The report titled “Streaming Violence: How Instagram Fuels Cow Vigilantism in India” was released by Washington-based think tank group Centre for the Study of Organised Hate (CSOH)
Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DELHI — The social media platform Instagram is now being used by cow vigilantes to glorify their nefarious activities targeting Muslims across India and to recruit members for their violent activities. They also seek donations to help them spread vigilantism, revealed a report.
The report titled “Streaming Violence: How Instagram Fuels Cow Vigilantism in India” was released by Washington-based think tank group Centre for the Study of Organised Hate (CSOH) on Tuesday.
The report tracked and analysed 1,023 Instagram accounts of individuals and groups involved in cow vigilantism in India and found that 30% of the vigilante accounts had posts showing vigilantes engaging in physical violence against people transporting cattle. Videos of assault espcially on Muslims are also uploaded. .
Most of these accounts, which post their vigilantism, are being run from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states with Haryana recording the highest numbers of accounts. States in which the BJP is currently in power, either on its own or in a coalition, accounted for 793 of the 834 accounts – 95%. 114 of them were from Haryana (13.6%), followed by Rajasthan with 54 accounts(6.4%) and Maharashtra with 22 (2.6%).
“Haryana stands out as a key state where cow vigilantism has proliferated tremendously in tandem with institutional support from the state. One of the ways the state has legitimised vigilantism is through the formation of the Special Cow Protection Task Force constituted in 2020 in order to enforce the state’s cow protection law,
The Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act of 2015, the Cow Protection Task Force essentially offers state impunity to the activities of cow vigilantes and enable them to indiscriminately carry out intimidation, surveillance, and physical violence against truck drivers. The law empowers vigilante violence by allowing perpetrators to “take prompt action on such illegal activities after specific inputs received from the public,” thus legitimising vigilante activities,” noted the report.
The 121 Instagram reels showing vigilantes inflicting physical violence on innocent people who were transporting cattle recorded 8.3 million views. As many as 9 of the 121 posts (7.4%) had more than 100,000 plays each. 100 of the 121 (82.6%) reels had no graphic content asf ilter was placed on them by Instagram.
Calls for donations are also given by cow vigilantes on their Instagram profiles, adding caprions and stories with the posts.
“Multiple Instagram accounts with posts glorifying violence and showing vigilantes engaging in physical violence against people who were transporting cattle continue to have the “Send Gift” feature available, providing their viewers with an opportunity to send them money directly via the social media platform,” report said.
What is more unfortunate and strange that Instagram has not taken any steps to stop the use of social media platform to spread violence against a particular community.
“A total of 167 Instagram posts depicting explicit violence by cow vigilantes were reported by selecting the “showing violence, death, or severe injury” option under the “violence, hate, and exploitation” category. Despite clear guideline violations, Instagram failed to remove any, resulting in a 100% inaction rate,” the pointed out.
Pointing out the failure and complicit of social media giant, the report further noted “The unmitigated spread of violent accounts produced and shared by cow vigilantes from across India reflect the Meta’s abject failure and complicity in popularising such content. Meta is fundamentally complicit, due to their clear lack of accountability and failure to address the violent content shared on their platforms by cow vigilantes. Despite the widely reported involvement of such accounts in numerous instances of violence against Muslims, they continue to operate unchecked and with impunity on Meta-owned social media platforms”.
