From April 19 to June 1, 2024, India holds elections for the lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha). On June 4, the results of the Lok Sabha election were announced, and the current Prime Minister Modi led the India Janata Party (BJP) to lead the votes and retain the position of the largest party in the Lok Sabha. On the same day, Modi announced his victory on social media, saying, "For the third time in a row, people have expressed their confidence in the National League for Democracy (NDA)!" This is a historic feat for India." On June 9, Modi and other cabinet members were sworn in, making Modi the only politician in India's history to serve as prime minister three times, after founding Prime Minister Jawaharlal · Nehru. The BJP is once again the largest party in Lok Sabha for multiple reasons, but the root cause is that it has pandered to India nationalism and made it the dominant ideology in India. In the future, the BJP government will generally continue the domestic and foreign policies of the past decade, and will make the construction of an "India religious state" one of the core agendas of the government. Despite the many positive factors of the BJP's rule, there are still many obstacles to building an "India state".
Supporters of the India Janata Party celebrate their election victory in New Delhi, India, June 4, 2024
India nationalism and the victory of the BJP
Historically, the BJP has used India nationalism to rise rapidly politically, evolving from a small role in politics to today's "one big family". The BJP is the most important India nationalist party in India at present, and the main political representative of the "League Family", the grand alliance of India nationalism. In 1980, the BJP was formally established. At the time of its establishment, the BJP adhered to non-sectarianism and socialism, and won only two seats in the Lok Sabha election for the first time in 1984. After that, the BJP abandoned non-sectarianism and socialist principles, and instead catered to the revival of India nationalism at that time, advocated the revival of India, actively participated in anti-Muslim activities, and won the support of the majority of Indian believers. For example, the BJP supports the "Rebuilding Rama Temple" campaign launched by the World Congress of India.
In the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 120 seats. In the 1996 Lok Sabha election, the BJP won 161 seats, making it the largest party in the Lok Sabha for the first time. In 1998, the BJP won 182 seats and formed a coalition government, but collapsed 13 months later when the coalition withdrew its support. In the 1999 Lok Sabha election, the BJP won another 182 seats, and Vajpayee came forward to form a government and complete a five-year term, becoming the first ANC government to complete a term since India's independence.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election (out of 545 seats), the BJP won 282 seats, a simple majority, ending the history of only the Congress Party winning a majority of seats since India independence. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP once again gained a simple majority and reached a record high of 303 seats. In addition to winning three consecutive general elections, the BJP has also "conquered" local state elections since 2014, and its sphere of influence has expanded from the traditional "Hindi-speaking core" in the west and north to the east and northeast, becoming a truly national party.
Judging from the 2024 general election, holding high the banner of India nationalism is the fundamental reason for the BJP's victory again. Admittedly, there are many reasons for the BJP's victory. For example, Modi's popularity among the people has trumped that of Congress leader Rahul and others, with some voters saying that if Modi is not a candidate for prime minister, he may not vote for the BJP. Another example is that compared with other political parties, the BJP has more abundant election funds and the ability to mobilize directly to the grassroots, and the election campaign momentum and actual results are better. Nevertheless, the continued hype of India nationalism is the core reason for the BJP's victory. India nationalism runs through the BJP's platform and campaigns. On January 22, 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a grand inauguration ceremony for the Rama Temple in Ayodhya to unofficially launch the BJP general election campaign. Since the original Barburi Mosque, where the Rama Temple was built, was demolished by fanatical India in 1992, "Rebuilding the Rama Temple" has become the slogan of Indian nationalist groups such as the BJP.
Apparently, the BJP's grand inauguration of the Rama Temple aims to boost the BJP's electoral performance by inspiring pride among India across the country. United States NBC and other media also believe that the BJP has made "rebuilding the Rama Temple" the core issue of this campaign. Adyanat, a India religious figure affiliated with the BJP and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said at a campaign rally in May 2024 that voters would choose between "followers of Rama" and "anti-Rama forces", which was the decisive theme of the election. Adyanat appealed, "The electorate votes for the Rama devotees because they are the ones who built the Rama temple for you". That month, Modi publicly stated that "if the opposition party comes to power, the Rama temple will be razed to the ground." Therefore, the BJP's top brass has made "rebuilding the Rama Temple" a central issue in the campaign, aiming to highlight the key role of the BJP in rebuilding the Rama Temple, and at the same time promote the destruction of the Rama Temple after the Congress Party comes to power, and guide India to vote for the BJP from both positive and negative aspects.
