Hate speech has the characteristic of poisoning the social atmosphere,” Teesta Setalvad tells us over a video call. The civil rights activist—and secretary of the Mumbai-based Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP)—is talking to us about Nafrat Ka Naqsha, a one-stop hate map to plot incidents of communal, casteist, ethnic conflicts and gender violence in India. This recent addition to the hate tracking activities of the organization—spanning 25 to 30 years—has been on the CJP website since February 2021, With the aim to conscientise citizenry to intervene with the authorities, the map’s objectives are to track, monitor, register pre-emptive complaints with the police, the district collector, the News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA), and others, follow up on complaints, and press to file FIRs and prosecute. Citing the 1987 case of Hashimpura-Maliana-Meerut communal violence, Setalvad explains how analysis indicates that three to six months before an upsurge of friction, “hate speech was steadily used by individuals and organisations to ratchet up the public temperature and create an atmosphere of complicity among the wider majority, so that they don’t act to prevent violence, to save lives or to generate a counter-narrative against the stigma of hate.”