‘Hindu nation’: Religion trumps caste in India vote

AGRA: Born at the bottom of the Hindu faith’s rigid caste system, voters like Anil Sonkar will determine whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi returns to power next month.

More than two-thirds of India’s 1.4 billion people are estimated to be on the lower rungs of a millennia-old social hierarchy that divides Hindus by function and social standing.

Politicians of all stripes have courted lower caste Indians with affirmative action programmes, job guarantees and special subsidies to mitigate long-standing discrimination and disadvantage.

But Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has established itself as India’s dominant political force with a different pitch: think of your religion first, and caste second.

“There are no economic opportunities and business has never been so bad for me,” said Sonkar, a 55-year-old fishmonger and a member of the Dalit castes, once disparagingly known as “untouchables”.

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“But under this government, we feel safe and proud as Hindus,” he told AFP in the tourist city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. “That is why, despite everything, I voted for Modi.”

Modi’s party is expected to easily win this year’s national election once it concludes in June, in large part due to his government’s positioning of the Hindu faith at the centre of its politics.

His government has been accused in turn of marginalising the country’s 200-million-plus Muslims, leaving many among them fearful for their futures in India.

But its strategy of appealing to pan-Hindu unity, and directing the faith’s internal frictions outwards, has reaped political dividends.

“The BJP’s base among the marginalised has grown over every election since 2014,” political scientist and author Sudha Pai told AFP.

The party, she added, had successfully forged a new pan-Hindu political coalition by showing respect to the “cultural symbols, icons and history” of low-caste voters, and in the process furthering its goal of building a “Hindu nation”.