Naik, 29, is the founding father of HindutvaWatch.org, some of the strong real-time knowledge units of human rights abuses on the earth’s largest democracy. Using video and film proof submitted by a community of Indian activists, together with information aggregation, the location tracks hate crimes by Hindus in opposition to Muslims, Christians and members of the lower-ranked castes. Since its founding in April 2021, it has catalogued greater than 1,000 situations of violent assaults and rhetoric. (Hindutva refers to political ideology that advocates for Hindu supremacy.)

It is probably going an undercount, Indian political consultants mentioned. Still, the web site has angered the more and more authoritarian authorities of right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which critics cost promotes the concept that the Hindu majority is superior and tolerates lethal crimes in opposition to Muslims and Christians.

At least 11 occasions, Naik mentioned, the federal government or Indian legislation enforcement have petitioned Twitter to droop its account or take down a few of its content material, one in all its most essential venues for publicizing its findings. As of Sunday, its Twitter account stays lively.

Until he agreed to an interview with The Washington Post, Naik, who’s Muslim, ran each the location and its Twitter account anonymously from Cambridge, Mass., the place he settled after fleeing India in 2020.

With Twitter now within the palms of Elon Musk, his work has turn out to be extra difficult. In India, the third-largest marketplace for Twitter, Musk has fired almost 90 p.c of the workers, in line with news reports. Hindu extremists have been allowed again onto the location, and hate speech has soared. Naik worries that Musk may acquiesce to the Modi administration’s makes an attempt to stifle Hindutvawatch.

Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Despite that, he has determined to make his work public, hoping to construct his homegrown website into a serious operation geared toward warning the Indian authorities that its human rights violations are being catalogued.

“At some point, it becomes very important for you to come out in the public and look into the eye of your oppressor,” Naik mentioned in an interview with The Post. To say: “I’m watching you, whatever you’re doing. And preserving evidence.”

Preserving proof of hate crimes

After gaining independence from the British Empire in 1947, India aspired to be a secular nation the place folks of all faiths may stay in peace. But non secular tensions have repeatedly flared hardly ever with as a lot vitriol as underneath Modi.

Since Modi took management in 2014, hate crimes in opposition to minorities in India have skyrocketed by 300 p.c, in line with a 2019 study by Deepankar Basu, an economics professor who research South Asian politics on the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Since then, Modi’s get together has solely turn out to be stronger in India’s parliament, however up to date hate crime statistics are onerous to search out, a number of consultants mentioned. After 2017, India’s crime bureau stopped accumulating knowledge on hate crimes, news reports show.

Modi’s workplace didn’t return a request for remark.

The cease has created a gaping void of data, the students added, and most makes an attempt to report on hate crimes in India have shortly been shut down or disappeared.

Enter Naik. He was born in Kashmir right into a household of modest means and spent a lot of his youth making ready to turn out to be an engineer. But that each one modified as soon as he acquired into faculty and have become a journalist reporting on the injustices in opposition to Kashmiri Muslims unfolding round him.

Naik recounts how his ardour for the work traces again to a single second in 1997, when he was approaching 4 years previous.

It was the spring. Protests have been roiling Naik’s neighborhood in Kashmir, a Himalayan and majority-Muslim area claimed by India and Pakistan. Mistakenly believing Naik’s dad was a sympathizer with Muslim insurgents, army males got here and took his father away. He returned after three days, overwhelmed and bruised.

In faculty, Naik acquired a style for journalism after volunteering to cowl occasions in Kashmir for a small website whereas finding out political science. The job uncovered him to the plight of Muslims within the area, he mentioned.

In 2019, Naik’s work started to attract wider consideration. Modi stripped the disputed areas of Jammu and Kashmir of autonomy, sparking violent protests. Modi responded with a curfew and an web shutdown.

Naik was one in all just a few journalists in a position to report on the unrest, submitting dispatches for the Globe Post from the earliest days. Soon, Naik recalled, Indian intelligence officers have been haunting his dad and mom’ house in Kashmir.

After being questioned by Indian intelligence officers thrice in August 2019, Naik mentioned he spoke with folks from organizations such because the Committee to Protect Journalists, who urged him to depart. They purchased him a airplane ticket to New Delhi, the place he spent weeks bouncing from sofa to sofa.

Shortly after, Naik determined to go the United States after an American-based charity group invited him come to present lectures about his expertise. At a type of talks, he mentioned, an activist approached and talked about that he had bought the area title HindutvaWatch.org to trace Hindu hate crimes. The website was not lively, and the activist didn’t have time to work on it.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Naik returned to his dad and mom’ house in Kashmir after his dozens of talking occasions within the U.S. wrapped up. Soon, Indian intelligence officers have been ringing his cellphone, and Naik determined it was time to depart for good.

In August 2020, he got here again to the United States on a vacationer visa and later utilized for a particular work visa. He lived in Mississippi for roughly a yr earlier than settling in East Cambridge round August 2021, the place he stayed with a buddy who labored in biotechnology.

With loads of free time on his palms, his ideas turned to Hindutva Watch.

