India

While the United States focuses its attention on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, in another part of the world democracy is under siege from religious extremism. As Martha C Nussbaum reveals to us in this penetrating examination of India today, the forces of the Hindu right are a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and the secularism of the state. Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots in which nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists, the Hindu right has grown increasingly powerful to the point of threatening constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance and pluralism. hard-earned religious life in India. Under the political leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right seeks the subservience of other religious groups and has directed its particular vitriolic criticism against Muslims, whom it sees as demons in need of purging. The future is far from assured, and Hindu extremism and exclusivism remain a worrying obstacle to harmony in South Asia.