‘Serious job’: How a collective in election-bound India fights hate speech

Hate Speech Beda trains volunteers from across the southern state of Karnataka on using the law to combat hate crimes.

Bengaluru, India – As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a grand Hindu temple in the northern Uttar Pradesh state on January 22, a crowd of about 100,000 devotees gathered at a mausoleum nearly 2,000km (1,242 miles) away.

The sombre congregation at Mulabagilu, a small town in the Kolar district of the southern state of Karnataka, was called to mark the Urs (death anniversary) of the 12th-century Sufi saint Hazrat Baba Haider Ali, revered mainly by Muslims but also by other communities in the area. A procession taken through the town, about 100km (62 miles) from the state capital Bengaluru, is the highlight of the annual five-day event.

Shaikh Jaffer Sadiq, who runs a hotel in Mulabagilu, and his friends were preparing for the procession this year when they learned about a photo of the mausoleum – called a dargah in Urdu and Persian – morphed with images of the Hindu god Ram and a saffron flag doing the rounds on social media.

“One of my friends told me about the social media post which had angered the Muslim community. It was a deliberate attempt to hurt the sentiments of Muslims,” Sadiq, 39, told Al Jazeera. A young Hindu man was accused of being behind the incident.

To defuse mounting tensions, Sadiq and his friends met the members of the mausoleum’s management and advised them to file a police complaint against the accused man. “After a police complaint was filed by the dargah members, the Hindu boy was called to the police station and given a strict warning before being let off,” he said. The police made the accused delete the social media post.