The civic authorities in Nagpur demolished the two-storey house belonging to Fahim Khan, the alleged mastermind behind the riots in the city.By Ghulam Suhrawardi
Rewriting the Past, Reframing the Region
India’s internal political changes over the last decade have begun to have an increasingly destabilizing effect across South Asia—nowhere more profoundly than in Bangladesh, where shared histories and porous cultural frontiers mean that what happens in Delhi or Mumbai cannot be easily ignored. Led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India has undertaken a humongous task of history revisionism and reengineering of ideology by the precept of Hindutva nationalism. It is not confined to Indian borders; it spills over into the adjoining states, fuels communal misconceptions, and misrepresents diplomatic relations, particularly with Bangladesh.
From the renaming of cities and the systematic erasure of Muslim heritage to the strategic use of cinema and disinformation as tools of ideological warfare, India’s ruling party is not merely reshaping national identity—it is attempting to rewrite the historical consciousness of an entire region. These efforts are designed to construct a singular, hegemonic narrative of Hindu supremacy, displacing centuries of Indo-Islamic contributions and silencing dissent under the guise of nationalism. For Bangladesh—a secular democracy closely bound to India through politics, culture, and commerce—this ideologically driven campaign presents both symbolic and strategic challenges, threatening the foundations of regional pluralism and mutual respect.
This article examines the far-term regional implications of India’s Hindutva politics and assertive historical revisionism, mainly how these developments affect neighboring Bangladesh. It examines how the BJP’s ideological agenda is remaking India’s representation of its past—most dramatically through symbolic acts like the desecration of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s tomb and the celebration of Hindu nationalist heroes—while employing media, especially Bollywood, to promote communal narratives and distorted histories.
The article also looks at the social effects of these accounts, including India’s Muslim population growing in marginalization, the indiscriminate rise in anti-Muslim hate speech, and religious discrimination being normalized. More importantly, it looks at how India’s internal communalism has reverberations in Bangladesh, influencing public opinion, spreading misconceptions, and affecting diplomatic relations. In conclusion, this paper demands a more significant plural and principle-based approach towards history and identity, urging regional leaders, experts, and civil society to resist exclusionary ideologues and uphold the multicultural, inclusionary foundations on which South Asia was built.
Shadows Across Borders: Hindutva’s Expanding Regional Impact
India’s political environment has traditionally exerted influence in South Asia. Still, with the BJP at the helm, its impact has shifted from soft power to a more aggressive and ideologically inflected force. The rise of Hindutva nationalism under the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has altered India’s internal politics towards a goal of religious exclusivism, reconstructing national identity by excluding its Muslim past. To neighbors like Bangladesh, the transformation is not merely a domestic phenomenon—it’s a cause of growing regional unease, having implications for diplomatic relations, minority rights, and customary economic and cultural linkages.
India and Bangladesh have a border exceeding 4,000 kilometers, plus shared history, linguistic heritage, religious pluralism, and extensive bilateral coordination on trade, transit, sharing water, and security. Yet, political polarization inside India increasingly tosses a wrench in this tranquility. The Hindutva mainstreaming in Indian politics can potentially turn India’s secular democratic traditions into a Hindu-premium national order. This process is especially threatening for Bangladesh, which is a Muslim-majority nation and has always been deeply committed to secularism while securing its minority populations.
The BJP’s ideological project is not merely rhetorical, it is actively pursued through tangible state actions and deliberate cultural reengineering. The proposed renaming of Aurangabad to Sambhaji Nagar and the controversial desecration of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s tomb stand as stark examples of a calculated effort to erase Islamic heritage from India’s collective memory. These acts form part of a broader campaign aimed at portraying a thousand years of Islamic history in India as a “dark age,” systematically vilifying Muslim rulers while selectively glorifying Hindu saints, in an attempt to sanctify a singular religious narrative at the expense of the country’s rich pluralistic past.
This symbolism is politically contentious—it feeds the Hindutva tale that the grandeur of the subcontinent is exclusively in its pre-Islamic, Hindu past.
