In the small but voluble precincts of the Indian Internet, specifically, the corner of X formerly known as Twitter, where men with saffron-tinted display pictures and bios reading ‘Civilizational Hindu | Anti-Woke | Follow Back’ hold court, a curious consensus has emerged. Narendra Modi, the man under whose government the Ram Mandir got built, the man who abolished Triple Talaq, abrogated Article 370, passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, reformed the Waqf Board, constructed the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, and did more for Hindu civilizational infrastructure in a decade than every previous Prime Minister combined did in seven, is, wait for it: anti-Hindu.
Not insufficiently Hindu. Not tactically cautious on Hindu matters. Anti-Hindu. A traitor. A ‘Maulana’. A man in saffron clothing who secretly harbours, if not sympathies for, then at least a supine indifference to the ongoing civilizational project that his most fervent supporters believe should be the sole preoccupation of the Indian state from dawn to dusk and twice on Tuesdays.
I have been reading these complaints with the same mixture of fascination and mild nausea with which one reads the restaurant reviews of a man who has been served a seven-course banquet and sends it back because the garnish was parsley instead of coriander.
Let us, as they say, examine the charges.
The first allegation is that Modi promotes Buddhism abroad instead of Hinduism. He says ‘Buddh ka desh hai Bharat’ at international forums when he should be saying ‘Ram ka desh’ or ‘Krishna ka desh’. This, apparently, constitutes civilizational treason.
One hesitates to point out what should not require pointing out, but: the Buddha is the ninth avatar of Vishnu. This is not a fringe interpretation. It is standard Hindu theology. It has been standard Hindu theology for rather a long time. Claiming Buddhist heritage at the United Nations is not replacing Ram with Buddha. It is reclaiming something that belongs to the Hindu intellectual tradition before the Chinese and Japanese finish the job of appropriating it entirely.
But perhaps the deeper absurdity is this: the same people who accuse Modi of ‘selling Buddhism’ to the West would, one imagines, be the first to complain if China established itself as the global custodian of Buddhist civilisation, which, incidentally, it is doing at considerable speed and expense while the Indian right argues about whether the Prime Minister is Hindu enough.
The complaint extends to Modi’s remark that ‘Hinduism is not a religion’. Here, at least, he is in good company. Swami Vivekananda said substantially the same thing at the Parliament of Religions in 1893. The argument that Hinduism is a dharma, a civilisational matrix, a way of being in the world that transcends the Western category of ‘religion’, is philosophically sophisticated and, more to the point, strategically useful. It elevates rather than diminishes. But elevation, apparently, is a form of betrayal when you are busy measuring the precise degree of one man’s saffron.
And then there is the matter of Ambedkar statues. ‘Crores spent on Ambedkar statues’, the complaint goes, ‘while temple restoration gets peanuts.’ One wonders what sort of peanuts cost Rs 900 crore for the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor. Or Rs 800 crore for the Mahakal Corridor. Or 12,000 crore for the Char Dham Highway. Add it all up, which these gentlemen conspicuously decline to do, and temple spending under Modi exceeds Ambedkar memorial spending by roughly an order of magnitude.
But arithmetic, like the Buddha’s avatarhood, is apparently a detail too tedious for the civilizationally aggrieved.
We arrive at the second cluster of charges, which might be summarised as: Modi is a closet Maulana who appeases Muslims while pretending to be Hindu.
The evidence for this extraordinary claim includes: he visited a church once on Christmas. He has been known to attend iftar. He went to a dargah. And, the coup de grâce, he did not personally immolate himself on the pyre of Nupur Sharma’s career.
Let us take these in order.
The church visit. Every head of state in every democracy visits places of worship of multiple faiths. It is protocol. It is diplomacy. It is what grown-ups do when they lead a country of 1.4 billion people who follow assorted religions. One Christmas visit does not undo Rs 13,700 crore rupees in Hindu infrastructure. If it did, every temple in the world would have ceased to exist the first time a king glanced at a mosque.
The Nupur Sharma affair is more interesting, because it reveals the fundamental unseriousness of the ‘Maulana Modi’ charge. Sharma was not arrested. She was not prosecuted by the central government. She was suspended from the party. The party, not the government, because her remarks triggered a diplomatic crisis with Gulf nations that host eight million Indian workers who remit Rs 50 billion dollars annually.
