You are collapsing different propositions into one:
There is anti-Hindu persecution in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Therefore Bangladeshi distrust of India is mainly religious.
Therefore Hindutva is essentially a defensive reaction rather than a political movement.
I accept the first proposition. The others do not follow from it.
Bangladesh has entirely intelligible state-to-state grievances with India, unresolved Teesta water sharing, killings at the border, Indian political rhetoric portraying Bangladeshis as demographic threats, economic asymmetry and India’s perceived support for Sheikh Hasina and none of that makes Islamist propaganda imaginary. It means your claim that religion is the main explanation requires evidence rather than assertion. AP, among others, identifies both Teesta and lethal border enforcement as serious bilateral disputes [0].
India’s enormous contribution in 1971 also does not place Bangladesh under permanent political obligation. Bangladeshis fought the liberation war and India provided strategic assistance. Countries can remain grateful for historical aid while opposing a neighbour’s present policies. And Bangladesh has hardly forgotten Pakistan’s crimes: in 2025 it was still formally demanding an apology and financial settlement from Pakistan over 1971 [1]. That is rather different from your “bhai-bhai now” potrayal.
Similarly, describing the CAA as humanitarian does not answer the objection. A true persecution-based refugee law would ask whether an applicant was persecuted. The CAA instead adds to the broader co-relation over actual criteria they need to look for and preselects six religion [2], excluding groups such as persecuted Ahmadis and non-theists. Making religion the statutory filter is the part being criticised.
The portrayal of Savarkar as a benign humanitarian who simply snapped in response to Muslim extremism is not rationalising the fact after the incident. His 1923 Hindutva formulation made India’s status as both fatherland and holy land a criterion of national belonging, thereby excluding Muslims and Christians from the Hindu nation. That is an articulated political ideology, and not a reflex to witnessing extremism.
> "A HINDU means a person who regards this land of
BHARATVARSHA, from the Indus to the
Seas as his Father-Land as well
as his Holy-Land that is
the cradle land of his religion."
> Many a Mohammedan community in Kashmir and
other parts of India as well as the Christians in
South India observe our caste rules to such an extent
as to marry generally within the pale of their
castes alone; yet, it is clear that though their
original Hindu blood is thus almost unaffected by
an alien adulteration, yet they cannot be called
Hindus in the sense in which that term is actually
understood, because, we Hindus are bound together
not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common.
From: https://archive.org/stream/essentials-of-hindutva-veer-savar...
I'm not sure how Christians persecuted Sarvakar to cause him to not consider them worthy of belonging here. Although their rhetoric has indeed not been anti-Christian later given we are a minority.
> Not that I'm some expert, but I can report personal on-the-ground experiences.
Your claim that Jews “never made such an argument” makes the selectiveness more apparent. Zionism was organised as a Jewish political movement advocating a Jewish homeland and eventually a Jewish state in Palestine [3]. This does not make Zionism, Hindutva and the Muslim League identical movements, but it disproves the universal claim made. Were you to narrow it after the correction to “Jews specifically within India”, that would move the goalposts. Different minorities, occupying different demographic and political positions, unsurprisingly did not all develop identical political movements. Their differing outcomes do not prove that Muslim political mobilisation was uniquely theological while every other form of nationalism was historically intelligible. Hindu nationalism is granted an historical defence that it's adherents were provoked and driven towards it by Muslim extremism. Bangladeshi and Muslim politics, meanwhile, are stripped of political context and reduced to religion. If historical insecurity and persecution are relevant when explaining Hindutva, then border killings, water disputes, political interference and support for an authoritarian government are also relevant when explaining Bangladeshi distrust. You cannot treat context as explanatory when it excuses your side and as irrelevant when it complicates your account of the other.
Likewise, saying that Americans cannot understand Islamist extremism is rhetorical but not grounded. The United States was the target of the September 11 attacks, and the 9/11 Commission documented al-Qaeda’s development, declaration of war against the United States and execution of those attacks [4]. That does not make every American an expert on Islamism, but that is exactly the point: neither nationality nor proximity automatically establishes expertise. Asking where someone comes from rather than answering their evidence is a genetic fallacy, evaluating a claim through its origin instead of its reasoning. The special pleading lies in treating your own South Asian identity as evidence while treating somebody else’s identity as grounds for disqualification.
So asking whether someone is American, South Asian or Indian Christian does not resolve anything. A person outside India can misunderstand India, and a person within India can be misinformed about it. The relevant question is still whether the account is supported by evidence. Personal experience may provide useful evidence, but it cannot substitute for demonstrating causation. “I have been there” is not evidence that every Bangladeshi grievance is secretly religious.
Your appeal to on-the-ground experience is also less helpful than you suggest. The student protests in India provide a fairly direct example. Indian television did not report the same events from a same point, a review found that Republic, News18, ABP and DD News largely changed the protesters’ actual demands with narratives about conspiracies, Pakistan, Nepal and national security, while police violence against protesters nearly disappeared from their coverage [5] while AP seemed to have a much coverage of the police violence, and the HRW [6], [7].
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/india-bangladesh-energy-developme...
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-pakistan-relations-has...
[2]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2019/12/press-...
[3]: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/postwar-re...
[4]: https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/
[5]: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/07/21/nepal-reference-pak-l...
[6]: https://apnews.com/article/india-cockroach-protests-memes-sa...
[7]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...