The X account of the independent research project Hindutva Watch was withheld in India on Tuesday, January 16, reportedly in response to a legal demand.
The initiative monitors attacks on minorities and marginalized communities by Hindutva groups in India and was founded by Raqib Hameed Naik, a Kashmiri journalist who relocated to the United States in 2020.
The website was founded in 2021.
The website’s social media account posts videos and news snippets about violence against Muslims and other minority groups in India.
Last year, X, formerly known as Twitter, complied with a legal demand from the Indian government and withheld the accounts of the United States-based human rights organizations Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) and Hindus for Human Rights in India.
“What’s clear is that there is a coordinated plan of transnational repression by the Modi government, assisted by their eager partners in the diaspora – and their action against us may well represent the beginning of a massive clamp down of anti-Modi voices prior to the 2024 elections in India,” a press release of the Hindus for Human Rights had said, back in October 2023.
IAMC said that Elon Musk, the owner of X, is “working hand in glove with Modi’s authoritarian regime” to block a US-based organisation and that X is “accelerating the suppression of free expression and democracy”.
