Populist nationalism in India

Under Modi, a Hindu Nationalist Surge Has Further Divided India

When Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, was elected in 2014, it was with broad support for his sweeping promises to modernize India’s economy, fight corruption and aggressively assert India’s role in the world. 

Five years later, he is widely seen as having made at least some progress on those issues.

That secular agenda was always entwined with Mr. Modi’s roots within a conservative Hindu political movement that strives to make India a Hindu state. 

Many of his more moderate supporters hoped he might set the sectarianism aside.

But over the past five years, his bloc, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has been spreading an us-versus-them philosophy in a country already riven by dangerous divisions. 

The Hindu right has never been more enfranchised at every level of government.

Now, with national elections underway, and with most polling data indicating that Mr. Modi will return to power, the growing belief here is that a divisive Hindu-first agenda will only accelerate.

The emboldening effect became apparent within months of the 2014 election. 

Hindu lynch mobs began to pop up across the landscape, killing Muslims and lower-caste people suspected of slaughtering cows, a sacred animal under Hinduism. 

Most often, they have gotten away with it.

Hate speech began to proliferate. 

So did the use of internet trolls to shut down critics.

Government bodies began rewriting history books, lopping out sections on Muslim rulers, changing official place names to Hindu from Muslim, and more aggressively contesting holy sites. 

They also began pushing extremist Hindu priorities, including an effort to locate a mystical river that features prominently in Hindu scriptures. 

Critics called it pseudoscience and said the search was akin to using public dollars to study mermaids.

The consensus among Indian activists and liberal political analysts is that their society, under Mr. Modi, has become more toxically divided between Hindus and Muslims, between upper and lower castes, between men and women.

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Its population may be 80 percent Hindu, but the modern country’s founding fathers, including Nehru and Mohandas K. Gandhi, resisted going down the path of establishing a religiously identified state like Iran or Pakistan.