How Narendra Modi’s Hardline Hindu Nationalism is Transforming India

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi interacting with the school children after addressing the Nation, on the occasion of 71st Independence Day from the ramparts of Red Fort, in Delhi on August 15, 2017.

India's prime minister Narendra Modi was re-elected to office in a landslide victory for his BJP party.  Since then, he has implemented policies that have promoted hardline sectarianism.

Modi is a Hindu nationalist in a diverse country that includes one of the world's largest Muslim populations. He rose to political prominence in the early 2000s as the chief minister of Gujarat during inter-communal riots that lead to the murder of over a thousand people, mostly Muslims. He was widely accused of failing to stop the riots and has used the mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 to his political advantage.

Modi was first elected Prime Minister in 2014 and since his re-election in May 2019, Modi has very much doubled down on implementing a stridently pro-Hindu agenda that is undermining…