India’s Democracy at 70: Toward a Hindu State?

Christophe Jaffrelot

Journal of Democracy, Volume 28, Number 3, July 2017, pp. 52-63 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2017.0044

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/664166

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 created by BK on 6/9/17.

India’s Democracy at 70

Toward a Hindu State?

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at the Centre d’études

et de recherches internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po in Paris, and
director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique
(CNRS). His books include Religion, Caste, and Politics in India (2011).

In 1976, India’s Constitution of 1950 was amended to enshrine secular-

ism. Several portions of the original constitutional text already reflected
this principle. Article 15 bans discrimination on religious grounds, while
Article 25 recognizes freedom of conscience as well as “the right freely
to profess, practise and propagate religion.” Collective as well as indi-
vidual rights receive constitutional recognition. Articles 26 and 30, for
instance, stipulate that each religious denomination has the right to es-
tablish charitable and educational institutions, and that these are eligible
to receive state aid. These communities also have the right to manage
their “own affairs in matters of religion,” which in particular amounts to
recognizing customary and personal laws such as Islamic shari‘a.
Clearly, the Indian version of secularism does not imply the seculariza-
tion of the society within which it applies.1 On the contrary, India publicly
recognizes religions in its basic law. Yet for the past three decades at least,
pillars of this brand of secularism have been undergoing de facto demoli-
tion. Without overtly challenging any constitutional clause that upholds
secularism, well-organized Hindu nationalists have mounted a massive
ethnoreligious mobilization and effectively “Hinduized” the public sphere.
The ideological roots of Hindu nationalism go back to 1923, when
V.D. Savarkar published Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? In this charter of
what was to become known as the doctrine of Hindutva, Savarkar de-
fined the Hindus as the “sons of the soil,” for whom India was not only
a motherland, but also a sacred land. Muslims and Christians, by con-
trast, he presented as outsiders who had attacked Hinduism in the past
and should now swear allegiance to key symbols of Hindu identity in
order to become true Indian nationals. This equation between Hindu

Journal of Democracy Volume 28, Number 3 July 2017

© 2017 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press
Christophe Jaffrelot 53

civilization and Indian identity reflects an ethnic definition of the nation

that is at odds with the vision found in the Constitution of 1950. That
document, which enshrines the views of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawa-
harlal Nehru (the first prime minister), treats anyone born in India as a
legitimate citizen of the country, whose “composite culture,” moreover,
combines different religious traditions.
Yet the party of Gandhi and Nehru, the Indian National Congress
(INC or simply Congress), has never fully endorsed this conception.
There have always been holdouts among Congress notables at the level
of the states—especially the ones in northern India, where party bosses
have tended to promote Hindu traditions at the expense of minorities.
And even more significantly, Nehru’s own daughter and grandson—In-
dira and Rajiv Gandhi—during their respective turns as prime minister
during all but three of the 23 years between 1966 and 1989, tended to
instrumentalize religion. They played the Muslim and Hindu “cards” in
turn. Indira accorded Aligarh Muslim University status as a minority
educational institution under Article 30 of the Constitution, for instance,
while Rajiv sought to cater to traditionalist-Muslim sensitivities during
the Shah Bano affair (a dispute over whether a Muslim woman had a
right to alimony after her husband had divorced her under Islamic law).
In 1989, facing a national election, Rajiv turned to wooing Hindus.
He launched his campaign by invoking the divine figure of Rama, whom
Hindu nationalists had begun promoting, in the town of Faizabad, Uttar
Pradesh. Close by is Ayodhya, which many Hindus hold to be Rama’s
birthplace. It was there, said Hindu nationalists, that the first Mughal
emperor, Babur, had centuries earlier razed the temple marking the birth
site in order to erect a large mosque on the spot. Their demand was that
this temple be rebuilt. Instead of remaining loyal to secular values by
resisting this push, Rajiv Gandhi tried to benefit from it. He lost the
election, however, and Congress has never fully recovered.2
While Congress has diluted the secular discourse of the state in a
way that has given the Hindu-nationalist idiom a new legitimacy, there
is still more than a difference of degree between the party and the Hin-
du-nationalist movement. This movement has given rise to a myriad of
organizations that are known collectively as the Sangh Parivar.3 The
trunk of the Hindu-nationalist tree is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(National Volunteer Corps or RSS), founded in 1925. The branches that
it has sprouted include the highly successful Bharatiya Janata Party (In-
dian People’s Party or BJP).
As the events related to the Ayodhya affair were unfolding, the BJP
was gaining at the polls. In 1998, it arrived in power at the head of a co-
alition government. Restrained by partners that did not hold with Hindu-
nationalist ideology, the BJP shelved those elements of its agenda that
were most openly hostile to secularism. Its watch, however, did see the
outbreak of an anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002.
54 Journal of Democracy

