Browsing through comments on youtube videos about India right now is crazy. Full of Islamophobic, racist rhetoric almost indistinguishable from white nationalist ones (example CW: Islamophobia).
I get that BJP is responsible for appealing to hindu nationalist sentiment and making it worse, but what are the material reasons that caused a former br*tish colony to become like this?
1) India is a continent
2) The entire continent was invaded by Muslim powers (Bangladesh and Pakistan are still Muslim)
because of this, the Hindu perception of Muslims would be akin to the Black perception of Whites
Christians are a much smaller minority (5% vs 15%) and Christian conversions under Europeans were limited compared to Islamic conversions under Mughals etc. India is also bordered by an enemy Muslim nation, not a Christian one. And any terrorist attack in India over the last 50 years has been Islamic, not Christian
Also, European media is everywhere, while Arabs committed the crime of not colonizing enough places to become the worldwide linguistic/media/everything-else standard. This further tempers hatred towards Christians.
I’m not trying to justify anti-Muslim (anti-semitic? heh) hatred here, just explaining
3) Prior to the Islamic invasions, there were still problems which perhaps even made the Islamic conquests inevitable.
There is a long list of backwards trends which could be partially ascribed to either these Gangetic Brahmins, or their immediate ancestors in the Northwest:
Basically, the lack of Brahminical casteism in Dravidian India, and to some extent also Maharashtra and Gujarat, set these places up to have conditions more compatible with communism. Now that India is united as one country, majority rule takes place, which means the more reactionary Hindustani/Hindi-speaking politics prevail.