The Bhopal of the Begums and Nawabs stands on the brink of destruction. A city’s Muslim past, threatened by the towering figure of Raja Bhoj, an 11th-century king reimagined as the only rightful ruler of the place – occupying the precarious juncture between myth and history, as many things today do, in India. Bhopal is just one of the many Indian cities undergoing a similar transformation, the rapid erasure of the Islamic parts of their histories has become a government priority. With temple after temple being “discovered” under centuries-old mosques, with heritage structures being labelled as “illegal constructions” and torn down with impunity in broad daylight, with names of buildings, streets, railway stations and entire cities being changed every day, one wonders where all this will end. The India that I and many others like me knew and grew up in, or at least whose existence we were made to believe in, is now gone. That’s the thing with ‘imagined communities’ – they are what we make them to be – merely temporary constructions serving the interests of those in power. But some constructs are more dangerous than others.

The dream of the Hindu Rashtra, informed by the pernicious ideology of Hindutva, rests on the obliteration not only of everything ‘Muslim’ but also on the destruction of the magnanimity and diversity of thought, beliefs and practices that Hinduism itself stands for. A modern, political, ethno-nationalist ideology, Hindutva seeks to rigidly define the boundaries of Hindu identity and expressions through enforced homogeneity and to make sure that only those who claim such an identity for themselves are allowed to belong to the nation. In this hypermasculine, empty rhetoric of nationalism, peace, generosity, tolerance, and kindness, values that have been espoused and taught by Hindu texts, scholars, and holy men for thousands of years become synonyms for weakness, and any will to accept and respect the “Other” is seen as a form of betrayal, punishable by Death or other horrors – imaginable and otherwise.

In the new, polished, ever-growing, ‘emerging superpower’ that is India, those recognized as citizens operate on a false yet constant sense of urgency that they cannot quite fathom – they feel powerful, and at the same time more vulnerable than ever before, ready to defend, ready to fight, always at war, always alert – an endless adrenaline rush that keeps them on their toes, turning each human being into a weapon, fighting an imaginary war for survival against an endless set of enemies who are mostly Muslim, sometimes illegal immigrants, sometimes Communists, sometimes ‘Urban Naxals’, sometimes Dalit-Bahujans, sometimes queer folx, sometimes meat-eaters, sometimes Devil-worshipping Adivasis stuck in the pre-historic past.

Since 2014, in a matter of ten years, the idea of India in popular psyche has steadily transitioned from the ‘secular, democratic republic’ based on the ‘unity in diversity’ model to the Land of the Hindus, where all others are at best, second-class citizens. “Better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both” – We are no longer the nation that not just tolerates but celebrates diversity (at least, officially) – we are instead, a Hindu nation that is in every way bigger and better than all Muslim ones, a force to reckon with. This has been possible to achieve by doing some things at once – firstly, by injecting a deep sense of insecurity among the majority of the population by fabricating a saga of historical injustice, first under Muslim rule and then under leftist liberals; secondly, by running a sustained hate campaign against Muslims and other minorities through social media and encrypted messenger apps like WhatsApp, which ensured that any violence against such groups, whether overt or covert, came to be regarded as ‘normal’ and acceptable; and thirdly, by making people believe that the only one who could save them and deliver justice was a divinely-ordained king posing as the Prime Minister.

The third strategy proved to be crucial in a country like ours, with its long tradition of celebrating great kings and elevating them to the stature of Gods, coupled with its general culture of reverence towards the powerful. The concept of democracy as a holistic system where people actively participate in their governance and make informed decisions about their socio-political lives and destinies never quite took root here, remaining restricted to voting and elections alone. For this reason, even after nearly 77 years of Independence, the country remains stuck in a largely monarchical set-up, one that is carefully fashioned through myth-making, re-telling and re-writing of history, and cultivating collective amnesia. This is precisely why the image of the present Prime Minister, dressed splendidly as a Medieval Hindu ruler, inaugurating a much-awaited, much-celebrated temple in a majestic ceremony becomes imprinted in public memory as one of retribution, of hope – of Lord Krishna fulfilling his promise of returning to earth whenever the oppression and injustice become too much to bear.

As the imagined Hindu nation grows, the India of the people – of conversations, exchange, and shared spaces and lifestyles – shrinks. With polarization at an all-time high since the time of the partition, the possibility of dialogue has disappeared, leaving people with little choice but to withdraw into their static, constricting echo chambers that continue to grow smaller and smaller with time. On the surface, the overwhelming fear of losing to one’s imaginary enemies manages to surpass the crippling anxiety emanating from the rising unemployment levels in the country, massive inflation, increasing poverty, a failing government healthcare system, and the ever-decreasing protection of social security schemes, but deep within, these remain as steady undercurrents in an average Indian’s life – refusing to allow a moment of peace.

As the 2024 Lok Sabha elections draw closer, India continues to move on the path of hatred and divisiveness, its people thoughtlessly giving in to the breaking up of many-hued, multifarious social worlds into narrow binaries that only serve the cruel, clever interests of those in power. Caught in its endless web of us and them, it is only a matter of time until the new India, the Hindu India, is left standing as a picture of profound modern loneliness on the world map, stripped of its identity, divorced from its roots, an epitome of utter desolation and despair.

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Madhubanti Talukdar is a social science researcher from Kolkata who holds a postgraduate degree in Sociology from South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi. Having worked across a diverse range of projects in the past three and a half years, her research interests include feminism and gender justice, sexual and reproductive health and rights, labour and migration, memory and oral history, and Sociology of religion.