印度大选的一个深度分析。纽约时报的类似报道水平很高。

Under Modi, a Hindu Nationalist Surge Has Further Divided India

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Supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, holding pictures of him at a rally in Kolkata on Friday.CreditAtul Loke/Getty Images

By Jeffrey Gettleman, Kai Schultz, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar

April 11, 2019

NEW DELHI — In the machine tools market in the catacombs of Old Delhi, Muslims dominate the business stalls. But at night, they say, they are increasingly afraid to walk alone. And when they talk politics, their voices drop to a whisper.

“I could be lynched right now and nobody would do anything about it,” said Abdul Adnan, a Muslim who sells drill bits. “My government doesn’t even consider me Indian. How can that be when my ancestors have lived here hundreds of years?”

“Brother, let me tell you,” Mr. Adnan added with a sigh, “I live with fear in my heart.”

When Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, was elected in 2014, it was with broad support for his sweeping promises to modernize India’s economy, fight corruption and aggressively assert India’s role in the world. Five years later, he is widely seen as having made at least some progress on those issues.

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That secular agenda was always entwined with Mr. Modi’s roots within a conservative Hindu political movement that strives to make India a Hindu state. Many of his more moderate supporters hoped he might set the sectarianism aside.

But over the past five years, his bloc, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has been spreading an us-versus-them philosophy in a country already riven by dangerous divisions. The Hindu right has never been more enfranchised at every level of government.

Now, with national elections underway, and with most polling data indicating that Mr. Modi will return to power, the growing belief here is that a divisive Hindu-first agenda will only accelerate.

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The emboldening effect became apparent within months of the 2014 election. Hindu lynch mobs began to pop up across the landscape, killing Muslims and lower-caste people suspected of slaughtering cows, a sacred animal under Hinduism. Most often, they have gotten away with it.

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Hate speech began to proliferate. So did the use of internet trolls to shut down critics.

Government bodies began rewriting history books, lopping out sections on Muslim rulers, changing official place names to Hindu from Muslim, and more aggressively contesting holy sites. They also began pushing extremist Hindu priorities, including an effort to locate a mystical river that features prominently in Hindu scriptures. Critics called it pseudoscience and said the search was akin to using public dollars to study mermaids.

The consensus among Indian activists and liberal political analysts is that their society, under Mr. Modi, has become more toxically divided between Hindus and Muslims, between upper and lower castes, between men and women.

“In plain language, they are what we now call communal fascists,” said Aditya Mukherjee, a retired historian, referring to Mr. Modi and his political allies.

“This is something that Jawaharlal Nehru had predicted,” Mr. Mukherjee said, referring to India’s first prime minister. “He said if fascism ever came to India it would come in the form of majoritarian Hindu communalism. That is exactly what is happening.”

India is the second most populous nation, after China. It is a pivotal geopolitical player; its economy is huge and everyone wants to do business here; and it has a long secular history.

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Hindu students in Prayagraj, India, which was more widely known by the name Allahabad, in the Muslim tradition, before having its name changed.CreditBernat Armangue/Associated Press

Its population may be 80 percent Hindu, but the modern country’s founding fathers, including Nehru and Mohandas K. Gandhi, resisted going down the path of establishing a religiously identified state like Iran or Pakistan.

But Mr. Modi’s popularity raises the question of how long this will last.

It is not simply hard-line Hindus who like him. Many Indians of different political beliefs have been so fed up with the corruption and dynastic politics of the leading opposition party, the Indian National Congress, that they have thrown their support behind Mr. Modi, hoping he spends his energies on improving the economy.

[Follow coverage of the Indian elections in The New York Times.]

In modern India, Hindu nationalist views and corresponding anti-Muslim feelings have come in waves. But by many measures this particular wave of majoritarianism has hit a higher crest than ever before.

Several senior B.J.P. officials said they would not discuss the issue, and the Culture Ministry did not respond to repeated messages asking for comment. In the past, party officials have generally denied accusations that their policies might be stoking violence or hate.

But Mr. Modi’s supporters say the prime minister and his allies are simply restoring Hinduism to its rightful place at the core of Indian society. They argue that there is nothing wrong with emphasizing India’s Hindu history and traditions in a more muscular way.

Many middle- and upper-caste Hindus resent longstanding affirmative action policies to help lower castes, and the special customary laws that allow India’s Muslims to follow Islamic traditions when it comes to family legal matters like divorce and inheritance.

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Mr. Modi is one of contemporary India’s most polarizing figures, and he has been lionized as a hero for the Hindu cause. To many in the country’s Muslim minority, he is terrifying.CreditAtul Loke/Getty Images

“Indian politics had been geared to the appeasement of minorities, and minorities were dominating the majority,” said Vinod Bansal