Online caste-hate speech: Pervasive discrimination and humiliation on social media

In India, religious texts, social customs, rituals, and everyday cultural practices legitimise the use of hate speech against marginalised caste groups. Notions of "purity" of “upper-caste” groups, and conversely of "pollution" of “lower-caste” groups, have made the latter subject to discrimination, violence and dehumanisation. These dynamics invariably manifest online, with social media platforms becoming sites of caste discrimination and humiliation.

This report explores two research questions. First, what are the specific contours of caste-hate speech and abuse online? Semi-structured interviews with 12 scholars and activists belonging to Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi (DBA) groups show that marginalised groups regularly face hate and harassment based on their caste. In addition to the overt hatred, DBA individuals and groups are often targeted with abuse for availing reservations – a constitutionally mandated right. More covert forms of hate and abuse are also prevalent: trolls mix caste names and words from different languages to make their comments meaningless to individuals who are not keenly aware of the local context.

Such hateful expression often emerges as a reaction from "upper-caste" groups to DBA resistance and social justice movements. Our respondents reported that the hateful expression could sometimes silence caste-marginalised groups and individuals, exclude them from conversations, and adversely impact their physical and mental well-being.

The second question is how popular social media platforms and online spaces moderate caste-hate speech and abuse? The community guidelines, policies and transparency reports of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Clubhouse were analysed. The report showed that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube incorporated "caste" as a protected characteristic in their hate speech and harassment policies only in the last two or three years – many years after entering Indian and South Asian markets – showing a disregard for the regionalism contexts of their users. Even after these policy changes, many platforms – whose forms for reporting harmful content list gender and race – still do not list caste.