BANGALORE – On October 2, the world marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi – the greatest Indian of modern times. In a New York Times op-ed for the occasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the most powerful living Indian, duly praised his country’s independence leader. Between recalling the admiration for Gandhi of Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, and others, Modi saw fit to tout his own government’s commitment to sanitation and renewable energy.

That is a lot of ground to cover. Yet for this reader, the commentary was most striking in what it did not say. There was not a word about the cause for which Gandhi lived – and sacrificed – his life: interfaith harmony. From the 1890s, when he was an organizer for a small community of diaspora Indians in South Africa, to his death in 1948, by which time he was the acknowledged “Father” of a nation of over 300 million people, Gandhi worked to build unity and solidarity between Hindus and Muslims. While in South Africa, many of the meetings he organized to protest against discriminatory laws were held in mosques. And when he returned to India, he fasted and embarked on several long pilgrimages to build trust between Hindus and Muslims.

Gandhi had fought the British, non-violently, for an independent and united India. In the end, he achieved independence but not unity. When the British finally gave up the subcontinent in August 1947, they partitioned it. Pakistan was explicitly created as a homeland for Muslims. But, owing to Gandhi’s efforts, India itself was established as a nondenominational state: the new constitution forbade discrimination on religious grounds; the Muslims who remained were to be treated as equal citizens.

For the first two decades after independence, minority rights in India were carefully safeguarded, owing chiefly to the determination of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to prevent India from becoming a Hindu Pakistan. In more recent times, however, India’s large (and mostly poor) Muslim minority has come under increasing attack. This is partly because, after Nehru’s death, the ruling Congress Party shunned progressive Muslim voices in its efforts to cultivate the ulema (Muslim clergy) for votes. But it is also because the traditional opposition party, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has emphatically rejected Gandhi and Nehru’s vision of political and religious pluralism.

From the mid-1980s, the country was riven by a series of communal riots in which Hindu mobs taunted their Muslim compatriots with the slogan Pakistan ya Babristan! (Go to Pakistan, or be sent to the graveyard!) The bloodiest riot was in 2002, in Gujarat, where Modi was then serving as chief minister. The episode badly tarred Modi’s image, and even resulted in his being barred from entering the United States for a while.

But having rebranded himself as a Vikas Purush (Man of Development) and devised a platform promising inclusive growth, Modi was able to prevail in the 2014 general election. That outcome led to another wave of hate crimes against Muslims, which Modi proved either unable or unwilling to prevent. His first term in office yielded nothing for the economy, so he and the BJP contested the 2019 elections on a platform of jingoistic nationalism. Pakistan was depicted as the “Enemy Without,” and Indian Muslims and secular liberals as the “Enemies Within.”

Notwithstanding Modi’s public posturing in the pages of Western newspapers, he and his party remain committed to the idea of a Hindu Rashtra: a state run for and by Hindus. There is currently just one Muslim among the BJP’s 300-odd members of the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India’s parliament). Worse, senior BJP leaders routinely insult and intimidate Indian Muslims without provocation, demanding that they prove their “loyalty” to the Motherland.

It is no accident that Modi failed to mention Hindu-Muslim harmony even when praising Gandhi. His silence speaks for itself. Meanwhile, on October 1, Modi’s right-hand man, Amit Shah, the home minister and current BJP president, offered his own implicit message to India’s Muslims. “I today want to assure Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Christian refugees, you will not be forced to leave India by the Centre,” he said in a speech in Kolkata. “Don’t believe rumors,” he added. “We will bring a Citizenship Amendment Bill, which will ensure these people get Indian citizenship.”

Notably absent in these remarks was any reassurance for Muslim refugees, including those from Bangladesh, whom Shah previously referred to as “termites.” The purpose of his speech was clear: Indian Muslims should be careful what they say, or they could find themselves stripped of citizenship and deported.

As Gandhi’s biographer – and as an Indian citizen who is committed to pluralism – I am deeply worried about the escalating demonization of my Muslim compatriots. The democratic, secular republic that Gandhi fought for is being transformed into a Hindu majoritarian state.

Yet as a historian, I have no illusions about what we are witnessing. India, once an exception, is now converging toward the South Asian norm. Sri Lanka and Myanmar are both Buddhist majoritarian states, and their minority populations – Tamil Hindus and Rohingya Muslims, respectively – are treated as second-class citizens (and much worse). Likewise, Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim majoritarian states, where Hindus (and sometimes Christians) have historically been persecuted.

