By Syeda Noor Fatima

One ordinary afternoon, Pushpa Kumari opened her Facebook inbox and saw a stranger had written: “Tum Pakistan ki nahi ho. Kafir hoo, India wapas jao (You are not Pakistani. Infidels should go back to India).”

Then another message. And then dozens more, calling her an “Indian agent,” accusing her of betraying the country she calls home.

For Pushpa, this was not new. But this time, the words landed differently. For nearly two decades, she has travelled across Pakistan, standing with families facing forced conversions,  appearing in courtrooms with survivors of gender-based violence, and helping women rebuild their lives after displacement from floods. She is used to hostility in the field . What she did not anticipate was how the battlefield would expand from the street to the screen.

“They use our identity against us,” she says.

“Whenever I speak about forced conversions,” she explains, “they accuse me of doing it only because I am Hindu. And if I join a peaceful protest, they say I am trying to provoke Muslim  women.”

Once, Pushpa posted photos of Hindu women who had been raped and killed in Sindh, sharing them on Facebook to raise awareness. The post quickly drew a flood of hateful comments. Many told her, in disturbing words, that the same thing should happen to her, that she too, deserved to be violated. Some comments even encouraged others to harm her in the same way.

Tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) in Pakistan has been on the rise over the years,  particularly targeting minority and marginalized communities. In the country, the word “Hindu” often carries connotations beyond religion; it is treated as a marker of difference, ideology, or even as a sign of disloyalty to the state.

The term is frequently used as an insult in political speeches, everyday conversations, and even on school playgrounds. Hindu women, in particular, are subjected to intense online harassment and hate on social media platforms across both their gender and religious identity.

Threats Crossing From Online to Offline Spaces

Pushpa’s harassment was never limited to abusive comments. Her image itself became a battleground. On several occasions, deepfake-style edited photos of her were circulated,  including one where she was placed beside a well-known local religious group leader. The caption claimed she attended their gatherings, a calculated attempt to isolate her from her community.

“It was designed to break trust,” she says. “To make my own people doubt me. “After these kinds of situations, we started limiting our sittings and avoiding public meetings in urban areas, afraid of becoming the next target. Our circle of solidarity grew smaller, and with it, our freedom of expression.”

In 2023, after weeks of targeted harassment, Pushpa finally withdrew. She stopped opening  Facebook for two months, slipping into depression because of the relentless online hostility. She stopped posting about her work. She even stopped sharing her travel plans after men began openly threatening her with messages like: “We know where you’re going.”

“If I posted a location on Facebook, they said they would kidnap me,” she recalls.

She never reported the threats to FIA Cybercrime. “I’ve seen students file complaints, and nothing happened,” she says. “If they can’t protect them, how will they protect me?”

Instead of relying on the system, she built small safety walls around her life. “I never post my daughter’s pictures online, because people will threaten and abuse them. I don’t want them to live in fear. And I never allow my daughter to step into activism because of what I’ve gone  through.”

Pushpa carries the burden quietly. She keeps her personal struggles to herself, knowing her family would only sink into worry if they knew the extent of what she faces.

According to clinical psychologist Absar Fatima, repeated targeting of Hindu minority women can lead to long-term personality changes and identity crises. Being constantly told they “do not belong” to the country can trigger chronic stress, depression, and fear. Exposure to hostility on social media and in society can even result in symptoms of trauma, where women find themselves reliving threats and abusive messages around the clock. Flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and heightened anxiety become a daily reality,  prompting many women to limit their social media activity or withdraw from online spaces altogether. Over time, these psychological pressures can deeply affect their sense of self, safety,  and ability to participate freely in public life.

When Harassment Leads to Silence

In March 2024, Pushpa and a group of activists planned a small women’s march in Mirpurkhas.  The aim was simple: gather, speak, and claim space. They announced it online, hoping it would encourage more women to join. But the moment their plans became visible, the threats began.

A local religious group warned they would beat any Hindu woman who participated, accusing  the march of “promoting obscenity.”

“We knew if we continued, it would turn into a Hindu–Muslim conflict,” Pushpa says. “They used our social media posts to mobilize against us. So we stepped back.”The march was canceled.

The silence that follows harassment rarely appears in official reports, yet it is the loudest outcome of online hate. Pushpa pauses before continuing.

“Every day, we are asked to prove loyalty. To prove we are Pakistani. Why must we constantly  prove our belonging?”

Maryam Saeed, a digital rights expert who has studied hate speech against minorities in Pakistan  for years, says, “We are taught from a very young age that being a ‘good citizen’ is tied to being a  ‘good Muslim,’ especially in the older curriculum.” “Those who grew up with these textbooks still carry that mindset. Most children in Pakistan study in public schools, not private ones, so this narrative reaches the majority.”

She adds that the same discriminatory ideas once taught in textbooks now resurface online: “When you look at social media, Twitter, Facebook, all of it, you can see those lessons playing  out.” “Under posts about minorities, you’ll find comments like ‘yeh kafir hain,’ ‘yeh humaray jaise nahi’ as if these slurs are normal descriptors instead of hate speech. People refuse to see minorities as equal citizens. “Anyone who is different is treated as someone whose identity  can be questioned, dismissed, or erased in Pakistan.”

For Hindus in Pakistan, the danger is twofold. Their religious identity is constantly tied to India,  not just culturally, but politically. During sporadic yet increasingly frequent surges of Indo-Pak tensions, Pakistani Hindus are targeted as collateral damage. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been Pakistani citizens for generations and participate in local culture. When geopolitical tensions  rise, they are suddenly told:

“You are not one of us.”

