Violent Hindu nationalism has accelerated at critical moments when putatively secular politicians have used religion to gain an electoral advantage. This process, a century in the making, is now culminating in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s open rejection of any pretense of secularism.
As Muslim electoral support for Congress waned, Gandhi shifted her focus to the Hindu vote, thus opening the door wider for hardline Hindutva forces. She established backchannel communications with the RSS, and increased her use of Hindu symbols as Hindu-Muslim riots became more frequent in the early 1980s. Her pandering to Hindus in the Jammu and Kashmir elections, and her support for the Sikh militant Sant Bhindranwale in Punjab, further stoked Hindu identity politics. After her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, the anti-Sikh violence orchestrated by Congress leaders catalyzed mobs of unemployed – even unemployable – men as Hindu nationalism’s foot soldiers.
Two key developments in the 1980s gave vivid reality to Savarkar’s vision of an India united by politicized Hinduism. In 1983, emboldened hardline Hindutva forces launched the “Ekatmata Yatra,” loosely defined as a “march to celebrate India’s one soul.” Organized by the Sangh Parivar (the umbrella term for Hindutva groups), multiple processions crisscrossed the country with Hindu emblems. In 1987-88, instructed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (Indira Gandhi’s older son), state-owned television Doordarshan serialized the much-loved Ramayana epic, which spawned a Rambo-like iconography of Lord Ram as Hindutva’s avenger. Rajiv Gandhi also reignited the Hindu-Muslim contest for the site on which the sixteenth-century Babri Masjid stood. With Hindu zealots claiming that it was Lord Ram’s birthplace, Gandhi declared himself a champion of Hindu ideals and opened its gates, sealed since 1949 to contain communal passions. Then, in December 1992, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s Congress-led government dithered as frenzied Hindu mobs demolished Babri Masjid, triggering bloody riots and further bolstering the Hindutva cause. Only 16 years separated the Turkman Gate massacre of Muslims in 1976 to their humiliation with the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 and its gruesome aftermath. Indian secularism was a receding shadow. The Hindutva juggernaut was marching ahead, triumphing in May 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party – the political face of Hindutva – gained a large parliamentary majority under Modi’s leadership. With the hardliners in power, Hindu mobs have gained license to lynch Muslims and assassinate anti-Hindutva opponents. Matters could worsen. Hindu symbols and sentiments have infused state conduct ominously. Modi has helped establish Savarkar as a demigod. Promoting a Hindu theocratic state, he inaugurated the new parliament building in a ceremony overshadowed by Hindu ritualism. In November 2019, the Supreme Court, despite the absence of historical evidence of Lord Ram’s birth on the Babri Masjid site, authorized the Ram Temple’s construction in deference to Hindu “faith and belief.” Similarly, the chief justice recently presented himself as a modern Savarkar, remarking that flags flying atop Hindu temples represent the Constitution of India’s unifying force. Meanwhile, hate-filled H-pop and cinema are normalizing Hindutva’s hard edge, as are Congress’s “soft Hindutva tactics.” Although Hindutva’s rise over the past century has occasionally paused, it has never reversed. Indeed, it has accelerated at critical moments when putatively secular politicians used religion to gain an electoral advantage. They gave oxygen to Hindutva’s potent friend-versus-enemy narrative, which gradually overwhelmed the secular interlude of early post-independence India. Today, violent Hindutva – far removed from the peaceful tenets of Hinduism – has infiltrated politics and culture, with elite acquiescence. As Modi assumes the persona of a priest-like ruler on January 22, the idea of a theocratic India appears impervious to secular opposition, regardless of the outcome of the general election set for April and May.Ashoka Mody, a visiting professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton University, previously worked for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He is the author of India is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today (Stanford University Press, 2023).
PRINCETON – On January 22, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will preside over the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Executive power will symbolically fuse with the Hindu religion – harking back to myths of Indian rulers as incarnations of Supreme Lord Vishnu – at the former site of the Babri Mosque, demolished by self-styled “angry Hindus” in 1992.