Now. You may disagree with that decision. You may feel that defending a spokesperson’s right to quote Islamic scripture on television is worth more than Rs 50 billion dollars and eight million livelihoods. But you should at least have the intellectual honesty to state the trade-off explicitly, rather than pretending it does not exist. ‘What would you have done?’ is a question that tends to produce either silence or fantasy from the accusers.
And meanwhile, this supposed ‘Maulana’ abolished Triple Talaq, something no Congress government in 60 years had the nerve to touch. He passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which specifically helps non-Muslim refugees (the majority of whom are Hindu). He reformed the Waqf Board through the 2025 Amendment Act, putting District Collectors in charge of property verification. He removed the ‘Haj subsidy’.
If this is appeasement, one trembles to imagine what firmness looks like.
The caste census announcement provoked similar convulsions. ‘Civilizational betrayal’, it was called. ‘Modi said caste census was an ‘Urban Naxal phenomenon’ in 2023 and now he announces it in 2025. Hashtags trended. Rahul Gandhi was quoted as celebrating, which was taken as proof positive that something catastrophic had occurred, on the theory that anything Rahul Gandhi approves of must, by definition, be wrong.
But consider: caste data has not been collected since 1931. That is 96 years of making policy for a quarter of the population based on statistics from the era of the gramophone. The argument that not counting caste makes caste disappear is the demographic equivalent of closing your eyes and hoping the tiger goes away. It does not. The tiger merely eats you in the dark.
And here is the delicious irony that the anti-caste-census brigade declines to notice: accurate caste data might actually help General Category communities by revealing that many so-called ‘forward’ communities are economically destitute and deserve support. It might also expose the creamy layer among OBCs that monopolises reservation benefits. But that would require thinking two moves ahead, which is evidently asking too much.
As for the SC/ST Act: yes, it exists. Yes, conviction rates are 15 to 20%, among the lowest for any criminal law, which means the judicial system is already filtering false cases. And yes, repealing it would tell 25% of the Hindu population that the party of Hindu unity does not care about their safety. There is a word for a political strategy that deliberately alienates a quarter of your own coalition. The word is ‘suicide’.
The demand to ‘free Hindu temples from government control’ is perhaps the most emotionally potent of all the allegations, and it deserves a serious answer rather than the performative outrage it usually receives.
Four lakh Hindu temples are under state government control. Mosques and churches are autonomous. This asymmetry is real, and it is unjust.
But here is where the accusation collapses into constitutional illiteracy: temple administration is a State List subject. To be precise: entry 28. The central government cannot legislate on it any more than it can legislate on the colour of your living room curtains. Asking Modi to override state governments on temple control would violate the same federalism that BJP champions and that, incidentally, prevents hostile state governments from overriding BJP initiatives.
What the central government has done is create autonomous trust models: Kashi Vishwanath Trust, Somnath Trust, Ram Janmabhoomi Trust. These are the Somnath model being replicated temple by temple, slower than a blanket legislation, yes, but legally bulletproof and immune to constitutional challenge. The direction is right. The pace is arguable. But ‘11 years and not one temple freed’ is a lie by omission so brazen it would make a Congress spokesperson blush, assuming Congress spokespersons are still capable of that particular emotion.
Similarly, the Places of Worship Act of 1991, which freezes the religious character of all sites as of August 15, 1947, is cited as proof of Modi’s perfidy. ‘Why hasn’t he repealed it?’
Because the Supreme Court is already hearing challenges to it. Multiple petitions are pending. Courts have allowed the Gyanvapi survey, hearings on Shahi Idgah, ASI investigations in Sambhal. The judicial route is delivering results without the political combustibility of blanket repeal, which would open thousands of disputed sites simultaneously in a country where the police-to-population ratio is already among the world’s worst.
And the Modi government filed an affidavit declining to defend the Act. In legal terms, this is the equivalent of placing a flashing neon sign over the courtroom door reading ‘PLEASE STRIKE THIS DOWN’. If that is not intent, one wonders what would qualify.
The next set of charges: CAA implementation too slow, NRC abandoned, UCC not passed nationally, shares a common structure. The promise was made, the delivery was late, therefore Modi is a fraud.
CAA was passed in December 2019. Implementation rules came in March 2024. That is four years, during which a little thing called COVID-19 killed five million people worldwide, 200 petitions were filed in the Supreme Court, and the nation’s cities were set on fire by protesters. The rules are now notified. Applications are being processed. It is law. It is operational. But apparently four years, in the context of a global pandemic and mass unrest, is too slow for the gentlemen on X, who are capable, one presumes, of resolving sovereign debt crises over their morning chai.
