The secular project in India died when the majority Hindus (even previously liberal/secular ones) perceived that the secularisation of Indian Muslim society was simply not progressing at the pace of any other faith group despite receiving the most concessions from the Indian state.
Muslims were allowed AIMPLB for their domestic affairs where other religions had civil laws.
Everything from family planning to raising the age of marriage for girls to compulsory girls' formal education/equal property rights faced much more opposition from Muslim religious organisations than they did from anyone else.
In addition to that , the Indian state was funding and paying salaries to madrassahs and the ulamas for even religious instruction even when the students of these madrassahs had plenty of non Muslims, Hajj subsidy etc.
Whereas for other religions , reservations in colleges and government jobs were on the basis of caste , some states reserved a certain portion for all Muslims by blindly classifying them as Other Backward Caste, which was principally wrong.
And at least in the southern states (where Im from) even gender mixing was extremely one sided where Muslim society frowned upon and in many cases even threatened Muslim girls who would fraternise with the opposite sex . And I'm not talking about backward areas of the country. I'm talking about even the more upwardly mobile cities and neighborhoods.
I suppose individually these could've been seen as acceptable concessions but when taken on the whole and with experience over the years of the failure of this secular project, somewhat of a consensus that Islam and secularism are completely incompatible. And I've heard of endless number of Muslim theologians pretty much say the same and classical schools of jurisprudence also don't support any idea of a secular state.
Sure you'll have people who hate Muslims anyway just like you do in the rest of non Islamic world, but a lot of this "hatred" comes from the 2010's when the status quo became completely unacceptable for the majority.
The pendulum is now swinging the other way and already some states have stopped funding madrassahs and religious teachers (not all) and have converted them into formal schools (Assam)
I guess what at least some of the saner members of the current incumbent government want is somewhat of a preferred state belief system (Dharmic) with others having protected minority status where the minorities can practice their faith but with zero state funding and the inability to prosletyse to dharmics .
Ironically , that would make it the Dharmic equivalent of a modern Muslim state, lol.
At least that seems to be the long term agenda