As we enter a new decade, it is clear that Modi, Shah, and the BJP are committed to joining the club of ethno-nationalist states. In pursuit of that end, they have decisively repudiated the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, inaugurating a dark new chapter in the history of modern India.

NEW DELHI – At a time when India’s major national priority ought to be cratering economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has instead plunged the country into a new political crisis of its own making.

With its penchant for shock-and-awe tactics, the government pushed through parliament a controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill that fast-tracks citizenship for people fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh – provided they are not Muslim. By excluding members of just one community, the bill, which was quickly signed into law by President Ram Nath Kovind, is fundamentally antithetical to India’s secular and pluralist traditions. As I argued in parliament, it is an affront to the fundamental tenets of equality and religious non-discrimination enshrined in our Constitution and an all-out assault on the very idea of India for which our forefathers gave their lives.

As India’s freedom struggle neared its goal, Indian nationalists split over the question of whether religion should be the determinant of nationhood. Those who believed that it should, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his followers, advocated the idea of Pakistan as a separate country for Muslims. The rest, led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, argued passionately that religion had nothing to do with nationhood. Their idea of India led to a free country for people of all religions, regions, castes, and languages.

The implications – constitutional, political, social, and moral – of the Modi government’s betrayal of this core idea are profound. Under the approved bill, Muslim immigrants may be declared illegal. Coupled with the government’s plan to create an even more problematic National Register of Citizens, the authorities will be able to disenfranchise any Indian Muslim who is unable to prove his or her provenance in India. Many Indians, especially the poor, lack documentary evidence of when and where they were born; even birth certificates have become widespread only in recent decades. While non-Muslims would, thanks to the approved bill, get a free pass, similarly undocumented Muslims would suddenly bear the onus of proving that they are Indian.

This marks a breathtaking departure from seven decades of practice in managing an astonishing degree of cultural diversity. Foreigners – including President George W. Bush – admired the fact that India had produced hardly any Islamic State (ISIS) or al-Qaeda members, despite being home to 180 million Muslims. Indians proudly pointed out that this was because Indian democracy gave Muslims an equal stake in the country’s wellbeing. We can no longer say that.

Democratic India has never had a religious test for citizenship. Muslims have served as presidents, generals, chief ministers and governors of states, ambassadors, Supreme Court chief justices, and captains of national sports teams.

The religious bigotry that led to partition and the establishment of Pakistan has now been mirrored in pluralist India. As I told my fellow parliamentarians, that was a partition of India’s soil; this has become a partition of India’s soul.

Inevitably, mass protests have erupted, particularly in the North-Eastern states bordering Bangladesh, where locals fear being swamped by Bangladeshi Hindu migrants with fast-track citizenship; in West Bengal and Delhi, where Muslims fear that they will be subject to a worsening climate of suspicion; and among Muslims and secularists nationwide. Though the protests have been mostly peaceful, the authorities have responded with force. Four demonstrators have been shot dead in Assam (and two more killed in the chaos), curfews have been imposed, police have invaded universities, and Internet and telephone services have been suspended in some areas. Over 100 people have been injured. This self-inflicted wound will take a long time to heal.

In his first term in office, Modi attempted to create a more unabashedly Hindu India, but one that was still attractive to global investors. Six months into his second term, he seems to have given up on the latter goal. As foreigners recoil with horror at the blatant Islamophobia on display from the highest echelons of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, he has focused on criminalizing the triple-talaq form of Islamic divorce, pushing for a Hindu temple on a site where a 470-year-old mosque was demolished in 1992 by Hindu protesters, and changing the constitutional status of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir and detaining its political leaders. The new citizenship law is just one more brick in an edifice of official bigotry.

It is an edifice that is leaving India increasingly isolated. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promptly canceled a visit to India following the citizenship bill’s enactment, as have two Bangladeshi ministers. Foreign investors have already been withdrawing, thanks to Modi’s mismanagement of the economy, which has never recovered from the disastrous blows of an irresponsible demonetization exercise and the botched implementation of a nationwide Goods and Services Tax. Banks are weighed down by bad debt, the public sector is hemorrhaging money, automobile factories are closing, unemployment is at a 46-year high, and farmers are committing suicide in record numbers.

Now, the Modi government has compounded its economic fecklessness with political recklessness, plunging India into turmoil. The combination of ineptitude and bigotry that has laid the country low has left long-time admirers of the Indian model speechless in disbelief. With the government on the warpath against the fundamental assumptions of the Indian republic, the unspoken fear among the country’s democrats is that the worst is yet to come.

