Sabrang India

About Sabrang India

Sabrang India is a Mumbai-based digital news portal that reports and comments on human rights, communal harmony, law and justice, and the state of Indian democracy. Published at sabrangindia.in, it presents itself as the online rebirth of Communalism Combat, the monthly magazine founded in 1993 to fight religious intolerance and communal violence. Launched on Constitution Day, November 26, 2015, Sabrang India carries forward a decades-long tradition of journalism rooted in the conviction that hate hurts and harmony works. The portal is closely associated with Sabrang Communications and its sister organisation, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), and is co-edited by the veteran journalists and activists Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand. Its reporting spans hate speech, minority rights, freedom of expression, criminal justice reform, and child rights, with parallel editions in English and Hindi.

Origins: Communalism Combat and the birth of Sabrang

The story of Sabrang India begins with Communalism Combat, a monthly journal founded in August 1993 by Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad through their organisation Sabrang Communications. Anand, a journalist who had left the mainstream press, started the magazine in the aftermath of the December 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid, with the explicit aim of combating religious intolerance and communal violence. From the outset the journal described itself as unashamedly partisan in defence of core values and principles while maintaining high standards of professional integrity and journalistic ethics. Though its circulation was limited, it won national and international recognition and awards from its earliest years, becoming an influential voice on communal harmony, secularism, and the politics of hate.

Alongside the magazine, Sabrang Communications ran KHOJ, a secular education programme in Mumbai schools designed to help children look past identity labels. Financially, however, the journal lived precariously throughout its life. Committed to free and independent reportage and analysis, the editors were forced to stop publishing the print edition in late 2012. For three years the Communalism Combat archive stood as a testament to two decades of anti-communal journalism, until its team decided to relaunch it in a new digital form.

The 2015 relaunch as a digital news portal

The digital rebirth was timed symbolically. On November 26, 2015, India's Constitution Day, the team launched the website sabrangindia.in, presenting it as a redoubled effort committed to the credo "Hate hurts, Harmony works." In their relaunch note, co-editors Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand wrote that the growing climate of intolerance prevailing in India made a forum such as Communalism Combat more necessary than ever, and that the new portal reaffirmed their commitment to the pledge that "We, the People of India" gave themselves after Independence. The archived print material, including decades of reportage on the Gujarat carnage of 2002 and its legal aftermath, was carried over onto the new platform, giving readers access to a unique historical record.

From the beginning the portal has described its content as serious but reader-friendly, combining long-form analysis with shorter news updates, video reports, and podcasts. The relaunch marked Sabrang's transition from a niche print monthly into a continuously updated digital newsroom, one that publishes in both English and Hindi and seeks support and contributions from readers to remain viable.

The people behind Sabrang: Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand

Sabrang India is co-edited by Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, two figures who have been at the centre of India's human-rights journalism for three decades. Javed Anand, formerly a journalist with the mainstream press, founded Communalism Combat in 1993 and has remained its guiding spirit, known for his writing on communalism, secularism, and the politics of the Hindu right. Teesta Setalvad is a journalist and activist who rose to national prominence for her legal and journalistic work around the 2002 Gujarat violence, co-founding Citizens for Justice and Peace to pursue justice for the victims through the courts.

Both editors have faced significant pressure for their work. Setalvad's organisation has been at the centre of protracted legal battles, and in 2022 she herself was arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad in connection with cases arising from the Gujarat riots litigation, an arrest that drew condemnation from writers and human-rights defenders in India and abroad. The portal continues to report on the cases against its own editors as part of its wider coverage of the shrinking space for dissent.

Citizens for Justice and Peace: the sister organisation

Sabrang India's journalism is inseparable from the work of its sister organisation, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), which was formed on April 1, 2002, in the immediate wake of the Gujarat carnage. Registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and as a trust under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950, CJP set itself the objectives of checking threats to Indian democracy and the rule of law, combating bigotry and intolerance, intervening in courts through public-interest litigation to prosecute those guilty of communal violence, and assisting victims seeking redress. Donations to CJP are exempt under section 80(G) of the Income Tax Act.