In addition to "rebuilding the Rama Temple" as the central issue of the campaign, the BJP also hyped up other India nationalist issues, hyping up "India facing threats and conspiracies from Muslims" and "only the BJP can protect India from threats" in order to win the support of Indian believers, who account for more than 80% of the total population. Qatar's Al Jazeera TV reported on the issue, detailing a series of "anti-Muslim slogans" that the BJP hyped in the election campaign and tried to dominate the election agenda.
The BJP, for example, accuses Muslims of being "infiltrators of having more children." Speaking at a campaign rally in Rajasthan on April 21, Modi said, "During the last time the Congress was in power, it was said that Muslims had priority access to state resources. This means that if the Congress Party comes to power, the wealth will be collected and distributed to the 'people with more children' or 'infiltrators'". In another example, the BJP accused "the Congress Party of allocating reserved places for jobs and education to Muslims when it comes to power". Speaking at a campaign rally in West Bengal on May 21, Modi said the Congress party planned to abolish jobs and education opportunities that had been reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes and distribute them to Muslims. In addition, the BJP has never forgotten to play up the symbols of India nationalism in the elections. Since January 2024, no less than a million saffron-colored flags and banners symbolizing India nationalism have been hung in public places such as markets in New Delhi, the capital of India, and countless more saffron-colored flags have been hung on the rooftops and windows of residential buildings.
Through a series of actions, the BJP has portrayed itself as a "spokesman for India nationalism, India, and India" and "guardian of India", elevating it to political correctness, while smearing the opposition party "against India, against India." As a result, the BJP has created a politically correct narrative that it controls, and the Congress Party has been unable to break through the situation, and has been repeatedly suppressed by the BJP and passively responded. For example, in response to Congress Party leader Rahul's statement that "India beliefs are not the same as India nationalism" and accused the BJP and the National Volunteer Corps of misinterpreting India doctrine and stirring up hatred within society, the BJP quickly countered by accusing Rahul of "exposing his consistent opposition to India beliefs and India Christians." In the social environment where India nationalism is prevalent, the space for traditional secularism has been greatly reduced, and even some members of opposition parties such as the Congress Party have been forced to take the initiative to identify themselves as Indians in the election, and in order to boost the election, they have repeatedly visited Indian temples to appeal to Indian Christians to vote, which is called "soft India nationalism" by India public opinion.
India gather in the temple after the inauguration of the Rama temple in Ayodhya, India, January 22, 2024
The BJP government promotes the practice of building an "India religious state".
As noted above, there is a clear mutually reinforcing relationship between the BJP and India nationalism. The BJP quickly rose to become a mainstream political party in response to India nationalism, and after coming to power, it implemented a series of Indian nationalist policies at the central and local levels to achieve the three major goals pursued by Indian nationalist forces: the abolition of the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir, the construction of the Rama Temple on the site of the Ayodhya Mosque, and the enactment of the Unified Civil Code. After winning the 2019 parliamentary elections, the BJP quickly introduced a series of India nationalist policies.
For example, in August 2019, the BJP pushed Parliament to pass a motion to repeal Article 370 of the Constitution, formally removing the special constitutional status of Indian-administered Kashmir and applying all articles of the India Constitution to the region. At the same time, the India parliament also passed the Jammu and Kashmir Restructuring Bill (2019), announcing the division of Indian-administered Kashmir into two administrative units, the "Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir" and the "Union Territory of Ladakh", and allowing residents outside the former "Jammu and Kashmir" to purchase real estate there. Modi publicly stated that "the BJP has solved the problems that India has failed to solve in 70 years since its founding in 70 days." ”
In December 2019, the India Parliament formally passed the Citizenship Act Amendment, which blatantly discriminates against Muslims. Under the Act, India authorities granted India, except Muslims, Indian citizenship to India, Zoroastrians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who arrived in India before December 31, 2014 from the three Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and were "persecuted". This practice of differential treatment on the basis of religious beliefs is clearly contrary to the principle of secularism in the India Constitution, in particular the spirit of "no discrimination on the basis of religious belief".
