India, once celebrated as a secular and pluralistic society, is increasingly becoming a nation defined by religious intolerance and communal divisions. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership, Hindutva, the political ideology advocating for Hindu dominance, has gained unprecedented momentum.
This shift has disproportionately affected India’s Muslim population, leading to systematic discrimination, state-backed violence, and social exclusion. The rise of such policies threatens India’s secular framework and has triggered global concerns about the erosion of human rights and minority safety in the world’s largest democracy.
In the past decade, Modi’s government has systematically implemented policies that marginalize Indian Muslims, portraying them as outsiders within their own country. Two Indian states, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, recently passed a policy mandating that restaurants publicly display the names of all their employees. While seemingly innocuous, this policy has been viewed with concern by Muslim business owners, who fear it will result in targeted attacks, economic boycotts, and even violence by extremist Hindu groups that operate in these states.
These fears are not unfounded. The increasing influence of Hindutva has empowered hardline groups to enact mob violence, often with little........