The Modi Government Is a Regime of Low-Intensity Terror – Thomas Blom Hansen with Ullekh N.P.

Not many academics have studied Hindu nationalism with the intensity of Stanford University anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen. The 63-year-old’s new book, The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Politics, argues that anger and brutality have become mainstream in public life and politics in India. 

The 176-page volume delves into what Hansen calls “the emergence of a decidedly non-liberal form democracy,” which explains why police attacks against Muslims and lower-caste men and women go unpunished.

The Denmark-born scholar, who has written several books on nationalism in India, told me that “the enjoyment of violence, the pleasures of hatred and vengeful fantasies, and the license to kill” are factors that contemporary India shares with Germany before World War II. In his book, Hansen lays out the dangers of the rise Hindu nationalism, explicitly comparing today’s adherents to the Nazis, who allowed their vigilantes and storm troopers to terrorize Jews, communists, and anyone else opposed to their agenda….

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/thomas-blom-hansen-interview/