Dominant liberal thought in modern democracies affirms that religion and politics should always stay separate. This is naïve: religions are — and always have been — political movements. In fact, the world’s major religions are the most successful political parties of all time.

Think of Hinduism, Islam or Christianity as political parties, started by the respective prophets, which have evolved over centuries into trans-national, hyper-political entities, now called religion. Also, think of a 20th-century political movement like Maoism, which can similarly evolve over centuries into a trans-national religion, particularly if China becomes the dominant country of the 21st century, as it is on course to be.

In the long history of the world, yesterday’s politics is today’s religion, today’s politics is tomorrow’s religion, and so forth. Therefore, the impermeable “separation of the church and the state” is a red herring. In the world’s two largest democracies — India and the US — an eminently permeable membrane separates religion from politics.

Both the Hindu right in India, and the Christian right in the US, are active and mainstream political players. Their hatred of the ‘others’ (fundamentally Muslims) is an essential wedge that triumphant right-wing politicians from Narendra Modi to George W Bush have used en route to power. It is no coincidence that the current spate of Islamophobia in India comes around the same time as the elections in Bihar.

Post 9/11, the rabid Islamophobia of these politicians and their supporters is also a sign of the success of political Islam: the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or Islamic State’s global caliphate dreams need Muslim victimhood in pluralist democracies. In India, Modi’s government is unwittingly doing its best to help the likes of Islamic State establish their cardinal theory of Muslim victimhood. From the poor villager Mohammed Akhlaq to Bollywood’s biggest superstar Shah Rukh Khan, no one is spared the bile and bigotry of the Hindu right mob. The message to Indian Muslims from the country’s rulers is this: eat what we want you to eat, say what we want to hear, obey our orders, or else! It’s a message that is pushing the Indian Muslim to the brink.

Imagine waking up one day, as a south Indian lady or gent, and reading that north Indian politicians have banned the sale of uttappam in the country, and lynch mobs are attacking anyone who dares eat it. Or imagine complaining about the squalor of north Indian cities, only to be told that you are anti-national and a Pakistani agent. Imagine your patriotism questioned every time simply because you were born south Indian in a north Indian majority country. Over the past few weeks, that is how India has been treating its Muslims, encouraged by a prime minister who has made only lukewarm noises about tolerance.

But let us not blame the Hindu right alone. India’s left-liberal, secular political parties have a lot to answer too. In their haste to milk the Muslim vote bank, they have often played to the regressive Muslim gallery and promoted the dregs of the community to prominence. From Rajiv Gandhi’s insidious stand on the Shah Bano case to selling out Taslima Nasrin and Salman Rushdie, who were brave enough to speak against regressive Islam, India’s secular governments have, with their hypocritical stands, fed the right-wing Hindu resentment of Muslims. The secular skullduggery over not changing the most regressive elements of Muslim personal law has only made Muslims poorer, more ghettoised and vulnerable to the Hindu right’s aggression.

But there is also a core economic angle to the current ‘intolerance’, which most of Indian media blithely ignores in its analysis. The rapid economic growth of the last two decades has resulted in millions of Indians finally breaking the poverty trap and moving into the lower-middle-income bracket, making it the predominant income bracket in the country. A key characteristic of the lower middle-class is that its constituents are highly insecure about falling back into poverty, and they look at the poor and marginalised as their competitors for scarce resources.

In a 1993 essay titled ‘Modern Hate’, Chicago University Political Science professors Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph wrote about the mobs that demolished the Babri mosque. “They are the educated unemployed, not the poor and illiterate,” they wrote. “Frustrated by the lack of good jobs and opportunities, they are victims of modernisation, seeking to victimise others — like ‘pampered’ Muslims.”

If Modi had been able to deliver on his promised acchhe din , chances are that the intolerance debate would not have become so ugly. Faster growth would have meant less economic insecurity for the majority Hindu lower middle-class and less of a fight over economic resources like the cow. Till we become a real middle-income economy, intolerance fuelled by insecurity will be a regular feature of our political landscape.

The formula is simple: India needs to get richer to become more tolerant.

Sambuddha Mitra Mustafi is the editor of The Political Indiant; @some_buddha

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