After initially being a part of the Congress, Jinnah developed a paranoid fear about Hindus. At the All Parties Conference of 1928 he made fourteen completely unacceptable demands. But his fears seem to have been at least partly vindicated.

For the past seventy years India has put increasing pressure – whether subtle or blatant – on the Muslims who remained behind in 1947. Instead of keeping religion and the state separate, as Congress had assured, India has moved decisively against Muslims.

Article 48 of the Constitution, which seeks to “prohibit the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle” ostensibly in the interest of “modern science”, was a Trojan horse, a backdoor, for Hindu rashtra. On the basis of this authorisation, numerous states do not allow the sale of beef and prevent millions of Indian beef eaters from exercising their food choice.

Nehru then went with the flow and created the Hindu Act instead of setting uniform standards for all citizens. In addition, the government owns and manage temples, and sometimes even funds them. Likewise, Babri Masjid’s demolition could not have occurred without the active connivance of various governments. And the Supreme Court’s recent regularisation of this demolition has left no doubt in anyone’s mind that property rights can be easily rationalised to justify Hindu rashtra objectives.

The most telling is the socio-economic status of India’s Muslims. It is almost as if the smart and intelligent Muslims went to Pakistan, so they are fit to occupy their country’s senior roles. But India’s Muslims somehow turned out to be substandard: unfit for senior Indian roles. The Sachar Committee found that Muslims make up just 2.5 per cent of India’s bureaucracy. And if we exclude the Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry, the number of Muslims in India’s defence force is less than 2 per cent, with an even smaller share of generals. Further, an Economic Times Intelligence Group analysis showed that Muslims constitute just 2.6 per cent of directors and senior executives among the India’s top 500 companies.

I am reminded in this regard of the 4-day National Reform Summit that I organised at Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali headquarters in April 2013. At that time we were working closely together to launch a new political party (Swarna Bharat Party). The summit’s 100-odd participants included many reputed personalities, including former Vice-chancellors and generals from across India. My purpose at the summit was to test the party’s draft manifesto and get new ideas.

Many RSS members and supporters were also in attendance. They wanted me to specifically exclude Muslims from senior defence roles, in the manifesto. Indian Muslims would apparently betray us during a conflict with Pakistan. I rejected this atrocious suggestion and it is good that Ramdev and I later parted company. But it is not just the RSS; many (if not most) of India’s Hindu elites have a strong bias against Muslims, who consequently have little chance to advance in life.

But surely Muslims are not in that bad a situation. Don’t they have democratic rights? The ratio of Muslims in the Parliament to their population share was always very low, but BJP has set new records – with only one Muslim out of its 303 MPs. That says it all.

India’s Muslims have thus been second-class citizens in a de-facto Hindu rashtra for a long time. But with the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), this status has been legally ratified. That is what is causing the CAA to become such a watershed moment in India’s history.

The CAA is problematic on many fronts. It does not distinguish between refugees and economic migrants. In doing so it will allow India to be over-run by economic migrants – which is a major concern for the people of Assam, and violates the Assam Accord. Even more problematically, it includes a religion test to fast-track citizenship. Being a Muslim is sufficient to be denied India’s citizenship. The religion of Islam has been officially downgraded in India’s law.

This law has brought things to a head. Muslims have been officially told that their religion is unwanted in India. They are also being repeatedly denied permission by police to assemble in order to protest. Obviously, for how can second-class citizens expect democratic rights? In UP, when they raise their voice to protest they are being shot and their property seized. Mr Modi is also able to distinguish the religion of protesters by their dress. First injury, then insult.

What is Mr Modi’s end game for India’s Muslims? What does he want?

The BJP’s manifesto does not tell us much, so maybe we should look to Mr Modi’s mother organisation – the RSS – and to his Guruji. Golwalkar does provide us with a clear answer. He considers Muslims to be enemies of the state: “they not only got two big slices of this land where they live today as complete masters with plans to conquer the rest of our country, but also continue to remain here in sufficient numbers to act as potential fifth-column”.

If so, how are we to deal with this enemy? When he was young, Golwalkar was inclined towards the Nazi solution: “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races – the Jews … a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by”.

But later he probably realised that genocide won’t be easy. So he settled on second-class citizenship: “the foreign races in Hindusthan must either … learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, … and must … merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights.”

His directive to Muslims was clear: “come back and identify … with their ancestral Hindu way of life in dress, customs, performing marriage ceremonies and funeral rites”. Muslims must give up their religion if they wish to stay in India.

But here is the problem: Even as he pins down India’s Muslims in accordance with his Guruji’s directives, Mr Modi is talking about India becoming a $5 trillion economy. Unfortunately, this is not practical. If 200 million Indian Muslims are to be mentally crushed and made to feel small, then how will there also be a successful economy?

The only way out is for Mr Modi to stop oppressing Muslims, wind back all religious interventions (including the CAA, temple ownership and Haaj subsidy) and treat every Indian equally under the law.