ABSTRACT

In this chapter, we analyze how a majoritarian Hindu nationalism has been inscribed into law in unprecedented ways under Narendra Modi. In doing so, we start from Hindu nationalist attempts at redefining the Indian nation through grassroots mobilization and violence from the 1990s. The chapter then analyzes the more recent attempts by the Modi regime at mobilizing law in order to align the nation with the core tenets of Hindu nationalism. This, we argue, is in effect an attempt at legally locking in Hindu nationalist claims to the nation in ways that make it exceedingly difficult to reverse such claims in the future, and which erodes democratic rights in dramatic ways.