The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy

An investigation into the devastating Delhi riots of 2020 and the stories of betrayal and abandonment in their aftermath leads Rahul Bhatia to probe the history and spread of Hindu nationalism, to understand ‘where the poison comes from’, in the words of a survivor. From the emergence of Dayanand Saraswati and the Arya Samaj in the 1800s to the early twentieth century, when the first advocates of Hindu nationalism drew lessons from European strongmen, Bhatia traces the evolution of a fundamentalist ideology that silently took root and shaped India itself. His investigation throws startling new light on this movement’s use of misinformation and religious targeting for political ends, and how its extreme ideas sparked the creation of the world’s largest biometric identification project. Today, this citizen database has not only dealt a blow to citizens’ privacy, but also, in combination with the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens, threatens to relegate vast numbers of Muslims and other minorities to an inferior class of citizenship.

As a result, a sacred compact between citizens and the state lies broken: electorates in democracies used to choose their government, but in India, the government is attempting to choose its electorate.

Based on six years of research and on-the-ground reporting, The Identity Project builds—authoritatively, vividly, indelibly—to become the story of modern India. Using hundreds of interviews, letters, diary entries, Partition-era police reports and an astonishing range of sources, Bhatia shows how history plays a recurring role in the present: in politics, in the choices citizens make, in notions of justice and corruption.

A monumental work of narrative reportage that illuminates the ways in which an entire country is being remade, along with the minds of its citizens, this book will compel readers to ask what they truly understand about their neighbours and themselves.