Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Ajit Solanki/Associated Press

Bharatiya Janata Party supporters celebrating Sunday in Ahmadabad, India, after the announcement of state election results.

Somini Sengupta, Hindu Radical Is Re-elected in India - New York Times, December 24, 2007

NEW DELHI — He has been likened to the Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned. He has been denied entry into the United States for violations of religious freedom, yet praised as a business-friendly politician who has allowed private industry to flourish in his state.

On Sunday, voters re-elected the politician, Narendra Modi, arguably India’s most incendiary officeholder, as the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat. His victory, by a wide margin, was a stunning defeat for the country’s governing Congress Party and signaled that Mr. Modi and his charismatic, often pugnacious, brand of Hindu supremacist politics would be a force to be reckoned with in the future.Gujarat is considered a test case for national politics because it is viewed as a laboratory for radical Hindu politics in contemporary India.

Mr. Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is accused of sanctioning or taking no steps to stop Hindu mobs from massacring at least 1,000 of their Muslim neighbors in February 2002, after a mysterious fire engulfed a train carrying members of a Hindu nationalist organization, killing 59 people on board. Ten months later, voters in Gujarat returned Mr. Modi to power.

In elections held earlier this month, Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. captured 117 seats in of the 182-member state legislature, falling just short of a two-thirds majority; the Congress Party, which leads the nation’s governing coalition, trailed with 59 seats, while 6 went to other parties. The results were announced Sunday by the Election Commission of India.

Hindu Nationalists Win State Elections - New York Times, December 23, 2007

AHMADABAD, India (AP) — India’s main Hindu nationalist party swept to an impressive election victory Sunday in the western state of Gujarat after a bitter campaign fought in the shadow of deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots that still scar the state.

The Bharatiya Janata Party won 117 seats in the 182-seat state assembly, according to the election commission. The Congress party, which heads the federal government, won 62, while independents took three seats, it said.

Congress conceded defeat earlier Sunday as early results indicated success for the BJP and its contentious Gujarat leader Narendra Modi, in a poll that many view as a test of party strength ahead of national elections….

While the elections may have national bearing, the campaign was dominated by local issues, particularly the anti-Muslim violence that swept Gujarat in 2002 after 59 Hindus were killed when a train car burst into flames in Godhra, a town in the state. More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the subsequent riots.Modi, who was in power at the time of the riots, has been accused of not doing enough to stop them. In the last elections, the BJP swept the polls with 128 seats after Modi fought the election on an aggressively anti-Muslim platform in the aftermath of the riots. Congress won 51 seats.

J. Adam Huggins for The International Herald Tribune

Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat State in India, who seeks re-election, has been blamed for failing to stop riots in 2002.

Amelia Gentleman, Bloodshed in ’02 Shadows Indian Politician in Race That Tests Nationalist Party - New York Times, December 11, 2007

AHMEDABAD, India — Five years after more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed as riots swept through the Indian state of Gujarat, the man censured by the courts for failing to stop the violence is in a tight race to keep his job as the state’s chief minister.

The contest is being closely watched as an indicator of the strength of his party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which is still struggling after its defeat in the 2004 national elections. The local election, which starts Tuesday, could also shape the party if the chief minister, Narendra Modi, is re-elected, increasing his eventual chances of taking over the party’s leadership.

Mr. Modi, 57, is a cult figure to his followers, but a pariah to most outside his party, largely because of the upheaval in Gujarat, one of the worst outbreaks of sectarian violence since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The debate about him has only grown in recent weeks after an influential magazine presented evidence suggesting that he may have supported the violence, a contention he has dismissed as politically motivated.

For all the outside scrutiny of the vote and what it says about his party’s view of sectarian tensions, the killings have barely merited a mention from either Mr. Modi or the leadership of the rival Congress Party. Instead, both parties are focusing, at least on the surface, on whether Bharatiya Janata has done enough to further economic development in Gujarat, in western India.

Mr. Modi’s image makers have advised him to concentrate on the economy in an effort to recast himself. When he last sought re-election, in 2002, soon after the riots, he fought on a platform of Hindutva, his party’s trademark Hindu nationalism, which calls for Hindu unity and fans fears about Muslims.

Munson: Although the Hindu nationalist BJP has not controlled the Indian government since 2004, it remains powerful, as do related Hindu nationalist movements.

Smita Narula, “Overlooked Danger: The Security and Rights Implications of Hindu Nationalism in India,” Harvard Human Rights Journal, 2003

As a region, South Asia has gained significant prominence in the eyes of the international community as a focal point for the U.S.-led war against terrorism. So-called Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia and the Middle East is the subject of much debate and analysis and the justification for racially and religiously charged immigration and detention policies in the West. Much overlooked is the dramatic rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the dangerous and even violent policies espoused by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (“BJP”) and its sister organizations—policies that have already resulted in considerable violence against India’s Muslim, Christian, and Dalit, or “untouchable,” minorities.While madrassas, or Islamic schools, have come under scrutiny for their recruitment and training of future jihadis in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and more recently Bangladesh, the mushrooming of hundreds of thousands of shakhas, or Hindu training camps in India, has been dangerously overlooked. India’s shift away from secular democracy and toward the militarization of a growing Hindu nationalist cadre poses a significant threat to the human rights of India’s lower castes and religious minorities and, in a region with two long-term and now nuclear foes, to the security of the region as a whole. If the activities of these groups remain unchecked, violence may spread to other parts of the country. When compounded with the growing political influence of the Islamic right and the military in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Hindu militarization may destabilize the region as a whole.

BJP dismisses Gujarat riot claims, BBC, october 26, 2007

India’s main opposition party has dismissed claims that its government in the state of Gujarat supported violence against Muslims in 2002.

The allegations against the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party BJP were made in secret video recordings by the Tehelka magazine.

They have also been broadcast on local television.

The BJP has described the allegations as a conspiracy hatched by India’s governing Congress party.

Elections are due in Gujarat next month.

According to official figures, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the 2002 riots. Independent groups placed the figure closer to 2,000.

A spokesman for the BJP, Prakash Javdekar, described the Tehelka report as an election stunt stage-managed by Congress.He said it was a sting operation based on rumours and hearsay.

In the secret video footage, apparently filmed over six months, several hardline Hindu politicians, mostly belonging to the BJP, are seen describing how they carried out the violence against the Muslim community, often with graphic details.

Impasse in India - The New York Review of Books, June 28, 2007
Until 2004 the central government as well as many state governments in India were, as the philosopher Martha Nussbaum puts it in her new book,

increasingly controlled by right-wing Hindu extremists who condone and in some cases actively support violence against minorities, especially the Muslim minority. Many seek fundamental changes in India’s pluralistic democracy.

India: Justice, the victim - Gujarat state fails to protect women from violence - Amnesty International, 2005

Restore India’s Secular Political Culture (Human Rights Watch, 27-2-2003)

India: Carnage in Gujarat Unpunished (Human Rights Watch, 27-2-2003)

gujarat.pdf (application/pdf Object)