction disguised as news claiming ‘rising hate in India’ based on data from the same organization. Mainstream Media has time and again relied on this faulty data to peddle an anti-Hindu narrative. And now, the Congress party has decided to endorse this narrative which is clearly based on extremely dubious data.
The HCW is a concerted effort to manufacture what can only be described as sophisticated Fake News. Not once or twice, they have repeatedly invented new ways to portray the Hindu community and the BJP in poor light.
The BBC recently published a ‘research‘ which claimed that Nationalism is the primary driver of Fake News in India where they used factcheckers.in as a source for Fake News. One wonders what the BBC has to say about the fact that a source they endorsed in their research is a prime entity for manufacturing Fake News. Amusingly enough, the research itself was a classic case of Fake News.
The Congress party has also revealed that despite their public display of embracing ‘Soft Hindutva‘, they shall not hesitate to demonize the Hindu community. After all, they are the party which devoted state resources to manufacture the narrative of “Saffron Terror“.
