India, Islamophobia, and the Hindutva playbook

Abstract

Among the most disingenuous and carefully orchestrated playbook strategies of the Hindutva fascist movement in India, of which the current Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is part and parcel, is the manner in which it pursues its Islamophobic agenda. Arguably, there are few other spaces where Islamophobia is as dangerously manifest as it is in India today (Bazian et al. 2019: 3–10). This is not just because of the frequency of Islamophic attacks – a daily occurrence now – or the depth of depravity of the demonising language, or even the level of violence perpetrated against Muslims. Beyond that, the seriousness of Islamophobia in India is two-fold: (1) institutional support for Islamophobia from the highest political office in the country; (2) no recourse for Indian Muslims to appeal to the police or other legal authorities for meaningful protection. Today, it is open season on Muslims in India. Worse, there is not even any pretence of abiding by the rule of law or acknowledging the rights of minorities (Yeung 2020). It is a rabid, unadulterated hate-mongering that manifests in the most obscene of ways. This includes well-documented, blatant prejudice and discrimination against Muslims and other minorities that has stripped citizenship from millions of people, demagoguery that threatens to rape dead Muslim women, and lynching of Muslims in broad daylight – with police looking on (Goradia 2020). Even worse, in a twisted way, there seems to be a sense of amusement, even glee, at the rising levels of hate speech and violence directed towards Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Sikhs, and other minorites (Sharma 2011: 1–5). All this makes the unabashed nature of Islamophobia in India abbhorent.