Controversial Hindutva Orator Kajal Hindustani Sparks Online Debate with Hateful Narratives (Dfrac)

Hate Watch

With her speeches that are centered around Hindutva and anti-Muslim rhetoric, Kajal Shingala aka Kajal Hindustani seems to be the latest Hindutva icon in Gujarat.

But recently one of her speeches landed her in trouble. A week after delivering an allegedly incendiary speech on 30 March, on the occasion of Ram Navami, in Gujarat’s Una town, Kajal was arrested as according to many reports she is alleged to trigger communal riots.

She gave a speech where she instigated Hindus to pick up arms in order to defend themselves and fight against a particular community.

After this, the two groups on the internet started debating in favour or against the arrest.

In this DFRAC Exclusive report, we will analyse how Kajal spreads hate on an online medium such as on her Twitter account.

The report will cover pointers like:

  1. Who is Kajal Shingla?
  2.  Pattern of Hate Speech on Twitter
  3. Kajal Hindustani as ‘Plaster Saint’
  4. Spreading Misinformation

Who is Kajal Shingala?

According to many reports, Kajal Shingala is a social activist, she gave up her original surname to adopt Hindustani in line with her nationalistic views. She is also dubbed as the ‘lioness of Gujarat’.

A report stated that she describes herself as a ‘young and dynamic nationalist’ who is working to spread awareness on ‘Bhartiya Culture and Religions’. She claimed that she works for Hindu human rights and cited that she is a famous political activist working on-ground to ‘save girls from forceful conversions’.

She is having a significant following of nearly 110.3k users, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi follows her on Twitter. According to her Twitter Bio she is an “Entrepreneur, Research Analyst, Debater, Social Activist, Nationalist, and a Proud Hindustani”.

The analytics of her Twitter account shows that the account has 1.4 million total engagements.

After analyzing Kajal Shingla’s Twitter account, it was discovered that she was inactive from April 2022 until January 2023. However, there was a notable increase in tweet engagement following January 24th, 2023.

The Pattern of Hatred on her Twitter Account:

  • Most of her tweets promote Anti- Muslim Rhetoric. In many tweets, she uses the words like Love- Jihad, Land Jihad, and jihadi to trigger right-wing groups in the country against the Muslim community.

The below graph shows the post timeline on लव Gहाद done by Kajal. In total 127 tweets were done, where the highest number of tweets were done on April 26th 2023

  • In her tweets, she frequently uses the phrase “ALLAH KE BANDE” to denigrate and stereotype individuals from the Muslim community, implying that even those who are connected to God still engage in immoral behavior. Thus, generalizing the whole community.
  • In addition to this, many of her posts try to sarcastically make fun of the opposition leaders of the country which can potentially fuel political hate.
  • She has been observed encouraging her followers who identify as ‘Hindu’ to reject the principles of secularism and brotherhood, instead advocating for the establishment of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ in which other religions are not accommodated.

It can be seen that Kajal has used hashtags like #Lovejihad, #theconversion #thekerelastory, etc.

Kajal Hindustani as Plaster Saint:

On one hand, Kajal, with an intent to perpetuate the narrative of ‘love Jihad,’ kajal shared a video depicting a heartfelt portrayal of a Hindu girl entangled in a love affair with a Muslim man. She proceeded to label the video as a means of endorsing such alleged practices and urged Hindu girls to exercise caution and refrain from falling into this deceptive trap…

This story was originally published in dfrac.org. Read the full story here

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