CJP's early leadership included figures such as playwright Vijay Tendulkar as president, architect I. M. Kadri as vice-president, Teesta Setalvad as secretary, and cultural figures like Javed Akhtar, Alyque Padamsee, and Anil Dharkar on its board. The organisation constituted the Concerned Citizens Tribunal that investigated the Gujarat violence in 2002, recording more than 2,000 statements from affected areas across over 16 districts of the state. Sabrang India regularly publishes CJP's legal interventions, complaints to authorities, and campaign updates, functioning as the public-facing journalistic arm of this activism.

Editorial focus and coverage areas

The portal organises its journalism into sections that include Rights, Law and Justice, Hate and Harmony, Politics, Society, Environment, and Economy, along with Themes, Specials, Videos, Podcasts, and a Gallery. Much of its reportage is structured around four pillars that CJP has identified as its focus areas: minority rights, the freedom of expression, criminal justice reform, and child rights. Stories range from ground reports on communal incidents and hate crimes to analysis of legislation, court judgments, and government policy affecting vulnerable communities.

Sabrang India has given sustained attention to issues such as mob lynching and cow vigilantism, the suppression of dissent, attacks on human-rights defenders, and the state of electoral rolls and voting rights. Ahead of national elections it has published manifestos of human-rights demands addressed to political parties and candidates, calling on voters to vote for justice, equality, and the guarantee of human rights for all Indians. Its tone is explicitly advocacy-oriented: the portal does not claim neutrality on questions of communal hatred, presenting itself as partisan in defence of constitutional values.

Law, justice and the Gujarat cases

One of Sabrang India's most distinctive contributions is its documentation of the legal aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence. The portal's archives include detailed records of landmark cases: the Best Bakery case, the Bilkis Bano case, judgments on hate-speech prosecutions, and the reports of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal headed by retired Supreme Court Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, which recorded thousands of testimonies and indicted the role of the state machinery in the carnage. These archives, carried over from the print era of Communalism Combat, constitute one of the most comprehensive publicly available journalistic records of the Gujarat cases.

Beyond Gujarat, the portal follows cases of communal violence and state excess across the country, from police encounters and custodial deaths to the use of preventive detention and anti-terror laws against activists, students, and journalists. Its law-and-justice coverage frequently features the voices of retired judges, senior advocates, and legal scholars, and it publishes full texts of judgments, fact-finding reports, and citizens' tribunal findings that are difficult to find elsewhere.

Campaigning against hate speech

Hate speech is a central beat for Sabrang India, which maintains a dedicated section tracking incidents of communal hate speech by political and religious figures. The portal reports on complaints filed by CJP and other civil-liberties groups with the Election Commission of India, state police chiefs, and minority commissions, and follows up on whether authorities act on them. During assembly and general elections it has run special coverage of communal polarisation in campaigning, invoking the Model Code of Conduct to challenge electoral hate speech.

This campaigning journalism extends to the portal's monitoring of television news and social media, where it documents the normalisation of anti-minority rhetoric. By combining reportage with legal follow-up, Sabrang India exemplifies a model of journalism in which the newsroom and the courtroom are seen as complementary arenas for defending constitutional values.

Hindi edition and multimedia

Reflecting its ambition to reach beyond English-reading audiences, Sabrang India publishes a Hindi edition at hindi.sabrangindia.in, carrying translations and original reporting on the same themes of rights, justice, and communal harmony. The portal also produces video reports and podcasts, and maintains an active presence on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube. Readers are invited to join a mailing list for human-rights news, and the site solicits reader contributions to sustain its operations.

The multimedia effort is part of a deliberate strategy to make serious content viewer- and reader-friendly, in the editors' words. Documentaries, interviews with activists and scholars, and explainers on complex legal developments sit alongside the text archive, broadening the portal's reach among younger audiences and grassroots workers.

Recognition and standing

Over three decades, in print and now online, the Sabrang stable has earned a distinctive place in Indian journalism. Communalism Combat gained national and international recognition and awards from its earliest years, and its digital successor continues to be cited by scholars, lawyers, and journalists working on communalism and human rights. Media directories list Sabrang India as an online and digital outlet focused on gender, Dalit, and minority rights, publishing in English and Hindi from India.

Operating in a media environment that its editors describe as increasingly hostile to independent journalism, Sabrang India remains a reference point for those seeking an archive of, and ongoing reporting on, India's struggles with communalism. Its combination of investigative reportage, legal documentation, and advocacy campaigning makes it one of the country's most enduring experiments in human-rights journalism, now sustained entirely in digital form at sabrangindia.in.