The nationwide NRC has been shelved, and this is presented as a broken promise. After the Assam NRC experience, where lakhs of genuine Hindus and Bengalis were excluded while many who should have been filtered out sailed through, the administrative costs and social disruption of a nationwide exercise became evident. A government that adjusts its approach based on evidence is not breaking promises. It is governing. The substance of border security: fencing, tech surveillance, and Foreigners Tribunals continues. The label was dropped. The work was not.
UCC at the national level remains undone, and here the accusers have a stronger case, or would, if they could do coalition arithmetic. After 2024, BJP runs a government with JD(U) and TDP. Coalition politics is not betrayal. It is the only form of democratic government available when you do not have a two-thirds majority. Meanwhile, Uttarakhand’s UCC is operational, Triple Talaq has been abolished, and the Waqf Amendment dismantles another pillar of the parallel legal system. The trajectory is toward legal equalisation. The pace is set by constitutional reality, not by the fever dreams of X users.
‘BJP started riding the Ram Mandir wave in 1989. The temple was built in 2024. That is 35 years of milking one issue’.
Milking, yes, ladies and gentlemen, this word was used for the only party that has stood for Ram Mandir through thick and thin until Mandir became a reality. A reality which when became a reality made PM Modi’s hands shiver while raising the Dharma Dhwaj at the very mandir. Evidence is here for you.
I wonder, when the case of the Ram Mandir was in the Supreme Court, how the BJP could have made Ram Mandir a reality without coming into power? After all, the so-called intelligent Hindu right social media warriors accept it or not, but we live in a democracy. A democracy in which the Supreme Court ruled in November 2019 in favour of Ram Mandir’s construction and why this became possible, I need not tell you now. Also, after the verdict, construction started immediately in which the temple was built in Nagara style, with Rajasthani pink sandstone, across 71 acres with seven shrines, designed to stand for a thousand years: in record time.
Previous governments did not build it. Previous governments did not even try. And the complaint is that it took 35 years? I really feel sad for those who even think this way.
Modi performed rituals at the ceremony, and this offended, like the Left, those who believe only Brahmin pujaris may do so. But, I would like to tell you that in Hinduism, a tradition that, unlike certain other faiths, has no pope, no ordained clergy, and no centralised authority to determine who may and may not worship. In all, any devout Hindu can perform puja. The temple trust invited the Prime Minister. He participated as a devotee. If this is ‘hijacking’, then every grandmother who lights a diya at home also precisely does: ‘hijacking’.
Now, another absurd point is that India remains one of the world’s largest exporters of buffalo meat. ‘Under a Hindu PM!’ the accusers cry, as though Modi personally loads the containers at Mumbai port. First, it’s buffalo, not cow. Read again.
For those interested in knowing facts, Buffalo meat export is a Rs 26,000 crore industry employing lakhs of people, many of them are Hindu. 24 out of 28 states already ban cow slaughter in some form. BJP states have the toughest laws. The central government tightened cattle transport rules in 2017 and shut down illegal slaughterhouses. The approach is conservation through investment: gaushalas, cattle insurance, and breed improvement. Rather than the sort of blanket prohibition that would destroy rural livelihoods and hand the opposition a weapon more potent than anything in its current arsenal.
Then, the population control demand is equally detached from reality. India’s Total Fertility Rate has already dropped below replacement level: 2.0 per NFHS-5. Muslim TFR has fallen from 4.4 in 1992 to 2.3 in 2021, the fastest decline of any group. The ‘demographic crisis’ that animated so many fevered threads on social media does not exist in the numbers. Hindus are 79.8% of India. Pew Research projects they will remain above 76% through 2050. The ‘minority in our own country’ scenario is mathematically impossible within any living person’s lifetime.
India tried coercive population control once before. It was called the Emergency. Forced sterilisations produced one of the worst political backlashes in the history of the Republic. Any government that repeats this experiment will not need to worry about demographic decline, because it will be out of office before the next census.
So, foolish cuties, if the BJP has to keep a check on the population, as per you. Then, it will first have to remain in power. Not everyone, like you, can run this nation through social media.
That no national anti-conversion law exists. This is true. But then, again, this is also true that ‘public order’ and ‘religion’ are State List subjects, that BJP states covering 40% of India’s population already have these laws, that the FCRA amendments of 2020 stripped over 20,000 NGOs, many involved in conversion, of their licences, and that a national law risks US sanctions under IRFA, EU resolutions, and trade consequences that would hurt the very Hindu population it purports to protect.
