Aryan Nation: INDIA'S RECENT ELECTION SHOWS THAT MAJORITARIAN NATIONALISM IS HARD TO DEFEAT.

• Author: Block, Daniel

You got some bad dudes coming in," Donald Trump told the West Virginia crowd. It was the end of September 2018, and the president was trying to rally his base before the midterms. Democrats, Trump warned, wanted open borders. They wanted sanctuary cities that "unleash violent predators" and leave "innocent Americans" at the mercy of "really ruthless animals."

Several days before---and thousands of miles away--the president of India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (B JP) delivered a similar address. "There are illegal infiltrators in Delhi," Amit Shah said. "Like termites, they have eaten the future of the country. Shouldn't they be uprooted?" The audience cheered, and Shah pointed toward the crowd. He accused the BJP's rivals of being too cowardly to deal with undocumented immigrants, people who "enter here, throw bombs, and kill innocent citizens."

To an American, Indian politics can seem impossible to follow. There are more than thirty-five parties with seats in the country's national parliament, many specific to particular linguistic communities. Together, they serve nearly 900 million registered voters, an electorate more than four times the size of America's and close to twice as large as the population of the entire European Union.

But the country's seventeenth general election featured many themes that Westerners would recognize. The country's leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who won reelection, is a right-wing nationalist widely seen as having made India a less tolerant place for minorities. Religious hate crimes have increased more than fivefold since Modi and the BJP came to power in 2014. Most of the perpetrators are part of the country's vast Hindu majority. Most of the victims belong to the country's population of 190 million Muslims.

"The BJP has always been known for its Hindu nationalism, which, more often than not, translates into anti-Muslim ideology on the ground," Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a prominent Indian journalist, told me. When the party and its supporters speak about immigrants, "the whole idea is to whip up a kind of xenophobic, jingoistic sentiment, where the enemy is perceived to be the Muslim refugees who are reportedly taking over."

This isn't just through speeches. India has right-wing TV networks where anchors angrily berate liberals as unpatriotic. The country is experiencing its own fake-news epidemic. And during the 2019 contest, activists and journalists reported that millions of Indian citizens may have been purged from voter rolls. Most of those missing appeared to be Muslims, low-caste Hindus, and women.

"India is several years further along down a path of vicious nationalism than we are," said Audrey Truschke, a professor of Indian history at Rutgers University. "It's a wake-up call to be more proactive."

India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was an avowed progressive. "It is the duty and responsibility of the majority community, whether in the matter of language or religion, to pay particular attention to what the minority wants," he declared in 1955. "The majority is strong enough to crush the minority which might not be protected. Therefore, whenever such a question arises, I am always in favor of the minority."

These beliefs were, by all accounts, genuine. They were also critical for Nehru's project: creating a stable and democratic India. The country hosts dozens of languages. It is the birthplace of multiple religions and is home to hundreds of millions of people who practice non-native faiths. Nehru knew that keeping India free and whole required tolerance.

It's therefore no surprise that he clashed with Hindu nationalists. After Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, Nehru's government temporarily banned a far-right group with which the assailant was associated, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)...