Securitization, Jihad, and Hindu Supremacy in India by Safa Ahmed

When targeting Muslim communities, securitization is often justified by the same bogeyman: jihad, that nebulous specter of Muslim-perpetrated violence against the non-Muslim masses. According to the far-right government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, jihad is rampant in India (Human Rights Watch, 2024). As the claim goes, Muslims (comprising 14% of the population) pose an active threat to all aspects of Hindu society (80% of the population), from the stability of the economy, to the safety of Hindu women, to the demographic makeup of the entire nation – making extraordinary state repression appear not only justified, but necessary.

The threat, however, is manufactured. In reality, Indian Muslims are the most overtly persecuted religious minority in the nation (Indian American Muslim Council, 2026), facing rampant mob violence, lynchings, targeted home demolitions, wanton imprisonment, and in some states, apartheid levels of discrimination and ethnic cleansing (Panel of Independent International Experts, 2026). Driving this campaign of hate is Hindutva, or Hindu supremacy, an ideology modeled off European fascist movements of the 1920s that believes India should be a Hindu ethnostate, while minorities – particularly Muslims – should be “wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges . . . not even citizens’ rights,” as ideologue and militant leader M.S. Golwalkar put it (Ahmed, 2026). Since coming to power in 2014, Modi and his far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have thrust this once-fringe movement into the mainstream. Through the Hindutva lens, virtually anything an Indian Muslim does, no matter how mundane, can be recast as “jihad”, thereby transforming ordinary aspects of Muslim life into security threats that warrant state intervention.

Because Hindutva depends on treating Muslims as an ever-present security threat, bizarre new forms of “jihad” must constantly be in circulation to frighten the Hindu populus. One that is constantly in focus is “love jihad”, or the conspiracy that Muslim men have an agenda to convert Hindu women through seduction (Chaudhuri, 2022); Hindu supremacist speakers frequently call on audiences to arm their daughters with swords and tridents, lest they be lured in by the “sexual prowess” of “trained [Muslim] stud bulls” (Clarion India, 2024). Also popularly invoked are “land jihad”, or the idea that Muslims build homes and mosques illegally to encroach on government-owned land; “thuk jihad,” or the invented epidemic of Muslim street vendors spitting into Hindu patrons’ food; and the Great Replacement Theory-esque “population jihad”, which falsely warns that Muslims are reproducing at rates that will render Hindus a minority in a matter of decades. (Note, once again, that Muslims are only 14% of the population.)

As fantastical as these claims are, the consequences of their proliferation have been tangible and violent. Under the pretext of preventing love jihad, Hindu militant mobs prowl their localities seeking to punish interfaith relationships, threatening to raise “the sword” against those who “threaten [Hindu] women” (The Intercept, 2021). Muslim men have been harassed, abducted, assaulted, and even lynched over real or imagined relationships with Hindu women. Most alarmingly, 12 of India’s 28 states have passed laws that effectively criminalize conversion to Islam or Christianity: conversion or attempts at conversion “by marriage or for marriage” is punishable by one to five years of imprisonment, while concealing one’s faith “with intention to marry” is punishable by up to 10 years in prison (Wilson, 2023). Interfaith romance is thereby cast as a public safety crisis rather than a personal choice.

Land jihad is invoked when state governments deploy bulldozers against entire Muslim settlements, businesses, Islamic schools, and places of worship. Neighborhoods housing thousands of families and decades-old mosques are labeled “encroachments,” and those who reside there are accused of “illegal” activity, allowing collective punishment to be framed as law enforcement (Sharma, 2025). So common is this phenomenon that BJP parades have begun including bulldozers as symbols of “law and order.” (Shih and Gupta, 2022)

Similarly, the specter of population jihad is used as a reason to re-elect the BJP for term after term, particularly after the government’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC) published a paper just ahead of the 2024 elections claiming a 43% boom in the Muslim population from 1950 to 2015, versus a nearly 8% decline in the Hindu population. Critics point out that this paper is essentially propaganda – the Hindu population increased by roughly 663 million people, about five times the absolute increase in the Muslim population, over the same time period. Yet BJP leaders pursue the Hindu vote by linking Muslim population increase with danger; as one politician posted on X, “Left to the [opposition], there would be no country for Hindus” (Al Jazeera, 2024). In a similar vein, claims of “demographic change” via “illegal infiltrators” from Muslim-majority Bangladesh drive forced deportations, eviction drives, and threats of ethnic cleansing against the native Muslim population in the BJP-ruled state of Assam.

