The  true face of Indian secularism has been unraveled or well-exposed by the ongoing incidents of violence against Muslims, demonstrated and caused by the far- right  utranationalists and the Shiv Sena’s operated elements of Hindu Taliban, who seem to have been supported, nurtured and motivated by Narendra Modi-led BJP’s government in India.

This BJP’s sponsored or orchestrated faus pas– of casting life threats and violence against the Muslims residing in India and the Indian held Kashmir, including the Pakistan based writers, academicians, sports persons,actors,politicians,social thinkers and diplomats—is tantamount to providing the ample evidence that Modi’s government has become totally failed in maintaining the norms of secularism that the so-called largest democracy India apparently seems to be proclaiming for.

Dozens of thugs belonging to the Hindu extremist Shiv Sena stormed the Mumbai offices of India’s cricket board on Monday to disrupt planned talks on resuming matches against Pakistan, the latest protest by hardline Hindu activists in the city. The Shiv Sena, a junior partner in a ruling coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Maharashtra state government, opposes any dealings with Pakistan.

An uneasy calm prevails in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh(U.P.) where a Hindu mob lynched a Muslim man late last month following rumors of cow slaughter and beef eating. The killing sent shock waves across the country and demands are growing for swift and stern action against those involved.

What is more disturbing is the openness with which these radicals operate in India. An activist belonging to the Bajrang Dal, a radical Hindu group sharing deep ideological affinities with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), issued an open threat to other such free-thinkers on Twitter, saying “Then it was UR Ananthamoorty and now its MM Kalburgi. Mock Hinduism and die a dog’s death.”

For his secular and liberal views, Ananthamoorty remained on the firing line of the extremist forces until his death last year.

Commenting on the incident, The Hindu, in an editorial, wrote that “there is no denying the fact that fringe right wing groups have created an atmosphere of intolerance to outspoken writers and academics who question religious practices and myths, thereby putting pressure on freedom of speech and expression.” The editorial asks the government not to go soft on Hindu fundamentalism and to “crack down” on these fringe elements in the same way it would deal with other “religion and ideology based extremist groups.”

Hindu extremist groups are also targeting those who question Hinduism and want India to be a strong secular democracy.

India’s gradual descent into ‘majoritarian fundamentalism’ is alarming. The growth of anti-secular violence is a warning signal to all the right-thinking citizens of India to resist the growing clout of these medieval forces.

India’s ‘hypernationalist religious extremists’ has become the number one story in Pakistan as the ink attack against Sudheendra Kulkarni has proven to be only the opening act of the Hindu extremists against Muslims and other religious minorities. Social media is now over taken by trends like #ExtremistIndia and #ModiBehindShivSena and #BoycottBCCI among others. Punjab Assembly even tabled a resolution against Shiv Sena’s religious extremism.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has since 1998 formed the national government of India at the head of a coalition of centrist parties, is tied to the RSS( Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh), VHP(the Vishu Hindu Parishad), a right wing Hindu extremist Organisation, and Bajrang Dal, and functions as the Sangh Parivar’s political wing.  Other senior BJP officials, such as the late Home Affairs Minister L. K. Advani, have been the RSS associates.Yet Atal Behari Vajpayee ,the former Indian premier seems to have been remembered as a moderate voice in the BJP’s club,who tried to enhance the course of  ‘normalisation of India’s relations with Pakistan.

At the national level the BJP advances the ideology of ‘Hindutva’ through propaganda, the manipulation of cultural institutions, undercutting laws that protect religious minorities, and minimizing or excusing Hindu extremist violence. At the state level its functionaries have abetted and even participated in such violence.

The BJP appoints school officials who alter textbooks and curricula to emphasize Hinduism; they also require that Hindu texts be taught in all schools. Moreover, it has appointed Sangh Parivar adherents to key positions in autonomous bodies such as the Prasar Bharati, which controls the official media, the National Film Development Corporation, the Indian Council of Historical Research, and the National Book Trust.

BJP lawmakers have also attempted to restrict minority religious groups’ international contacts and to reduce their rights to build places of worship. It works to pass anti-conversion laws and to alter the personal laws that govern marriages, adoptions, and inheritance. It practices legal discrimination against Dalits (“untouchables”) who are Christian and Muslim, but not against those who are Hindu.

Three liberal writers have been killed and human rights groups and activists are increasingly intimidated and harassed. The brutal violence visited on Muslims in Gujarat in February 2002 also brought the dangers of Hindu extremism to world attention. Between one and two thousand Muslims were massacred after Muslims reportedly set fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists, killing several dozen people.This happened during the tenure of Narendra Modi’s  as the chief minister of Gujarat.

