NUH, India — Inside a sprawling resort south of New Delhi, diplomats were making final preparations for a world summit. The road was newly repaved and dotted with police officers. Posters with the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried the motto he had chosen for the occasion: One Earth, One Family, One Future.
However, not far away were the remains of a bitter division: grieving families, charred vehicles and the rubble of demolished shops and houses.
Weeks earlier, deadly religious violence had broken out in the Nuh district, where the complex is located. The Internet went down and thousands of troops were quickly dispatched to the scene. The clashes spread to the gates of Gurugram, a technology hub on the outskirts of New Delhi that India calls the city of the future.
These scenes sum up India’s contradictions as it recently hosted the Group of 20: its push toward a greater global role is built on increasingly combustible and inequitable terrain at home.
Modi, India’s most powerful leader in decades, is attempting a transformation of this nation of 1.4 billion people that will define his legacy.
He is trying to turn India into a developed nation and a role model for the voiceless in a world dominated by the West. The country, now the most populous in the world, is the fastest growing major economy, digital expert and full of young people eager to work. It is also a rising diplomatic power, seeking to capitalize on friction between the United States and China.
But Modi is deepening the fissures in Indian society with an intensifying campaign to transform a highly diverse country, delicately held together by a secular constitution, into a Hindu state. His party’s efforts to mobilize and uplift Hindus have marginalized hundreds of millions of Muslims and other minorities as second-class citizens.
The question for India, as Modi appears set to extend his decade-old rule in an election early next year, is to what extent will the instability caused by his religious nationalism hamper his economic ambitions.
The sectarian clashes in Muslim-majority Nuh were sparked by a religious march organized by a right-wing Hindu organization that falls under the same Hindu nationalist umbrella as Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. It was just the latest flare-up in what has become a seemingly constant state of tensions.
The emboldened right-wing vigilantes and aggressively Hindu messages of BJP politicians have left the country’s Muslims and Christians in a perpetual state of fear and alienation.
Asked whether his government had discriminated against religious minorities, Modi said during a state visit to Washington in June that there was no discrimination in India. “We have always shown that democracy can deliver results,” he said. “And when I say deliver results, that is irrespective of caste, creed, religion or gender.”
In Nuh, minority Hindu residents are now vulnerable in a district where they said they had survived easily even during the worst phases of India’s previous sectarian tensions.
As violence spread to Gurugram, many offices made their employees work from home. Company executives spoke of a fear they had never experienced before.
About 500 families, both Hindu and Muslim, had settled in the shadow of Gurugram’s skyscrapers in search of a better life. Now, many Muslims have left.
“It’s fear,” said Sourav Kumar, who works as a guard.
Others had piled their belongings outside as they contemplated their options.
Suhasini Raj contributed reporting to this article.
By: MUJIB MASHAL and HARI KUMAR
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6892138, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-13 19:50:08
#divisions #threaten #Indias #global #rise