BLOOMINGTON, Indiana — A new wave of intolerance seems to be sweeping across India. Hapless migrant workers from India's poorest states, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have been attacked in Bombay, Christians have faced the wrath of Hindus in Orissa and Karnataka and Bodo tribals have attacked Bengalis in West Bengal.

Amid all these developments, the country has also witnessed a new spate of Islamic zealotry with a little-known, shadowy group, the self-styled Indian mujahedin setting off bombs in various metropolitan areas including the national capital, New Delhi.

Earlier in the year, the long-troubled and insurgency-ridden state of Jammu and Kashmir had witnessed a new round of violence in the aftermath of a maladroit attempt on the part of the state government to transfer some land Hindu pilgrims.

The attacks on northern migrants have, in turn, contributed to mindless, anomic retaliatory violence in the state of Bihar. Young men who fled the state of Maharashtra returned home and indulged in a rampage against railway buildings and officials.

Fortunately, a combination of conciliatory and coercive measures, albeit belated, has ended the violent protests in Kashmir. The bombings in the shopping malls and parks of many metropolitan areas have understandably left large numbers of city dwellers on edge. That said, the miscreants who are responsible for these bombings have failed miserably in their attempts to sow increased Hindu-Muslim discord and provoke communal violence.

What explains this sudden rash of violence that has engulfed the country yet again? Despite the seeming inability of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to respond with alacrity against this recrudescence of communal and ethnic violence, it cannot be held responsible for having contributed to the current climate of intolerance. Instead Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has publicly expressed his concerns about the growing tide of ethnic and religious hatred and violence. The answers are complex and can be traced to diverse sources.

The rise of the Indian mujahedin is probably the result of the convergence of two disparate social forces. The first is obviously indigenous in origin. Certain social and religious groups have not benefited significantly from the rapid economic progress that has characterized the country over the past decade. Of these, the Muslim community is undoubtedly the worst off.

As a consequence, small but growing numbers of young Muslim men who have faced discrimination in education, employment and social life probably feel alienated from the rest of Indian society. Coupled with this sense of alienation, they have also fallen prey to the siren call of global, radical Islam. The confluence of these two factors has proven to be toxic and has driven them to embrace an ideology of violent religious extremism. Addressing this social malaise that has gripped a small segment of the Muslim community will require both enlightened, long-term social policies and better, more adept policing in the short run.

The explanation for the attacks of Christians is more straightforward. The ultranationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) acolytes in the Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindu organization, is on a quest to solidify the Hindu vote in critical states in view of the upcoming nations elections next year. To that end, they have seized upon a non-existent problem: the conversion of low-caste Hindus to Christianity.

Ironically, for all their fury about this matter, statistics indicate that evangelical Christians have made few inroads in Orissa, the principal location of their violent attacks on vulnerable communities and churches. The total Christian population of Orissa is a mere 2.4 percent and the total national figure is 2 percent. The state government has strangely equivocated on the plight of the Christians and the UPA regime in New Delhi has been loath to dismiss the government despite its abject failure to maintain social peace. The UPA's reluctance to invoke the appropriate constitutional provisions to dismiss the state government probably stems from fears of an electoral backlash. Also, since previous Congress governments have a rather dubious record of invoking the appropriate constitutional provisions, the Congress-dominated UPA regime may also feel constrained from acting with seemingly undue haste.

The return of violent nativist agitation in Bombay has long antecedents. Raj Thackeray, the nephew of Bal Thackeray, a former cartoonist and the leader of the Shiv Sena, a populist, anti-immigrant party, has spearheaded the latest spate of violence against poor, migrant workers from north India. In earlier times, his uncle had first targeted workers from various parts of south India and had then directed his shock troops against Muslims. The inheritor of his uncle's demagogic mantle, Raj Thackeray, has now chosen another easily targeted group to scapegoat for the many social and urban ills that plague one of India's wealthiest cities.

The fact that India has successfully weathered similar outbursts of ethno-religious violence should be of little comfort to either its citizenry or its government. The renewed acts of ethnic and religious hatred, quite apart from their economic and social costs, are fundamentally corrosive of India's democracy.

Populist demagoguery is hardly an exclusive preserve of India's democracy. However, in the Indian case, given the country's extraordinary cultural, religious and linguistic diversity, allowing it to take hold could well reduce India to what the political scientist and commentator, Fareed Zakaria, has aptly termed, "illiberal democracy" — one that has free and fair elections, avid political participation but willing to deny the civil rights of much of its citizenry.

Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science and director of research of the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University, Bloomington. © 2008 OpinionAsia