A retelling of what’s happening

On the Fourth of July 2022, Naik awoke bleary eyed and sick. But then a Twitter message popped up on his pc.

An activist despatched him a video of a bunch of males in India beating a Muslim man, squatting on the street bare. Naik tried to confirm if it was actual and requested a journalist contact who lived close to the village to research. Local police denied the incident, saying the Muslim man was mentally unwell. But a number of native residents confirmed it.

Less than a day later, Naik posted the video and police response on Twitter and his web site, etching an incident into digital historical past.

“We want to make sure the evidence is properly preserved,” he mentioned.

That video is one in all hundreds Naik has labored to confirm and doc: scenes of police beatings, properties being bulldozed, Hindu nationalist rallies that flip hateful and racist, even members of Modi’s get together calling for “Muslim genocide.”

Every day, Naik and a band of six activists internationally scour social media, messaging apps and chatrooms searching for hateful movies, textual content and speech within the Indian language press, Twitter, Reddit, Telegram and WhatsApp. Activists and journalists additionally ship them movies that must be verified.

The group holds digital conferences a number of occasions every week, the place they focus on the reviews and movies that must be verified. Hindutva Watch works with people on the bottom who might help nameless to allow them to report and confirm with out concern of retaliation. English subtitles are placed on movies in native Indian languages.

In the previous, Twitter has taken down a few of its content material on the request of Indian officers, Naik mentioned.

One of the location’s volunteers, who spoke with The Post on the situation of anonymity for safety causes, joined Hindutva Watch final yr after his personal Twitter account acquired banned for causes which are nonetheless not clear, he mentioned. He had been monitoring hate crimes as an activist, however with out Twitter he was misplaced.

“It is important to document hate crimes,” he mentioned, as a result of the mainstream media is “not showing this.”

Other organizations have carried out what Hindutva Watch does, with various ranges of success. In 2017, the Hindustan Times, a outstanding nationwide newspaper in India, began a hate crimes tracker on violence in opposition to Muslims and lower-caste Indians that have been typically coded as homicide or assault.

But the initiative stopped, which news reports point out could have been on account of authorities stress. The paper’s editor in chief, Bobby Ghosh, who spearheaded the initiative, resigned shortly after. He declined to remark.

Citizen’s Religious Hate Crime Watch, a knowledge monitoring venture, additionally operated with an analogous mission, nevertheless it shut down in 2019 with out rationalization, a number of students mentioned.

The Indian information group NDTV keeps track of hate speech from politicians, and a corporation referred to as Doto maintains a list of abuses which Hindutva Watch typically cites. Altnews is a outstanding fact-checking information website.

Khaled Beydoun, a worldwide Islamophobia scholar at Wayne State University in Detroit, mentioned it’s essential that Hindutva Watch exists, as a result of winners write historical past.

“Ten years from now, the history of what is taking place under the Modi years will be entirely authored by the Modi regime,” he mentioned. “But this [site] provides a retelling of what is taking place with Muslims in real-time.”

Rana Ayyub, an investigative journalist who additionally writes for The Post, mentioned hate crimes “have completely disappeared from our mainstream publications. … Hindutva Watch is documenting hate crimes, attacks on minorities and persecution that has otherwise been normalized by the mainstream media.”

Hindutva Watch has additionally proved to be priceless proof to some Indian lawmakers. Asaduddin Owaisi, a Muslim lawmaker within the decrease home of the Indian Parliament, mentioned he has spent years attempting to persuade opposition lawmakers that Muslim hate crimes are occurring. The visible proof might help.

“Whether it changes their minds or not is a different thing,” he mentioned in an interview. “But definitely, when you see a video of beatings … how can anyone deny it?”

‘If Twitter goes down’

These days, Naik’s father, who additionally spoke on the situation of anonymity for safety causes, mentioned he chats together with his son sporadically and largely retains tabs on him on Twitter.

In a WhatsApp cellphone name, he mentioned he’s apprehensive about his son’s future and would have most popular if Naik caught together with his authentic plans to be an engineer.

“We are tense and worried all the time because of what happens to journalists,” he mentioned, referring to reporters being jailed. “If he comes home, they could do anything.”

Meanwhile, as Naik, who moved elsewhere on the East Coast a couple of months in the past, ran HindutvaWatch.org anonymously, he at occasions reported on the rise of the Hindu proper in America underneath his personal title.

In April 2021, a report he wrote for Al Jazeera about how coronavirus funds have been steered to “Hindu right-wing groups” within the United States prompted demise threats and have become a part of a wider defamation lawsuit filed by the Hindu American Foundation, an influential lobbying group looking for to form the picture of Hinduism within the United States. The case was dismissed by a federal court in December.

And now, with Musk main Twitter, Naik worries the billionaire’s needs to open the location as much as every kind of speech has repercussions for India. It is more likely to stoke anti-minority sentiment that already runs excessive on the web site, he mentioned.

If the location turns into overrun with hate speech, he mentioned, it’s extra dire.

“If Twitter goes down,” Naik mentioned, “it would seriously impede our work.”