Echoes of India’s violent Sectarian past

Just seven months ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were swept into power with the largest mandate in India’s recent history. Since then the Hindu nationalist party has begun to substantially undermine freedom of religion in the world’s largest democracy. Fundamentalist groups closely linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS—or the National Volunteer Corps), the ideological mentor of BJP, are attempting to implement their vision of a homogeneously Hindu nation by using a combination of force and fraudulent tactics to convert Christian and Muslims across the country to Hinduism. In response to the uproar evoked by the opposition in the Indian Parliament, the BJP has now proposed carefully crafted anti-conversion laws, which only further the Hindu supremacist agenda. The campaign of forced conversions and crescendo of extremist rhetoric from the BJP and its affiliate groups coupled with Modi’s deafening silence is likely to invoke ghosts of India’s lurid past of state-sanctioned, and even state-sponsored, violence against its religious minorities.
In nearly every corner of the country, Christians and Muslims have complained of a wave of hostility in recent months by fundamentalist groups affiliated with the BJP. Forty-two Christian families in the state of Bihar sought police protection to defend themselves from intimidation, threats of violence, and raids conducted by Bajrang Dal and Vishva Hindu Parishad. The impoverished villagers, who converted to Christianity in 2007, all formerly belonged to the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system and have been warned that they will be deprived of government benefits and driven out of the village if they do not re-convert to Hinduism.

It became the concrete ethnic nationalist doctrine of Hindutva in the early 20th century when it formulated a national identity that hinged on the religion, culture, language, and territory of the country’s majority community, coining the motto “Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan.” This ideology puts forth that the Hindu majority represents the nation because it is the largest and oldest community, while religious minorities are deemed outsiders with foreign loyalties. Whatever their private beliefs may be, in the public sphere, more than a hundred million of India’s Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs must pay allegiance to Hindu symbols.

While Western business elites steadfastly supported Modi’s rise to power with the promise of economic liberalization, the international community must, at the very least, admonish the Indian government for its recent assault on religious freedom. Another incident of state-sanctioned violence would not only undermine the country's economic reform agenda but also, if the past is any indication, possibly lead to the deaths of thousands of Indian Christians and Muslims who wish for nothing else but to practice their religion without state intervention.

confuzzled dude wrote:

Just seven months ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were swept into power with the largest mandate in India’s recent history. Since then the Hindu nationalist party has begun to substantially undermine freedom of religion in the world’s largest democracy. Fundamentalist groups closely linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS—or the National Volunteer Corps), the ideological mentor of BJP, are attempting to implement their vision of a homogeneously Hindu nation by using a combination of force and fraudulent tactics to convert Christian and Muslims across the country to Hinduism. In response to the uproar evoked by the opposition in the Indian Parliament, the BJP has now proposed carefully crafted anti-conversion laws, which only further the Hindu supremacist agenda. The campaign of forced conversions and crescendo of extremist rhetoric from the BJP and its affiliate groups coupled with Modi’s deafening silence is likely to invoke ghosts of India’s lurid past of state-sanctioned, and even state-sponsored, violence against its religious minorities.
In nearly every corner of the country, Christians and Muslims have complained of a wave of hostility in recent months by fundamentalist groups affiliated with the BJP. Forty-two Christian families in the state of Bihar sought police protection to defend themselves from intimidation, threats of violence, and raids conducted by Bajrang Dal and Vishva Hindu Parishad. The impoverished villagers, who converted to Christianity in 2007, all formerly belonged to the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system and have been warned that they will be deprived of government benefits and driven out of the village if they do not re-convert to Hinduism.

It became the concrete ethnic nationalist doctrine of Hindutva in the early 20th century when it formulated a national identity that hinged on the religion, culture, language, and territory of the country’s majority community, coining the motto “Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan.” This ideology puts forth that the Hindu majority represents the nation because it is the largest and oldest community, while religious minorities are deemed outsiders with foreign loyalties. Whatever their private beliefs may be, in the public sphere, more than a hundred million of India’s Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs must pay allegiance to Hindu symbols.

While Western business elites steadfastly supported Modi’s rise to power with the promise of economic liberalization, the international community must, at the very least, admonish the Indian government for its recent assault on religious freedom. Another incident of state-sanctioned violence would not only undermine the country's economic reform agenda but also, if the past is any indication, possibly lead to the deaths of thousands of Indian Christians and Muslims who wish for nothing else but to practice their religion without state intervention.

http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2015/01/13/echoes-india%E2%80%99s-violent-sectarian-past