Retweeting a crime, forced conversions excluded from ’emotional harm’ clause: How Karnataka’s draconian hate speech bill is engineered against Hindus

On 8th December, the Siddaramaiah government tabled the Karnataka Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2025. The Bill was accompanied by the usual rhetoric about “dignity”, “equality” and “protection for all communities”. However, the text of the Bill reveals something entirely different.

This Bill is not a framework meant to create peace. It is a legal instrument crafted with surgical precision to ensure that the Hindu voice, which is already pushed into a defensive corner by decades of selective secularism, becomes even easier to police, prosecute and silence.

Every clause of the Bill mimics an earlier version of Congress’ censorship legacy. From Nehru’s First Amendment to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency to UPA’s Section 66A, the party has always invoked harmony while crafting new tools to suffocate dissent.

For the first time, a state government has attempted to criminalise emotion, penalise forwarding, and empower feelings over facts. In a society where one community’s feelings are routinely weaponised to shut down Hindu festivals, Hindu speech and Hindu mobilisation, the direction of the blow is obvious even before implementation begins.

A definition of “harm” so vague that Hindu speech becomes criminal by default

The Bill defines “harm” as emotional, psychological, social or economic. This definition is not accidental but deliberate. In the current ecosystem, Hindu speech is constantly branded “hate-filled”, “divisive”, “majoritarian”, “Islamophobic”, “casteist” or “anti-minority” by activists, evangelists, political commentators and the cottage industry of grievance-manufacturers who thrive on policing Hindu expression.

The Karnataka government has anchored criminal liability to subjective “emotional or psychological injury” and created a legal weapon that is custom-built for selective enforcement. Because of the language of the Bill, a Hindu questioning aggressive proselytisation can be accused of causing “emotional harm”. A Hindu pointing out patterns of communal violence can be said to have inflicted “psychological injury”. A Hindu criticising exclusive doctrines or religious supremacism can be prosecuted for creating “social harm”.

Notably, all of this happens already in public discourse. What this Bill will do is to institutionalise it by giving these accusations the force of criminal law. A term like “emotional harm” would never survive constitutional scrutiny under the Supreme Court’s Shreya Singhal judgment where the Court struck down Section 66A precisely because vague, subjective categories cannot be grounds for restriction.

However, the Karnataka government has now attempted to resurrect the ghost of 66A, but in a far more aggressive and expansive form. Hindus, who face the majority of FIRs filed for “hurt sentiments” across India, will inevitably become the primary targets under a framework where every feeling becomes an FIR.

Imagine a person sitting in New Delhi makes a comment about Islam or Christianity which is well within the descriptions of the religious texts of the respective religions. However, someone sitting in Karnataka feels the statement hurt his or her emotions or psychology. The feeling of “hurt” will allow that person to file an FIR against the person sitting in New Delhi and it will become a serious threat to freedom of speech and expression.

Even without this new Bill in place, such “hurt sentiments” have proven disastrous for Hindus. Take the example of former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, who is still living under threats to her life. Her personal as well as political life has been ruined just because some “sentiments” were hurt. Now imagine what will happen if the Karnataka government manages to make the Karnataka Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2025 a reality.

Criminalising thought, dissent and even forwarding content ensures that Hindus online become the softest targets

The Bill criminalises “unknowing assistance” which is easily the most chilling provision. That term sounds technical until you realise the implications. In practical terms, it means that a person who forwards a WhatsApp message, shares a news report or retweets satirical commentary can be prosecuted if someone claims that the content inflicted emotional or psychological harm.

It will not matter if the person who forwards or reshared the content intended to hurt, whether the content was factual, whether the expression was legitimate political critique, or whether the person sharing it understood its implications. The mere act of forwarding becomes a potential crime.

This single provision turns the Bill into a digital weapon of mass destruction aimed at the majority. In recent years, FIRs related to online speech have overwhelmingly targeted Hindus who questioned conversion rackets, Islamic extremism, demographic aggression or violent street mobilisation. This Bill makes that process effortless.

Empowering the most aggressive elements ensures Hindu festivals and public expressions remain permanently vulnerable

The Bill also has the provision that gives the District Magistrates sweeping authority to restrict gatherings, processions, public events and even the use of loudspeakers if any community claims “apprehension”. Whenever Hindus celebrate Ramanavmi, Hanuman Jayanti or Ganesh festivals, certain groups can come forward and raise “apprehensions”. Instead of ensuring law and order, the administration will only have to ban the procession or revoke the permission.

The wording ensures that the more volatile a group is, the more power it gains. A group that threatens to resort to violence automatically becomes a community whose “apprehensions” must be respected. On the other hand, a peaceful Hindu procession will become unlawful because someone else threatens lawlessness if the procession is taken out.

Congress’ model of “peace” has always meant quieting Hindus to avoid upsetting its favoured vote banks. This Bill finally codifies that model in statutory language, making Hindu festivals and gatherings dependent on the tolerance of those least inclined to tolerate them.