Yet the erosion of secularism continued, aided by judicial rulings

such as a December 1995 Supreme Court decision which endorsed the
idea that Hindutva (the Hindu-nationalist ideology) is a secular concern
with the Indian ethos or “way of life.”4 This has meant that Hindutva-
based election campaigning—which would be banned were Hindutva
construed as religious in nature—has been able to go on unchecked.
After ten years in opposition, the BJP returned to power in 2014.
Currently, it has a majority in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India’s
bicameral Parliament) where it holds 282 of the chamber’s 545 seats (its
actual governing coalition is larger, totaling 339 seats). The BJP’s lead-
er, Narendra Modi, had been chief minister of Gujarat between 2001 and
2014, a period that included the 2002 anti-Muslim riots there. He made
the promotion of economic development the centerpiece of his 2014
campaign, but exploited religious issues too. Since coming to power, the
BJP has not directly challenged official secularism at either the national
or the state level—though it has passed highly controversial laws in
some states—but vigilantes acting on behalf of Hindutva have subjected
citizens from minority groups to acts of ruthless cultural policing, with
physical violence not seldom involved.
Lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha (Parliament’s upper house), the
BJP has not sought to change federal law in this area. Modi did promise
during his campaign to amend the Citizenship Act of 1950 to grant au-
tomatic Indian citizenship to any Christian, Hindu, Jain, Parsee, or Sikh
refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, or Pakistan—conspicuously
omitting Muslim migrants—but he has yet to bring forward such a bill.
States in which the BJP has passed laws hostile to religious minori-
ties include Maharashtra, whose capital Mumbai has long been a model
of cosmopolitanism. The BJP won control of the state in 2014 after al-
lying with Shiv Sena, a regional Hindu-nationalist party. The resulting
state government quickly scrapped positive-discrimination measures
meant to aid Muslims. In 2015 came legislation making the sale and
possession of beef a crime punishable by a fine and up to five years in
jail. This measure, reflecting the sacredness of the cow in Hinduism, has
primarily penalized Muslims, many of whom are butchers by trade. (The
BJP-run state of Haryana also passed a “beef ban” in 2015.)
Finally, Maharashtra passed a law making religious conversion ex-
tremely difficult. Hindu nationalists had become alarmed by the find-
ing of the 2011 national census that the Hindu share of the population
had fallen below 80 percent for the first time since 1947. Maharashtra’s
law was modeled on anticonversion statutes already in force in Gujarat
and Madhya Pradesh. The aim in each case is to thwart the activities of
Christian missionaries and to a lesser extent the movement by certain
groups (tribes or lower castes) to adopt Islam.
In addition to legal changes, the dominant discourse has taken an
ethnoreligious turn as high officials promote Hindu identity. External
Christophe Jaffrelot 55

Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has publicly supported the naming of

the Bhagavad Gita as India’s “national scripture.”5 In 2015, Culture
Minister Mahesh Sharma removed the name of Aurangzeb—a Mughal
emperor despised by Hindu nationalists—from a Delhi street and named
it instead after the recently deceased former president A.P.J. Abdul Ka-
lam. Sharma said that Kalam, “despite being a Muslim, was a national-
ist and humanist.”6 In 2016, a Shiv Sena politician mused publicly that
Muslims should lose the right to vote.7
In 2016, nearly two decades after her death and just months before
she was formally declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, even
the once universally admired figure of Mother Teresa came in for bitter
Hindu-nationalist criticism. Yogi Adityanath, the head of a monastery
and temple in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, and one of the most aggressive
voices in the BJP, accused her of wanting to Christianize all of India.
Attempts to spread Christianity, he further claimed, were behind “sepa-
ratist movements.”8 Adityanath is anything but marginal in the BJP: In
March 2017, the party’s national leadership would make him chief min-
ister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state.
Uttar Pradesh has been a target of propaganda in the fullest sense. In
2013, BJP leaders in Muzzafarnagar district in the state’s western reach-
es were involved in clashes that killed at least 55 people. In 2016, one
of these leaders, Hukum Singh, claimed that 346 Hindu families in his
Lok Sabha constituency had been driven from their homes in the Mus-
lim-majority town of Kairana by Muslim intimidation. Amit Shah, the
BJP’s party president and Narendra Modi’s right-hand man, made fur-
ther remarks that exploited the feeling of vulnerability the episode had
created among Hindus. The National Human Rights Commission (an
official body restaffed since 2014 by the BJP government) lent credence
to these assertions. Investigative journalists and documentary filmmak-
ers, however, have shown that the list of those supposedly forced to flee
included people who died or moved away long ago as well as some who
never left Kairana and in fact still lived there. Despite such published
evidence, however, the “Hindu exodus” story lives on as an example of
how disinformation can twist civic discourse.9

