Hindu Nationalism to the Fore

Abstract This chapter deals with the 2019 elections widely regarded as a turning point in the expansion of Hindu nationalism as a dominant force and the challenge it posed to the pluralist idea of India. It outlines how and why Hindu nationalism gained the upper hand in 2019 and the effect it had on Congress, and its ability to counter the growing support for it in the public sphere. It argues that national security, which came to dominate the 2019 election, facilitated the idea of a Hindu nation in the garb of national security. The BJP did not seek votes for what its government had accomplished over the past five years, which was very little, it chose the plank of national security as the core issue to mobilize political support at a time when it was heading into a difficult election. The conflation of nationalism and national security shifted the ideological ground in favour of BJP’s conception of nationalism.