NEW DELHI – Injustice, discrimination, and violence are hardly unheard of in India. But today, they are being normalized, enabled, and even encouraged by the state, which is promoting an aggressive form of Hindu nationalism that looks increasingly like mob rule. India’s diversity and complex civilizational legacy are now under assault, and it is shaking the very foundations of Indian democracy.

In August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped Jammu and Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority territory – of its special status, which had granted it considerable autonomy, and split it into two “union territories” over which the central government now wields more direct control.

In order to stave off unrest, the government deployed thousands more troops to Jammu and Kashmir before announcing the changes. It then placed prominent local politicians, including former allies of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under house arrest; enforced a curfew on residents; restricted movement into, out of, and within the state; and imposed media and telecoms blackouts.

Months later, most Kashmiris still lack Internet access. Despite the blackout, sporadic reports paint a dark picture of repression by armed forces. Civilians have reportedly sustained severe injuries from crowd-control tactics (such as the use of tear gas and pellet guns), and thousands of locals – including children as young as nine – are languishing in jails.

Yet, rather than defend the rights of Kashmiri citizens, India’s Supreme Court has postponed hearings on relevant pleas. As for the rest of India’s population, they have largely ignored, accepted, or applauded the assault on Jammu and Kashmir.

In the northeastern state of Assam, another horror unfolds. In August, authorities released their jurisdiction’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), which excluded nearly two million people who could not provide proof of their names or parents’ names in the electoral rolls before March 24, 1971 – an arbitrary date essentially directed at identifying Muslim immigrants. Many of these now-stateless people have been sent to detention camps, where they live in appalling conditions.

Betraying the project’s xenophobic aims, its architect, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, has called these people – many of whom were born in Assam or whose families have lived there for decades – “termites,” his term for illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. He has also promised that the BJP government “will pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal.”

In this case, instead of pushing back, India’s Supreme Court has actively instigated and aided the process. It now watches as the BJP government builds detention camps across the country, in preparation for the program’s nationwide implementation – a process that is likely to be even more aggressively anti-Muslim.

While the NRC implicitly targeted Muslims, some Hindus were caught in the crossfire. So the government is keen to pass a new Citizenship Amendment Bill, which makes Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Parsi, or Christian refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan eligible for Indian citizenship. Muslims are excluded.

Though the bill is blatantly unconstitutional, it has already been approved by the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament), and seems to have broad popular support. It now needs only to clear the Rajya Sabha (the upper house) to become law.

Muslims are not the only group facing discrimination and violence in India today. Hindu nationalists have also targeted the long-marginalized Dalits, the lowest-ranked group in India’s rigid caste hierarchy. In 2016 alone, more than 40,000 crimes against members of lower castes were reported. And yet last year, the Supreme Court triggered large protests by weakening the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, designed to protect lower-caste communities.

Moreover, India continues to fail its women, who face high rates of sexual violence. Victims who report the crimes committed against them often suffer far harsher punishments – including harassment, job losses, further violence, and even death – than the perpetrators. Legal processes are slow; authorities often treat victims poorly; and justice is rarely served, especially if the accused is powerful or well connected.

Just this month in Uttar Pradesh, a 23-year-old woman who had reported being gang-raped last year was set on fire while heading to a court hearing. Among the attackers were two of the five accused men, who had been released on bail. She died a few days later. Since then, two more rape survivors have been killed in Uttar Pradesh.

Even when perpetrators are punished, it may look more like mob justice than the impersonal application of the rule of law. The recent gang rape and murder of a young veterinarian near the southern city of Hyderabad is a case in point. Initially, local police failed the victim through apathy. When her family attempted to file a missing person’s report, they resisted taking action at all, before sending the family to another police station, because the victim’s last known location was in that jurisdiction. Several hours passed before the search began.

After four men were accused of raping and murdering the young woman, however, there was a massive public outcry, including calls by prominent women to lynch the rapists. Under pressure, police quickly rounded up the accused, took them under a bridge, and shot them dead. (The police claimed that the men had tried to grab their guns, forcing them to shoot.)

Such extrajudicial killings are being widely hailed in India. Due process and the rule of law are not nearly as satisfying, it seems, as quick revenge. Meanwhile, no one is addressing women’s lack of safety, or the impunity of other acknowledged rapists who have more political power.

India’s rapid descent into xenophobia, violence, and irrationality – much like support for populist leaders and causes elsewhere – has an important economic dimension. Declining demand, employment, and consumption have left many feeling insecure and frustrated. But it takes politicians to channel these emotions into nationalism, and to embolden the nationalists to commit violence. Now that the BJP has done so, is it able – or willing – to exorcise the many demons it has unleashed?

