have lynched three dozen Muslims, who traditionally run meat shops and slaughterhouses.

As India heads toward a general election that begins this week, taking up arms for "mother cow" is part of a broader campaign to impose ancient Hindu religious values across a multicultural country. As with similar movements across the world, Hindu nationalism, once fringe, has now taken a central place in India's politics.

The movement is led by the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who grew up chanting slogans and practicing maneuvers at nationalist training camps. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party seek to retain power in the elections by promoting Hindutva — a Hindu way of life — instead of secular pluralism. A fresh mandate for Modi could embolden efforts to mold the world's largest democracyof 1.3 billion people into a stringently Hindu nation.

"I think what Modi has successfully done is just to normalize bigotry," said writer and historian Mukul Kesavan. "What we have already seen is a shift of the common sense of the republic way to the right."

Scenes of religious nationalism are now common in India.

In New Delhi and Ayodhya, a city in Uttar Pradesh state, tens of thousands of men in saffron armed with swords and the name of the Hindu Lord Ram painted on their foreheads shouted anti-Muslim epithets. They demanded a temple to Ram at a site where Hindu hardliners tore down a 16th century mosque in 1992, sparking riots that left about 2,000 people dead. Hindu groups say the mosque was only built after Muslim invaders destroyed