Hyderabad: India recorded at least 42 hate crimes and hate speeches targeting Muslims, Dalits and Christians in January 2026, averaging nine to 10 incidents a week, according to Siasat.com’s monthly tracker.
The incidents spanned the length of the country, from Assam in the northeast to Karnataka in the south, with a notable concentration in Odisha and Uttarakhand. Several state officials, such as Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, were active participants.
Telangana’s Hyderabad, a city long celebrated for its tradition of communal harmony and Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, saw a string of troubling incidents in January. The most notable incident was on the night of January 14, when a communal clash erupted in the Puranapul Darwaza area in Old City after a tattered flex board and a damaged idol were reportedly found inside the Mysamma Temple.
Days later, on January 24, the Telangana High Court cleared the Bhagyanagar Ganesh Utsav Samithi to hold a “Dharma Raksha Sabha” congregation at Ganesh Chowk in Balapur in Hyderabad. Police subsequently registered a case against four people, including the head priest of the Chilkur Balaji Temple, for alleged hate speech against Muslims.
The month also saw what activists described as state-facilitated electoral suppression. During a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, hundreds of Muslim voters in the Jamalpur Assembly of Gujarat’s Ahmedabad district were reportedly deleted from electoral rolls and listed as dead in the electoral rolls, following the mass filing of Form 7 deletion requests.
In what has increasingly become normal, Uttar Pradesh’s Raebareli organised Virat Hindu Conference, an event attended by Hindutva influencers and local leaders on January 21, casually remarking on open calls for the genocide of Muslims and Christians in India. One speaker, right-wing social media influencer Riddhima Sharma, told the crowd, “If they kill two of yours, you kill 100 people in retaliation for peace.” A first information report (FIR) was registered against seven accused.
Attacks on Kashmiri Muslims, a trend that had spiked through December, showed no signs of abating into the new year. The pattern was particularly visible in Uttarakhand, where Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami recorded the highest frequency of hate speech incidents of any state leader in 2025, according to monitors. In Dehradun district, a 17-year-old Kashmiri boy was attacked by a shopkeeper, sustaining 15 stitches to the back of his head and a broken hand. Kashmiri Muslims are routinely physically assaulted and harassed for petty reasons and frequently labelled as “terrorists.”
Two shrine desecrations were recorded during the month. In Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, a Hindutva mob with alleged links to the Hindu Raksha Dal vandalised the more than a century-old shrine of Syed Baba Bulleshah on the night of January 24. In Deoria, Uttar Pradesh, the Hazrat Shaheed Syed Abdul Gani Shah Baba shrine was demolished by district authorities using bulldozers, acting on orders from a local court. The structure stood on barren government land near an overbridge on the Deoria-Gorakhpur Road.
In Assam, which shares a border with Bangladesh, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has made the expulsion of undocumented migrants a defining policy, with the rhetoric having ground-level consequences. On New Year’s Day, Sarma announced that all individuals declared foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunal would be pushed back into Bangladesh within a week. “We pushed back more than 2,000 people in the last three months, 18 of them yesterday (December 31). So, that will be the new way to deal with foreigners,” he had said.
Sarma, who has time and again used the derogatory term “miyas” to describe Bengali-speaking Muslims, had also urged people to make life difficult for them. “In a rickshaw, if the fare is Rs 5, give them Rs 4. Only if they face troubles will they leave Assam… These are not issues. Himanta Biswa Sarma and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are directly against Miyas,” he said in his tirade.
The climate stoked by such statements appeared to have spread beyond Assam’s borders. In Karnataka’s Mangaluru, a migrant labourer from Jharkhand was assaulted on suspicion of being Bangladeshi. In Bihar’s Madhubani district, a Muslim migrant worker identified as Noorshed Alam was beaten and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” after being branded a “Bangladeshi.” A video of the assault, which showed a profusely bleeding Alam being interrogated about his phone contacts — which his attackers claimed were from Pakistan and Bangladesh — circulated widely on social media.
Caste-based violence against Dalits in January followed a grim pattern of humiliation and marginalisation. In Telangana’s Siddipet district, a 23-year-old Dalit house surgeon at the Government Medical College allegedly died by suicide after the man who had promised to marry her withdrew on grounds of caste. She self-injected with herbicide inside the college hostel.
In some cases, individuals are harassed, dehumanised and humiliated just for being Dalit. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly, a 16-year-old Dalit boy was allegedly kidnapped, stripped and brutally assaulted by five men in the Cantt Police Station area.
The Christian community has faced what the community describes as systemic persecution. They are constantly a target of Hindutva mobs.
The most widely condemned incident of the month took place in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district on January 4, where a group of Hindutva men assaulted a Christian pastor Bipin Bihari Naik, paraded him with a garland of shoes and forced him to eat cow dung. The men accused him of conducting religious conversions. The attack drew nationwide condemnation and renewed focus on a sustained pattern of violence against Christians.
A second incident in the state occurred on January 25 in Kapena village, Nabarangpur district, where a Hindutva mob entered a church, assaulted, harassed and barred Christian tribal community members from holding prayers.
When voices of intolerance grew louder, on January 26, the country witnessed a powerful act of brotherhood in Uttarakhand, in the form of 32-year-old gym trainer Deepak Kumar, now widely known as ‘Mohammed Deepak.’
On India’s 77th Republic Day, workers of the Bajrang Dal gathered outside the shop of 70-year-old Vakil Ahmed in Kotdwar, demanding that he remove the word “Baba” from his shop’s name, claiming it was associated with a Hindu deity. As voices rose and the elderly shopkeeper tried to reason with them, the situation threatened to spiral.
That is when Deepak Kumar stepped in.
Along with his friends, he confronted the group and questioned their actions. In a video that has since gone viral, he is heard asking, “Are Muslims not citizens of India?” Refusing to be intimidated, he identified himself as “Mohammed Deepak,” gaining a reputation as a “true Hindu” and “true Indian.”
The backlash was swift. Deepak reportedly faced boycott calls, threats and a noticeable drop in gym memberships. But citizens across the country rallied behind him. Lawyers volunteered legal assistance. Political leaders, including John Brittas and Rahul Gandhi, purchased memberships at his gym.
In the days that followed, ‘Mohammed Deepak’ became more than just a name. His act of courage screamed that speaking up against hate matters, and more than ever in these turbulent times.
(Reporting by Veena Nair and Khadija Irfan Rahim)
This post was last modified on February 28, 2026 12:14 pm