The rise of Hindutva under India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has understandably unsettled Bangladesh. Geography alone explains part of this anxiety: India surrounds Bangladesh on three sides. But the deeper concern lies in the ideological shift within India itself. A country once anchored by moderate, secular parties -- most notably the Congress, which led the independence movement, which now finds its political center of gravity pulled sharply toward a religious majoritarian vision.
The BJP, a relative newcomer compared to India’s older political formations, has built its ascent on a powerful fusion of Hindu identity, cultural revivalism, and political mobilization. Its call to unite Hindus under the banner of Hindutva first took root in Gujarat and then swept across Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. Today, Hindutva is a defining marker of Indian nationhood for the ruling establishment.
But this transformation raises urgent questions -- not only for India’s neighbours, but for India’s own citizens. Nearly 20% of Indians belong to minority communities: Roughly 224 million Muslims, 44 million Christians, 25 million Sikhs, and 10 million Buddhists. India is, in fact, the world’s third-largest Muslim-majority population after Indonesia and Pakistan. What becomes of these millions who do not subscribe to Hindutva? Are they any less Indian? Does their faith render them outsiders in the land of their birth?
These questions are not unique to India. They reflect a global pattern: The resurgence of religion as a political force.
Across continents, religion has entered politics as an identity marker and a tool of populist mobilization. Even in the United States -- whose Constitution enshrines strict separation of church and state -- Christian evangelical activism has reshaped regional and national politics. In Europe, far-right parties in France, Austria, and Belgium invoke “Christian identity” not as theology but as a cultural weapon against immigration and Islam.
Scholars often describe political history as cyclical. Periods of liberalization provoke conservative backlash; secularism triggers religious revival; globalization fuels nationalist retrenchment. The decline of socialism and communism -- once the ideological lodestars for youth -- has coincided with the rise of culturally conservative, religion-based politics. This shift is not driven by a single cause but by a convergence of anxieties: Identity, rapid technological change, demographic shifts, and the human search for belonging.
For centuries, religion shaped governance across Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa. The Islamic Caliphate unified faith and state until the Ottoman Empire’s collapse after World War I. The modern idea of separating religion from politics emerged only with the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions.
The United States became the first nation to constitutionally separate church and state -- a principle that has endured for more than 250 years. Europe followed with its own secular turn, while communism in Russia and China enforced an even more aggressive rejection of religion in public life.
Yet the 20th century produced an irony: After decades of secularization, people began returning to religion as a political anchor. Christian Democratic parties dominated post-war Europe. In the United States, the Moral Majority and other evangelical groups reshaped the Republican Party from the late 1970s onward. In Turkey, Islamic political movements gained strength despite Atatürk’s secular constitution.
This shift may reflect a broader historical cycle rather than a permanent ideological realignment. Critics note that the resurgence of conservative and religious politics stems not from a single cause but from a convergence of cultural anxiety, identity politics, globalization, the erosion of older ideologies, rapid technological change, and a human search for belonging and stability.
The world, however, has changed in the last hundred years. World War I not only demolished the Ottoman Empire, and defaced the world map, it also ushered in political beliefs and practices that are antithetical to religion.
First was secularism, which entered politics after the French Revolution and the period of enlightenment which coined secularism, separation of church and state, as an ideology. Second, a more aggressive form of this separation came with the spread of communism as an ideology which spread after World War I in Russia and later into other countries of Europe, and in a vehement form in China.
The irony, however, came to dominate the next decades. People started to go back to religion and support politicians who adhere to their faiths and elect them to office. Following World War II in the late 1940s, religion-based political organizations (primarily Christian Democratic parties) became a dominant, mainstream force in Europe.
In the US, a bastion of secularism, conservative Christians engaged in a massive political realignment beginning in the late 1970s. Organizations like the Moral Majority (founded in 1979) mobilized evangelical voters into the Republican Party over issues like school prayer, abortion, and family values.
India’s embrace of religion-based politics is not an anomaly in world history. But its consequences are uniquely consequential because of India’s size, diversity, and history of communal violence.
The subcontinent has repeatedly witnessed how religious polarization can tear apart the social fabric -- from Partition to the riots that have scarred both India and Bangladesh.
The immediate danger is not theoretical. When minorities feel cornered, when political rhetoric paints them as outsiders, when laws and policies appear to privilege one community over others, the result is predictable: Alienation, resentment, and eventually unrest.
History offers sobering lessons. Sectarian conflict in Ireland, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East shows how elevating one religious identity while diminishing another leads to cycles of violence that can last generations.
India’s leaders may aspire to consolidate power for decades, but true power in a democracy comes from the consent of all its people -- not just the majority.
India is not a monolith; it is a mosaic of religions, languages, and ethnicities. Its greatness has always come from this plurality.
For Bangladesh, the rise of Hindutva is more than a geopolitical concern. It is a reminder of how fragile communal harmony can be when politics weaponizes identity.
For India, the challenge is internal: Whether it can preserve the inclusive, pluralistic ethos that has long defined its national character.
The world will continue to witness cycles of religious and secular politics. But nations that have experienced the trauma of communal division cannot afford complacency.
India’s future stability -- and the peace of the region -- depends on leaders who recognize that a nation of many faiths cannot be governed by elevating one above all others.
Pluralism is not India’s burden. It is its greatest strength. One hopes its leaders remember that before the cost becomes too high.
Ziauddin Choudhury has worked in the higher civil service of Bangladesh early in his career, and later for the World Bank in the US.