Examining Hate Speech as an Abiding Threat to Justice: The Case of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India

Abstract

It needs to be very clearly emphasized that discrimination on the basis of caste is an age-old phenomenon; indeed so predictable a phenomenon that it often occurs implicitly. If the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have continued to suffer under the undue burden of a stigmatized identity and abiding discrimination in present-day India despite the ponderous safety net of statutory safeguards, the onus must lie with a deliberate form of marginalization or disparagement that aims to secure the exclusion of individuals on the basis of their membership of a particular group—through hate speech. This prejudice-driven crime has gone on to determine the way the dominant social class has been and continues, consciously and unconsciously, aiding and abetting the maintenance of status quo through their private utterances. This practice of unconscious and unpunished speech occurring casually in unsuspecting familial settings perhaps stands out in its greatest potential to damage, disrupt, cause a permanent mind change and ingrain and invigorate social apartheid.