‘Vote jihad’: As Modi raises anti-Muslim India election pitch, what’s next?

Speaking to a saffron-clothed crowd of supporters in his home state of Gujarat earlier this week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned to an increasingly favoured electoral theme – how opposition parties are collaborating with Muslims to plot a takeover of the nation.

“[The opposition alliance] is asking Muslims to do ‘vote jihad’. This is new because we have so far heard about ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’,” said Modi, referring to a string of Islamophobic conspiracy theories, before emphasising to his audience why they needed to be fearful. “I hope you all know what the meaning of jihad is and against whom it is waged,”

As India’s giant national election nears its mid-point, with the third of seven phases of voting scheduled for May 7, Modi’s rhetoric against Muslims is growing shriller. That’s worrying analysts and even Muslims who backed the prime minister until recently but now fear that the rhetoric risks serving as oxygen for increased physical violence against Indian Muslims.

His latest remarks came after a local leader of the opposition Samajwadi Party, Maria Alam, addressed a gathering in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, asking Muslims to carry out a “jihad” of “votes”, as “that is the only jihad” that they could carry out to remove Modi from power. After Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attacked her for the use of “jihad” in her speech, she clarified to the press that by “jihad”, Arabic for struggle, she was encouraging Muslim voter participation.

Modi, in his speech, however, suggested that a call for “vote jihad” was “dangerous for the country’s democracy”. Critics and opposition leaders, however, allege that the PM’s words, targeted against India’s 200 million Muslims, are what are troubling for India, especially in the middle of a tense election, in which 960 million voters have registered to cast their votes.

‘Infiltrators’, ‘invaders’, ‘looters’

In a campaign speech last week, Modi equated the Muslim community with “infiltrators” and described them as “those who have more children”, pandering to a popular Hindu majoritarian trope that Muslims produce more children, with the aim of eventually outnumbering Hindus in India. In reality, Muslims constitute less than 15 percent of the national population, and government data shows their fertility rate is going down faster than that of Hindus and other major religious groups.

Those comments set off a political row, inviting sharp criticism from the opposition and sections of civil society. Nearly 20,000 citizens wrote to the Election Commission of India to act against the accusations of hate speech by Modi.