This act of historical erasure is complemented by education reforms, redrafting textbooks, and redesign of public spaces to legitimize a Hinduized version of Indian history. Places like Allahabad (now Prayagraj) and Mughalsarai (now Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar) have already been renamed, and the pressure goes on to “reclaim” other sites by stripping them of their pre-Mughal names. It not only redefines national identity but also tells India’s 200 million Muslims that they are foreigners in India.
For Bangladesh, this ideological change has real effects. As political and media life in India gets more communalized, it spurs misinformation, twists incidents in the neighboring territory, and fan religious phobias. Indian media depicts Bangladesh’s communal events as evidence of the rise of Islamic extremism, even if local players and political provocateurs are responsible. This slanted reporting hurts inter-community relationships and makes diplomatic dialogue more challenging.
In the broader South Asian regional context—where cross-border migration, inter-religious tolerance, and entanglements remain fragile—the spread of Hindutva ideology undermines the very idea of a pluralized regional order. It undermines decades of diplomatic dividends, deepens sectarian fault lines, and delegitimizes regional platforms like SAARC, which are built upon cooperation and mutual respect. Fundamentally, the ideological ferment of Hindutva is not particular to India’s shores. It casts a long, foreboding shadow over the region—one that Bangladesh and South Asia must more broadly cope with through diplomacy, honest history, and commitments to pluralism.
Historical Revisionism as Political Theatre
This revisionist project is not being led by historians but by politicians and ideologues, abetted by media sympathizers and Bollywood. It portrays Mughal emperors such as Aurangzeb as tyrants and Maratha monarchs such as Chhatrapati Sambhaji as godly patriots, maintaining a binary nationalist narrative lacking nuance. The film Chhaava, a new Sambhaji biopic, is taking the template—glorifying his rebellion against Aurangzeb without communicating the complex socio-political context of 17th-century India.
In contrast, scholars like Richard Eaton and Audrey Truschke offer fact-based counter-narratives. Eaton’s research discloses that Aurangzeb destroyed fewer temples than common legend would suggest. Truschke depicts him as a pragmatic ruler whose policies were often guided by political necessity, not religious fanaticism. These more nuanced perspectives are being systematically drowned out by state-sponsored misinformation
Violence as a Political Tool
The BJP’s ideological mobilization doesn’t halt at symbolism but spillovers into the streets in the form of targeted violence. From lynchings based on beef rumors to bulldozing Muslim homes and shops under cover of law, a pattern has emerged: delegitimize, dehumanize, and destroy. The latest Nagpur riots, linked with communal ire over Aurangzeb’s tomb, are a continuation of this sinister trend. These events are not spontaneous outbursts but thought-out political moves designed to polarize society and consolidate Hindu votes.
The RSS, the BJP’s ideological parent, is heavily inspired by European fascist blueprints and has been advocating a Hindu Rashtra (state) for decades. Its dream of an Akhand Bharat that encompasses India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and more is a direct assault on regional pluralism and sovereignty.
Bangladesh in the Crossfire: Misinformation and Media Manipulation
The consequences of the rise of Hindutva are already being felt in Bangladesh. Indian media—particularly those with a BJP-centric narrative—frequently misreport political unrest in Bangladesh as communal violence, projecting Islamophobic narratives. For example, the Bangladesh National Hindu Grand Alliance has explicitly stated that recent attacks on Hindu properties were politically motivated. Still, Indian media continues to report these incidents along communal lines. This generates suspicion, encourages misinformation, and strains diplomatic relations. Bangladesh must walk a diplomatic tightrope: maintaining internal pluralism, protecting minorities, and maintaining sovereignty without getting sucked into the ideological crossfire of India.
The Hegemonic Rise of Hindutva: BJP’s Increasing Regional Power
The Hindutva politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged as a hegemonic movement from a local ideological force to one with growing regional ambitions and implications. What began as a cultural expression of Hindu identity in India has now become a transnational political ideology—one that seeks to rewrite not just India’s national identity but extend its ideological reach across South Asia. Through a combination of soft power, economic dominance, strategic diplomacy, and militant cultural tale-telling, the BJP has rendered Hindutva a subtle but pervasive regional tide, informing political discourse, religious sentiment, and inter-state relations. India’s cultural exports—Bollywood, education, and religious institutions—are being steadily infused with nationalist hues, often celebrating a homogenized Hindu identity over Muslim, Christian, Sikh, and other minority stories.
