India election: how Narendra Modi’s BJP uses and abuses religious minorities for political purposes

By M. Sudhir Selvaraj, University of Bradford

If the pre-election polls are to be believed, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), is set to return to office for a third successive term when the result is declared on June 4. The election is the world’s largest and India has a very diverse population and complex culture, but Modi appears locked in to retain the power he has held on to since 2014.

Modi’s seemingly impenetrable popularity stems from a mix of his populist rhetoric, his affinity with India’s business elite, and his propagation of a Hindutva – Hindu nationalist – ideology. He is benefiting from India’s positive economic outlook – but there is also strong support in the country for Modi’s brand of populist autocracy.

Hindutva is an important part of this. This is a cultural nationalist ideology which portrays India as the “land of Hindus”, emphasising the need for unity among all Hindus across caste, linguistic, regional and class divides. Some adherents promote Hindutva as a way of countering what they see as the demographic, political and cultural threat posed by Muslims and Christians.

Under Modi’s premiership, Hindutva has been increasingly embedded into India’s social-legal-political system. On a national level, this has included the removal of statehood for Kashmir – previously India’s only Muslim-majority state.

There was also the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act, which prevents persecuted Muslims (but not other religious minorities including Christians) from neighbouring countries from claiming asylum in India.

At the state level, in BJP-run states, a slew of anti-conversion laws have been passed which seek to limit “conversion” to Christianity and Islam. Hindutva-aligned vigilante groups provide extrajudicial and often violent enforcement of these laws.

This has prompted a sharp rise in the number of everyday instances of anti-minority violence. The UN Special Rapporteur for Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, recently described this situation as “massive, systematic and dangerous”.

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