The tinderbox project - The BJP and the mainstreaming of majoritarianism

"The most interesting — and insidious — aspect of this election is the mainstreaming of the sangh parivar’s principal belief: that India is a Hindu nation. The ideologues of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have consistently maintained that India as a nation ought to be defined by the culture and preferences of its Hindu majority and that minorities ought to defer to this idea of India as a Hindu nation state. The definitive statement on Hindu hegemony came from the second sarsanghchalak or supreme chief of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar: “...the non-Hindu people in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and revere Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the Hindu Nation...” If they don’t, they “...may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizens’ rights.” Golwalkar’s unambiguously Hindu supremacist position used to embarrass the Bharatiya Janata Party (not because of what he had said, but on account of the starkness with which he said it) and was often explained away by gesturing at its context — the politics of the 1930s when India was a colonized country, threatened by Muslim separatism. The implication was that the BJP had evolved ideologically and no longer wanted Muslims to be treated as helots in republican India. However, after the electoral defeat of 2009, as the party regrouped around its most polarizing leader, Narendra Modi, it became less shy about its Hindu supremacist project. One straw in the wind was the BJP’s admission of Subramanian Swamy, the sole proprietor of what remained of the Janata Party, into its ranks..." (Read more.)