The London Assembly has approved a motion, proposed by a British Indian assembly member, which urges the Metropolitan Police to collaborate with the local Hindu community and encourage them to report hate crimes specifically aimed at their community.
The assembly expressed concerns that hate crimes against Hindus might not be adequately documented by the Metropolitan Police. As a result, they have called on the police to include a breakdown of hate crimes by religion in their crime dashboard, providing more transparency and visibility into these incidents.
"I am pleased that the London Assembly supports holding the Metropolitan Police to account so that they build the confidence held in them by our community," Assembly member Krupesh Hirani said.
"Meat being thrown at school pupils, women wearing a red bindi mark on their forehead taunted for having a sniper mark... Sadly there has been a worrying rise in hate crimes faced by our community over the past year," Hirani said, while introducing the motion at the floor of the assembly.
Hindus, constituting approximately 5.15 percent of London's population, are reported as the second most likely religious group to experience religiously motivated hate crimes, as indicated by the 2023 Crime Survey for England and Wales.
However, a notable challenge is that the Met Police dashboard does not currently provide a breakdown of hate crimes by religion. This lack of specific data makes it difficult to assess the number of recorded hate crimes against the Hindu community in London.
"We need to see a better recording of hate crime... Hinduphobia is far too common but it’s not properly recorded. We cannot begin to tackle these issues unless it is properly recognised," the Labour group member for Brent and Harrow constituencies said in a statement.
Recent Home Office statistics reveal that in the 2022/2023 period, there were 291 reported hate crimes against Hindus in England and Wales, accounting for approximately three percent of all recorded police hate crimes.
The data further indicates a significant increase in hate crimes against Hindus over the past few years, with incidents rising from 58 in 2017-18 to 166 in 2020-21, representing a nearly 200 percent increase within four years. In the years 2018-19 and 2019-20, there were 114 attacks recorded in each year, encompassing a range of offenses such as racial slurs, assaults, property vandalism, and targeting religious institutions.
The statistics also reveal a rising trend in racially or religiously aggravated offenses recorded by the police since 2015.
In April of this year, an independent London-based think tank conducted a survey of 988 Hindu parents, and more than half of them reported that their children had experienced discrimination in UK schools.
Additionally, less than a month after riots occurred in Leicester following an India-Pakistan match, over 180 Hindu organizations and temples penned an open letter to the then British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, expressing their concerns that they were feeling "under siege."
(With Agency Inputs)
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