How Modi’s BJP Ensures that the Two-Nation Theory Flourishes in India Ramachandra Guha
December 26, 2021 https://janataweekly.org/how-modis-bjp-ensures-that-the-two-nation-theory-flourishes-in-india/
After Amit Shah became home minister in May 2019, the stigmatisation and humiliation of Muslims have become active ingredients in the policies of the Union government. This has been manifest in, among other things, the abolition of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, in the proposal for a National Register of Citizens, and in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act whose leaving out of Muslims from the list of potential refugees was calculated as well as spiteful.
Fundamentalists of different faiths always feed off one another, but for the home minister of India to be playing this game is a dangerous thing indeed.
Back in the 1940s, Jinnah and the Muslim League claimed that Indian Muslims needed a separate country of their own to live safely and with honour. Now, in the 2020s, the Bharatiya Janata Party of Modi and Shah believes that Hindus in India must continually assert their economic, political, and ideological dominance over Muslims. This places them strikingly at odds with the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, who sought to build a nation where Hindus and Muslims could live together in friendship and solidarity.