Cultural Vigilantism
The Hindu-nationalist movement uses more than words. Since the
1980s, the RSS has formed vigilante groups to enforce its understanding
of Hindu traditions. The most widely known among these militias is the
Bajrang Dal. Founded in Uttar Pradesh in 1984, it has more than two-
thousand local branches and deploys youthful cadres who mostly target
“deviant” artists. In 2006, it forced the world-renowned painter M.F.
Husain, then aged 90, into exile.10
Since 2014, hardly a month has gone by without the launch of some
56 Journal of Democracy

campaign to promote one or another pet theme of Hindu nationalism. In

2014, after that year’s elections, Hindutva activists accused Muslims of
mounting a “love jihad” with the alleged aim of seducing young Hindu
women into marrying Muslim men and embracing Islam. Self-defense
groups formed with the stated purpose of guarding Hindus against this
“threat,” complete with images such as one depicting the actress Ka-
reena Kapoor (whose husband is Muslim) with half her face covered by
a black niqab, a garment that she never wears. This campaign was fol-
lowed by another one, called Ghar Vapsi (Homecoming), which aimed
to convert (or reconvert) Muslims and Christians as a reaction to Mus-
lim and Christian proselytism.
While many of these campaigns have come and gone quickly, one that
has kept up its momentum since 2014 is the movement to defend the cow,
which is sacred in Hinduism. Beef consumption is legal in every state, but
all of them except Kerala, West Bengal, and most of the far-northeastern
states have laws that partly or fully ban the slaughter of cows. In the heat-
ed atmosphere that Hindu-nationalist rhetoric has created, militias and an
umbrella movement known as Gau Raksha Dal (GRD or Cow Protection
Organization) have sprung up to take the law into their own hands.
In Maharashtra and Haryana, the state governments outsourced imple-
mentation of the beef ban to these militias. The state government of Maha-
rashtra created the post of “Honorary Animal Welfare Officer,” and placed
one in each district. All the publicly known applicants for these posts have
been gau rakshaks (cow protectors) from various militias already in the
habit of stopping “traffickers” (that is, dealers in beef whose business was
legal before the laws were changed) and burning their cargos.11
In Haryana, where the GRD claims to have five-thousand activists,
gau rakshaks wielding field-hockey sticks patrol the 240 kilometers of
highway between Chandigarh and Delhi, halting trucks that they believe
might hold beef or live cows. These enforcers generally belong to Hindu-
nationalist organizations. One gau rakshak told a reporter how, before
the beef ban, they would burn trucks, but could now give them to the
police.12 Ten states (all in the north and west) now have GRD branches.
Other Hindu-nationalist organizations have created their own groups of
gau rakshaks, some of whom have been found guilty of beating Muslims
for transporting cows.13
The case that has raised the most concern, however, is the September
2015 mob lynching of a Muslim from Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, whom cow
vigilantes suspected of storing beef in his refrigerator (some investiga-
tors later claimed that it was mutton). Two Muslims driving buffaloes
to market in Jharkhand were also lynched, and two Muslim women ac-
cused of eating beef were gang raped.14
While Muslims are the primary victims of the gau rakshaks, Dalits
(who belong to castes once called “untouchable,” with current numbers
of more than two-hundred million) also have been subjected to cow pro-
Christophe Jaffrelot 57

tectors’ wrath. Members of certain Dalit castes follow traditional oc-

cupations of tanning and shoemaking and therefore must skin animal
carcasses to make a living. In July 2016, gau rakshaks in Una, Gujarat,
publicly beat several Dalits and then dragged them to a police station
for having performed this task on a cow that a lion had killed.15 A video
purporting to show the assault circulated widely on social media.16

