In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hindu nationalists jumped on the opportunity to link the virus to Muslims, inventing the conspiracy theory of “ coronajihad.” That had real consequences: Muslims were beaten and denied hospital beds, and Muslim health care workers were ostracized. Now, as India is ravaged by COVID-19, it faces the latest casualty of this lie: the official and likely undercount of 4,000 lives lost every day to a deadly second wave that was precipitated and exacerbated at every turn by Hindu nationalism.
The lie has transformed nearly every aspect of Indian society beyond recognition. Our ardent wish is to see our fellow Hindus freeing their hearts and minds from the hateful and harmful ideology of Hindutva, and the Islamophobia that often accompanies it.Ĭhain reactions sparked by Hindutva ideologies have claimed the lives of innocent people-a Muslim lynched on the suspicion that he eats beef, a Hindu woman who suffered a miscarriage while imprisoned for marrying a Muslim man, an 8-year-old Muslim girl raped and killed in a Hindu temple, and countless others. Most of our board members and our sole staff member are Hindu Indians in the United States, and we have a deep love for India. I am a co-founder of a progressive Hindu organization, Hindus for Human Rights. The motto of the modern Indian state, printed on every note and coin, is Satyameva Jayate, a Sanskrit phrase meaning “Truth Alone Triumphs.” But the current Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come to power on a dangerous lie that they have been selling to India’s Hindus: that in a country where they make up 80 percent of the population, Hinduism is under threat-and will only prosper if they support the ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.
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