Asif Mahmood

The recent incident in which an Indian state chief minister forcibly removed the veil of a Muslim woman was shamefull but not surprising. It was a dirty show rooted in power, prejudice, and ideological arrogance. The stripping away of a woman’s religious covering in public was meant to humiliate, to dominate, and to send a warning to an entire community. Such behavior is undoubtedly shameful, but it is not surprising, because it flows naturally from the ideological foundations of the Indian state.

India, at its core, has long operated as a Hindu majoritarian state with clear fascist traits. In this sense, it mirrors Israel, which openly defines itself as an exclusionary Zionist state built on ethnic supremacy. What the world is witnessing today is not a sudden collapse of Indian values, but the logical outcome of an ideological project embedded deep within the state from its earliest years.

This reality became apparent when the Indian constitution refused to recognize Sikhs as a distinct religious community and instead forcibly absorbed them into Hinduism. This was not a clerical error or a benign oversight. It was an ideological assertion of dominance, signaling that the state would determine identity, faith, and belonging according to the preferences of the majority. Minority communities were tolerated only insofar as they did not challenge this imposed hierarchy.

India’s much celebrated secularism has always functioned as camouflage. It concealed structural discrimination while projecting an image of pluralism to the outside world. The ban on cow slaughter, justified under the language of animal protection, is a telling example. Beneath this moral vocabulary lay a clear assertion of Hindu religious supremacy, selectively enforced and politically weaponized against Muslims and other marginalized groups.

What has changed under Narendra Modi is not the ideology itself, but the pretense surrounding it. The secular mask that earlier governments carefully maintained has been violently torn away. Hindutva fascism no longer hides behind constitutional rhetoric or symbolic inclusivity. It now operates openly and unapologetically. Lynching, public humiliation, disenfranchisement, and everyday intimidation are no longer anomalies. They have become instruments of ideological enforcement.

For Pakistan, this exposure is deeply significant. Pakistan was created precisely to protect Muslims from such majoritarian domination. As India moves further toward ideological extremism, Pakistan’s founding rationale of safeguarding religious identity and political dignity stands increasingly vindicated. The international community must now abandon comforting myths about Indian secularism and confront the reality of a state that has revealed its true face.

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