Daily Times

There are eight different religions in India: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. Hindus are 86 per cent, followed by Muslims at 12 per cent, of the total population, almost the third largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan. Christians are 2.3 per cent, and Sikhs 2 per cent.

Islam came to India even before Muslim conquerors. Arab traders brought Islam to its western coast. In 712 AD, the 17-year-old Muhammad bin Qasim entered Sindh. In 1000 AD, Mahmood Ghaznavi attacked India. Shahab-ud-din Ghauri laid the foundation of Muslim rule in India towards the close of the 12th century. For centuries, Mughals ruled India, an area extending from Afghanistan to Bengal and Kashmir down to the southern extremities of the Deccan Plateau. On the whole, Muslims ruled India for about 1,000 years.

Hindus glorify warriors, such as Prithvi Raj Chauhan, Rana Pratap and Shivaji, who fought Muslims. Hindus continue to regard Muslims as foreigners with extraterritorial loyalties. Maj Gen GD Bakhshi (retired) is not just against Pakistan but is rewinding history regarding the Muslim rule in the subcontinent for centuries in which according to him, Hindus were maltreated.

According to Khushwant Singh, it was during the British rule that Hindu nationalism took birth, and a very powerful movement started. The Arya Samaj began under the leadership of Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883). Subsequently, several Hindu extremist organisations came into being.

The most important one was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (1889-1940) in Nagpur. He propagated the cause of Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu state. Dr Hedgewar, was not happy about the 1,000-year Muslim rule, followed by a Christian (British) one. The RSS was banned twice, first in 1948 after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, and later during the emergency of 1974-75 imposed by Indira Gandhi.

The RSS is said to be the ideological father of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Its main theme is that Muslims and Christians do not have any right to be in India. They would be either converted to Hinduism, or forced to leave India. The RSS was involved in the Gujarat riots, demolition of the Babari Mosque and cow vigilantism.

An important part of the idea of the geopolitics of Hindutva is the Akhand Bharat

‘Hindu’ is a word taken from Persian; it refers to ‘people who live across the Indus river’. According to the Oxford dictionary, Hindutva is the state or quality of being Hindu. The term Hindutva first appeared in the mid-1870s in the novel, Anandamath, by Bankim Chandra. Hindutva is the ideology that India is the homeland of Hindus. According to Prof Sumit Ganguly of Indiana University, the creation of the All India Muslim League led to the creation of the Hindu Mahasabha.

The ideology of the Hindu Mahasabha was uplifting of Hindus and conversion of Muslims to Hinduism. The political manifesto of Hindutva dates back to Hindu reform movements, such as the Brahma Samaj (1828), and Arya Samaj (1875). These groups were created to curb the growing influence of Islam and Christianity in the subcontinent. They tried to reform Hinduism along modern lines. Leaders of these movements later formed the Hindu Mahasabha in 1914. In 1925, Hedgewar formed the RSS, an offshoot of the Mahasabha. The aim was to unify Hindus, and enhance physical strength through training and exercise.

The RSS and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, a political party that was the precursor of the BJP, were against state interference in religion. In 1980, the BJS morphed into the BJP under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The BJP won two seats in the 1984 elections and struggled to make an impression.

An important part of the idea of the geopolitics of Hindutva is the Akhand Bharat. It implies Hindu domination and expansion to Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. According to the Indian Constitution, the term Hindu shall be referred to persons professing Sikh, Jain and Buddhist religions. The Hindu category excludes Muslims and Christians. No person who professes a religion different from the Hindu religion shall be deemed to be member of a scheduled caste. The Indian Constitution is generally presented as a document that guarantees equality of status to every citizen, but the same Constitution has reduced Muslims to the status of second-class citizens.

Hindutva has replaced the age-old philosophy of the so-called Indian secularism. Contrary to the Indian Constitution secularism is based on the promise of respect towards all faiths. Since 1990, the BJP has gathered strength, and India’s electoral milieu has seen a surge of religious content with electoral success of the Hindu nationalist BJP. The BJP that is now again in power is a rightist party that stands for Hindu nationalism. Its philosophy is based on anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan ideas as seen during the election campaign when Modi played the Pakistan Card.

