Has Hindutva Peaked in India?

The Diplomat

18-07-2025

The third consecutive Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, Modi 3.0, has now been in power for slightly over a year. Unlike Modi 1.0 and Modi 2.0, the current BJP-led government is a coalition government that faces political constraints and must make compromises to enact its agenda. Recent trends raise the question of whether conservatism — social and political — including Hindu nationalism or Hindutva, has peaked in India.
This question is distinct from whether the BJP has peaked as a political force. In fact, the two questions may be inversely related, particularly if the BJP has little more to gain from promoting an explicitly Hindutva agenda. Hindu nationalism is an amorphous idea that can take on many forms, ranging from advocating for the establishment of a theocracy, to privileging Hindu customs and forcing assimilation, to the establishment of a majoritarian state that would still maintain constitutional rights for all, to the idea of treating Hinduism as a sort of cultural brand for India. The last of these visions seems to have increasingly prevailed: a far cry from what many on the right had previously advocated.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains highly popular, according to polls, and the right-leaning BJP does not seem to be at electoral risk, having performed well in recent local elections. Nonetheless, there are three reasons why the specific political agenda associated with Hindutva has peaked and may no longer play an important role going forward.
First, the Hindutva movement has achieved most of its big goals, such as the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, taking a tough line on Pakistan, and the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which gave the state of Jammu and Kashmir autonomy. Other goals, such as the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi and the implementation of a uniform civil code (UCC) offer the prospect of a tough battle in exchange for diminishing electoral returns. As the results of the 2024 general election demonstrated, a successful Hindutva agenda is not enough for the BJP to win a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha, especially when people have other concerns.
Second, Hindutva has either run into political opposition to its goals, or political calculations have led it to change its view on certain issues, ranging from language to religion to caste. For example, a recent move by the BJP-led government of Maharashtra to make Hindi a mandatory third language in the state, where Marathi is spoken, ran into strong opposition from other right-wing, nationalist parties also rooted in the Hindutva movement, but which promote local interests. The Hindutva movement, and the BJP in particular, is also moving toward a more accommodating stance toward minorities, especially Muslims. Perhaps this is driven by electoral calculations, but many people on the right seem to revel in the image of India as a successful multifaith society, rather than as a religiously or culturally homogenous one.
Not long ago, Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu organization with close ties with the BJP, gave a speech advocating for reconciliation with the past and avoiding further disputes between Hindus and Muslims over historical mosques built over Hindu temples. During the May 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan, the Indian government promoted a multifaith, rather than exclusively Hindu, identity by fielding a Muslim spokeswoman, Colonel Sofia Qureshi, for example. This demonstrates a move away from some of the more explicit rhetoric of characterizing India as a Hindu state. Nationalism remains extremely popular, but its expression has changed.
No issue demonstrates the changing social priorities of the Hindu right more than its embrace of the enumeration of castes in the upcoming 2027 census. The Hindutva movement, and the BJP, have generally downplayed caste and projected the idea of a united Hindu community — undivided by divisions of jati — that would help it ride to legislative majorities. Of course, the BJP has been adept at using caste calculations to win elections, but caste has never been a major plank of its ideology; the party's 2024 electoral manifesto did not mention it even once. Despite this, caste has remained a major feature of Indian society, and one of the few ways for opposition parties to push back against Hindutva and make electoral gains. One reason the BJP lost its majority in the 2024 election was because of faltering support among certain castes in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The potential of more caste-based reservations is particularly attractive for backward castes, especially in an economy that lacks a strong tradition of private entrepreneurship. Other parties have failed to offer compelling alternative visions to much of the BJP platform: development, nationalism, and geopolitical assertiveness, all of which are popular. But the promise of reservations and welfare tied to caste numbers is a temptation that can lure many voters away from the BJP to regional parties or the opposition Indian National Congress. Thus, in order to remain electorally competitive, the Hindu right must dilute its ideology of Hindu unity and embrace caste politics. But a caste census would further entrench caste divisions, making it more difficult in the future to push for an agenda on the basis of a united Hindu community. Perhaps this is why the Hindutva movement is becoming more accommodating toward minorities, whose votes it may need.
Third, the social and economic aspirations of much of India's population have changed. The idea of promoting Hindu customs and demanding assimilation into them has less salience when the idea of Hindu tradition has itself changed. The electorate is also increasingly composed of different types of people with varying ideologies, which means that the political right has to modify its agenda in order to match the views of an increasingly young, educated, and connected population that is in some ways both increasingly liberalized and also increasingly prone to 'first-world' problems such as declining fertility. Advocating for cultural issues that are no longer outstanding problems is not a winning strategy.
Dr. Alice Evans, a social scientist at King's College London, corresponded with The Diplomat about the impact of technology on gender norms and Indian society. According to Evans, young people may 'push for greater freedoms' as a result of increased smartphone access. Smartphones make it easier for men and women to interact across caste lines and can also contribute to the spread of progressive Western ideas, especially through video. Changing gender norms, particularly an increase in friendship between men and women, move societies away from traditional social patterns. At the same time, Evans noted that 'there is a big gap in smartphone ownership' and that men can use the internet to 'express discourses of resentment and hostility' and 'may police and shame young women for impropriety.' In other words, the spread of technology and new ideas mean that there is 'lots of scope for ideological persuasion.'
How the impact of technology and societal change plays out in mixing modern and traditionalist ideas is exemplified by the Uniform Civil Code, Uttarakhand, 2025, which was enacted by a BJP government. BJP-led governments have long championed a uniform civil code, which is generally opposed by the Muslim community because they fear the abolition of their distinct personal law. The Uttarakhand UCC demonstrates that the BJP has attempted to synthesize old and new in a concession to changing norms, while also trying to remain true to its original agenda: the code gives women equal inheritance rights, but also sets the age of marriage at 21 for men and 18 for women. It recognizes extramarital cohabitation but also requires the registration of such relationships. In the span of little over a decade, groups on the Hindu-right went from protesting Valentine's Day to cautiously supporting gay rights. Hindutva's traditionalist stances, therefore, seem to have peaked, or at least begun to incorporate elements of a more liberal worldview, which is influenced by concepts of rights and, in the case of caste, social justice.
Legislative successes, new political realities, and changing social norms have all contributed to altering the agenda of the BJP and the ideology of Hindu Nationalism. Together, these trends point toward a conclusion that Hindutva, or at least much of the old goals and program of Hindutva, has peaked.