Though the FBI is still in the process of compiling hate-crime statistics for 2008, those based on local media reports have forced experts to describe the surge as unprecedented. Some officials compared it to the rise in attacks on Muslims after the 9/11 attacks.
One in five hate crimes reported in the US in 2011 were due to religious bias, most of them stemming from anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic prejudice, while almost half of such crimes were racially-motivated, the FBI has said in its new data.
Crimes committed against Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Arabs and three other minority religions would now be tracked as hate crime by law enforcement agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Attorney General Eric Holder said.
A prominent Hindu temple in Canada's Ontario province has been vandalised by unknown people with "anti-Hindu and anti-India graffiti", in what is described by the police as a "hate-motivated incident."
The development is being seen as a sign of the growing political prominence of Hindus in America. Hinduism is the fourth largest faith in the US, representing approximately one per cent of the US population in 2016.
The temple, which is a symbol of Indian heritage, has been left vandalised with hate-filled messages directed towards India.
A total of 7,120 hate crimes were reported to the FBI by law enforcement agencies around the country last year, slightly down from 7,175 in 2017, the FBI said, adding that this involved 8,496 offenses.
A prominent Hindu temple in Canada has been defaced by 'Khalistani extremists' with anti-India graffiti in an apparent hate crime, prompting the Indian mission in Toronto to condemn the incident and urge Canadian authorities to take swift action against the perpetrators.
'Famine in Gaza is not a failure of logistics or aid. What is to blame is deliberate starvation caused by a brutal war.' 'Any child dying in a war zone is a vote of no confidence against humanity.'
Indian Americans speak up about the daunting challenges on the 16th anniversary of the tragedy.
The India body said there was a "lack of clarity" on the inputs that weighed in the rankings which were based on "opinion or perception".
Ten people, including the gunman were killed in in Dayton's Oregon district, while another 20 were shot dead at a crowded Walmart store in the southern border town of El Paso in Texas.
From the voter-level, traditionally anti-BJP, anti-Hindutva minorities and other secular voters would have an option, especially in the face of the mounting anti-incumbency against the ruling party -- as it happened in the 2001 assembly polls, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'If this is the India you're talking about, where there is no space for minorities, where you have hate, where people can enter universities and beat students up, let me be anti-national.' 'I'll carry that as a badge of honour.'
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
'The Opposition has no option but to make it an 'All versus One' fight to even think about winning.'
