The Conspiracy of Silence: Unmasking the Rise of Hindudvesha in the West

• The sharp rise in anti-Hindu hate crimes in the West is closely linked to ongoing negative portrayals of Hindu Dharma in media, academia, and pop culture.
• In many Western countries, anti-Hindu hatred and violence are often ignored or downplayed, making the problem worse.
• Major media outlets often avoid covering attacks on Hindus, instead pushing stories that portray the Hindu community as aggressors through terms like “Hindutva” or “Hindu nationalism.”
• While Islamophobia is actively addressed in the West, Hinduphobia is rarely even acknowledged.

 Hindudvesha, or anti-Hindu hatred, is deeply rooted in society and is growing stronger. It shows up in two main ways: through ideas and narratives that spread hate against Hindus in media, academia, and culture, and through real-life acts of violence and discrimination against Hindus.[1]

A critical mistake often made is treating physical attacks or acts of prejudice against Hindus as isolated incidents, detached from broader cultural and ideological trends. This flawed narrative allows real-world hate crimes to be framed as random acts, stripped of context, and stripped especially of their anti-Hindu undercurrent. Such framing not only masks reality but also weakens any meaningful response.

Recent years have seen a disturbing spike in anti-Hindu violence, including in Western democracies.[2] [3] One stark example is the murder of Dharmesh Kathireeya, a 27-year-old Indian national in Rockland, Canada, who was brutally stabbed by an 83-year-old white neighbor. Reports confirm that the attacker had previously hurled racist and anti-India remarks at the victim and his wife. [4] Despite clear indicators of a hate crime, major Canadian media failed to mention this angle, choosing instead to treat it as a generic act of violence.[5]

This media silence speaks volumes. Outlets that are quick to condemn Hindu majoritarianism in India suddenly go quiet when Hindus become victims abroad. Moreover, the stereotype of Hindus as a wealthy, well-assimilated minority in the West often stifles the community’s attempts to raise awareness about such incidents.

Kathireeya’s case is not an exception—it is part of a larger, underreported trend. In the following sections, we examine the patterns and systemic factors behind this rising tide of anti-Hindu hate crimes in the Western world.

In the following sections, we look at a troubling issue that’s rarely discussed – the growing number of hate crimes against Hindus in Western countries.

Hinduphobia Rising: A Global Wake-Up Call for Justice and Reform

 A report by the California Civil Rights Department in May 2023, based on a year-long campaign called California vs. Hate, showed a sharp rise in anti-Hindu hate crimes in the U.S. It further established that anti-Hindu hate crimes were the state’s second most reported cases of religiously motivated incidents, the most reported being cases of antisemitism, while incidents of Islamophobia came third.[6] [7]

Anti-Semitic (36.9 percent), Anti-Hindu (23.3 percent) and Anti-Muslim (14.6 percent) were the most cited reasons for reports related to religious targeting,” the California vs. Hate Data showed. [8]

These findings are important for the Hindu community in the U.S. Hindu groups say that anti-Hindu hate and violence are often ignored or downplayed.[9] When concerns about rising Hinduphobia are raised, they are frequently dismissed as “Hindutva conspiracy theories” by those who oppose Hindus. Some of these groups also push laws and policies that unfairly target Hindu Americans, using caste as a reason.

This creates a never-ending cycle of anti-Hindu narratives, where victims are not only denied a voice but are also unfairly blamed as potential threats. As a result, real safety concerns of the Hindu community are ignored, while they are wrongly portrayed as the problem through wild conspiracy theories.

The sudden spate of deaths of Indian-origin students in the U.S. in 2024 is a case in point. In 2024 alone, at least 11 Indian students died under suspicious or unclear circumstances. Between January 15 and February 5, seven students died within just three weeks. Overall, from October 2022 to March 2024, at least 15 Indian-origin students lost their lives in the U.S.[10]

Many of these deaths happened under mysterious circumstances, and the exact causes are still unknown. While they can’t be directly linked to anti-Hindu bias, they should be viewed in the broader context of growing Hinduphobia in American society, including in civil spaces, academia, and politics.

