INDIA has always claimed to be wedded to secularism and pluralism. Indeed, this has been one of the moral justifications of the Hindu-majority country for holding on to the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. But whether the Indian Government does in practice treat all religions alike is of course a matter of debate. This is especially so when the country is ruled, as it has been for the last five years, by a coalition led by a self-confessed Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP is originally part of a family of organisations, Sangh Parivar, that espouse a Hindu supremacist ideology called Hindutva. The most rabidly sectarian member of the Sangh Parivar is the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or the World Hindu Council, which dealt a grievous blow to Indian secularism a decade ago by demolishing a medieval mosque in a town called Ayodhya in order to build a Hindu temple in its place. The compulsions of keeping together a coalition regime however had the salutary effect of forcing the BJP to reign in its hot-headed sibling - the VHP.

Unfortunately, that tenuous family arrangement was disrupted by 9/11. The anti-Islamic reverberations that followed around the world emboldened the VHP to break free of its leash. And there was no stopping the VHP when, within three months of 9/11, India itself suffered a major terrorist strike in the form of an attack on its Parliament House. It added fuel to the fire because of the evident involvement of Kashmiri Muslims in the Parliament attack and India's accusation of Pakistan's complicity. In retaliation, the VHP revived more aggressively than ever before its campaign to build the Ayodhya temple.

It was in such a communally surcharged environment that on 27 February 2002 an entire compartment of the train in which a batch of VHP supporters were returning from Ayodhya was set on fire allegedly by a mob of Muslims at a town called Godhra in the state of Gujarat. The charred remains of over 50 persons found in the train were allowed to be used by the VHP to engineer communal riots which went on in Gujarat for several weeks. But Hindu right-wing leaders chose to describe the massacre and rape of Muslims and the destruction of their homes and shops as "a spontaneous reaction" to Godhra. With an estimated death toll of 2,000, the Gujarat riots proved to be the biggest communal violence seen by India since the riots that followed the demolition of the Ayodhya mosque in December 1992.

The BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi, called for an early poll to cash in on the religiously polarised electorate. In the run-up to the Gujarat election that finally took place in December 2002, the BJP and VHP unleashed hate speech with unprecedented ferocity.  Sample what a prominent VHP leader, Mr. Ashok Singhal, is widely reported to have said at a public meeting in September 2002: "Godhra happened on February 27 and the next day, 50 lakh (five million) Hindus were on the streets. We were successful in our experiment of raising Hindu consciousness, which will be repeated all over the country now." He gloated over entire villages having been "emptied of Islam" and Muslims having been dispatched to refugee camps, terming that as "a victory for Hindu society." Spewing more venom a month later, Singhal said during a press conference: "What happened in Gujarat will happen in the whole of the country. Hindus were not born to be cut like carrots and radishes, and that the Hindukaran (a term to denote the process of the re-baptism of Hinduism into a militant Hindu identity) of the people of Gujarat was the direct result of the jehadi mentality of Muslims." The reference to the Muslim notion of jehadi is a recurring theme in the right-wing Hindu rhetoric, whether the context is communal riots or terrorism or Pakistan or anything undesirable. It is as if the Hindutva adherents are feeding on the jehadi groups. Anybody who does not subscribe to their thinking runs the risk of being branded "Musharraf ki aulad" (literally, 'progeny' of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a pejorative in India today).

The lead provided by Singhal in violating all norms of civilized discourse has been followed by the rising star of the VHP, Dr. Praveen Togadia, a medical professional specialising in cancer. Pointing out to his doctor status, Togadia said he had a medicine to deal with anti-national and anti-Hindu elements, whom he called "modern-day Ghaznis" (after Mohammad Ghazni who was ruler of a small Afghan principality called Ghazni who repeatedly led forays into India to loot and pillage). He said there were three types of Ghaznis: "jehadi Ghaznis, secular Hindu Ghaznis and political Ghaznis." And for each, he said - urging the audience to repeat after him - there was a prescription: "Hang the jehadis, ostracise the secular Hindus and snatch the chair from political Ghaznis."