Responses to the Hindu-Nationalist Trend

Prime Minister Modi broke his silence early in August 2016 to opine
that many gau rakshaks were not really cow protectors at all.17 On Au-
gust 20, the GRD’s head Satish Kumar was arrested on charges that in-
cluded rioting and extortion. The RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, however,
defended the gau rakshaks while addressing a large rally of his follow-
ers in October 2016.18
On 29 May 2017, the central government, through a rule issued under
the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, banned the sale of cattle
at markets for slaughter. Amid large protests against the new “beef ban,”
the chief ministers of Kerala and West Bengal publicly denounced it.
Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan condemned the measure as
being “against the principles of secularism and federalism enshrined in
our Constitution.”19 As of this writing in June 2017, a Supreme Court
challenge is in the works.
There has been some pushback against the Hindu-nationalist trend. In
2015, artists and intellectuals began returning prizes and other distinc-
tions awarded by the state to protest the growing intolerance. High-pro-
file Muslims and Christians also began to take a stand. Bollywood star
Shah Rukh Khan said that he was concerned about the rise in “religious
intolerance.” Former Gujarat and Punjab police chief Julio Ribeiro, a
man known for his integrity, wrote that as a Christian he never felt less
at home in India. The country’s highest-ranking Muslim official, Vice-
President Hamid Ansari—he was elected well before the 2014 Hindu-
nationalist wave—has repeatedly urged respect for secularism while
stressing that India’s Muslims are peaceful citizens.20
In early 2015, Modi himself said that “everyone has the undeniable
right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion
or undue influence. My government will not allow any religious group,
belonging to majority or minority to incite hatred against others overtly
or covertly.”21 But these words, uttered in the presence of the Catholic
archbishop of Delhi, have not been followed by dismissals or even rep-
rimands of BJP ministers who have shown contempt for secularism.
What can account for Modi’s combination of rhetorical action and
practical inaction? There are three, not mutually exclusive, explana-
tions: 1) Modi shares the extremists’ views but deems it inexpedient to
say so; 2) he is dependent on the RSS and feels reluctant to antagonize
58 Journal of Democracy

it; 3) the shift toward Hindu nationalism as the center of gravity in In-
dian politics has been so rapid and far-reaching that even Modi is having
trouble adjusting to it.
The BJP’s sweeping state-level election victories in Assam in 2016
and Uttar Pradesh in 2017 have made this shift obvious. Assam in the
far northeast “hosts” a large number of illegal migrants from Bangla-
desh. In 2016, the BJP received support from openly xenophobic region-
al parties and drove the Indian National Congress from office. Fear of
Muslims (who now form more than a third of Assam’s population) and
nostalgia for an idealized Hindu past played large roles in the BJP cam-
paign. Modi paid homage to a fifteenth-century Hindu saint while visit-
ing Jorhat, Assam, which was once the capital of the Ahom Kingdom,
a Hindu polity that centuries ago successfully fought off the Muslim-
ruled Mughal Empire. His interior minister also came to promise that the
263-kilometer border barrier between Assam and Bangladesh would be
finished that year (as of 2017, this has not yet happened.)
In Uttar Pradesh early in 2017, the BJP ran another campaign laced
with Hindu-nationalist appeals. Amit Shah, the party’s national presi-
dent, said that until the BJP’s three rival parties in the state were “laid to
rest,” Uttar Pradesh would never develop. As a jibe at them, he coined
the acronym “KASAB,” which he said stood for Congress, the Sama-
jwadi Party, and the Bahujan Samaj Party.22 Kasab is also the surname
of Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani terrorist who was the only one of the ten
November 2008 Mumbai attackers to be taken alive (he was hanged
in 2012).23 Similarly, Modi claimed obliquely that Muslims were being
favored over Hindus: “If a village receives funds for a graveyard, then
it should also get funds for a cremation ground. If you provide uninter-
rupted power supply for Eid, then you should also do it for Holi. There
should not be any discrimination.”24
Such statements might be construed as illegal under Section 123(3A) of
the 1951 Representation of the People Act, which bans any election-related
“attempt to promote, feelings of enmity or hatred between different classes
of the citizens of India on grounds of religion, race, caste, community, or
language.”25 Yet no complaint filed with the Election Commission on these
grounds has borne fruit. The BJP leaders mostly stuck to economic-policy
messages during the campaign anyway, waiting until after they had won a
huge majority to loudly trumpet Hindu-nationalist themes.
Even so, the naming of Yogi Adityanath to be chief minister of this
heavily populated state—were it a country, it would be the world’s
sixth-largest—came as a shock to many. This Hindu-nationalist leader
was born Ajay Singh Bisht into a higher-caste (Rajput) family in 1972.26
At 26, he became the Lok Sabha’s youngest member. At 30, he founded
his own youth militia, the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV). In 2007, HYV
members were implicated in a Gorakhpur communal riot that caused
two deaths and required the imposition of a curfew.27 Adityanath was ar-
Christophe Jaffrelot 59