Analysts inside and outside India have widely speculated that the re-elected BJP will take further steps to advance India nationalism and build India into a "India-dominated country."
First, it is not excluded to amend the constitution to change the originally upheld secularist principle to "a India-dominated state". In recent years, especially since the BJP came to power in 2014, India nationalist forces such as the "Alliance Family" have diligently sought to reshape India's national identity, ignoring or even erasing the role of Muslims in India's history, and deliberately exaggerating or even fabricating the important role of India nationalist forces in India's history, especially major historical nodes.
In the capital, New Delhi, some streets named after the era of the Muslim dynasty have been renamed. In states controlled by the BJP and its allies, many Islam-named cities have been renamed India place names. For example, Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh was renamed Prayagraj, and Osmanabad and Aurangabad in Maharashtra were renamed Darlashif and Chhatrapati· Sambaji Nagar, respectively. There are public opinions in India that the BJP has introduced a series of India nationalist policies in its second term, and after its re-election, it may push for a constitutional amendment to position India as a "India-dominated country" at the legal level. It's not without a trace.
For example, BJP member Anant Kumar publicly stated in a speech in Karnataka, "Why does the BJP need to win 400 seats in the Lok Sabha? This is because past changes to the constitution by the Congress Party did not give priority to India. We must change this and save India. The incident sparked a strong reaction from opposition parties and public opinion, and the BJP announced that the incident only reflected its personal views and did not represent the official attitude of the BJP. However, opposition voices generally believe that the BJP's move is simply to avoid affecting the election. Apwanand, a professor and political commentator at the Hindi Department at the University of Delhi, said, "It is clear where Modi and the BJP want to lead India. Even if the BJP does not achieve its goals by amending the constitution, it will pass laws to invalidate the relevant provisions of the constitution, all with the aim of establishing a India religious state. ”
Second, the Unified Civil Code should be enacted and implemented to build a unified India state at the legal level. In order to win the support of India, the BJP made three major commitments: to abolish the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir, to build a Rama temple on the site of the Ayodhya Barburi Mosque, and to formulate a Unified Civil Code. So far, the BJP has fulfilled its first two major commitments, leaving only the Unified Civil Code unkept.
The BJP has been striving for a Unified Civil Code to create uniform civil law applicable to all citizens of India in matters such as marriage, inheritance and adoption. At present, the above-mentioned civil matters of different religious and tribal groups in India (except Uttarakhand and Goa) can be subject to either secular codification, the laws of different religious belief groups or tribal traditional laws. As a result, the applicable law that regulates issues such as who a citizen can marry India, how many people he can marry, how to end a marriage, and inheritance rights varies from religion to religion.
The Uniform Civil Code, on the other hand, does not take into account religious beliefs or tribal attributes, and designs the same set of rules for all. For example, the Uniform Civil Code prohibits polygamy, while Sharia law allows polygamy, allowing a man to marry up to four wives; The Uniform Civil Code sets the minimum age for marriage for men and women, which is not restricted by Islamic law and some tribal laws; The Uniform Civil Code also gave sons and daughters equal inheritance rights and sought to limit cohabitation throughout the country, advocating imprisonment or fines for those who failed to notify the authorities within one month of cohabitation.
In February 2024, the BJP's ruling Uttarakhand Parliament passed a bill to replace the previous civil laws based on religion with a Uniform Civil Code. However, this approach has been widely criticized for drawing heavily on the India Code of Religious Laws. Some legal experts said that the Unified Civil Code mostly draws on the content of the India Civil Code, and rarely considers the inclusion of exclusive civil codes for religious and ethnic minorities such as Muslims. There is no doubt that the BJP wants to follow the example of Uttarakhand and promote it in other states where it is in power, as well as across the country. In May, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) senior Home Minister Amit ·Shah publicly stated that if the BJP wins re-election, it will introduce a Uniform Civil Code nationwide in the next five years, declaring that "this is the responsibility that the framers of the India Constitution have left to the India Parliament and the state legislature since independence in India" and that "secular countries should not enact laws based on religion, but should implement a Uniform Civil Code".
