Words that harm: confronting hate speech in Bangladesh

Freedom of expression, as a corollary of democracy itself, offers everyone the opportunity to live together as equals and share ideas. In recent years, an intense and often confused debate has emerged, highlighting hate speech as a constituent of freedom. It is imperative to distinguish between the peaceful exercises of freedom of expression and hate speech, which is intolerable.

There is no single universally accepted definition of hate speech. Hate denotes a powerful, antisocial and destructively aggressive emotion directed at an individual or a group. Hate speech consists of expressions that attack a person or group on the basis of protected characteristics – race, religion, ethnicity, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or political affiliation. Alarmingly, incidents of hate speech are rising in Bangladesh, not only between different races, religions and nations but also within them, driven by divergent ideologies, beliefs and ways of thinking.

Religious hostility, including Islamophobia, is increasing in Bangladesh. This troubling trend is driven by anti-Muslim rhetoric and outright hatred. Muslims are often portrayed as if every one of them were a ‘terrorist,’ while the slur ‘malaun’ is often used to attack Hindus. Such hostile statements are intentionally targeted.

A recent incident at a school in Bangladesh illustrates this atmosphere and goes to show that even children are affected. I learnt about it from Hindu a friend who is a journalist at a respected online news portal. His son is in class 2. One day during the tiffin break, a classmate insulted and rebuked the boy, saying, ‘Hindus are bad; they pray to sculptures… be Muslim, Muslims are good.’ The Muslim child’s taunting frightened my friend’s son, who came home visibly upset. Similar or worse incidents targeting religious minorities occur elsewhere in the region, including India.

Hate speech has long been used as a weapon to continue the oppression and subordination of groups who have been discriminated against politically, socially and economically. It not only targets a group or individual’s psychological and emotional state, but also their personal freedom, dignity and personhood. Since, by definition, minorities are easy targets of hate speech – both online and offline – spreading of misinformation against them and inciting violence against them have become easier, anonymous and more common with the advent of social media. Hate speech is increasingly used by majority groups against minorities on the basis of religion, ethnicity or linguistic difference and its main driver in the region currently are the ubiquitous online platforms, primarily social media. Another common factor is the introduction of laws framed to restrict freedom of speech in the guise of protecting citizens against hate speech and violence.

Today’s hate speech is fundamentally different from isolated incidents of the past – it spreads through Facebook, YouTube and messaging apps, reaching millions within hours and sometimes sparking mob violence, communal riots or targeted harassment campaigns.

The 2012 Ramu violence, in which a doctored Facebook photo triggered attacks on Buddhist temples and homes, stands as a stark example of how digital falsehoods can ignite real-world destruction. Similar patterns have since recurred in Nasirnagar, Bhola, and other districts, showing that this threat is neither hypothetical nor fading.

Hate speech is common in Bangladeshi politics. Parties on all sides use extreme and sometimes anti-Semitic language against rivals. Those in power often speak as if they held absolute authority and target opponents with hateful rhetoric, while opposition parties respond in kind against the government and other stakeholders.

Literature has always had an ambivalent relationship with hate and prejudice. Rather than countering hatred with facts alone, literary language works by slowing readers down inside another person’s consciousness, where stereotypes struggle to survive. Virginia Woolf argued in her 1929 book A Room of One’s Own, that women needed a room of their own to create. Nearly a century later, their social position remains largely unchanged. The women and children suffering abuse and death around us are someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s friend.

The Bengali literary tradition, however, offers a powerful, centuries-old counter-current to communal hatred – one that long predates the digital-era crisis. Rabindranath Tagore, the first Bengali Nobel laureate in literature, repeatedly articulated a syncretic and pluralistic vision of Bengal. His poetry and songs celebrate the unity of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians as one people. These lines remain alive today, most notably in Bangladesh national anthem, ‘Amar Sonar Bangla Ami Tomay Valobashi’. That a Hindu poet’s composition was adopted as the anthem of a Muslim-majority nation stands as a quiet but potent rebuttal to the essentialist, us-versus-them rhetoric that continues to surface in schoolyards and political discourse.

Kazi Nazrul Islam, national poet of Bangladesh famous for rebel poetry, took this vision further by making interfaith unity an explicit political and spiritual mission. In his poem Manush ‘Human Being’, he asserts that no mosque, temple or scripture holds greater value than human dignity itself. Nazrul composed devotional songs in both Islamic and Hindu traditions – writing ‘Hamd and Na'at’ alongside ‘Shyama sangeet and Bhajans’ – thereby treating religious traditions as a shared cultural inheritance rather than competing camps. His own life reflected this ethos: he married across religious lines and endured censorship under British colonial rule for his defiant stance.

Bengal’s oral and folk traditions carry this same spirit. Baul singers – wandering mystic-musicians whose songs draw simultaneously on Sufi, Vaishnava and folk philosophical currents – have long exemplified a lived religious hybridity that resists the rigid boundaries on which hate speech depends. Their music, recognized by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage, blends influences from Hindu bhakti movements and Sufi song while refusing alignment with any single organised religion, caste system or sacred site.

In 2013, an Islamic scholar described women as ‘tempting fruit like tamarind’ and argued that according to the Quran, women should stay at home and take care of their families and children. He also faced public outrage and media criticism when he called on the guardians of madrasa students not to send their daughters to school after the fourth or fifth grade, saying that this could make girls disobedient and lead them to elope with men.

Bangladesh’s response to hate speech is fragmented and ineffective. The Cyber Security Act is seen as vaguely worded – risking punishment of legitimate dissent while failing to curb real incitement – eroding public trust. Social platforms lack local accountability, and Bangla moderation lags behind English, letting local-language hate slip past both automated and human review. Reporting and takedown processes are slow – often taking days while misinformation spreads in hours. Authorities often blur hate-speech enforcement with political censorship, using broad laws to silence critics rather than genuine perpetrators, which deters civil-society support for stronger regulation.

Because religious minorities are few, hate speech poses outsized risks; single inflammatory posts have been used to justify land grabs, property destruction and displacement, as minority-rights reports document. Low digital literacy, especially in rural areas, worsens the situation. Fabricated images, out-of-context videos and rumours spread through social media and word-of-mouth, creating a vicious cycle of misinformation and hate.

Addressing this crisis requires co-ordinated action by multiple actors. The state should enact clear, narrowly tailored laws that distinguish protected speech from incitement to violence, with judicial safeguards to prevent misuse. Law enforcement need specialist training to identify and respond to hate speech quickly and impartially. Technology platforms must invest in Bangla-language moderation, hire local context experts and create faster escalation channels for content that risks sparking violence. Bangladesh-specific transparency reports would increase accountability.

Civil society and media should act as watchdogs. Independent fact-checkers, journalist networks and human-rights groups can rapidly debunk viral falsehoods, while responsible reporting must avoid sensationalising communal incidents. Besides, educational institutions should teach media literacy and digital citizenship so young people – highly active on social media and vulnerable to manipulation – develop critical skills to resist hateful narratives.

Religious and community leaders can use their moral authority to de-escalate tensions and promote interfaith harmony during crises. Individual citizens have a role too: verify before sharing, report hateful content and counter hate with reasoned dialogue rather than silence or retaliation.

Confronting hate speech in Bangladesh is not simply a legal or technological problem – it is a societal one, demanding vigilance, empathy and collective responsibility. This world is a global village where every religion, every cast, every nation will have to learn how to establish a peaceful society which accommodates different ideologies peacefully.