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This paper conceptualizes security as a discourse of violence that masks violence in the name of counter-violence, killing in the name of protection. As the case of Hindutva in India illustrates, violence against minorities is normalized in the name of personal, communal, national and even international security. The will to secure the Self has as its corollary the will to make insecure the Other, the desire to control and use violence. Using the example of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, the paper examines some of the ways in which a stereotypical image of Muslim men (the figure of ‘the Muslim’) is seen as constituting the danger against which the Hindu body politic needs to be secured. The violence against minority Muslims is facilitated and justified in the name of achieving security for the Hindu Self at individual, community, national as well as international levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]