At 75, dreams of a Hindu nation leave Indian minorities sleepless

VARANSI, India: The Hindu priest on the banks of the holy river Ganges spoke softly, but had a threatening message 75 years after the birth of independent India: his religion must be the heart of Indian identity.

"We must change with time," said Jairam Mishra. "Now we must cut every hand that is raised against Hinduism." Hindus make up the overwhelming majority of India´s 1.4 billion people but when Mahatma Gandhi secured its independence from Britain in 1947 it was as a secular, multi-cultural state.

Now right-wing calls for the country to be declared a Hindu nation and Hindu supremacy to be enshrined in law are growing rapidly louder, making its 210-million-odd Muslims increasingly anxious about their future.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has backed policies and projects across the country -- including a grand new temple corridor in the holy city of Varanasi -- that reinforce and symbolise the trend. A grand temple is under construction in the holy Hindu city of Ayodhya, where Hindu zealots destroyed a Mughal-era mosque three decades ago, triggering widespread sectarian violence that killed more than 1,000 people nationwide. The BJP has backed a $300 million, 210-metre statue off the Mumbai coast of Hindu warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji.

"The infrastructure push, roads, riverbank projects and cleanliness -- everything´s better," said Syed Feroz Hussain, 44. But the Muslim hospital worker said he was "really worried" about his children´s future. "Unlike the past, there is also too much violence and killing over religion and a constant feeling of tension and hatred" between communities, he said.

Authorities have carried out arbitrary demolitions of homes of individuals accused of crimes -- most them Muslims -- in what activists say is an unconstitutional attempt to crush minority dissent.

In Karnataka -- which saw a spate of attacks on Christians last year -- the BJP has backed a ban on hijab in schools, which triggered Muslim street protests.

Emboldened Hindu groups have laid claims to Muslim sites they say were built atop temples during Islamic rule -- including a centuries-old mosque next to the grand Varanasi corridor opened by Modi -- raising fears of a new Ayodhya. "We´re a Hindu nation because India´s identity is Hindu," its leader Surendra Jain said.