BY VISHAL VIVEKANANDA –
At the beginning of 2022, in the Indian state of Karnataka, Muslim students of a junior college who wore a hijab to classes were denied entry on the grounds that it was a violation of the college’s uniform policy. In the following weeks, protests on the issue were met with counter-protests from Hindu students, demanding to wear saffron scarves (the colour is seen as a Hindu symbol). Ultimately, the dispute was considered by the Karnataka High Court, where they determined that the restrictions on hijabs should be upheld. The decision was criticised inside India and internationally, by the likes of the Human Rights Watch, and by human rights activists such as Malala Yousafzai.
The state of Karnataka has been governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – since the 2019 election. Since then, the state has adopted popular Hindu nationalist policies such as banning cow slaughter and passing an “anti-conversion bill” which prohibits conversion from one religion to another by misrepresentation, force, fraud, allurement or marriage. This has made it difficult for interfaith couples to marry or for individuals to convert to Christianity or Islam. Commentators often describe the region – a stronghold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing BJP – as a laboratory for majoritarian Hindu politics.
Protests sparked across India following the enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on 12 December 2019. The CAA amended the Indian citizenship Act to accept illegal migrants who are Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christian from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and who entered India before 2014, following the religious persecutions in their respective countries. The bill does not mention Muslims and other communities who fled from the same or other neighbouring countries. The amendment had been widely criticised as discriminating on the basis of religion, particularity for its exclusion of Muslims.
Hindu Nationalism
Policy decisions, like the CAA amendments, are rooted in Hindu nationalism. The predominant form of Hindu nationalism is Hindutva – a political ideology championed by organisations such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the BJP and other organisations in an ecosystem called the Sangh Parivar. The Hindutva movement has been described as a variant of “right-wing extremism” and as “almost fascist in the classical sense” as it adheres to a concept of homogenised majority and cultural hegemony. Hindutva was articulated in the early 20th century but has since come into the forefront of Indian politics following the 2014 Indian general election which resulted in a BJP win and thus Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. Under the BJP, India is being remade into an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist state.
Modi and the BJP
In 2002, Modi came into the national and international spotlight. A train of Hindu pilgrims were attacked and burned by a mob of villages that were believed to be Muslim. Widespread riots broke out in Gujarat. Within 150 days of Modi becoming chief minister of Gujarat, Hindu hard-liners were massacring Muslims. An investigation into the riots by the Campaign Against Genocide found the state government “complicit and culpable at the highest level.” Over 2,000 people – majority Muslims – were killed in the rioting, and a further 200,000 displaced. According to Human Rights Watch, the violence in Gujarat in 2002 was pre-planned, and the police and state government participated in the violence. Tehelka magazine in its report went so far as to call it a “state-sanctioned pogrom”. In 2005, Modi’s ties to the riots led the United States to deny him a diplomatic visa and revoke his existing visa. Modi was the first official to ever be denied entry under the International Religious Freedom Act, which prevents US entry of a foreign government official responsible for violations of religious freedom. However, an investigation by a Supreme Court-appointed panel in 2012 ultimately found Modi’s actions not to be prosecutable. The court did however, report Modi to have a discriminatory attitude that justified the killing of innocents. Modi has continually refused to apologise for the government response to the riots. For a significant section of his core constituency, the Gujarat pogrom was about finally teaching Muslims a lesson for their historical tension. Moderates in the Hindu population were horrified at the pogrom, but moderates don’t make the most effective army for an election campaign.
Despite the controversy surrounding Modi’s role in the riots, the BJP named him as their candidate for Prime Minister in 2013. And in the 2014 election, nearly every single district in northern and western India was won by the BJP. Modi has tried to distance himself from his ties to the RSS and other radical Hindu groups in his public speeches; however, the BJP policies and leadership selection demonstrate that the party refuses to uphold secular values. Modi has also published books during the campaign highlighting the lives and contributions of RSS members to society.
