MOSAIC: Will New Jersey’s Indian diaspora continue to support Prime Minister Narendra Modi? | Opinion

By Shaheen Khateeb

With India’s elections in full swing for the next month, Indian voters are poised to decide the political future of my birth country.

Will they continue to support current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)? Or will they reject a leader who recently called Muslim Indians “infiltrators” and who is widely considered culpable for a massive anti-Muslim pogrom?

Will they reject a regime that has made bulldozing Muslim homes official policy and a party that routinely expels opposition politicians while imprisoning activists and critics?

The question matters not only in India, but also in my home state of New Jersey. Home to nearly 500,000 Indian Americans, New Jersey has also become one of the main U.S. battlegrounds for the ideology promoted by Modi and the BJP: Hindu nationalism.

First conceived by political leaders looking to apply fascist ideas in India, Hindu nationalism is the idea that India must be a pure Hindu state, one in which other religions, particularly Muslims and Christians, are relegated to the status of second-class citizens.

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