“You are loyal to India.”

Hate spikes are predictable: during elections, cross-border tensions, or even major cricket matches, digital hostility intensifies. And as Maryam Saeed points out, this online hate doesn’t remain confined to the screen, it shapes public opinion and often spills into real-life consequences.

Another Voice, Identical Patterns

Kamla Bheel, a Hindu political activist, faces constant hostility both online and offline. “Being a woman already makes this work difficult,” she says. “Being Hindu makes it even harder.” On  Facebook, her posts about community rights or political activities attract abusive comments.

“Why is a woman from a lower-caste Hindu community being allowed to speak?” Written mostly in Sindhi, these words slice through her online presence with the same precision as the attacks  Pushpa faces.

Her family, worried about backlash, urges her to limit her online activity and avoid public appearances. Even sharing her photos online feels risky. “My husband and brother tell me, ‘It’s too risky, don’t put yourself out there,’” Kamla explains.

The pressure shrinks her digital and physical space, making her activism a careful negotiation between courage and safety.

A Broader Pattern: How Hate Travels Across Platforms

In 2023, DRF’s Cyber Harassment Helpline received 2473 complaints, averaging 206 per month. Women accounted for 58.5% of the cases, and the transgender community for 1.6%.

In 2024, TFGBV cases rose to 3171, with 1,772 reported by women and 124 filed by religious or gender minorities.

According to the Institute of Domestic Violence, Religion and Migration’s 2025 report, around  40% of minority women in Pakistan face gender-based violence in digital spaces. More than 70%  say this online abuse affects their mental well-being and forces them to limit their online activity.

Yet many women, including Pushpa and Kamla, choose not to report these incidents at all. The gap between institutions and survivors remains stark. Although thousands of online harassment cases are recorded every year in Pakistan, the official figures capture only a fraction of the reality.

Why the System Fails

Social media platforms further deepen existing divides. As Maryam Saeed explains, “A social media company may not want to understand this, or perhaps it simply doesn’t. Their economic model thrives on engagement, and hateful content generates more of it. Even when they should be concerned about harmful posts, their own interests don’t align with acting on them.”

Secondly, “One of the biggest barriers is language. Platforms do not prioritize Urdu or other regional languages the way they prioritize English. Human moderators who understand these regional  nuances are extremely limited, and automated moderation struggles with Pakistani slang,  sarcasm, cultural context, and coded insults.” Words that may be harmless in one region can be hostile in another, and without trained moderators, harmful content spreads unchecked. “Twitter, with its massive volume, is the worst platform when it comes to language-sensitive moderation,” Saeed notes. “Its broad ‘free speech’ ideology allows harmful material to remain online, unchecked and unchallenged. If you compare it with the English-speaking world, you’ll probably find relatively less hateful content there than  in countries where the national language is different from English.”

The sheer diversity of regional languages compounds the challenge. In countries like India or even Pakistan, language changes dramatically every few hundred kilometers. Even when users report harmful content in regional languages, social media companies simply do not have enough human resources to handle it. Each report requires contextual understanding: moderators must decide whether to remove or delete content, but with the volume of posts so high.

A disturbing pattern has also emerged: when progressive journalists speak out against extremism,  their accounts are mass-reported in coordinated campaigns, sometimes resulting in temporary suspensions. Meanwhile, accounts spreading abusive or hateful content continue operating without consequence. This imbalance exposes how current moderation systems fail to protect vulnerable communities while unintentionally enabling those who weaponize reporting tools to silence dissent.

“What happens online is simply a reflection, and often an amplification, of what is already happening on the ground,” says Ramna Saeed, a journalist and digital rights practitioner. She explains that patriarchy normalizes abusive behavior, which is why it is common to see even middle-class men freely using misogynistic or hateful language on social media.

Over the years, specific extremist groups have also strengthened their presence online, launching coordinated campaigns against posts related to minority and women’s rights, particularly around sensitive events or public discussions. The national media contributes to this marginalization by

underreporting or framing minority issues with bias, further reducing public awareness of the scale of online abuse.

Ramna adds that Pakistan’s rapidly growing internet population, combined with a wide digital gender divide, makes the problem more urgent. Since companies like Microsoft do not have their main offices in Pakistan, the government carries a major responsibility to push for effective moderation systems. She stresses the need to develop automated detection tools in regional languages so that platforms can identify hate speech and threats targeting minority communities with cultural and contextual accuracy. “We need awareness, education, and strong media literacy,” she says. “Alongside this, government policies must address cyber-harassment in ways  that reflect our local languages, our social context, and the lived realities of marginalized  groups.”

Where Gender and Faith Collide

Pushpa and Kamla’s stories reveal something deeper than digital violence alone. They stand at an intersection where gender and faith create a double burden — where being a woman already invites vulnerability, and belonging to a minority faith magnifies the risk. Their identities themselves become battlegrounds, online and offline.

The harassment they face isn’t just misogyny; it’s misogyny sharpened by religious bias. Every insult carries two wounds — one targeting their gender, the other their faith. And yet, they continue to speak, to show up, and to refuse disappearance.

Their struggle reminds us that digital rights are never neutral. Safety, dignity, and expression are shaped by power: who holds it and whose voices are easiest to erase. For women from marginalized faith communities, claiming digital space is not just participation- it is resistance.

“No woman should ever surrender her digital space to anyone. The moment you give it up,  someone else will fill that silence.”