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An excellent point by @esaagar. Opposing hindutva is one thing, but treating it as a lunatic fringe is simply inaccurate, and a rhetorical ploy often used to justify reductive, bigoted attacks against hindus, under the guise of opposing "hindutva, not hinduism" https://twitter.com/esaagar/status/1322271724570845184
When you claim that BJP supporters are all fascists/extremists, you're not referring (as you might imagine) to a small cabal of elite conspirators, but ~300m Indians-- many of whom are poor and "low" caste-- who support the BJP and subscribe to its ideology.
That's almost the entire population of America! Now, if you think that they're _all_ irredeemable fascists, then please just say so. Alternatively, consider the fact that maybe your understanding of an emergent political phenomenon in another country whose ascendance is
driven by the non-english speaking poor is not foolproof, and that the simple narrative you've been spoon-fed by the New York Times does not reflect the the ground realities in a country that contains a sixth of humanity.
The issue here is that Indian political dynamics are fundamentally illegible to American political discourse in a way that, say, European politics are not. This should not be surprising. Any discursive framework is a product of a particular history and political tradition that
helps us make sense of different positions and values. The legibility of a particular view within that framework is what distinguishes a reasonable view that you may disagree with from a view that you consider irrational and "fringe."
Consider that the BJP-- which is now by far the most popular party in India-- traces its revival to the movement to rebuild the Ram temple in Ayodhya (which was just inaugurated following the Supreme Court verdict). For individuals steeped in American political discourse, this
is not a legible issue, so the reflexive response is to explain this phenomenon in the most reductive manner possible, to elicit the appropriate fear response (e.g. fascism, religious chauvinism, nationalism). This is not conducive to understanding.
Even worse, this tendency strips Indians of agency of their own, characterizing the country's politics as derivative of certain "forces" that make people act in strange ways, rather than the product of deliberate choice oriented towards particular political objectives.
I do think this distortionary effect is accelerated by the fact that the Indians (diaspora or otherwise) who populate these newsrooms are pretty well assimilated into the sort of standard anglo-american liberalism that you expect to find from similarly placed journalists from
western countries. This isn't a problem in and of itself, but I do think that it gives their peers the impression that these values are rooted in Indian society, which is just not the case.
And of course, the Indian journos will never admit this, because doing so calls into question their credibility as reliable interpreters. And so the cycle continues...
