Columns

India: Sleepwalking to Extremism

19/03/2022

Violence against minorities in India has increased many folds during recent years. While this progression might look shocking on the surface, it is only a continuum of the Hindutva ideology which aims at turning secular India into Hindustan. The aggressive pursuit of a hard-line Hindu agenda by the current regime is instilling fear in the hearts of not only Muslims and Christians, but also different minorities within the Hindu religion ie: Dalits, Tribal groups, and Scheduled Castes.

For many years, Muslims in India have been at the end of cultural and direct violence; but now the BJP government is helping Hindutva ideology to spread its bloody claws to other minorities too. History and social studies books that had been taught in schools for years are being re-written to fit the Hindu nationalist agenda, cities with Muslim cultural names that go back to the Mughal empire are been renamed. Laws that go against India’s constitution are being enacted. All of this happening very suddenly, but simultaneously, is not a coincidence; this is the continuation of a deliberate attempt at making the lives of minorities miserable and establishing the hegemony of Hindu supremacist ideology.

Unlike other countries in the region which tried to homogenize their population by declaring one state religion or language or propagating one culture, the Indian Constitution explicitly aimed at making India secular. Article 25-A of the Indian Constitution states that: “All persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion.” The fact that this article was drafted in 1948 hints at how enacting laws that undermine Muslim authority was almost impossible before the BJP government, despite the ideology behind it has been a forever presence in the Indian society.

In July 2019, the Indian Parliament changed the law and introduced new legalization that criminalized Triple Talaq. While the members of Parliament tried to justify it by claiming it protects Muslim women by saving them from Triple Talaq, the fact of the matter remains that it undermines the Muslim authority to have their laws (on matters like marriage and divorce, etc). Since the BJP government has realized it possesses the power to introduce new articles in the Constitution, they can try to legalize the homogenization of Indian society according to majoritarian Hindu ideals. The recent Hijab Ban in several states is also an example of the manifestation of that authority.

Finding differences and then using them to stereotype and discriminate against Muslims, Christians, and lower-caste Hindus have polarised Indian society. It started with cow vigilantism, next mainstream media was used to portray Muslims in a negative light by calling them names like “Pakistani”, “Terrorist”, and “Jihadi”. Names that were bound to instill hatred against minorities in the minds of average citizens. Muslims are being widely accused of spreading Coronavirus. More than a dozen films have been made on the topic of “Love Jihad” in recent times, all of which help justify violent countering of Love Jihad. Several incidents of Muslim men being beaten up or even killed to save “naive” Hindu women from them keep coming up. In the aftermath of most of these cases, there are explicit proofs that Police, Politicians, and city administration let upper-caste Hindu perpetrators off the hook pretty easily. This biased treatment has further helped polarize society by making minorities feel as if they are second-class citizens in their own country.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes that: “With the exception of the National Emergency from 1975 to 1977, Indian democracy has never seemed as fragile as it does today. With polarization now reaching alarming heights, Indian democracy may have entered uncharted territory.” United Nations’ HRW 2021 report listed the many ways India is quickly becoming unliveable for religious minorities, Scheduled Castes, Tribal groups, Dalits, women, sexual and gender minorities; as well as committing grand atrocities against Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir by using its Draconian Public Safety Act which permits detention without trial for up to 2 years.

The Hindutva ideology is driving the anti-Muslim violence in India, not just physical violence but also the hate speeches and demonization of Muslims and other religious minorities. This hate has manifested itself in the form of frequent attacks and discrimination in everyday life, and it keeps increasing in proportion. The ongoing moves on the legislative front by the elected members of parliament are equally horrific, as they are trying to undermine Muslim authority, identity, rights, and may very well strip them of their citizenship in the future. This intersection of communal hatred, legislations, normalization of a prejudiced outlook regarding minorities’ way of life and culture is dangerous territory and a very slippery slope that should be equally concerning for both Civil Society and International Community.