State-level laws achieve the same result with lower geopolitical risk. The substance is the same. The label is different. If you prefer the label to the substance, you are in the business of sloganeering, not governance.
Yes, the farm laws repeal is a more legitimate grievance, and I will not pretend otherwise. Those were sound reforms, and their repeal was a tactical retreat before the Punjab and UP elections. But notice the pattern: CAA was not repealed despite years of protest. Article 370 was not reversed. Triple Talaq was not rolled back. The farm law repeal was the exception, not the rule.
One repeal in 11 years does not define a record. It defines an outlier.
The allegation that Modi has been ‘silent’ on Hindu persecution in Bangladesh since August 2024 collides rather awkwardly with the fact that India recalled its High Commissioner, issued the strongest diplomatic demarches in decades. And you, too, very well know what Modi did for Hindus after the anti-Hindu Pahalgam attack, in May 2025: Operation Sindoor, one of the most decisive military actions against Pakistan-based terror infrastructure since Balakot.
Folks, India cannot invade a sovereign country because temples are burning there. That is not how international law works. Compare this with the UPA’s response to anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh in 2001: nothing. Zero. The silence was so complete you could hear a pin drop in South Block.
Lastly, the most sweeping charge is that BJP is ‘Congress plus cow’: identical governance with a saffron veneer. ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ is just code for ‘we will not pursue a Hindu Rashtra agenda’.
Let us count what Congress did for Hindu civilisational causes in 60 years: nothing.
Repeating for those whose memory is weaker than yesterday’s news, what Modi has done in 11: article 370 abrogated. Ram Mandir built. Triple Talaq abolished. CAA passed. Waqf Amendment enacted. Kashi Vishwanath Corridor built. Mahakal Corridor built. Char Dham Highway constructed. Haj subsidy removed. International Yoga Day established. PRASAD scheme for temple tourism launched. Five hundred DD channels in Indian languages. Operation Sindoor.
If this is ‘Congress plus cow,’ then Congress was a restaurant that served empty plates for six decades, and Modi is a seven-course banquet. The diner who complains about the garnish on course four, while acknowledging that the previous establishment served no food at all, is not a food critic. He is a man who has confused entitlement with appetite.
Here is what I find most striking about the ‘Hyper Hindu’ critique: it is simultaneously the most privileged and the most ungrateful political movement in contemporary India.
These are people who expected Hindu Rashtra, delivered, presumably, by executive order on Day One of the Modi government, and received instead a modernising, constitutionally literate government that has done more for Hindu causes than any government in the Republic’s history, but has done so within the constraints of democracy, federalism, coalition politics, constitutional law, and international reality.
The gap between what they wanted and what they got is the gap between fantasy and governance. Fantasy requires no trade-offs. Governance is nothing but trade-offs.
And the deepest irony is this: the ‘Hyper Hindu’ critique and the secular-liberal critique of Modi are mutually exclusive. The secular opposition says Modi is ‘too Hindu’, ‘too majoritarian’, ‘too aggressively saffron’. The Hyper Hindu camp says he is ‘not Hindu enough’. He is simultaneously the ‘most dangerous Hindu nationalist’ in Indian history and a ‘closet Maulana’. He is both the ‘RSS’s puppet’ and the ‘man who has betrayed the RSS’.
These two accusations cannot both be true. But they can both be useful: to the opposition, which is delighted to see the Hindu right tear itself apart over the garnish while the main course goes unappreciated.
The real question the Hyper Hindu camp has never answered is the one that demolishes every one of its twenty allegation clusters in a single sentence and I’m repeating it again: what had the Congress done for the Hindus in their 60-year rule?
The answer, in every case: temples, UCC, anti-conversion, cow protection, CAA, NRC, Article 370, Triple Talaq, Ram Mandir, everything, is the same: nothing. Not a thing. Not one brick, not one bill, not one executive order, not one court filing, not one diplomatic demarche, not one policy paper, not one committee recommendation. Nothing.
And the man who delivered the seven-course banquet after 60 years of starvation is being told by his own supporters that the dessert arrived three minutes late. Which civilisation do these civilisational warriors think they are defending, and from whom: the one who did and is doing everything that he can to save that civilisation? I don’t know if Prime Minister Modi will have a word for them or not, but I call them idiots.
Editor’s note: The author has been covering the decline of civilisations that don’t know they’re declining for rather longer than he’d like. This is the first time he’s encountered one that’s ascending and determined to pretend otherwise, but prefers anonymity.
