The prime minister’s bigotry is who he is. Whether Hindu society can or wants to change is the big question that will be answered in these elections.
The reason the prime minister of the “mother of democracy” could refer to more than 200 million Muslim citizens as “infiltrators” and those who “produce many children” is because he could.
If the prime minister can get away with expressions of naked prejudice, it is not only because the Election Commission ignores its constitutional duties. A large swathe of Hindu India applauds and approves of Modi’s bigotry and does not care that their prime minister, after a decade in power, is given to deliberate misinterpretation, religious incitement and outright lies.
Like him, his Hindu supporters do not care about the fact-checks that debunk the Muslims-will-overwhelm-us falsehoods and the common sense that the leader of a multi-cultural, multi-faith nation must unite its people, not go out of his way to divide them and dehumanise its largest minority. What does one say about anyone who buys Modi’s claims that the principal opposition party is out to steal your mangalsutra or has banned the Hanuman chalisa?
Recent history has taught us that the prime minister’s long-standing and unyielding bias against Muslims is kept hidden when convenient and easily deployed when political insecurities grow. Modi’s anti-Muslim bias is dragged out of its dark, hiding place whenever political momentum is required and whenever anything challenges his and the right-wing ecosystem’s Hindu-first worldview.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.