In some cases, the cold and uncaring response from authorities—like the Jaahnavi Kandula incident—also highlights a serious lack of cultural sensitivity. In the bodycam footage of the hit-and-run incident that led to the tragic death of Jaahnavi Kandula, Officer Daniel Auderer was heard laughing and saying that Kandula’s life had “limited value.” Even though his racist remarks sparked widespread outrage, U.S. officials chose not to file criminal charges against him.[11] However, in July 2024, Auderer was terminated from the Seattle Police Department for displaying ‘lack of professionalism.’[12]

In the UK, concerns about anti-Hindu hate crimes were recently highlighted at an event in London organized by Krupesh Hirani, a London Assembly member. British Hindus came together to raise awareness and share their experiences. Hirani stressed that Hinduphobia is real but often goes unreported and ignored. “One of the issues does lie in the reporting of incidences but also misreporting or misclassification of data from the MetPolice as well, so we want to get all parties interested, and people are coming together because they are interested in the issue and want to tackle it genuinely,” he said.[13]

In November 2023, Hirani put forward a motion in the London Assembly asking the Metropolitan Police to report hate crimes by religion to address rising anti-Hindu hate better. The motion passed unanimously and urged the police to work with local Hindu communities to build trust and encourage reporting. Hirani pointed to a survey showing Hindus are the second most likely religious group to face hate crimes, yet this isn’t reflected in police data—something he said must change.[14]

On March 30, INSIGHT UK launched the Anti-Hindu Hate Survey to collect real-life experiences of British Hindus facing bias, discrimination, or hate because of their faith. The survey is especially important given the ongoing silence around anti-Hindu incidents in the UK, despite having strong systems in place to address Islamophobia and Antisemitism.[15]

In April 2023, the Henry Jackson Society released the findings of a study that examined the prevalence of bias and discrimination against Hindu pupils in schools across the UK. The study found direct causal links between the quality of teaching of Hinduism in the classroom and incidents of bullying and harassment experienced by Hindu students. The teachings of Hinduism through a predominantly Abrahamic lens, the distortion and misappropriation of key concepts of Hinduism “are said to be a direct cause of bullying in the classroom.”[16]

Canada has seen a rise in anti-Hindu hate crimes, with frequent attacks on temples and regular harassment of the Hindu community by Khalistani extremists. Between January 2022 and October 2023, over 20 incidents of temple desecration, vandalism, or break-ins were reported in Canada, often involving hate-filled graffiti, according to a report by VHP Canada.[17]

The situation in Canada gets further complicated by various factors, including the anti-India posturing of Canadian authorities, the reluctance of the lawmakers to pass stringent regulations to prosecute perpetrators of anti-Hindu hate crimes, the reluctance to prosecute incidents of anti-Hindu violence as hate crimes, the consistent demonization of Hindu organizations, and the distorted portrayal of Hindu culture and traditions.

The 2022 Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) Report revealed several disturbing trends regarding the rise in anti-Hindu hate crimes. The report showed a 1,000 percent rise in anti-Hindu narratives and attacks against the Hindu community worldwide. “We’ve seen that there’s been a growth of over 1,000 percent (incidents), and anti-Hindu slurs are stoking fears of replacement mixing with antisemitic memes, with other forms of narratives, and hatred shared by white supremacists, by Islamists, and others, and creating a toxic atmosphere of hostility”, says the report. [18]

Media Silence and Misinformation

A Google search for “anti-Hindu hate crimes in the West” shows some surprising trends. Most of the articles on the topic come from non-Western sources. It’s also rare to find detailed reports of even a single anti-Hindu hate crime from Western media, even though many reports mention a rise in such incidents. Local media coverage is minimal or hard to find online. Instead, most information comes from Hindu advocacy groups and their websites or X (Twitter) handles. These patterns raise serious concerns about how little attention global mainstream media gives to hate crimes against Hindus.

Even Indian media, while covering these incidents more than Western outlets, often avoids clearly labeling them as anti-Hindu hate crimes. Instead, it uses vague language that hints at the issue but avoids addressing it directly.

Meanwhile, major Western media not only ignore these hate crimes but also dismiss the real experiences of Hindus in the West. Instead of reporting on attacks, they often push a narrative of “Hindutva majoritarianism” or “Hindu nationalism,” unfairly portraying the Hindu community as aggressors rather than victims.

Take The New York Times, for example. While it’s full of articles criticizing how religious minorities are treated in India, there’s hardly any coverage of the growing anti-Hindu hate crimes in the West. Instead, it often publishes pieces that seem aimed at dismissing or discrediting the concerns raised by the Hindu-American community.

A September 2023 headline from The New York Times reads, “Modi’s Hindu Nationalism Stokes Tension in Indian Diaspora.” The article is a textbook example of victim-blaming. Its twisted logic suggests that “Modi’s Hindu nationalism” is the reason for rising Hinduphobia in the West—even blaming it for the anti-Hindu actions of Khalistani extremists. The article opens with dramatic lines about lecture halls becoming battlegrounds, threats of violence, and temples in Canada and Australia defaced with divisive slogans. It then quickly shifts focus, blaming India’s “Hindu-first” policies for supposedly fueling global tensions within Indian communities.

