(Ram Puniyani)
As the three-nation tour of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat has come to an end, various analysts have put forward their opinions. Some of them praised Bhagwat by stating that he has broadened Hindutva by adding diversity to it. Can Hindutva in any way be broadened to include the rich religious diversity of our country?
Respect for diversity can be judged by the condition of religious minorities in a country. It goes without saying that the health of democracy of any country should be judged by the safety and security of the religious minorities. As India is steeply falling down in the indices related to democracy, we also need to match it with how religious minorities are faring and how they themselves are perceiving their own situation. Although few Muslim leaders and others who are in the position of privilege may deny the worsening plight of minorities in India.
The best way to evaluate this is by assessing the steps which the government has taken in the last few years or even for over a decade or so. Recently a meeting of People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) held in Delhi on these issues, shows us a good mirror of our society. BJP has 240 Lok Sabha MPs, and 117 MPs in Rajya Sabha. It also has nearly 1516 MLAs i.e.( 1873) total representatives , put together in various states. Out of this only 2 MLAs from BJP are Muslims, one in Tripura, One in Manipur!
In the PUCL meeting, various representatives of human rights organisations articulated their views. As far as Muslims are concerned, the demonisation of Muslims in social thinking has reached unprecedented levels.
In Delhi, the brutal attack by police on two 4 PM journalists (Shaheen and Nafisa) intensified after the official who was beating them came to know that both these women journalists are Muslims. The initial stance against this community was to make them objects of hate and violence. Now the goal is to disenfranchise them.
This step began with the notorious NIC and CAA. As the response of Muslim women in the form of Shaheen Baghs springing all over the country was phenomenal, the process is on hold. Meanwhile the unique idea of cutting them off from electoral rolls came up and Special Intensive Revision (SIT) was inflicted on the country.
State after state, lakhs of voters, mainly Muslims and Dalits are being deleted from the voters list. Nothing can affirm this more than the West Bengal election results, where over 27 lakh voters were found ineligible under Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls just before the polls.
Parakala Prabhakar, an economist and political commentator of repute points out that SIR is not only meant to revise the electoral rolls, it will lead to “two classes of citizens — those who can vote and those who cannot. At the current pace, an estimated 16 crore people could be disenfranchised. SIR is, in effect, carving out sections of the country from the democratic process.”
While even the Supreme Court brought a stay on bulldozers being used against Muslims, the chief ministers of some BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh have used it as a badge of honour. Added on to these is the threat of delimitation, which will certainly increase the number of representatives from the BJP-dominated states. These are big games being orchestrated by the RSS progeny. At another level, the BJP’s decision to impose a full version of Vande Matram, in contrast to what was decided by the Constituent Assembly’s song committee, is an attempt to bring in Hindu goddesses to be worshipped by non-Hindus.
Religious freedom in India is more of a euphemism. State after state have brought in “Freedom of Religion” acts which essentially mean that those who have converted away from Hinduism will not be permitted to do so and the minorities can be attacked on this pretext. There is another phenomenon which RSS affiliates indulge in and that is ‘Ghar Wapasi’, where the Adivasis in particular and others from Dalit community and Muslims are converted to Hinduism, a phenomenon well entrenched in remote areas of the country.
Those monitoring religious freedom have been calling India a country of particular concern. One such organisation is the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which is an official, independent federal body. It issued a statement days before Bhagwat’s arrival saying religious freedom conditions in India continue to deteriorate, that violence and incitement are routinely used against minority communities and that RSS-affiliate groups have been involved in the violence.
Columnist Tavleen Singh wrote in Indian Express, “The more intrepid of these Hindutva warriors stormed into churches and disturbed services with vandalism and violence. Videos of these ‘accomplishments’ were uploaded on social media. In one of them, I saw a BJP legislator enter a church in Jabalpur and harangue a blind woman, whom she accused menacingly of trying to convert Hindus to Christianity…there were nearly a hundred attempts to disrupt Christmas festivities and nearly all of them occurred in states ruled by the BJP. Nobody was punished and no chief minister openly deplored the violence.”
As many other states, Maharashtra’s anti-conversion law has come into force. This law paves the way for enforcement against religious conversion through coercion, fraud or inducements. Anyone who wants to adopt another faith must inform the authorities 60 days in advance. If these rules are violated, church officials or individuals can be jailed for seven years. Twenty civil society organisations, including Christian ones, held a press conference on August 24, 2026 in Mumbai asking for the withdrawal of the law, which they said is an “intrusive regulation of personal choices” and impinges on an Indian’s right to practise and propagate their faith freely, guaranteed in the Indian constitution. In the light of this, churches in the Mumbai region have decided to introduce the consent form from those who come to attend church services.
On top of attacking the prayer meetings, the Christian NGOs doing humanitarian work are facing another problem – funding. The new FCRA rules are being framed in a way that halts the charity work of missionaries and deprives the poor who depend on these humanitarian services. This so far as ‘diversity’ as an ornament phrase used by the Hindutva politics patriarch Mohan Bhagwat.