Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are now halfway through their five-year term. The BJP belongs to a vast family of organizations and associations known as the Sangh Parivar, all controlled by the cadre-based Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Its goal to establish Hindu dominance across India enjoys stronger backing than ever now that the BJP controls the government without coalition support.

For years, the Left has debated whether the RSS’s declared project of securing a Hindu state amounts to fascism. No matter what we call it, everyone agrees that it wants to found an authoritarian and belligerent nationalist order.

This would transform India: Hindus would enjoy differential rights, and religious minorities, namely, Muslims and Christians, would face permanent marginalization. To accomplish this, RSS would have to institutionalize this stratification: legal and extra-legal mechanisms to monitor, subordinate, contain, defuse, and even eliminate actual or potential resistance, no matter its direction or source.