​Call to Conscience: India’s Pluralism at Stake in Attack on Muslims

Ever since self-avowed Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in 2014, the country’s core pluralist and democratic fabric has undergone a drastic overhaul. India’s federal and state legislatures, federal and state governments, judiciary, and even the supposedly nonpartisan pillars of government such as the election commission, as well as non-State stakeholders such as the news media, the academia, cinema, and popular arts, have all succumbed to a narrow Hindu supremacist agenda, marginalizing and othering India’s 250 million Muslims. For the first time since India’s freedom from British colonial rule in 1947, a federal government has not a single Muslim minister. For the first time, India’s ruling party—Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—does not have a single Muslim as a member of Parliament. This ideology is essentially predicated on violence, both by non-State actors and by State as a primary agent.