The selective exemption for proselytisation exposes the Bill’s true political intentions

Among all the provisions of this Bill, none is as revealing as the exemption quietly inserted which protects the “bona fide interpretation and espousing of religious tenets”, including proselytisation. In any genuinely secular framework, either every religious assertion is protected or every religious assertion is subject to scrutiny. Karnataka’s Bill deliberately avoids this neutrality. At a time when aggressive conversion campaigns have been repeatedly exposed in rural Karnataka, often involving inducement, deceit, social fragmentation and foreign funding, the government has chosen not only to ignore these concerns but to grant missionaries a legal shield. In short, this bill gives free hand to missionaries to run conversion rackets without any fear of the law.

This exemption is a confession. If proselytisation caused no emotional or social disruption, the government would not need to protect it explicitly. The exemption exists precisely because the drafters know it routinely causes distress within Hindu families and communities. Instead of acknowledging that harm, the Bill silences Hindu resistance while protecting the very activity that creates the “disharmony” it claims to address.

A state protected from accountability while the Hindu citizen is exposed to limitless criminal liability

The Bill also provides blanket immunity to government officials for acts done “in good faith”. Combined with the vague definitions of harm, offence and intention, this immunity creates a framework where the state can act with maximal force and minimal scrutiny.

By shielding the government machinery while criminalising ordinary citizens for undefined emotional injury, the Bill effectively removes all checks on selective policing. A police officer who books a Hindu for a satirical post faces no consequences. An officer who restricts a Hindu procession due to the “apprehension” of another community is protected.

The state can punish without fear, but the citizen must speak, forward, think and celebrate with fear in every breath. Such asymmetry does not create law and order, it creates a hierarchy of power where the state and its favoured constituencies stand at the top and the Hindu citizen stands permanently exposed.

A constitutional failure on every front, crafted to evade scrutiny and survive through selective enforcement

If the Bill faces scrutiny under any sincere constitutional test, it will fail miserably. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that restrictions on speech must be precise, narrowly defined and directly linked to incitement of violence. Karnataka’s Bill disregards all three principles. Criminal liability based on “emotional harm” or “psychological injury” has no place in Article 19(2), which protects expression unless it poses a genuine threat to public order or security. Here, the threat is not violence but sentiment, not action but interpretation.

The Bill also produces an overwhelming chilling effect. When an individual knows that disagreement, satire, criticism or even forwarding content can be reframed as a criminal act, the rational response is silence. A democracy built on fear is no democracy at all. Yet this chilling effect is not a flaw in the Bill, it is the very purpose of the Bill. Congress does not need mass arrests. It needs hesitation. It needs the majority to doubt themselves. It needs Hindus to think twice before criticising policies, questioning conversions, condemning extremism or asserting cultural identity. Silence, once internalised, requires no policing.

Even if the Bill is eventually struck down in court, the damage will already be done. Many past laws have been abused for years before being declared unconstitutional. Selective prosecution, self-censorship and administrative bias will leave deep scars long before any judicial remedy arrives.

Congress’ long ideological commitment to suppressing Hindu assertion shapes every line of this Bill

This Bill did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the natural continuation of Congress’ ideological instinct to control Hindu assertion while appearing morally elevated. Nehru’s First Amendment in 1951 curtailed freedom of speech to accommodate “reasonable restrictions” that have since been weaponised against Hindus. Indira Gandhi’s Emergency suspended civil liberties altogether. The UPA’s Section 66A was used disproportionately to target Hindu social media users who questioned the government’s policies or exposed communal violence patterns.

The Karnataka Hate Speech Bill is the latest expression of the same impulse. It is no coincidence that the communities who riot at the slightest perceived slight are already empowered, while the community that does not riot becomes the easiest to silence. Harmony, under Congress, has always meant the quieting of Hindu voices to preserve the comfort of its vote banks. With this Bill, the party has simply found a new legal vocabulary to justify the old political instinct.

A threat that will not stop at Karnataka but spread to any state where Congress gains influence

If Karnataka succeeds in implementing this Bill, it will become the template for states that have long shown hostility towards Hindu festivals and free expression. Tamil Nadu already imposes unreasonable restrictions on Hindu processions while tolerating inflammatory rhetoric from radical groups. Once a model for “sentiment-based policing” is established, it will be replicated wherever the political incentives align.

Congress has understood something crucial. It does not need to control national law to control national discourse. A state-level model of selective policing can silence the majority across linguistic and geographical boundaries.

Conclusion

Karnataka’s Hate Speech Bill is a masterclass in political inversion. It claims to maintain peace while empowering those who threaten it. It claims to protect minorities while shielding missionary activity and punishing Hindu resistance. It claims to uphold dignity while criminalising emotional discomfort. It claims to combat hate while institutionalising prejudice against Hindus under the guise of protecting “vulnerable groups”.

Hindus do not riot over memes. They do not burn cities over cartoons. They do not demand blasphemy laws. They do not weaponise their sentiments for political leverage. And that is precisely why this Bill targets them. The community that behaves responsibly becomes the easiest to police. The community that refuses to express fear becomes the easiest to intimidate.