rested but only briefly detained.28 In 2006, an RSS member named Sunil
Joshi was part of a conspiracy to bomb a Sufi saint’s shrine in Ajmer,
Rajasthan. Joshi met with Adityanath to seek his aid in the plot. The
scheme resulted in an October 2007 blast outside the shrine that killed
three. Adityanath reportedly had refused to help the plotters, but he had
failed to tell police about the contact.29
In 2014, while electioneering for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Aditya-
nath complained about the supposed “love jihad.” He said that Hindus
should “take” a hundred Muslim women for every Hindu woman “tak-
en” by a Muslim, drawing a reprimand from the Election Commission.30
Immediately after the BJP’s national leadership named Adityanath
chief minister, “anti-Romeo squads” fanned out across the state to hunt
for “love jihadis.”31 Around the same time, butcher shops were attacked,
even when they were not selling beef, and scores of Muslim families
were harassed and impoverished.32

The Path to Ethnic Democracy

In India, as George Orwell might say, some citizens are becoming more
equal than others. The trend was palpable even before 2014, but the BJP’s
political hegemony has transformed a difference of degree into one of kind.
In purely legal terms, few things have changed: The Constitution remains
unaffected, and only a couple of new laws have been passed, as mentioned
above. But in practice minorities have been subjected to fresh forms of
domination. The country’s rulers have publicly and repeatedly pledged al-
legiance to Hinduism at the expense of the official, secular character of
the state, and they have stood by while Hindu militias have imposed novel
types of brutal cultural policing on Muslims and Christians.
Indicators of inclusion, already dropping, have dipped even further
since 2014. In the 2011 census, the Muslim share of the Indian populace
topped 14 percent, yet only 3.7 percent of current Lok Sabha members
are Muslim. At the same time, 21 percent of those in prison awaiting tri-
al are Muslim.33 Yet the Muslim share of those sentenced in 2015 (15.8
percent) is nearly the same as the proportion of Muslims in the general
population, a sign that many of those arrested are cleared at trial.34 The
Indian justice system is so notoriously slow that being arrested can itself
mean a long prison term before any trial.
These trends suggest that India is on the path the becoming an “ethnic
democracy.” Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha outlines the features of
such a democracy: 1) The dominant nationalist discourse recognizes an
ethnic group as forming the core nation in the state; 2) the state sepa-
rates membership in the single core ethnic nation from citizenship; 3)
the state is owned and ruled by the core ethnic nation; 4) the state mobi-
lizes the core ethnic nation; 5) noncore groups are accorded incomplete
individual and collective rights; 6) the state allows noncore groups to
60 Journal of Democracy

conduct parliamentary and extraparliamentary struggles for change; 7)

