The anatomy of hatred | Political Economy

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It fears a dangerous increase between India and Pakistan last week, seeing an explosive mixture of militant violence, retaliation and mutual provocation threats. After the killing of 26 tourists in Indian -administered Kashmir, which India blamed on Pakistan, Islamabad claimed that it had a “credible intelligence” which suggested that India could launch a military strike within 36 hours. It raised the alarm in the capitals around the world.

This situation has worsened through tight -tet measures by two governments: cancellation of visas, diplomatic withdrawal, suspension of the important Sindh Water Agreement and display of military power, including India’s test missile strikes and an Indian drone in Pakistan.

Given that neighbors armed with nuclear weapons have historically been subjected to controversy over Kashmir, any wrong calculation can slip into a major confrontation. International powers, including the United States and China, have emphasized patience. However, the growing nationalist pressure in India and deep distrust between the two sides has created an unstable environment.

Since the partition of 1947, India and Pakistan have been an anti -Pakistan relationship. There have been wars like Kashmir, border conflicts and non -resolution conflicts. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, especially after the 2014 and 2019 elections, bilateral relations under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have increased significantly.

One of the most fruitful moves is that India’s unilateral cancellation of Article 370 in August 2019, which snatched Jammu and Kashmir from its semi-independent position-caused anger in Pakistan, which led to a decline in diplomatic relations, withdrawal of trade with the military. This deterioration in cross -border relations is parallel to the rapid increase in domestic enmity with Muslims within India.

Since the rise of the BJP, anti -Muslim rhetoric, discrimination laws such as citizenship amendment Act, widespread violence and Muslim institutional backwardness have increased. All of this is linked to the ideological inclination of the BJP, which has its roots in Hindutva. This ideological enmity appears to spread to foreign policy, where Pakistan-India Muslim-majority neighbors rapidly put it as both as a threat to security and a cultural opponent. To fully understand this pace, the BJP’s birth and ideological foundations must be understood, and how they inform their strict line against Muslims and Pakistan.

The ideological roots of the Bharatiya Janata Party are located in the Rashtriya Swayamsuk Singh, a Hindu nationalist organization founded in 1925 by Kishao Balirum Hijour. It was considered as a response to British colonialism and growing Hindu -Muslim tensions, the RSS created significant inspiration from the writings of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who supported the establishment of a culturally and politically united Hindu nation.

The RSS worked as a highly disciplined cadre, initially mostly comprised of upper -caste Brahmins, which is committed to protecting and promoting Hindu interests. Although it has presented itself as a cultural rather than a political force, the RSS has always spread Hindutva, or Hindu Nice ideology through paramilitary training, religious symbols (especially the worship of Hanuman), and has demanded unity in caste letters. Over time, the RSS has played a central role in the formation of India’s Hindu nationalist movement. Many prominent BJP personalities, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are closely associated with the organization.

The theory of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh is deeply impressed by the concept of Hindutva of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, as described in the text of his 1923, in the Accessories of Hindutva. Although the RSS describes itself as a cultural organization, its ideological commitment to the construction of the Hindu Rashtra (Nation) keeps it firmly in a nationalist framework that backs the non -Hindu communities. The main idea of ​​this global theory is that only those who believe in India as their Patravo (ancestral regions) and Panabhu (the Holy Land) can be considered as a complete member of the Indian nation.

This local and cultural standards automatically exclude Muslims and Christians, for which many sacred places are outside India. In particular, Islam is presented not as an indigenous belief but as a legacy of violent foreign victory. According to Savarkar, Islam entered India not through organic cultural synthesis but by “sword” – a device of destruction and humiliation over a resistant Hindu civilization. The RSS has inherited and inherited these stories, and celebrating Hindu -resistant heroes, especially under figures such as Aurangzeb, who develop Muslim rule as a period of national humiliation and subordinate.

