World is watching how India treats Hindu nationalist tendencies: Report

World is watching how India treats Hindu nationalist tendencies: Report NEW DELHI: A key US intelligence report has painted a bright outlook for India as the fastest growing economy in the next five years, but has said that the world is watching how it deals with “Hindu nationalist impulses” that are “sparking increased tensions” with the minority.  The Global Trends report by the US National

Intelligence Council — prepared once every four years and timed for the new US administration — says India will grow as China’s economy cools, but internal tensions over inequality and religion will complicate this expansion.

The report says that BJP’s Hinduvta drive into policy is sparking tensions within and around India. “India’s largest political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, increasingly is leading the government to incorporate Hindutva into policy, sparking increased tension in the current sizable Muslim minority as well as with Muslim-majority Pakistan and Bangladesh,” it reads.

World is watching how India treats Hindu nationalist tendencies: Report

The US report, which assesses key trends that could shape the world over the next 20 years, says that a more interconnected world will increase differences over ideas and identities, leading to rising identity politics.

Among global trends that include authoritarian control in China and Russia, the report says India’s approach will be a key factor. “How New Delhi treats Hindu nationalist tendencies and Israel balances ultra-orthodox religious extremes will be key determinants, for example, of future tensions,” the report says.

Predicting that the threat of terrorism is likely to increase in the coming years, the report identifies ‘violent Hinduvta’ in India, besides ‘Militant Christianity and Islam’ as factors.

“Militant Christianity and Islam in central Africa, militant Buddhism in Burma and violent Hindutva in India will all continue to fuel terror and conflict,” the US report says, adding that “the world will look to see how India tames its Hindu nationalist impulses.”

The intelligence assessment says that while violent extremism, terrorism and instability will continue to hang over Pakistan and Afghanistan, India will offer smaller South Asian nations a stake in its economic growth with development assistance.

On the security front, the report says that India will face a Pakistan that will look at rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal and delivery platforms, including tactical nuclear weapons and sea-based missiles. The deployment of nuclear weapons in sea has been identified as a major security risk factor for the region. “At-sea deployments of nuclear weapons by India, Pakistan, and perhaps China, would increasingly nuclearise the Indian Ocean during the next two decades.

Nuclear mating requirements for naval-based delivery vehicles remove a safety valve that until now has kept nuclear weapons stored separately from missiles in South Asia.”. It also predicts that an assertive India shall further involve itself into East and Southeast Asian economic and security matters.