the state perceives noncore groups as a threat; and 8) the state imposes
some control on noncore groups.
India meets only some of these criteria, mainly because the distinction
between the majority and the minorities has not assumed legal form. But
it is worth noting in this regard that the courts have begun to foster or
at least permit the erosion of secularism. As noted earlier, the Supreme
Court’s 1995 characterization of Hindutva as a “way of life” made it pos-
sible to use this ethnoreligious notion to define national identity. In 2016,
the Court refused to revise this ruling despite the efforts of secularist
NGOs,35 and no court has challenged the laws against cow slaughter that
the BJP has passed in Gujarat, Haryana, and Maharashtra. Indeed, on 31
May 2017, a single-judge bench of the Rajasthan High Court asked the
central govenment to declare the cow the country’s national animal and
recommended that the sentence for cow slaughter be increased to life, an
idea that the government of Gujarat had introduced a few weeks before.36
Smooha also defines ten conditions that can lead to the establishment
of an ethnic democracy: 1) The core ethnic nation constitutes a solid
numerical majority; 2) the noncore population constitutes a significant
minority; 3) the core ethnic nation has a commitment to democracy; 4)
the core ethnic nation is an indigenous group; 5) the noncore groups are
immigrants; 6) the noncore group is divided into more than one ethnic
group; 7) the core ethnic nation has a sizeable and supportive diaspora;
8) the noncore groups’ homelands are involved; 9) a transition from a
nondemocratic ethnic state has taken place; 10) ethnic democracy en-
joys international legitimacy.37
In India, the bulk of these conditions exist. Most saliently, Hindu na-
tionalists define the ethnoreligious majority as eternal India’s heir while
rejecting minorities—which are themselves divided along religious and
social lines—as outsiders. Some Hindutva activists condemn India’s
Muslim minority in particular as a “fifth column” for Pakistan, and a
large section of the Hindu diaspora backs or at least tolerates their anti-
Muslim rhetoric. Hinduism continues to enjoy a favorable international
image as a religion that professes pacifism and pure spirituality. Indeed,
this is one of the sources of Indian “soft power.” Yet criticism is mount-
ing. In its 2017 annual report, the U.S. Commission on International Re-
ligious Freedom decried the existence in India of “a pervasive climate of
impunity in which religious minorities feel increasingly insecure have
no recourse when religiously motivated crimes occur.”38
While visiting India in January 2015, U.S. president Barack Obama
spoke in favor of tolerance and secularism, but Washington policy mak-
ers have done little since. With India acting as a counterweight to China
and still meeting the formal criteria of democracy, it is likely that Western
Realpolitik will continue to prevail over principle. As Smooha suggests,
in an ethnic democracy, the preponderant group believes in democracy
Christophe Jaffrelot 61

precisely because that group is securely preponderant: It is easy to believe

in majority rule when you are the majority and can expect to remain so in-
definitely by polarizing the electorate along religious lines of cleavage.39
Hindu nationalists, looking around at a mostly Hindu society, have
always favored democracy in the majoritarian sense. What they do not
favor is the nondemotic side of democracy, the side which insists that
individual and minority rights must remain sacrosanct, with no major-
ity allowed to trample them, ever. That side is what raises a democracy
above the level of mere majoritarianism and makes it, in the classical
sense of the word, liberal.
NOTES

1. On India’s specific brand of secularism, see Rajeev Bhargava, “What Is Secularism

For?” in Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and Its Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1998), 486–542.

2. In 1992, Hindu activists tore down the Ayodhya mosque. The site remains the sub-
ject of legal wrangling over who owns title to the land. I dealt with the history of the
Hindu-nationalist movement in great detail in The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

3. For an analysis of the Sangh Parivar, including its student union and labor union, see
Christophe Jaffrelot, ed., The Sangh Parivar: A Reader (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2005).

4. Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo v. Shri Prabhakar Kashinath Kunte and Others (1995),
AIR 1996 SC 1113.

5. “Sushma Pushes for Declaring Bhagavad Gita as National Scripture,” The Hindu,
7 December 2014, www.thehindu.com/news/national/sushma-pushes-for-declaring-bhag-
wad-gita-as-national-scripture/article6670252.ece.

6. “Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma Speaks: Despite Being a Muslim, APJ Abdul Ka-
lam Was a Nationalist,” Indian Express, 18 September 2015, http://indianexpress.com/article/
india/india-others/culture-minister-speaks-despite-being-a-muslim-kalam-was-a-nationalist.

7. “Bar Muslims from Voting, Writes Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut,” Times of India,
13 April 2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bar-Muslims-from-voting-writes-
Shiv-Sena-MP-Sanjay-Raut/articleshow/46901031.cms.

8. “Mother Teresa Part of Conspiracy for ‘Christianisation’ of India: BJP MP Yogi

Adityanath,” Indian Express, 21 June 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-
news-india/mother-teresa-part-of-a-conspiracy-for-christianisation-of-india-says-bjp-
mp-adityanath-2866131.

