BY KALIM AHMED / Alt News
On April 3, 2022, just about two months after Yati Narsinghanand got bail in the Haridwar Dharam Sansad hate speech case on the condition that he would not deliver provocative speeches that can disturb communal harmony or take part in similar assemblies, Narsinghanand launched a vitriolic attack against Muslims at the Burari Hindu Mahapanchayat in Delhi and urged Hindus to take up arms against Muslims.
Fourteen days later, he repeated it in Una, Himachal Pradesh. Here, speaking to the media during a hate-spewing assembly in which he took part, Narsinghanand said that Islam’s jihad would eat the entire country.
Undaunted by bail conditions imposed on him, Narsinghanand has since delivered speech after speech after speech targeting Muslims, which received thousands of views on YouTube. Not only that, he has announced a three-day dharam sansad in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, from December 17, 2022. After the district administration denied him permission, he said he would hold it at any cost.
The Supreme Court recently took a serious note of the ‘disturbing’ nature of hate speeches ‘against one community’ and asked police to take suo moto action in such speech cases ‘even if no complaint is forthcoming and proceed against the offenders’. Keeping this in mind, Yati Narsinghanand’s brazen and repeated violations of bail orders with complete impunity deserve to be highlighted. It is worth noting that the apex court said in its October 21 order that ‘any hesitation to act in accordance with this direction will be viewed as contempt of this Court and appropriate action will be taken against the erring officers.’
What constitutes Hate Speech?
According to the United Nations, hate speech ‘refers to offensive discourse targeting a group or an individual based on inherent characteristics (such as race, religion or gender) and that may threaten social peace.’ It identifies hate speech as a ‘precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide.’
The Law Commission of India had in March 2017 submitted a report to the Supreme Court on hate speech. On page 38, the report defines hate speech as an ‘expression which is abusive, insulting, intimidating, harassing or which incites violence, hatred or discrimination against groups identified by characteristics such as one’s race, religion, place of birth, residence, region, language, caste or community, sexual orientation or personal convictions.’
Readers can find the Alt News Hate Speech Policy here, follwoing which this report has identified and classified Narsinghanand’s hate speeches. The document has been prepared based on Facebook’s community standard on hate speech, which is the most detailed such document available publicly.
Tier 2 of the policy considers the following as hate speech: Expressions of contempt (in written or visual form), which is defined as:
- Self-admission to intolerance on the basis of protected characteristics, including, but not limited to: homophobic, islamophobic, racist.
- Expressions that a protected characteristic shouldn’t exist.
- Expressions of hate, including, but not limited to: despise, hate.
All of Narsinghanand’s public speeches documented below, offline or online, can be designated as hate speech according to the above classification.
Who is Yati Narsinghanand?
In January 2022, Narsinghanand’s father 83-year-old Rajeshwar Dayal Tyagi told ThePrint that Narsinghanand was born in 1972 in Hirnot village, Bulandshahr. His given name was Deependra Narayan Singh.
This story was originally published in altnews.in. Read the full story here