Facebook users in India target Hindu-Muslim couples, promote extremism and hate speech
The 21-year-old Hindu college student was having a quiet breakfast with her mother when her phone pinged with a terrifying message. Her name was on a hit list.
She and her Muslim boyfriend had been targeted publicly on Facebook along with about 100 other interfaith couples - each of them a Muslim man and their Hindu girlfriend. She immediately called her boyfriend to warn him.
The Facebook post included instructions: "This is a list of girls who have become victims of love jihad. We urge all Hindu lions to find and hunt down all the men mentioned here." At least two followers heeded the call.
The phrase "love jihad" is meant to inflame dark fears that Muslim men who woo Hindu women might be trying to convert them to Islam - a prejudice that the Hindu right has tried to stoke for nearly a decade. But use of the term has spread on social media with the rise of the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a time when religious hatred is growing on Facebook in India, its largest market.
Facebook is facing criticism that hate speech spread on the platform has fuelled ethnic and religious violence in Asia, particularly in places such as Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary committees in Washington, on April 10, 2018. Picture: AP
During his appearances before Congress on April 10 and 11, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company was working on a way to remove hate speech within 24 hours of its appearance and adding dozens of new Myanmar-language content monitors.
"It's clear now we didn't do enough" to prevent the platform from being "used for harm", Zuckerberg said in his statement. But the company has said little about its prevention efforts in India, a market of more than 240 million users.
Satish Mylavarapu posted a hit list of Hindu-Muslim couples on Facebook. Picture: Washington Post / Annie Gowen
"It's a matter of Muslims taking over our blood and taking over our wombs - the wombs that would give Hindu children," he said.
Highly motivated Hindu extremist "volunteers" across India assembled the list by meticulously plotting the locations of mosques and girls schools and colleges around the country and combing young women's profiles for photos or posts that would link them to Muslim men.
"You cannot defend such a sick love," Mylavarapu said. "This too is a kind of terrorism."
Muslims in India no longer matter for Narendra Modi's BJP or Rahul Gandhi's Congress party
The young couple's romance began in the online space that would be its unravelling. They met in 2016, through a student Facebook group for the Communist Party, which is active in some parts of India. He was immediately enchanted by her blue eyes - contact lenses - and her earrings - silver circles with a likeness of Che Guevara that she made herself.
Their relationship soon blossomed in real life, and they met in Kolkata's tea stalls and along its lovers' riverbank promenade, Prinsep Ghat, holding hands and even kissing.
Ramiz and Lisa, an interfaith couple in Kolkata. Picture: Washington Post / Annie Gowen
"We don't believe in religion. We believe in humanity," says Ramiz, a 26-year-old English honours student, sitting in a coffee shop with his girlfriend at his side. "So there is no question of conversion." Because of the threat, Ramiz has asked to be identified by only his first name and his girlfriend by her family nickname, Lisa.
Yet tension was unavoidable in a deeply traditional society riven by caste and religion. His parents, a clerk and a social worker, grudgingly accepted their relationship, although they made it clear they would prefer a Muslim daughter-in-law; Lisa's mother will lend her support only if Ramiz gets a good job.
Meanwhile, conservative Hindu groups supporting Modi's powerful Bharatiya Janata Party began pushing into areas in India's east and south traditionally dominated by other languages and regional parties, including the couple's home state of West Bengal.
West Bengal has been roiled recently by riots between Hindus and Muslims that followed sword-waving devotees marching in honour of Lord Ram - a Hindu deity who is not normally worshipped in the region. At least four people died.
A message on a Hindu activist's phone warns of love jihad - the fear that Muslim men will seduce Hindu women to convert them. Picture: Washington Post/Annie Gowen
"This has never happened in West Bengal," Ramiz says. "Bengal is very beautiful - our society, our culture. This is the place of poets. We don't believe in this kind of thing."
Myanmar groups blast Facebook's Zuckerberg over hate speech inciting real-world violence
In India, a March study by the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank based in New Delhi, showed that religion is increasingly being used as a basis of hate speech on Facebook.
"I don't think Facebook has a clue how to monitor hate speech," says Maya Mirchandani, a senior fellow who co-wrote the study. She says that more proactive text monitoring systems are not in place, including among its rapidly growing non-English-speaking audiences.
"Maintaining a safe community for people to connect and share on Facebook is absolutely critical to us," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. "We have policies that prohibit hate speech and credible threats of harm, and we will remove this content when we're made aware of it."
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Picture: AFP
About two weeks after they filed the police report, Ramiz says, he was returning home in the evening when two men grabbed him, roughed him up and tore his shirt collar. "Why did you report us?" they hissed, he says. And, "why are you dating a Hindu girl?"
The couple have, in fact, been dealing with relationship problems; Lisa, who works part time at an event management company, wants Ramiz to get a job, saying he is spending too much time smoking and talking politics with his friends.
"She wants somebody perfect, perfect, and I am not," he says.
"We're still very good friends," Lisa says. "I'm not sure if we're in a relationship at the moment."
This is the type of tension that Mylavarapu hoped to provoke when he posted the list of names. He has been using Facebook to promote an extremist Hindu agenda since 2012, according to the Indian data and fact-checking website Boom Live.
India is Facebook's biggest market. Picture: AFP
He said in one post that his favourite boots were made of "pure sunni skin", a reference to the Sunni branch of Islam. In another, he urged Hindus to keep swords in their homes for protection and practise killing goats and chickens to get used to the sight of blood.
On March 8, India's Supreme Court upheld the woman's right to choose her faith and partner. But India's National Investigation Agency, which investigates and prosecutes terrorism, is continuing with the case, saying it has seen an "organised effort" by Muslim activists linked to Islamic State to convert Hindus, a spokesman says.
In India's Assam, a Rohingya-like refugee crisis in the making
Mylavarapu is associated with a fringe Hindu group called Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, whose members revere the assassin of Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, whom they blame for the bloody 1947 partition that created the nations of India and Pakistan.
"He's a staunch Hindu and he's functioning because of our support," says the group's state president, N. Subramanya Raju. "If there is any threat from a jihadi, we will protect his life."
Mylavarapu says volunteers are continuing their online research into Hindu-Muslim couples - and will hold on to the data they find until the time is right to release it. He adds that many of those on the original list have already split up.
"We succeeded," Mylavarapu says in a tweet. "Their deceptive love could not withstand the pressure we created."
The Washington Post
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2018. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