Links between the BJP and the RSS have grown stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP’s electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism. In January 2017, the BJP selected Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister (governor) of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Yogi Adityanath is an Indian monk and founder of the Hindu extremist militant group Hindu Yuva Vahini. The Hindu Yuva Vahini has participated in many non-secular policies, including public cow protection campaigns, fights against Hindu–Muslim marriages, and Ghar Wapsi, mass conversions of Christians and Muslims to Hinduism. He also has made vocal calls for violence against Muslim communities. The appointment of a radical religious leader as the chief minister of the largest state in India is indicative of the BJP’s intent to move away from the secular roots of the country, as well as endorsement of violent strategies against minority communities.
In his second term, the Modi administration has revoked the special status, or limited autonomy granted to Jammu and Kashmir. In its efforts the government locked down the Kashmir Valley, increased security forces, imposed a law that prevented assembly, and placed political leaders such as former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti under house arrest. Internet and phone services were also blocked. Two months after the Indian government removed the region’s special autonomous status, 23 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) visited Kashmir. The trip sparked controversy when it was revealed that most of the MEPs belonged to far-right political parties, including France’s National Rally (formerly National Front) and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). It wasn’t just the affiliations of these visitors that drew attention: The MEPs had been granted access to Kashmir even as foreign journalists and domestic politicians were barred access to the region. The Indian-administered government had also imposed an internet shutdown since August.
This visit is an example of the growing ties between the far-right in India and Europe, a connection that is rooted primarily in a shared hostility toward immigrants and Muslims, and set in similar overarching nationalistic visions. Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and editor in chief of the far-right site Breitbart News Network, has long admired Modi, once calling him “a Trump before Trump.” Like other populists, Modi taps into the resentment of impoverished voters and directs their anger at elites and minorities. Similarly in the U.S., Trump has made his nativist rhetoric about immigration a hallmark of his administration. Their similar populist rhetoric has been used to garner a loyal following.
Implications
The shift toward Hindu nationalism over the past few decades has potential security implications beyond domestic politics. Both India and Pakistan have been nuclear states since 1998. Although India had been developing nuclear weapons since the 1970s, its 1998 test occurred under the direction of the newly elected BJP government. Shortly after, Pakistan responded with its own nuclear test. The tests resulted in international sanctions against both countries, but it did not eliminate the nuclear programs. By 1999, both states were engaged in another war in Kashmir, after Pakistani forces infiltrated the Line of Control. Known as the Kargil conflict, this standoff was the first instance of direct conventional warfare between two nuclear states. It is evident that Hindu nationalists take a much more hard-line approach when it comes to security, especially as it relates to the division between Muslims or rivalry with Pakistan. One particularly concerning stance is the view from both Pakistan and India on first-strike utilization. Pakistan has always gone against this norm by maintaining that it will consider a first-use policy of nuclear weapons. In contrast, India had previously held the view that it will only utilize nuclear weapons on a second-strike, or retaliatory, basis. However, since the election of Modi, that stance appears to be shifting. In their 2014 election manifesto, the BJP said it is studying, revising, and reconsidering its nuclear program. While the intent of the manifesto is not entirely clear, many nuclear scholars suggest that the language is a noticeable hard-line shift in Indian foreign policy.
India faces a very serious crisis. Already its institutions – its courts, much of its media, its investigative agencies, its election commission – have all been pressured to fall in line with Modi’s hard right policies. Political opposition is withered and infirm. Hindutva, in its complete expression, will involve undoing the constitution and unravelling the fabric of liberal democracy. And that is what may occur to accord with the BJP’s blueprint for a country in which people are graded and assessed according to their faith. Politicians, indoctrinated media outlets and squadrons of social media trolls lie, polarise, and demonise political discourse. Among the BJP and RSS tactics is the invention of categories of abuse for their opponents, to convey why such people should not be trusted to have India’s interests at heart. “Presstitute” is applied to liberal journalists to accuse them of selling their coverage for money or influence. “Sickular” is born of the RSS’s opinion that Indian secularism is a demented version of minority appeasement.
The Constitution of India still enshrines secularism, but the trend for the past three decades indicates it is moving toward Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalists have long sought to expand India’s territorial reach into what was once British-controlled India—including Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other parts of South Asia. With the growing power of Hindu nationalism, in what direction will the world’s largest democracies’ foreign and national policy head?
