The world breathed a sigh of relief last week as the Islamophobe populist Geert Wilders failed to become the head of the biggest party in Holland. It is India’s biggest and most important state. Mr Adityanath is a Hindu priest who, while elected five times from his temple’s town, has been shown repeatedly to be contemptuous of democratic norms. On the campaign trail, Mr Adityanath warned: “If [Muslims] kill one Hindu man, then we will kill 100 Muslim men”. Mr Adityanath, now a powerful figure, is signalling that in India minorities exist merely on the goodwill of the majority.

Source: The Guardian March 19, 2017 19:41 UTC