The real agenda becomes clear when the piece claims that Modi’s government has caused divisions among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and different castes across the world—spilling into school boards, city councils, festivals, and universities. Instead of addressing hate crimes against Hindus, the article blames the victims by portraying their identity as the problem.[19]

There is a growing trend of twisting the reality of anti-Hindu violence in the West by falsely linking it to “Hindutva”—often based on a distorted, woke version of the term. A key example is the violence in Leicester, UK, in 2022. An investigation by Charlotte Littlewood, published by the Henry Jackson Society, showed that the Leicester unrest was wrongly portrayed as a case of organized Hindutva extremism. The report explains how these false claims spread and highlights the role of media and radical Islamist groups in pushing the so-called “Hindutva conspiracy theory.”

“A misinformation campaign accused sections of the Hindu community and a number of Hindu temples of having connections to a political organization, the RSS, in India. This has riled community tensions, leading to violence in Leicester and Birmingham with threats of violence elsewhere, including the targeting of Hindu temples. Influencers involved in spreading misinformation have been heavily relied upon by mainstream media for comment and, most worryingly, have been sent to meet with Leicester’s City mayor to discuss the future of the independent review into the unrest”, says the report. [20]

Selective Outrage: The West’s Blind Spot on Hinduphobia

Western countries go out of their way to address Islamophobia, but Hinduphobia isn’t even acknowledged, let alone taken seriously. This clear double standard is seen in how differently religious hate crimes are treated. Islamophobia is officially recognized as a significant issue, while anti-Hindu hate is often ignored or grouped under broad terms like “Asian” or “South Asian.”

The UK’s plan to set up an Islamophobia Council shows this imbalance. British Hindu groups have raised concerns, saying such efforts should fight hatred against all religions, not just one. The Council is expected to define anti-Muslim discrimination and guide the government on how to respond—but there’s no similar effort for Hinduphobia.[21]

British Hindu organizations have pointed out that focusing only on one religious group while ignoring the discrimination, threats, and past injustices faced by Hindus and others goes against the values of fairness and equal justice. They also raised concerns that such measures could be misused to silence free speech. The Hindu community stressed that the Council’s definition of Islamophobia should not confuse respectful criticism of religious ideas with actual hate. [22] [23]

Mainstream media also gives far more attention to Islamophobia while downplaying or ignoring anti-Hindu hate crimes. When such crimes do happen, they’re either dismissed as not religiously motivated or are explained away using “Hindutva conspiracy” theories.

If Muslims are involved in anti-Hindu attacks in the West, the blame often shifts to the Hindu community. This was seen in the Leicester violence case, where global media pushed the narrative that the RSS and “Hindutva forces” were behind the unrest. But as police investigations progressed, it became clear that members of the Muslim community played a key role in the anti-Hindu violence.[24]

The bottom line is that Islamic appeasement is a serious problem in the West, and the Hindu community often ends up paying the price. The term “Islamophobia” is frequently misused to shut down Hindu voices—especially when they speak out against radical Islamist networks or highlight their role in spreading anti-Hindu hate.

Fight Against Anti-Hindu Crimes

The rise in anti-Hindu hate crimes in the West is being strongly challenged by the Hindu community. Hindu advocacy groups and supportive lawmakers are taking legal and constitutional steps to address the issue.

Georgia became the first U.S. state to introduce a bill against Hinduphobia. If passed, it would add anti-Hindu discrimination to the state’s penal code, allowing hate crimes against Hindus to be prosecuted. The bill defines Hinduphobia as a “set of antagonistic, destructive, and derogatory attitudes and behaviors towards Hinduism.” Notably, in 2023, Georgia also became the first state to recognize the existence of Hinduphobia officially.

In December 2024, the Gavishti Foundation launched the first-ever anti-Hindu hate tracker. This tool is designed to document religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus, raise awareness about Hindu persecution, promote human rights, and publish research on Hindu-related issues. [25]

Wrapping Up

 Hinduphobia is a serious global issue, and in the West, it takes on an even more complex form. Hindu Dharma and its practices are often targeted by subtle yet widespread academic and cultural propaganda, which misrepresents Hindu Dharma and fuels negative stereotypes.

Anti-Hindu hate crimes in Western countries rarely make it to proper investigation, let alone media coverage. The Hindu community is often dismissed because of the stereotype of being wealthy, which is used to downplay or ignore their victimhood. When Hindus speak out, they are frequently labeled as supporters of India’s “Hindu nationalist government” or tagged as “Hindutva extremists”—a tactic used to shame and silence them by flipping the narrative.

To truly address the rise in anti-Hindu hate crimes, a broad and coordinated effort is needed. This includes stronger legal protections, better community awareness, academic accountability, and genuine political will to take the issue seriously.

