MR JUSTICE JOHNSON Approved Judgment Hegab v Spectator what he describes as the Hindutva ideology, but I do not accept that he genuinely believed that those involved could reasonably be described, en bloc, as “the Hindutva”. He denounced the opposing faction of Hindu men as “the Hindutva” for his own rhetorical and propaganda purposes, just as he described the Jewish people he encountered in Golders Green as “Zionists” without any objective basis, and to suit his own narrative. 57. Speech: In respect of his speech, the claimant laid great emphasis on his phrase “if they believe in reincarnation”. He strenuously maintained that this was a genuine use of a conditional clause which demonstrated that he was referring to the Hindutva, not Hindus. His reasoning was this. All Hindus believe in reincarnation. It would therefore be redundant to ask if a group of Hindu men believed in reincarnation. Thus, the use of the word “if” shows he was not referencing Hindus. Instead, he was talking about the Hindutva. He maintained that not all those who subscribe to the Hindutva ideology are Hindus. It therefore made sense, in that context, to use the conditional clause, because there are some Hindutva who are not Hindus and who may not believe in reincarnation. The claimant made great play of the fact that he gave this explanation in an interview before litigation was initiated, thereby proving that it was not an ex post facto rationalisation to gain a litigation advantage. 58. The claimant’s explanation is nonsensical. When asked to name anyone in the world who subscribed to the Hindutva ideology but who was not Hindu he was able to give only one name: Benjamin Netanyahu. Later, despite spending some considerable time thinking about it, he came up with two further (equally incongruous) names: Tommy Robinson and the second defendant. The reality is that those who subscribe to the Hindutva ideology are overwhelmingly Hindu. There were no Hindutva, or at least no significant numbers of Hindutva, in Leicester who were not Hindus. The phrase “if they believe in reincarnation” was not a genuine conditional clause that sought to distinguish Hindu Hindutva from non-Hindu Hindutva. It was a rhetorical device intended to inflame sectarian tensions by inviting ridicule of a central tenet of Hinduism. 59. Even on its own terms, the claimant’s rationalisation does not work. That is because, on his analysis, he did not choose to ridicule the Hindutva generally as a group. He chose only to ridicule those Hindutva who were Hindus. So he was, thereby, ridiculing Hindus as opposed to non-Hindus. 60. The claimant’s evidence was that when he said “we got the truth” he meant that justice was on the side of those he was talking to, as opposed to the Hindutva. I do not accept this explanation. The words “we got the truth”, followed immediately by the ridiculing of a central tenet of Hinduism, convey (and I am satisfied were intended to convey) that Islam was superior to Hinduism. It was a further aspect of the claimant’s inflammatory rhetoric that intentionally aggravated the febrile atmosphere. 61. Financial losses: The messages which the claimant relied on to show the withdrawal of funding arrangements have the appearance of being contrived for the purpose of these proceedings. In two instances, they are addressed as “Dear Mr Hegab”, when the correspondents were well known to the claimant and addressed him, in other contemporaneous contexts, in altogether more natural and less formal terms. They each attribute their decision to disassociate from him to the article. They each provided the material that would be necessary to support a claim for financial losses