Elite political actors manufactured Hindu-Muslim religious identities to win electoral power.

Evidence

The British constructed new religious identities to create the divide, especially after the Hindus and Muslims had joined hands and risen against them jointly in 1857. Many historians assert that the Muslim other for Hindus came to be created during the British times which got reinforced by the creation of Pakistan out of India on religious grounds by the British rulers, before declaring Indian Independence, on the demand of some Muslim politicians, an event which resulted in large-scale communal violence. The political parties in independent India have consistently tried to polarise Hindus and Muslims on religious and other grounds to win their political favours. While the Hindu rightist parties constantly remind the Hindu electorates of their oppression and cultural subordination under the Muslim rule, the political discourse in India today centres around ‘communalism’, in which the Hindu rightist parties are blamed for spreading communalism, and the secular parties are blamed for appeasement of Muslims. The feelings of Hindu victimhood have considerably helped the Hindu rightist parties, whose presence in the Indian parliament was miniscule in the first 45 years of independence, to become the majority party twice and currently the ruling party in India. — R. C. Tripathi, R. Kumar, and V. N. Tripathi, When the Advantaged Feel Victimised, 14

Categorization

• XREF: Sharp parallel to the reader’s core frame: a historically dominant group (upper-caste Hindus / a religious majority) being positioned as victims — but here the victimhood was partly manufactured by external colonial rule and domestic political entrepreneurs rather than arising organically, which complicates a clean transfer of the whiteness-based theory. — connects to: Gujarat’s 2002 anti-Muslim violence was state-orchestrated and electorally rewarded — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 696; Anti-Muslim prejudice was deliberately deployed by elites at specific political moments. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 25; Electoral politics incentivize both parties to weaponize anti-Muslim racism for career gain — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 743
• QUESTION: Does the reader’s weak-identity/accountability-evasion framework require the group to construct its OWN victim narrative, or does externally-imposed identity construction (by the British) do equivalent work? This passage suggests the Indian case had a third party building the categories.

Broader Connections

• Anti-Muslim prejudice was deliberately deployed by elites at specific political moments. #corroborates (0.95) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 25
• Electoral politics incentivize both parties to weaponize anti-Muslim racism for career gain #corroborates (0.95) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 743