How Hindu nationalism is changing India?

The book titled ‘Majoritarian State: How Hindu nationalism is changing India’ was launched in New Delhi last month. The book consists of contributions from leading scholars of Indian politics and highlights that RSS is violently tearing apart Indian communities and institutions systematically. The terms like Hindu Raj, Ethnic Democrachy and Deep State reveal the true face of India. This book of essays examines the growth of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India, focusing on the tenure of the current BJP government, which came to power in 2014. The authors argue that the ruling party’s agenda of creating a majoritarian state has permeated every sphere of public life, including civil society, the media and the judiciary, and this has resulted in violence based on caste, gender and religion.
The contributors explore how Hindutva ideology has permeated the state apparatus and formal institutions, and how Hindutva activists exert control over civil society via vigilante groups, cultural policing and violence. Groups and regions portrayed as enemies of the Indian state are the losers in a new order promoting the interests of the urban middle class and business elites. As this majoritarian ideology pervades the media and public discourse, it also affects the judiciary, universities and cultural institutions, increasingly captured by Hindu nationalists. Dissent is silenced and debate increasingly sidelined as the press is muzzled or intimidated in the courts. Internationally, the BJP government has emphasised hard power and a fast expanding security state. This collection of essays offers rich empirical analysis and documentation to investigate the causes and consequences of the turn taken by so-called largest democracy in the world.
Majoritarianism is a traditional political philosophy or agenda that asserts that a majority (sometimes categorized by religion, language, social class, or some other identifying factor) of the population is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society. This traditional view has come under growing criticism and democracies have increasingly included constraints in what the parliamentary majority can do, in order to protect citizens’ fundamental rights. India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had envisioned India as a secular, pluralist, polity that belonged to all Indians and not to any one group. In particular, India did not belong to the Hindu majority, which constituted 80 percent of the country’s population according to the last official census. It was this secular idea that created India in 1947 opposite of majoritarian nationalism.
Now, things have changed. With the BJP’s rise to become India’s ruling party in 2014 and by having a majority in the 2019 elections; and since Narendra Modi is sure to have the second term as Prime Minister of India, the idea of India is being redefined to mean a Hindu polity (Hindutva). The BJP, which has for decades called upon the government to recognize the special rights of Hindus in a Hindu majority country, has been the single most important force in shifting the terms of debate. In 2017, BJP had nominated Yogi Adityanath as chief minister of United Province (UP), a bigoted Hindutva hardliner who made a career out of inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the mastermind of cynical agenda had drawn flak on this brazen move.
The Communist Party of India (M) had accused BJP of systematically playing communal card in India’s biggest state. Sreemoy Talukdar Senior Editor First Post stated: “In picking Yogi Adityanath for the post of Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have certainly sold us a Hindutva dummy in the name of ‘vikas’. Installing such a divisive and thuggish figure at the helm of India’s most populous and volatile state is a terrible, terrible decision.” India today stands exposed, as the threat to religious minorities by fanatic and aggressive Hindu fundamentalism is enough to raise serious doubts among the international community regarding the secular outlook and democratic claims of India.
The plight of Indian minorities during BJP’s era and especially with Modi at the helm has surpassed all previous records. His policies are dictated by RSS who have unleashed reign of terror on Indian minorities and still showcase India to be a secular state. Unfortunately, secular claims are not substantiated by the ground realities; and eidetic reality is that India has an unwritten mandate of pushing the minorities against the wall through State policies as well as by hardliner Hindu politicians.