9. Nakul Singh Sawhney, “Watch: Kairana, After the Headlines,” The Wire, 28 Septem-
ber 2016; Lalmani Verma, “Kairana Row: Hukum Singh—Lawyer, MP, and Now Author of
‘Exodus’ in UP,” Indian Express, 15 June 2016; Zoya Hasan, “Kairana and the Politics of
Exclusion,” The Hindu, 17 October 2016; and Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, “BJP Refuses to
Let Facts Get in the Way of the ‘Hindu Exodus’ Story in Kairana,” Scroll.in, 17 June 2016.

10. Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Militias of Hindutva: Communal Violence, Terrorism

and Cultural Policing,” in Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot, eds., Armed Militias
of South Asia: Fundamentalist, Maoists and Separatists (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2009), 199–236.
62 Journal of Democracy

11. Smita Nair, “Refrain in Sangh Turf: Cards Will Give Us Power,” Indian Express, 23
August 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/maharashtra-gov-
ernment-beef-ban-gau-rakshak-id-cards-animal-husbandry-modi-sangh-turf-2991489.

12. Ishan Marvel, “In the Name of the Mother: How the State Nurtures the Gau Rak-
shaks of Haryana,” Caravan, 1 September 2016.

13. Pragya Singh, “Four Stomachs to Fill,” Outlook, 15 August 2016.

14. Alok K.N. Mishra, “2 Muslims Herding Buffaloes Thrashed, Hanged in

Jharkhand,” Times of India, 19 March 2016; “‘They Raped Us Calling It Punishment of
Consuming Beef,’ Alleges Mewat Woman,” India Samvad, 11 September 2016, www.
indiasamvad.co.in/other-top-stories/haryana-woman-alleges-rape-as-punishment-of-eat-
ing-beef-16166.

15. “Lion Killed Cow, Not Dalit Men Flogged by Gau Rakshaks: Gujarat CID,” Dec-
can Chronicle, 27 July 2016, www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/270716/
lion-killed-cow-not-dalit-men-flogged-by-gau-rakshaks-gujarat-cid.html.

16. Indian Express Online, “Video of 7 Dalits Being Assaulted for Skinning a Dead
Cow,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLgIQYbsNGU.

17. “Punjab: Crackdown on ‘Cow Vigilantes,’ Gau Raksha Dal Chief Booked,” Indian
Express, 8 August 2016.

18. Pavan Dahat, “‘Gau Rakshaks’ Are Good: RSS Chief,” The Hindu, 12 October
2016, www.thehindu.com/news/national/%E2%80%98Gau-rakshaks%E2%80%99-are-
good-RSS-chief/article15465091.ece#!.

19. Anusha Soni, “Beef Ban: Plea Challenges Centre Order in SC, Says It Would
Lead to Increase in Cow Vigilantism,” India Today, 7 June 2017, http://indiatoday.in-
today.in/story/beef-ban-supreme-court-to-hear-plea-challenging-centre-decision-on-
june-15/1/972627.html.

20. “There’s Extreme Intolerance in India: Shah Rukh Khan on 50th Birthday,” Indian
Express, 3 November 2015; Julio Ribeiro, “As a Christian, Suddenly I Am a Stranger in
My Own Country,” Indian Express, 17 March 2015; “Vice President Mohammad Hamid
Ansari Calls for ‘More Complete’ Separation of Religion, Politics,” Indian Express, 2
April 2016; “Muslims in India Have No Inclination to Resort to Violence: VP Hamid
Ansari,” Indian Express, 1 June 2016.

21. “Will Ensure Complete Freedom of Faith: Full Text of PM Modi’s Speech at Chris-
tian Conference,” Firstpost, 17 February 2015, www.firstpost.com/india/will-ensure-com-
plete-freedom-of-faith-full-text-of-pm-modis-speech-at-christian-conference-2103923.html.

22. “Congress+SP+BSP=KASAB, Says Amit Shah,” The Hindu, 22 February 2017,

www.thehindu.com/elections/uttar-pradesh-2017/congressspbspkasab-says-amit-shah/
article17347625.ece.

23. “Amit Shah Faces Fury for ‘Kasab’ Remark,” The Hindu, 23 February 2017, www.
thehindu.com/elections/uttar-pradesh-2017/Amit-Shah-faces-fury-for-‘Kasab’-remark/
article17356100.ece.