The Pulwama incident created a war fever and a call for revenge against Pakistan, which led to the Balakot attacks. Pakistan hit back the very next day by dropping bombs next to an Indian brigade headquarters and other military installations. Two Indian jets were shot down, and an Indian pilot was captured.

During the five years of Modi’s last government, several Muslims were lynched on allegations of eating beef and for transporting cattle for slaughter. For Hindus, a cow is a sacred animal. Cow slaughter and consumption of beef have long been banned in 24 out of 29 states across India. Extremist Hindus are not happy with Muslims eating beef and offering prayers on roads; they look at it as an ‘attempt’ to convert the land of Hindus into a Muslim one. In the recent past we have seen increased cases of lynching, rape and molestation of Muslims.

According to a 2018 human rights report, many senior leaders of the ruling BJP, publicly, promoted Hindu supremacy and ultra-nationalism at the expense of fundamental rights of all Indians. According to the Human Rights Watch, extremist Hindu groups, many claiming affiliation with the BJP, committed numerous assaults against Muslims and other minority communities in response to rumors of cows being sold, bought and killed for meat. According to the South Asian director of the HRW, Indian authorities have proven themselves unwilling to protect minority religious communities and other vulnerable groups from frequent attacks. According to Arundhati Roy, the world famous writer and human rights activist, Modi’s government is systematically targeting its opponents, free thinkers and members of minority groups.

The Trinamool Congress has also accused the BJP of being “a syndicate of fanatics, a party of a lynching syndicate, a torture syndicate, and a syndicate of agencies.” Christophe Jaffrelot in his book Majoritarian State: how Muslim Nationalism is Changing India writes that the RSS is damaging India’s social fabric and tearing Indian communities part. The historian, Mukherjee, while referring to Nehru said, “If fascism ever came to India it would come in the form of majoritarian Hindu communalism.” That is what is exactly happening. He further says, “The damage done is not short term, it is very long term.”

The governments in the BJP-led Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan are re-writing history textbooks to downplay Islamic contribution to Indian history and culture. Textbooks in Maharashtra scrapped an entire chapter on the Mughal Empire that ruled the subcontinent for over three centuries before the arrival of the British. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, has championed the cause of ‘love jihad’ that Muslim men are marrying and impregnating Hindu women to change demography balance. There is also ‘ghar wapsi’ (homecoming), which aims to convert minorities to Hinduism – implying that they were all originally Hindus. Adityanath has also renamed cities that refer to Islamic heritage: Allahabad to Prayagray, and Faizabad to Ayodhya.

BJP policy makers are looking forward to an India where militaristic Hindu nationalism triumphs under Modi’s rule, sidelining minorities. Over 40 per cent members of parliament in India are facing terrorism and criminal charges of killing minorities, mass murder and rape. 233 members of the 543 elected members are facing criminal charges.

Majority Indians believe that if Hindus unite, Muslims can be defeated, and India can regain its past glory. Mahatma Gandhi gave India its first lesson in tolerance and non-violence. The Gandhian era and the present India stand in total contrast with one another. Gandhi firmly believed in secular nationalism and unity of the country. His policies were based on values like trust and non-violence. On June 30, 1948, Nathuram Godse fired at point blank range and killed Gandhi. A BJP candidate who won the election on that slogan has promoted his murderer as a patriot.

According to The New York Times, with the BJP in power, Hindu lynch mobs began to pop up across the landscape, killing Muslims and lower caste people suspected to slaughtering of cows. In an interview to The New York Times, one Indian Muslim from Delhi said, “I live with fear in my heart.”

The BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal, and Vishva Hindu Parishad have created an atmosphere of fear among minorities that include 25 per cent Dalits, 17 per cent scheduled castes and 9 per cent scheduled tribes.

The writer is a retired brigadier and currently commissioner of the Afghan Refugees Organisation, Balochistan