ABSTRACT:
The struggle on 'minority issues' in India is for the rights of minority members' as equal citizens of India, especially in regard to the ethno-religious plurality recognized in the Constitution. The politics of majoritarianism practiced by the combined Hindutva front consisting of the Bhartiya Janata Party, the Shiva Sena, and other frontal organizations like the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal of the Sangh Parivar are causing fear and apprehension among the Christian-Muslim minorities as they would be marginalized and discriminated if such politics gain national power. Over the last decade and a half, such politics practiced in the name of majority have been attempting to construct a 'homogeneous' Indian identity basing itself on the majority religious ethos that can provide a cultural unity to the Indian nation-state. By articulating Hindutva explicitly as an ideology of cultural nationalism, they seek to divest India's established secular and culturally inclusive egalitarian national ethos. At the same time of oppose such political approach is reverted back by some political parties to safeguard rights of minorities with ulterior motive for the gain sake of sympathy of minorities. Thus infused with a strong missionary zeal of unitary nationalism Hindutva seeks to legitimize majority communalism in the name of nationalism. Such an attempt therefore stands against the national politics of democracy and secularism that protects the cultural ethos and practices of the minorities. Therefore Gurpreet Mahajan emphasizes that in India minority rights were granted to safeguard 'against the possibility of the state assimilating minority religious communities.