Modi's polarising populism makes a fiction of a secular, democratic India

At Madison Square Garden in 2014, Modi described his electoral victory as divine

After Donald Trump was sworn in as US president, The Times of India published a piece titled “Why both Modi and Trump are textbook populists”.

Citing Jan-Werner Müller’s What is Populism?, the journalist, Amit Varma, was struck by “how closely our own prime minister, Narendra Modi, matched Müller’s definition”. After enumerating Müller’s seven “characteristics” and the three “things” populists did when in power, Varma found these all applicable to India.

But can such schematic “characteristics” of populism describe the ghastly daytime murder of 15-year-old Hafiz Junaid on a moving, packed train? And what