This transformation has allowed the BJP to articulate an ideology of ideological dominance externally, impacting India’s relations with neighboring countries. In countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, which share deep historical, religious, and linguistic ties with India, the BJP’s narrative of an “existential oneness under Hindu dharma” begins to catch hold surreptitiously. The party’s ideology of Akhand Bharat, a fictional unified Hindu nation from Afghanistan to Myanmar, is not fringe fantasy—but is increasingly referenced in political orations, textbooks, and religious rituals. The RSS system of cultural institutions and diaspora activities, particularly in the United States, United Kingdom, and Southeast Asia, actively promotes this vision under the banner of preserving Indian heritage.
Concurrently, the economic and geopolitical influence of India has allowed the BJP to influence regional alignments with smaller South Asian nations, often having to temper their criticism of Hindutva trends to be able to preserve diplomatic relations and commercial interests. Moreover, Indian television stations enjoying a regional audience, generally pro-BJP, influence perceptions in the neighboring country through communal and often fallacious reports. These hegemonizing tendencies do not come without consequences; they undermine regional diversity, increase communal insecurities, and twist democratic values. Hindutva is no longer simply an intra-national political movement—it is a regional ideational machinery that dynamically remolds South Asia’s socio-political landscape in the BJP’s image.
Bollywood as a Cultural Weapon
Historically, Bollywood has been a mirror of Indian society, and it participates in the Hindutva narrative today. Films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story, and Chhaava are now cinematic versions of BJP propaganda, emotionally charged and factually inaccurate. These films simplify history to Hindu heroes versus Muslim villains, minimizing the composite nature of the subcontinent’s culture.
This is not a new cinema that has long been used for political messaging—but the frequency and strength with which such stories are currently being manufactured and legitimated by states are novel. Such a purposeful concoction makes art politically charged, renders millions of Indian Muslims inaccessible, and further fractures an already fissiparous society.
Democracy Derailed: Rising Hate and Institutional Decay
India’s democratic institutions are eroding under this ideological weight. Global observers like Freedom House and the V-Dem Institute have mapped India’s democratic decline—from censorship of freedom of the press and civil liberties to growing religious discrimination. Anti-Muslim hate speech is said to have risen by 62% in late 2023 by India Hate Lab, with three-quarters of these cases occurring in BJP-ruled states.
West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh state electoral rhetoric also promotes this trend. BJP leaders hawk unsubstantiated fears of superior Muslim populations, claiming they are “stockpiling weapons” or “preparing to outnumber Hindus.” Muslims are politically marginalized—no Muslim BJP MPs, zero state representation, and discriminatory laws like NRC and CAA targeting their citizenship.
Partition’s Ghosts and Regional Instability
The ideological pursuit of Hindu uniformity ignores an abiding lesson of history: South Asia is robust because it is pluralistic. The subcontinent has never been religiously uniform—it has always been a cultural mosaic of religions, faiths, and identities. The atrocities of Partition in 1947, conceived out of religious nationalism, are a reminder not to repeat this mistake.
The BJP’s attempt to rewrite history and reshape demography not only threatens India’s own democratic culture but has the potential to re-ignite regional fault lines, particularly with Bangladesh. With communal violence and media manipulation spilling across borders, South Asia is faced with the very real threat of renewed instability, both diplomatically and socially.
Resisting the Weaponization of History
In this critical juncture, academics, journalists, civil society, and regional leaders need to stand firm. History needs to be reclaimed as a discipline—not a tool of politics. Films, textbooks, and popular accounts must reflect nuanced truths, not simplistic binary.
The future of South Asia depends on whether it can avoid the allure of majoritarian politics and embrace a vision of pluralism, justice, and shared heritage. History has never built nations—it has permanently destroyed them. As historian Eric Hobsbawm once wrote, “The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one’s contemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century.” This erasure in present-day South Asia is not accidental but systematic, deliberate, and politically motivated. The time to disrupt this constructed present is now—before history is weaponized beyond.