PATNA, INDIA – On January 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government suddenly announced that an additional 10% of school seats and government jobs would be set aside for the “economically weaker sections,” meaning the poor among the upper castes. This was on top of the already extensive quotas for various historically oppressed castes under India’s wide-ranging affirmative action policy. The government rushed through a constitutional amendment to this effect on January 8 and 9. The decision may well be challenged in the courts, but the announcement was an implicit confession of three failures.

The first failure is that of affirmative action. After almost seven decades, the world’s biggest and longest-running such program – mandated in India’s 1950 constitution as a temporary expedient for 15 years – has failed to ameliorate historical caste injustice. Governments have repeatedly broadened affirmative action to include larger swaths of public life, target more groups, and cover promotions as well as recruitment. Modi has been unable to fix this situation, which he inherited, but did not create.

On January 21, following Modi’s surprise announcement, Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of the state of Bihar, called for a census of all castes in 2021 to create a system for reserving jobs based on each caste’s share of the population.

The net result is that Indians are more sharply conscious of caste identity today than at independence in 1947. Far from steadily weakening over time, caste identity – and caste-based inequality – has been further entrenched. India now has a frozen equilibrium of caste-defined access to public institutions and services. And with Dalits (formerly called “untouchables”) being such a powerful voting group, no political party or leader dares to suggest the abolition of these set-asides.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of benefits intended for the poor, downtrodden, and oppressed castes have been captured by the elite among them. Entitlements that were meant to address moral claims of equal citizenship have been swallowed by cynical political powerbrokers. This is especially true of caste-based political parties in which the founders’ children inherit the leadership, creating family dynasties.

A second, related failure is that more than 70 years after independence, India has not managed to forge a truly national identity. Instead, the country consists of a collection of minorities who cling ever more fiercely to their group identities in order to obtain various public benefits. Dalit caste identity is recorded at birth and reinforced throughout a citizen’s life. In politics, caste calculations are crucial in selecting candidates to match the demographics of each constituency, and in choosing coalition leaders to head state and federal governments.

Finally, the government’s recent set-aside announcement was an implicit admission of failure to create jobs for the millions of young people entering the workforce. Modi promised in his 2014 election campaign to create 20 million new jobs per year by unleashing India’s entrepreneurial potential. Instead, the unemployment rate is currently at its highest level since the early 1970s.

The government sat on the bleak unemployment figures for months, prompting two members of the National Statistical Commission to resign in protest, before the report was finally leaked to the Business Standard newspaper on January 31. According to the National Sample Survey Office, the unemployment rate reached 6.1% in 2017-18 (compared to 2.2% in 2011–12), with people aged 15-29 and urban women the worst hit.

Higher unemployment is partly a result of Modi’s egregious decision in 2016 to demonetize India’s highest-denomination bank notes of 500 and 1,000 rupees (about $7 and $14 respectively). This had a particularly severe effect on the informal sector, which employs over 90% of the country’s workforce. Demonetization not only cost India at least 1.5 million jobs; it also failed to achieve its primary goal of uncovering “black money,” because 99% of the cash was returned to banks.

According to independent experts, the latest unemployment numbers are alarming, but not surprising, because signs of rising joblessness had been visible for some time. With a general election due by May, the government’s reluctance to release the report is understandable.

The approaching election also helps to explain the government’s sudden embrace of expanded set-asides. Having failed to create jobs, the government is instead dividing the existing pie among important groups of voters. The reality of job scarcity is to be camouflaged in the sop of set-asides. This is “placebo politics” at its worst. Electoral imperatives have also driven budget giveaways, with something for nearly everyone.

Leading the first Indian government in 30 years to enjoy a comfortable majority in its own right, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had the opportunity to act on its election slogan of minimum government, maximum governance. Instead, it has largely squandered the chance to undertake significant structural reforms that would have put India on the path of freer markets. The BJP has now retreated to the same populist and socialist nostrums of its main opponent, the Congress party. Perhaps Modi was spooked by sizeable losses in three important state elections last December. He also faces the political headache of stress in the agricultural sector, which has led many farmers to commit suicide.

India may still be the world’s fastest-growing major economy. But its two main parties’ shared tendency to choose the path of least political resistance and defer deep reforms is postponing prosperity for the average Indian. What Modi’s government really announced on January 7 is that life will remain nasty, brutish, and short for far too many people for some time yet.