Apart from fomenting a damaging polarization between the majority and minority communities, the current ruling dispensation’s other disservice to India has been to stymie the country’s advancement towards modernity.

In the earlier decades, India was seen as a nation of the present times despite its poverty for being “famously democratic”, as the British magazine Economist, said while other newly independent countries were lapsing into dictatorships. Besides, India was praised for the autonomy of its various institutions, including the academia, judiciary and a free press. 

The latter took a hit during the Emergency of 1975-77, but recovered after the “dictator” (Indira Gandhi) lost power in a free and fair election under the aegis of another of the autonomous institutions, the Election Commission. The political scene might have been rumbustious, but as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto realized while waiting for the gallows, there was much to be said for such bedlam when compared with the “order” in Pakistan where a prime minister could be hanged.

There was, thus, much to be proud of about India in those days not only because of the rule of law, but also because of the sense of security and oneness with the nation which all the citizens felt irrespective of their caste or creed.

The 'selfhood' of India

Among those who relished their safety were the Muslims even if their forebears had been responsible for the country’s partition and the consequent carnage. The reason for their sense of well-being was that the politicians of the time played a key role in reassuring them and making them feel that India was their home, which they had made by choice, as it had always been but for the aberration of a division.

As Salman Riishdie said, “The selfhood of India is so capacious, so elastic that it manages to accommodate one billion kinds of differences … this is why individual Indians feel so comfortable about the strength of the national idea, why it’s so easy to ‘belong’ to it in spite of all the turbulence, the corruption, the tawdriness”.

The central idea in Rushdie’s piece is the sense of belonging to the nation shared by the people of all communities whatever their modes of worship. It is this feeling which has suffered under the rule of the Hindutva brigade since a Muslim boy can now be beaten for drinking water in a tap in a temple or Christian nuns can be asked to prove their identity and asked to get off a train by activists of the Bajrang Dal, one of the organizations under the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It is noteworthy that both the incidents took place in Uttar Pradesh, a state run by the hardline Hindutva Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath.

The reason why the boy was beaten and the nuns detrained was that their saffron assailants do not believe that Muslims and Christians 'belong' to India. They are aliens as the Hindutva guru, V.D. Savarkar, has said since their places of worship are outside India in Saudi Arabia or Italy. So, according to the saffron theorist, even if India is their pitribhu (fatherland), it is not their punyabhu (holy land) as it is for the Hindus.

It is understandable, therefore, why the former vice-president, Hamid Ansari, said that the Muslims feel insecure in India. And behind this insecurity is the RSS-inspired view that “our war with Islamic terrorism began with Mohammud of Ghaznavi’s attack on Somnath and is still continuing”, as Pravin Togadia, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader, said.

'War' against multiculturalism

Because of this “war”, India’s quest for modernity is bound to suffer since modernism implies, unlike medievalism, that citizens are not targeted as long as they do not break the law. Their religion is of no concern to the authorities. To be fair, Narendra Modi does make this point when he says, "sabka saath, sabka vikas" or development for all. But the prime minister’s foot soldiers do not seem to care for this message as the two - and countless other - examples cited above show.

But if India fails to adhere to this main tenet of a modern society, it risks being labeled as an “electoral autocracy”, as Sweden’s V-Dem Institute has done, or “partly free”, as America’s Freedom House has done. Being bracketed with Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey is a come down for Jawaharlal Nehru’s India, about whom V.S. Naipaul said, “Nehru was unique in recent world history. A colonial protest figure, a folk hero who did not appeal to fanaticism, but was a reasonable, reassuring man. A man committed to science, religious tolerance, the rule of law and the rights of man”. 

It will be difficult to attribute any of these attributes – reassurance (to the minorities), commitment to science and the rule of law – to the present-day rulers.

As attempts are made to sustain the ideals of the one-time folk hero, who was called a "Prince of Bharat Mata" by former prime minister and BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, against the onslaught of those who are trying to make multicultural India adhere to the concept of cultural nationalism - one nation, one people, one culture - which is the mantra of the RSS lobby, fears are bound to arise as to whether India will lose its capacious selfhood.

(The writer is a current affairs analyst. The views expressed are personal)