Savarkar’s criticism in Hindutva’s accessories is historically forced to oppress Muslims as a stranger. Although he recognizes the joint ethnic lineage, he insists that Indian Muslims have cut off their cultural relationship with Hindu Sanskrit, and that indigenous heroes are with foreigners in Mecca and Medina instead of festivals, festivals and ideas. Change in Islam has been shown not as a free belief but the result of mass repression, which means a cultural breakdown for Savarkar, which can be repaired only by re -accuming in Hinduism.

Savarkar presents Muslims as a political responsibility, and a warning of potential loyalty to the Islamic Brotherhood (Pan Islamism) globally, beyond national borders. This makes Muslims in India a potentially unfaithful “second”, which is subject to the full acceptance of their Hindu priority. These ideological places create the cultural and political backbone of the RSS and, with the expansion, the BJP’s contemporaries form a BJP’s view on nationality, secularism and minority rights in India.

In modern India, Muslims face a rapidly abusive and uncertainty, which identifies both institutional discrimination and vigilant violence. After the April 2025 Pohgam attack, a wave of Islamophic cultural content, especially “Hindutva pop” songs, and AI generated propaganda emerged, surprisingly, which calls for hatred, decent and sectarian violence.

These digital antiquities often glorify Hindu retaliation and prepare Muslims as traitors, with attacks around the world with attacks, eviction, medical neglect and economic boycott that target Muslims across the country. This orchestrated reaction was not an isolated reaction, but a part of a vast, strategic dynamic of hate, which has become a feature of India’s political culture under the BJP. The government and its ideological allies have used sectarian violence as a tool to dominate and exclude sectarian violence.

This Islamophobia is deeply tied to the state -sponsored obsession with Pakistan, which the BJP has systematically surrendered for political advantage. Anti -Pakistan sentiment has been developed in the main plaque of domestic politics, media rhetoric and cultural production of India with a historical enmity.

From promoting the 2019 Paloma attack to promoting nationalist sentiment and winning elections, eliminating opposition figures, as Pakistani sympathizers, and removing this hatred through Bollywood blockbusters and newsletters, the BJP has promoted Pakistan and Pakistan. The rallies are echoing. The result of anti-Muslim prejudice and anti-Pakistan is not just politically viable-it is ideologically the focus of Hindutva nationalism and has no sign of its elimination.

Hindutva’s theory, as the BJP and its parents’ organization are champions by RSS, is naturally formed to maintain upper -caste Hindu dominance, often at the expense of lower caste communities. Ironically, the party has succeeded in gaining significant support from Dalits and OBCs through symbolic involvement, religious dynamic and welfare measures that clarify its elite. By adding lower-caste gods and folk heroes to a broader Hindu story and promoting cow protection and cultural biology, the BJP has given these communities a sense of relationship and relationship-if not real empowerment. However, the general election of 2024 exposed the limits of this strategy.

In states like Uttar Pradesh, the BJP suffered significant disadvantages due to increasing unemployment, inflation and economic backwardness and constitutional risk risks in Dalits and backward castes. Voters indicated a fatigue with a new interest in removing hateful politics and material inequality and democratic cuts.

Nevertheless, this election blow does not make any significant change in India’s foreign policy under Modi, especially to Pakistan. The BJP’s ideological project is still tied up to present Pakistan as a permanent enemy, which is an external extension of its internal Muslim “other”. This positioning justifies a railing cry for the Hindu alliance and a militant publication.

Depending on the party’s nationalist sentiment and security statements – especially during electoral cycles – there is no serious engagement or dentist with Pakistan. Pakistan should assess more diplomatic enmity, the media’s devilishness and potentially growing military operations, especially at domestic pressure within India.

Therefore, the most rational process for Pakistan is not to nurture the realistic expectations of reconciliation, but rather to strengthen its military preparations, strengthen the strategic alliance and maintain a vigilance against both the traditional and hybrid risks from the border.

Author is the Associate Professor and Head of the Economics Department at Commerce University Islamabad of Lahore Campus.