Securitization against jihad also serves another purpose: it redirects public anger away from government failures. In 2020, social media users, law enforcement, and government officials alike blasted Muslims with accusations of purposefully spreading COVID-19 through “Corona jihad”, providing a convenient scapegoat that diverted public outrage from the Modi government’s catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic. The campaign fueled a wave of Islamophobic violence, including physical attacks on Muslims, efforts to bar them from entering gated communities and villages, and calls to boycott Muslim vendors amid claims that they were waging biological warfare through “spit jihad” (Al Jazeera, 2020).”

Even Muslims’ civic participation is reframed as a threat to India. Most recently, BJP leaders have trotted out “vote jihad,” or the notion that Muslims weaponize their voter rights against Hindu – or rather, Hindu supremacist – interests, calling it “dangerous for [India’s] democracy (Sharma, 2024).” Meanwhile, BJP governments in Bihar, Assam, and West Bengal have deleted millions of Muslims from voter rolls to secure an advantage over opposition parties (Mitra, 2026). Muslims who did show up to polling booths in recent elections were met with harassment from local BJP politicians and baton-charges by police. In one case, a police officer in Uttar Pradesh pointed a gun at a group of Muslim women outside a polling location, saying he had “orders” to do so (Maktoob, 2024).

If this is the punishment directed toward Muslims living their private lives, what then of the Muslim activist, journalist, or student leader who challenges the regime outright? This type of jihadi is slapped with even more egregious legal charges: outraging the religious sentiments of Hindus (Indian Kanoon, n.d.) , sedition (BBC News, 2016), terrorism (USCIRF, n.d.). The Modi government has turned the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), a draconian anti-terror law under which bail is nearly unattainable, into a weapon against its critics, particularly minorities. Often, the accused have done little more than threaten the government’s narrative control: Muslim journalist Siddique Kappan was detained from October of 2020 to February of 2023 for traveling to report on the rape of a Dalit woman that sparked nationwide outrage (USCIRF, n.d.), while student activist Umar Khalid has been imprisoned since 2020 for merely giving a speech (USCIRF, n.d.). Between 2019 and 2023 – amid nationwide Muslim-led protests against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act – over 10,000 people were arrested under the UAPA. As of December of 2025, only 335 people had been convicted, leaving thousands indefinitely imprisoned before ever facing trial (The Wire Staff, 2025).

The asymmetry is striking: while the state relentlessly securitizes Muslim life, it almost never treats Hindu supremacist violence as a security problem. Indeed, such violence is celebrated by BJP leaders, most notably in the runup to the 2024 general elections. “Shoot the chest of people who do love jihad,” declared politician T. Raja Singh in Maharashtra. Delhi Labour Minister Kapil Mishra threatened, “Wherever Afzal [a Muslim] comes out, we will enter that house and kill him.” Modi himself said at a rally in Gujarat, “I had heard of land jihad and love jihad, but now I am concerned about vote jihad (Indian American Muslim Council, 2025).” Those who then stand up to jihad are the real patriots, the defenders of the Hindu nation.

Because Hindu supremacist violence is framed as defense rather than extremism, it escapes the logic of securitization altogether. Thus, when a gang of cow vigilantes lays out strips of nails as booby traps for Muslim truck drivers, drags their victims from their vehicles, and then livestreams their terror as they are beaten, tortured, and lynched, the motive is “protecting Hindu sentiments”. Hindu supremacist leaders frame boycotts of Muslim businesses as self-defense: “If you buy from Abdul to save five rupees, Abdul will use the same money to behead your child, to pick up your daughters, and to defend terrorists in court,” declared one hate speaker in 2024 (Vakil, Mellins and Bose, 2025). Mosques, simply by existing, are reminders of centuries-past Islamic rule, and thereby are subjected to hostile takeover: poojas conducted by force in basements, lawsuits ripping places of worship out of Muslim hands.

The fragile Hindu supremacist ego – and therefore, India as a nation – is constantly being “protected” through violent acts of chauvinism, each a brick in a new Victory Tower, built on an ever-growing pile of Muslim bodies. In a way, Narendra Modi is right: there is a holy war ravaging India, but it is not being waged by the minority.

What can be done to combat this slow smothering of a religious minority? Indian Muslim activists have raised the call over and over again: it is on the international community, the activists within civil society across the world, to raise their voices and draw attention to Modi’s regime of hate. Share their stories, amplify their research and reporting, and do not allow Modi’s India to call itself “the world’s largest democracy” – right now, it is anything but.