TIME magazine cover features PM Modi with the headline “India’s divider in chief.” Modi first appeared on TIME cover in 2012, when he was the Gujarat chief minister, with the headline, “Modi means business… but can he lead India?” And will it signal a twenty-first-century, post/colonial turned neo-imperial rendition of despotism, the reign of majoritarian fascists and micro-fascism in India? An excerpt from the book of essays “Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India,” which traces the ascendance of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India.  Muzaffarnagar 2013 marked Uttar Pradesh as the next frontier in Hindu nationalism’s incursion into the body politic. Between 27 August and 17 September of that year, massified violence targeted the Muslim commu­nity in Muzaffarnagar. At the onset, two Hindus accused and killed a Muslim youth for allegedly sexually harassing a Hindu woman and relative. In the violence that ensued, sixty-two people died, ninety-three suffered injuries, women…

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