Turns out the BJP has been on this for some time.
When I was in India during the 2009 election the students I was staying with were fairly pro-BJP - in English it sounded like they saw Congress as the corrupt establishment, but there may have been nativism I didn't pick up on. (They were largely Hindi speakers studying in Chennai).
Not actually nativist:
The migrants included many Hindus, but Modi has issued orders stating that no Hindu or members of other minorities from Pakistan or Bangladesh would be considered an illegal immigrant even if they entered the country without valid documents before 2014.
My Indian immigrant co-worker describes Modi as "the Hitler of India." I would guess this is typical of non-Hindus (she's a Christian from Kerala).
Yeah, my Indian immigrant co-worker (Hindu from Bangalore) says he's inclined to think of Modi as the lesser evil and points to things like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao as the upside. No idea how to evaluate any of that; that particular scheme seems to have had fairly qualified success.
Hindu-Muslim clashes are generally off my radar. However, I recall a few years ago I landed (for reasons I don't remember) on the wikipedia page for Mogul era architecture and was surprised to find it in grips of a massive edit war* that appeared from the history to have been going on for years.
*over to what degree the distinctive styles of the period derived from Hindu vs Muslim sources, of course.
Modi is quite keen on the old ethnic-enemy-massacring. A lot of Muslims died somehow or other in Gujerat while he was chief minister. (A completely different massacre from the one in the linked article.)
Hey Barry, what's media coverage of/public opinion on Xinjiang like in the Arab world?
9 Newspapers here are basically just a collection of press releases so I don't usually read them and I don't watch TV news so I this is hardly definitive but I've seen and heard nothing. I'll ask some friends and cow orkers if they've heard anything.
The citizenship thing predates Modi, since illegal immigration from Bangladesh has been a major source of tension in Assam for a long time. In fact, this is also an ethnic divide in the region, since the migrants tend to be Bengali, in addition to being mostly Muslim. The Nellie massacre alluded to in the article happened in 1983 when Indira Gandhi of the congress party was Prime Minister, and the reports of the enquiry into are still classified perhaps due to the nature of their findings.
These tensions were bad enough that they were a contributing factor to insurgency in Assam, and the Assam accords signed by her son, Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1985 required the establishment of a register of citizens and a citizenship test, although this agreement was not honored much in practice. So, I don't think that this is something that Mr. Modi came up with.
Sorry for the long comment, but the dirty secret of Indian politics is that the Congress has considerable mastery in using ethnic and religious divides and the consequent riots as a political tool. They have quite a share of blood on their hands. I am not much of a fan of the BJP either, but I do thoroughly detest the congress party.
Thanks Anon. I knew Congress was dirty, and played all against all to keep themselves on top, but BJP apparently is playing Hindus against the rest, and achieving a degree of increased centralization, which strikes me as more dangerous. But again, I know nothing.
I don't pretend to understand Indian politics, but I can't help be a little leery of anyplace where that many doctors were born.