These attacks were not inchoate mob violence, triggered by real or rumored insult; rather, they involved careful planning by organized Hindu extremists with an explicit program and a developed religious-nationalist ideology. Like the ideology of al-Qaeda and other radical Islamists, this ideology began to take shape in the 1920s as a response to European colonialism. It rejected the usually secular outlook of other independence movements; in place of ‘secularism’, it synthesized a reactionary form of religion with elements of European millenarian political thought, especially ‘fascism’.

Modi won a landslide victory in the previous Indian general elections as the nominee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Though the party was established in 1980, it is the creature of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which was formed by K B Hedgewar in 1925.The speculations– that by becoming the premier of India, Modi will be tied to his hard-core fascist lobbying against Pakistan–have become true.The present course of Modi’s governmental actions against Pakistan endorses the truth that BJP’s agenda is to provoke anti-Pakistan feelings in India.

The founding fathers of India, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, wanted to model India as a ‘secular country’. Nehru, a self-proclaimed agnostic, stood for secularism, democracy and scientific temperament. The three goals were enshrined in the Indian Constitution. Though Dr Ambedkar is regarded the prime architect of the Indian Constitution, however, Prime Minister Nehru wielded considerable influence in its framing. The provision of the Constitution, which mainly postulates secularism, is its Article 25. It grants citizens of India of all religious persuasions to profess and propagate their faith “in a way that does not disrupt public order and does not affect morality adversely”. These words are construed to act as a constraint to the anti-conversion laws. Many states in India have already passed anti-conversion laws. Some of them are Orissa (in 1967), Arunachal Pradesh (in 1978), Gujarat (in 2003), etc. Secularism, according to the Constitution, does not mean separation of religion and state like it does in the West.

To maintain the political coalition that enables it to rule at the national level, the BJP downplays its specifically religious goals and portrays itself as a moderate party. But it also allies with the Sangh Parivar to appeal to its base. In its 2004 recommendations, the U.S. Commission on ‘International Religious Freedom’ proposed that India be included on the State Department’s official shortlist of the worst religious persecutors for its “egregious, systematic, and ongoing” violations of religious fights.

Many believe Hindu extremist groups are behind all these incidents and enjoy the tacit approval of the current Narendra Modi-led BJP government-a pioneer of the movement of ‘Hindu radicalism’.The future of minorities,Muslims,Sikhs and Christians in India,seems at a stake.

Social activist Shabnam Hashmi’s NGO Anhad is documenting the events. She says the figures point to an alarming trend: “The way these cases are happening, in quick succession and the manner in which the atmosphere is being vitiated – particularly with the help of non-state actors who appear to have been let loose to do whatever they wish and wherever, is extremely worrying. It’s not only about minorities it’s an assault on the country’s diversity and pluralism’’.

It’s a multi-faceted attack targeting communities on the one hand by polarizing them and spreading hate and the intellectuals and institutions on the other. Everyone who disagrees with them is under attack.”

If religious extremism continues to grow, it will drag India’s democracy, economy, and foreign policy down with it.

The goal of secularism, set by the Indian Constitution, has been under threat since the death of Nehru. The change, however, was slow, almost imperceptible. But since the 1990s, it has accelerated. The demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 is but one example. However, since the advent of the Modi government, the change has acquired gargantuan proportions.

In response to a question, Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesman (FO) said, “the cancellation of the meeting of Chairman, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), with his counterpart in Mumbai, due to the protests by an extremist organisation, is the latest in a series of such incidents that have taken place in the recent past.”FO spokesman said, “Effective measures are required to prevent continuous recurrence of such incidents in India.

Given India-Pakistan governmental tensions, the ongoing uncivilized tactics/ policies of the Indian government if not controlled or resisted, will result in brewing ‘communal riots’ in India and Pakistan- a development that a conflict and strife-ridden ‘South Asia on the brink of war, cannot afford.Meanwhile, Pakistan took a serious notice of the increasing number of violent protests, which were aimed at disrupting scheduled events in India involving Pakistani nationals and called for steps to stop such happenings.

By any measure,the resurgence of Hindu extremism in India is a ‘dangerous trend’ that must be immediately addressed by India’s government, and the international community should seriously take notice of it. Both the UN and the EU should pressurize Modi to crack down on the extremists’networks before any more innocent lives are lost and what has started as a national shame grows into a ‘humanitarian crisis’.

A fora– led by the leaders of the Indian National Congress,  India’s liberal NGOs, the unbiased members of the Indian print and electronic media, accompanied by the moral support of the  humanists– must come forward and  wage an ‘ideological crusade’ against this heinous trend of ‘communal hatred and political extremism’, lashed out by the Hindu right- wing organisations in India.What India needs today, is the call right back to follow the teachings and precepts of  Sri Sankaracharya, a great social humanitarian thinker of India.