One obvious feature of the hate speech spewed out by the VHP is its uninhibited use of unparliamentary or abusive language regardless of the stature of the persons it is targeting.  The manner in which Togadia attacked Sonia Gandhi, India's main Opposition leader, for condemning the killing of Muslims in Gujarat was clearly outside the norms of any codes of behaviour in a democratic society. He said: "First, the local pups started barking (against Hindus). They were then joined by dogs from other parts of the country. And last, came Italy ni kutri (a b**** from Italy)."  The reference to Italy is because Sonia Gandhi is Italian-born and acquired Indian citizenship a decade after marrying into the Nehru political dynasty.

The accident of the Opposition leader being a person of foreign origin has also given the hate speech in India a xenophobic edge.  In the VHP's worldview, Indian Muslims are largely native people who had converted because of pressure from a succession of Muslim rulers from abroad. But when it comes to foreign Christian missionaries or Sonia Gandhi, the VHP is clearly xenophobic. "We believe that Sonia is an import, unlike Indian Muslims who have their roots here and whose forefathers were Hindus but had to convert to Islam because of their helplessness," Togadia said, adding that "a genetic test would show that Indian Muslims had the blood of Lord Ram or Krishna (Hindu Gods), not that of Mohammad."

The upsurge of hate speech politics in India post 9/11 is despite express provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC). It prescribes criminal prosecution for "wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot" (Section 153), "promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion" (Section 153A), "imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration" (Section 153B) and "uttering words with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person (Section 298). So, if the likes of Togadia and Singhal have got away with their hate speech, it is not because of any legal lacunae as much as it is due to a clear lack of will on the part of the dispensation in New Delhi to enforce the letter and spirit of the law. Given the long and close nexus between the VHP and the BJP, the reason for the Government's failure or reluctance to book such cases is not far to seek. The police in India do not have the autonomy to act on their own. And even if they happen to book any case on a hate speech, the police or the prosecution would have to seek the Government's sanction before filing charges in the court under provisions such as Section 153A or Section 153B.

While the executive is anyway notorious for balking at anything that is politically inconvenient, what is less obvious is the judiciary's complicity in the growth of hate speech in India.  The freedom of speech conferred by the Indian Constitution is not absolute as it is subject to reasonable restrictions. Article 19 (2) lays down that such restrictions on speech are permissible for the interests of sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency and morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offence.

Yet, on the one and only occasion on which the Supreme Court of India sat in judgment on the Hindutva ideology, Justice J. S. Verma ended up giving a verdict favouring the Sangh Parivar. Disregarding all evidence to the contrary, Verma put a liberal gloss on Hindutva and rejected the contention that it was against other religions. Little wonder then that the VHP and BJP repeatedly referred to the Supreme Court judgment in a bid to justify their hate speech politics during the Gujarat campaign.

Another judicial failing, which has allowed hate speech to rear its ugly head post-9/11, was in the context of the gruesome murder a couple of years earlier of Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons. The murder was the culmination of a vicious campaign launched by Bajrang Dal, the militant wing of the VHP, accusing foreign Christian missionaries of converting poor Indians to their religion on the strength of material allurements. But an inquiry conducted by a Supreme Court judge, Justice D P Wadhwa, said there was no evidence to suggest that Bajrang Dal had directed the main accused, Dara Singh, to murder Staines. That was a needlessly technical finding as it glossed over the Bajrang Dal's concerted hate speech campaign that preceded the murder. (The census figures, incidentally, show that despite the alleged conversions the percentage of the Christian population has actually been dropping in recent decades.)

The impunity with which Hindu fundamentalists have been engaging in hate speech erodes India's much-vaunted claim to being a tolerant and progressive society upholding the rule of law. If anything, its obsession with Pakistan seems to be making India become more and more like its theocratic neighbour.

Manoj Mitta is CGK Reddy Fellow and legal correspondent for The Indian Express, New Delhi