However, the BJP's implementation of the Uniform Civil Code has met with strong opposition from religious and ethnic minorities. In particular, many Muslims believe that the move is aimed at restricting their religious beliefs and undermining centuries-old traditions such as polygamy, accusing "the government of overstepping its authority, interfering in the personal lives of Muslims, and violating the tradition of pluralism enshrined in the Constitution." In addition to the Muslim community, India's northeastern states such as Nagaland and Mizoram are also openly opposed. In September 2023, the Chief Minister of Nagaland said that the Eastern Bangladesh Border Management Act gives Nagaland autonomy in judicial, executive, legislative and land-related matters, so they will not implement the Uniform Civil Code. The Mizo National Front, a prominent political party in Mizoram, has threatened to sever its alliance with the BJP if the Uniform Civil Code is implemented in Mizoram.
Third, inciting India confrontation and violence against Muslims, pushing India society to "turn to the right". Under the propaganda and agitation of India nationalist forces such as the BJP and the National Volunteer Corps, as well as some high-level government officials, India society has shown an overall "rightward turn" trend. Radical India nationalists have used "jihad" as a suffix for various terms, including "love jihad", "coronavirus jihad", "land jihad", "economic jihad", etc., to play up the "Muslim plot to take complete control of India."
For example, "love jihad" refers to statements made by India nationalist organizations and figures, including top officials of the BJP, accusing Muslim men of deliberately seducing Indian women to convert to Islam. The "coronavirus jihad" refers to the accusation that Muslims deliberately spread the virus in India by attributing the large-scale spread of the epidemic in India to the religious activities of the Islamic missionary group Dawa Mission Group. "Land jihad" refers to the accusations by Indian nationalists of the systematic encroachment of Muslims on public lands through illegally built mosques and madrasas. "Economic jihad" refers to the accusation by Indian nationalists that Muslims exclusively sell halal meat to exclusively exclude India and deprive them of their economic rights. In the BJP-ruled state of Assam, the state government forcibly evicted thousands of Muslim families of Bangladeshi descent in the name of opposing "land jihad."
Radical India nationalists also violently prevent cattle slaughter to protect the Indian sacred cow. Cattle are considered sacred animals in India, but they are commonly eaten by Muslims, and many Muslims are engaged in related occupations such as cattle slaughtering. There is a clear difference in how the two groups treat cattle, but this difference has not been a major political issue until now, due only to differences in religious beliefs and eating habits. Nowadays, various Indian nationalist organizations suppress Muslims under the banner of protecting the sacred cow, exacerbating the division and confrontation between Indian and Muslim groups. Many of the states ruled by the BJP and its allies have introduced laws prohibiting the slaughter of cattle. Radical India nationalists also launched a popular "cattle protection campaign" in which Muslims were lynched on suspicion of slaughtering cattle or owning beef.
According to agency statistics, violence against civilians accounts for more than half of all political violence between India and Muslims, and more than two-thirds of such acts are unilateral targets of Muslim civilians by India mobs. The BJP government has mostly been silent or even condoning such lynchings, and has done little to combat violence. The controversy over whether or not to slaughter cattle and the abuse of lynching by the "cattle protection movement" have further divided and divided India society.
In addition to enacting laws prohibiting the slaughter of cattle and ignoring the indiscriminate lynching of cattle activists, the BJP's involvement in violence against Muslims includes so-called "bulldozer justice." "Bulldozer justice" refers to the government's punitive demolition of houses deemed to be violators under the guise of building planning, etc. Such actions are carried out unilaterally by the government without due process and are mainly targeted at Muslim families following incidents of violence or activism in the Muslim community. In India, some have called it "state-sanctioned, collective punishment of the Muslim community."
Amnesty International reported that in several cases it investigated, Indian properties located in the same area were spared, despite the involvement of both India and Muslims in the riots, suggesting that the official demolition was clearly discriminatory and raised questions for India's own judiciary. For example, in July 2023, clashes between India and Muslims broke out in Nukh, Haryana, India. The India government targeted the demolition of Muslim houses. In response, the Punjab and Haryana High Courts questioned: "Does the demolition of Muslim houses amount to 'ethnic cleansing by the state'?" ”
Constraints on the BJP's efforts to build an "India state."
