Majoritarian politics and hate crimes against religious minorities: Evidence from India, 2009–2018

Abstract

• In 2014, the Hindu nationalist BJP won the national parliamentary elections in India. • The BJP’s exclusivist, nationalist ideology has constructed Muslims as the ‘other’. • BJP’s electoral victory in 2014 increased hate crimes against religious minorities. • Accounting for unobserved confounders does not change the results qualitatively. Did the unprecedented victory of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 national elections in India increase hate crimes against religious minorities? I investigate this question using a difference-in-difference methodology and a novel state-level panel data set for the period 2009–18. To provide context, I offer a brief historical account of Hindu nationalism and a descriptive account of anti-minority hate crimes in India between 2009 and 2018. Turning to the econometric analysis, I estimate a binary treatment regression model (states where BJP won the largest plurality of votes in the 2014 national elections form the treatment group). My results show that BJP’s electoral victory in 2014 caused an increase in the incidence of hate crimes against religious minorities, especially Muslims. I test for robustness of my results by using two falsification tests and a count data model specification. I account for possible omitted variable bias and compute bias-adjusted treatment effects. I conclude that unobserved confounders are unlikely to nullify the results.