Citations 

[1] Hindudvesha and UN’s Double Standard; https://stophindudvesha.org/hindudvesha-and-uns-double-standard/

[2] Rising Hinduphobia: Global Surge in Anti-Hindu Violence Raises Alarms; https://ddnews.gov.in/en/rising-hinduphobia-global-surge-in-anti-hindu-violence-raises-alarms/

[3]  Dangerous hybridization of hate against Hindus globally, says U.S.- based research organization – The Hindu;  https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/dangerous-hybridisation-of-hate-against-hindus-globally-says-us-based-research-organisation/article65921343.ece

[4] Canada: 27-yr-old Dharmesh Katheeriya, victim of a hate crime, the neighbor had made racial slurs against him before fatally stabbing him;  https://www.opindia.com/news-updates/canada-27-yr-old-dharmesh-katheeriya-victim-of-a-hate-crime-neighbour-had-made-racial-slurs-against-him-before-fatally-stabbing-him/

[5] CoHNA Canada on X;  https://x.com/CoHNACanada/status/1909320172655329734

[6] Anti-Hindu hate crimes beat Islamophobia cases in California: Report – India Today;   https://www.indiatoday.in/world/us-news/story/anti-hindu-hate-crime-us-california-religious-bias-civil-rights-department-anti-muslim-2544296-2024-05-27

[7] Hinduphobia in California: U.S. State witnesses rapid surge in Anti-Hindu violence, hate crimes against Indias;   https://organiser.org/2024/05/28/239758/international/america/usa-america/hinduphobia-in-california-us-state-witnesses-rapid-surge-in-anti-hindu-violence-hate-crimes-against-indians/

[8] Ibid.

[9] New Report from California Civil Rights Highlights Growing Hinduphobia in the State – Coalition of Hindus of North America;  https://cohna.org/new-report-from-california-civil-rights-highlights-growing-hinduphobia-in-the-state/

[10] The sudden spate of deaths of Indian-origin students and rise of anti-India sentiments in the U.S.;   https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/sudden-spate-of-deaths-of-indian-origin-students-and-rise-of-anti-india-sentiments-in-the-us-13764485.html

[11] Ibid.

[12] ‘Cruel mockery’: Seattle police officer recorded on body camera laughing about Northeastern student’s death fired by department (The Huntington News); https://huntnewsnu.com/78988/campus/cruel-mockery-seattle-police-officer-recorded-on-body-camera-laughing-about-northeastern-students-death-fired-by-department/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[13] Concerns over Hinduphobia in London discussed at City Hall event | The Standard;    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/hinduphobia-faith-hate-crime-met-police-krupesh-hirani-hindu-b1218185.html

[14] British-Indian Lawmaker Tables Motion Against Anti-Hindu Hate Crimes in UK;   https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/british-indian-lawmaker-tables-motion-against-anti-hindu-hate-crimes-in-uk-4545268

[15] Shedding Light on Silence – The significance and impact of the anti-Hindu hate survey – INSIGHT UK; https://insightuk.org/shedding-light-on-silence-the-significance-and-impact-of-the-anti-hindu-hate-survey

[16]  Anti-Hindu Hate in Schools – Henry Jackson Society;  https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/anti-hindu-hate-in-schools/

[17]  ADDRESSING HINDUPHOBIA IN CANADA – VHP CANADA;   https://vhpcanada.ca/addressing-hinduphobia-in-canada/

[18] 7/11/22 – Anti-Hindu Disinformation: A Case Study of Hinduphobia on Social Media; https://networkcontagion.us/reports/7-11-22-anti-hindu-disinformation-a-case-study-of-hinduphobia-on-social-media/

[19] Modi’s Hindu Nationalism Stokes Tension in Indian Diaspora – The New York Times;  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/30/world/canada/modi-canada-hindu-nationalism.html

[20] Henry Jackson Society Report on Hindu-Muslim civil unrest in Leicester; https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CRTLeicesterFinalReport-FINAL-VERSION.pdf

[21] British Hindus object to islamophobia council in the UK, call for hatred against all religions to be recognized – The Times of India; https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/british-hindus-object-to-islamophobia-council-in-uk-call-for-hatred-against-all-religions-to-be-recognised/articleshow/118337929.cms

[22] Ibid.

[23]  Statement on the UK Government’s initiative to establish an islamophobia council –   INSIGHT UK; https://insightuk.org/statement-on-the-uk-governments-initiative-to-establish-an-islamophobia-council

[24]  Is the SOAS inquiry into Leicester violence biased and rigged against Hindus?;  https://hindupost.in/world/is-the-soas-inquiry-into-leicester-violence-biased-and-rigged-against-hindus/

[25] Hinduphobia Tracker – A database of Anti-Hindu hate crimes; https://www.opindia.com/2024/12/hinduphobia-tracker-a-database-of-anti-hindu-hate-crimes/