Although Modi led the BJP to re-election, it does not mean that the BJP government can implement a series of domestic and foreign policy ideas without obstacles, and it still faces many challenges and constraints to further promote India nationalism and build an "India state".
First, it is difficult for the BJP to gain the parliamentary support it needs to amend the constitution. India's constitutional amendment process is very strict. The Constitution stipulates that constitutional amendments can only be adopted if more than half of the members of the quorum of the Council of States and the Lok Sabha are present and more than two-thirds of the members present vote in favour. Once passed, the amendment must be approved by the President before it can take effect. That is why Modi has set an ambitious election target: the BJP will win 370 seats in parliament, and his leading National League for Democracy (NLD) will win more than 400 seats.
However, the June 4 vote count showed that the BJP had the lead but only 240 seats, while its dominant National League for Democracy (NLD) won 293 seats, a gap between the two-thirds majority (362 seats) needed to amend the constitution. At the same time, the BJP must rely on the coalition parties to maintain its parliamentary majority, and India politics has returned to a certain extent to the coalition politics since the 90s of the 20th century, while regional parties such as the Telugu Country Party, which has expressed support for the BJP, are not members of the "League Family" and do not endorse the radical India nationalist agenda advocated by the BJP, let alone promote the construction of an "India religious state".
Second, opposition parties such as the Congress Party have strengthened checks and balances on the BJP. Ahead of the general election, the BJP is in a rather optimistic position. Before the election, public opinion in India generally believed that the opposition coalition led by the Congress party, the Inclusive Alliance for National Development of India (INDIA), was divided internally, the Congress party itself did not perform well in the federal and local elections since 2014, and its leader Rahul was unable to compete with Modi, who has a strong personal charisma. However, after the election, there was a big change in the evaluation of the Congress Party.
The results of the vote count showed that despite the internal split in the INDIA coalition before the election, with one main member, the BJP (coalition), withdrawing and switching to the BJP camp, the Congress party won 99 seats, an increase of 47 seats from the 2019 election, and its INDIA coalition won a total of 234 seats. Some media believe that the Congress Party has seen a revival after a decade of sluggish work, and the prestige of its leader Rahul has been greatly boosted. In the upcoming local elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana, the Congress Party is obviously bullish and is expected to pose a greater challenge to the BJP. Against this backdrop, the Congress Party, which has traditionally upheld a tradition of secularism and pluralism, is bound to pose a greater constraint on the BJP's further advancement of the India nationalist agenda.
Third, South India "Dravidianism" began to confront "North India-centrism". In the past decade, the BJP has continuously strengthened its India nationalist identity with Hindi and India as the core identifier at the federal and local levels, and its positions are mainly concentrated in the "Hindi core area" in northern and western India. In contrast, the southern states of India are culturally and linguistically very different from the north, and these differences will be difficult to eliminate in the foreseeable future. Some analysts in India believe that "despite the large populations and increasing political influence of the northern states, the southern states are generally more prosperous and the people are more educated", and "southern India is like a completely different country".
Because of this, the BJP has a very limited political footprint in southern India, with few seats in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. This shows that the southern region as a whole resists the BJP's India nationalist ideology. It is clear that the BJP's continued promotion of India nationalism has provoked a strong reaction in southern India, especially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, which has led to the emergence of "Dravidianism" political and social movements in southern India, emphasizing the language, culture and national identity of South India, opposing "North India-centrism", and ensuring the linguistic, cultural and ethnic independence of South India. In the future, whether South India's "Dravidianism" can integrate internally and jointly fight against "North India-centrism" is bound to have a major impact on the BJP government's implementation of India nationalism.
Source: "Contemporary World" WeChat public account
Author: Wang Shida
Editor: Wang Sheng
[Disclaimer: This number is an official public welfare account serving governments at all levels, enterprises and institutions to make decisions, and this article is reproduced for the purpose of conveying more information. If there is a source label error or other inaccuracies, please contact us. We will correct it in a timely manner. Thank you]