Hindu nationalist surge

last updated 8 January 2015

Gujarat, India

Hindu hard-liners won a landslide victory in state elections in Gujarat this week after campaigning on an anti-Muslim platform. The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party that dominates the federal government, swept the state by reviving fears of Muslim violence. Last spring, a group of Muslims burned alive a trainload of 59 Hindu activists on their way to a temple. The killing sparked a retaliatory wave of lynchings and burnings as Hindu mobs slaughtered hundreds of Muslims. Political analysts said the BJP’s exploitation of religious tensions was a troubling development in India’s secular, pluralistic democracy. The BJP is effectively saying that “in order to be Indian, you have to be Hindu,” analyst Mahesh Rangarajan told The Washington Post.