24. “Modi’s ‘Kabristan’ Remark Draws Ire, Congress to File EC Complaint,” The
Quint, 19 February 2017, www.thequint.com/uttar-pradesh-elections-2017/2017/02/20/
modi-kabristan-remark-congress-to-file-an-election-commission-complaint.

25. For the relevant portion of the Representation of the People Act, a law first passed
in 1951, see http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/election/volume%201/representation%20
of%20the%20people%20act,%201951.pdf.
Christophe Jaffrelot 63

26. Yogi Adityanath’s upper-caste background is not unimportant. In 2017, the BJP
sent a record number of upper-caste candidates to the Uttar Pradesh state assembly. See
Gilles Verniers, “Upper Hand for Upper Castes in House,” Indian Express, 20 March
2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/bjp-narendra-modi-rajnath-singh-adi-
tyanath-devendra-fadnavis-upper-hand-for-upper-castes-in-house-4576599. Adityanath
has praised the caste system on several occasions, saying, for instance, that like furrows
in a farmer’s field, castes in society keep things in order. See Abhimanyu Chandra, “What
the Hindu Yuva Vahini’s Constitution Tells Us About Yogi Adityanath’s Regime in Ut-
tar Pradesh,” Caravan, 27 March 2017, www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/hindu-yuva-
vahinis-constitution-tells-us-yogi-adityanaths-regime-uttar-pradesh.

27. On Adityanath and communal rioting, see “Who Is Yogi Adityanath? A Factfile,”
Sabrang India, 27 March 2017, https://sabrangindia.in/article/who-yogi-adityanath-factfile.

28. On the many cases against Yogi Adityanath which are still pending, see Dhirendra
K. Jha, “Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister: What Happens to the Cases
Against Him?” Scroll.in, 21 March 2017, https://scroll.in/article/832327.

29. Charu Kartikeya, “Why Didn’t Yogi Adityanath Inform Police About Hindutva Ter-
rorist Sunil Joshi?” Catch News, 25 March 2017, www.catchnews.com/politics-news/why-
didn-t-yogi-adityanath-inform-police-about-hindutva-terrorist-sunil-joshi-55693.html.

30. Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Other Saffron,” Indian Express, 6 October 2014, http://
indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-other-saffron.

31. “With Yogi as CM, Anti-Romeo Squads out in Full Force in Meerut,” Huffington
Post India, 22 March 2017, www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/03/21/anti-romeo-squads-now-
out-in-full-force-in-meerut-turn-out-to_a_21905028.

32. “‘You May as Well Kill Us’: Human Cost of India’s Meat ‘Ban,’” BBC, 30 March
2017, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39427552?ocid=socialflow_twitter.

33. Deeptiman Tiwary, “Over 55 per Cent of Undertrials Muslim, Dalit or Tribal:
NCRB,” Indian Express, 1 November 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-
news-india/over-55-per-cent-of-undertrials-muslim-dalit-or-tribal-ncrb-3731633.

34. Deeptiman Tiwary, “Share of Muslims in Jail Bigger than in the Population, Show
NCRB Data,” Indian Express, 3 November 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/ex-
plained/muslims-daliots-undertrials-in-prison-ncrb-3734362.

35. “SC Declines To Go into Hindutva Verdict,” The Hindu, 2 December 2016, www.
thehindu.com/news/national/SC-declines-to-go-into-Hindutva-verdict/article16081556.ece.

36. “Declare Cow as National Animal: Rajasthan High Court to Centre,” Indian Ex-
press, 31 May 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/rajasthan-high-court-asks-
centre-to-declare-cow-as-national-animal.

37. Sammy Smooha, “The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Demo-
cratic State,” Nations and Nationalism 8 (October 2002): 475–503; and “The Model of
Ethnic Democracy,” in Sammy Smooha and Priit Järve, eds., The Fate of Ethnic Democ-
racy in Post-Communist Europe (Budapest: Open Society Institute, 2005), 4–59.

38. USCIRF’s report is available at www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/India.2017.pdf.

39. Christophe Jaffrelot, “Refining the Moderation Thesis. Two Religious Parties and
Indian Democracy: The Jana Sangh and the BJP Between Hindutva Radicalism and Coali-
tion Politics,” Democratization 20, no. 5 (2013): 876–94.