COVER STORY – INDIA: RISING FASCISM
Hindutva Fascism Finds a Home in the U.S. Hindutva has expanded far beyond South Asia BY LUKE PETERSON
T
he plague of right-wing ethnonationalism has gone global. From the UK’s British National Party to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro to Donald Trump’s popularizing of the old American fascist slogan, “America First,” few corners of the globe seem to have escaped the politics of racism, essen tialism and economic privilege. In India, always touted as “the world’s largest democracy,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have excelled at the politics of division and shifted South Asia’s political playing field from policies focused on population growth, climate change and economic scarcity to a full-throated support of Hindu nationalism. This change has been concomitant with public calls to target and violently exclude India’s 12% Muslim minority, calls to action so common and brazen that they have sparked ethnic violence in the northeast. Indeed, Modi apparently hopes to ride a popular wave of anti-Islamic policy and discourse that will allow him to stay in power for the foreseeable future. Two million Muslims living in Assam province have already been officially disenfranchised. According to Modi and the BJP, these “Bangladeshi migrants” should be excluded from India’s democratic processes. But these Assam-born Indians, just as Indian as Modi himself, have been tarred with a catch-all phrase used by far-right Hindu nationalists in seats of power throughout the region to identify all South Asian Muslims. In the provinces of Bihar and Bengal, the latter of which shares a border with Bangladesh, anti-Muslim racism is also rife. Provincial (state) officials have called for citizens of both districts, home to more than 40 million Muslims, to undergo “citizenship verification processes,” a carefully crafted euphemism advocating that Muslim citizen take Orwellian loyalty oaths under threat of deportation, reeducation or worse. In effect, this process effectively otherizes India’s Muslims, classifying them as something less than the mainstream, acceptable Hindu-majority population. Being Muslim in India today, then, has become a life-threatening liability, as mob violence against them for actions as simple as herding cattle or being in the company of Hindu women can attest. In sum, thanks to Modi and the BJP’s unabashedly racist nationalism, the “construct of the Muslim [Indian] as the unwanted, dangerous outsider has been honed and mainstreamed” (https:// time.com/6103284/india-hindu-supremacy-extremism-genocide-bjp-modi/). The rampant ethno-nationalism at the heart of Modi’s vision has proven to have a surprisingly long reach as well, extending its Islamophobic aims as far afield as the American academy. In September 2021, a planned conference organized by researchers in the U.S. to examine the rise of Hindu nationalism and Modi’s Islamophobic policies was attacked by a targeted, online campaign. In all, more than a million emails threatening death, rape and/or bombs were sent to scholars and universities nationwide, as well as to the principal researchers behind the conference, should the event be convened. Some experts on South Asia were surprised by the sheer volume of these threats, but not by the fact that they were made. Several lecturers who speak on Hindu nationalism had long ago required security at their events. One scholar who travels 16 ISLAMIC HORIZONS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
to India regularly told the Washington Post about the threat of violence looming over contemporary South Asian studies, only after the newspaper agreed to not to mention his/her name. Unsurprisingly, several prominent scholars cancelled their participation in the September 2021 event. Various law enforcement agencies are currently investigating some of the more violent threats made by proponents of the Modi regime. Universities with South Asian Studies depart ments remain in a compromised position vis-à-vis the study of Hindu nationalism. The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and similar pressure groups moni tor their activities and challenge their faculty members
