Welcome to the new nationalism. For the first time since the second world war, the great and rising powers are simultaneously in thrall to various sorts of chauvinism, says an article in The Economist about the rise of dangerous nationalism. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi finds a mention among the likes of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and the recent recruit to this growing tribe, Donald Trump.
But before the West started discussing the increasing conservatism laced with racism and hatred, India was already reeling under what was termed as rising intolerance in the country. Since the day Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Narendra Modi was elected as the Prime Minister, in one of the most polarised elections in the country, India hasn’t stopped debating the spike in nationalism, intolerance, religious hatred and discrimination. The BJP’s ideological parent is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing, Hindu nationalist organisation. Modi, a veteran RSS man, espouses the same strain of Hindu nationalism.
It started with the holy cow or at least it became a turning point in the current scheme of things. Sale and consumption of beef were banned in two BJP ruled states, Maharashtra and Haryana, and the idea of ‘Gau Raksha’ or cow protection was propagated by politicians bringing ‘beef politics’ into the life of everyday Indian. (Cows are considered holy by Hindus, revered as mother or ‘gau mata.’ Most of the states have had laws prohibiting the slaughter of cows and/or bulls for decades.) The events took an ugly turn when a villager, Mohammad Akhlaq, was lynched for alleged possession of beef in Dadri, 60 km from New Delhi. The killing of a Muslim man on the pretext of storing beef was a reflection of the turn national discourse had taken. It sparked fear of growing intolerance and the rise of Hindu nationalism. It also marked the increase in cow-related vigilantism that the country was witnessing.
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