Why Hindu Nationalism Keeps Gaining Ground in India

(Bloomberg) -- In 1947, the authors of India’s constitution envisaged a secular state where all citizens were equal before the law. But the reemergence of Hindu nationalism has been testing that ideal. Since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, hard liners in his Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, have become increasingly emboldened in promoting the dominance of Hindus, who form 80% of the population. A restrictive new citizenship law is the latest move to worry the country’s 170 million Muslims. Protests against it that broke out late last year turned deadly before the coronavirus pandemic provided the government an excuse to clamp down.

1. What does the new law do?

The Citizenship Amendment Act was passed by the BJP-dominated parliament in December. It prioritizes citizenship for undocumented Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, describing them as persecuted minorities. Muslims are excluded from this list. It’s the first law since India gained independence to explicitly discriminate against Muslims, and is aimed mainly at those who came across the border during the 1971 conflict that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

2. What was the reaction?

Protests initially began in Assam state, where residents worried the law would encourage another influx of migrants. Elsewhere, including the capital New Delhi, opposition centered on fears the law went against India’s secular nature. Sit-ins were organized on college campuses and by Muslim women in northern India. In December, Modi called for peace — two days after telling a rally that those protesting the law could be identified by their clothes, a reference to Islamic attire. The country’s top court agreed to examine the law but declined to suspend it while the case proceeded. In late February, more than two dozen people died when Hindu mobs vandalized mosques and attacked Muslim-majority neighborhoods in Delhi — all during a state visit by U.S. President Donald Trump. Protest sites were cleared in March as part of lockdown measures — the world’s largest — put in place to fight the coronavirus. At the same time, reports of hundreds of infections linked to an Islamic gathering in Delhi sparked another spree of anti-Muslim attacks.

3. Is this a new phenomenon?

Conflicts between Hindu and Muslims go back centuries, and were aggravated by the British colonial policy of “divide and rule,” leading to the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into mostly Hindu India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party, which led India to independence, advocated religious pluralism, but some Hindus disagreed. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a former member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Corps, a secretive, all-male society founded in 1925 that promotes India foremost as a Hindu nation. Modi joined the RSS as a teenager, then shifted to the BJP, which is inspired by its ideology, as a political organizer. He moved rapidly through the party hierarchy in his home state of Gujarat and became the state’s chief minister in 2001. The following year the state saw religious riots that left more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslim, dead.

4. How has Modi harnessed it?

After 13 years leading Gujarat, Modi turned to national politics, taking on a long-dominant Congress party that had mismanaged the economy and was increasingly viewed as corrupt and ineffective. After his extraordinary win in 2014, he began to focus on identity issues, whipping up nationalism while turning a blind eye to increasingly bolder Hindu groups. He and his closest aide, Amit Shah, pursued a strategy of uniting disparate voters by stressing a Hindu identity instead of one divided by castes -- the idea being that if you could unite all the caste-based parties, you could create a new majority that rules India for decades to come. His even bigger re-election victory in 2019 showed that identity issues prevailed over economic ones, giving him space to push further with such initiatives, including the citizenship law. The government, meanwhile, has sought to limit media coverage of the violence. Polls show Modi’s support remaining rock solid, despite the social upheaval and economic pain from measures taken to fight the pandemic.

5. Have there been other manifestations?

• After Modi’s re-election, the government scrapped seven decades of autonomy for the contested region of Kashmir, the only part of India with a Muslim majority. Modi has repeatedly said his government wants to bring Kashmir, which Pakistan also claims, closer to the rest of India and improve economic conditions there.
• A citizenship registry introduced in Assam threatens to render stateless close to 2 million people, mainly Muslims, who have lived there for generations and yet do not have enough paperwork to prove citizenship. Shah, who became India’s home minister in 2019, wants to extend the registry nationwide, although that’s been delayed indefinitely as the government fights the coronavirus.
• Hindu nationalists also are pushing to build a temple in Ayodhya on the site of a mosque destroyed by Hindu activists in 1992, an event that triggered deadly riots at the time and remains sensitive for Muslims. Many Hindus believe the warrior god Ram was born there. The nation’s highest court in November gave Hindus control over the site, and Modi laid the first brick on Aug. 5.
• Vigilante mobs have attacked people transporting cows, which many devout Hindus consider sacred, disrupting the meat export industry.
• The firebrand governor of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, led a campaign that accused Muslim youths of waging “love jihad” by seducing Hindu women to convert them to Islam. At least one marriage was ordered annulled by a court.

6. What representation do Muslims have in Parliament?

Less and less. In 2014, only 4% of the members of the lower house were Muslim, compared with 9% in 1980, even as the Muslim share of the population rose to 14% from 11% in the same period. The BJP is the only major political party with no Muslim members of Parliament.

7. What does the government say?

Shah has defended the new law, saying it doesn’t revoke anyone’s citizenship but is aimed at helping those specified religious groups facing persecution. Regarding the planned national registry, the government has said it’s “not about any religion at all” and will be implemented in a way so as not to harass or endanger any citizen.

8. What do Modi’s critics say?

That the rise of religious identity politics has shifted focus from fundamental problems such as malnutrition, poor education, lack of sanitation and rising income inequality. Economic growth was slowing even before the pandemic and the country is now bracing for its first recession in three decades. Billionaire Rahul Bajaj in December provided a rare display of a corporate leader publicly expressing reservations about the government. Some outside India have chimed in, including Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. And Freedom House, a U.S.-based advocacy group, said that among the world’s major democracies, India suffered the steepest declines in civil and political liberties last year.

The Reference Shelf

• Bloomberg Opinion’s Mihir Sharma says India is abandoning its founding principles, and Pankaj Mishra says the country’s problems are bigger than Modi.
• Bangladesh, Pakistan and India each remember the 1971 conflict differently.
• Those who can’t prove citizenship may end up in detention camps.
• Kashmir may be silent, but it’s far from peaceful.
• A look at the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India through the lens of economics.
• “Religious Nationalism and India’s Future,” an article published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and a reader on Hindu nationalism, available on Amazon.com.
• QuickTakes on the BJP’s victory in state elections, on democracy under Modi, and on India’s slowing economic growth.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.