Kanpur, India ? At her summer camp, 10-year-old Stuti Gupta is learning to use guns, leap through rings of fire and fight with knives and wooden truncheons — skills India’s most powerful Hindu nationalist group tells her she needs to protect her faith.

The women’s wing of the World Hindu Council is conducting training camps in several parts of India, where girls learn martial arts and are “ordained” with metal tridents, the symbol of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

But in a modern nation built on principles of tolerance and equality, such camps don’t just deepen Hindus’ faith. They create cauldrons of hostility and inject hatred against Muslims and Christian minorities, critics say.

“Such trends are inconsistent with prosperity, development and modernization. They are completely antithetical to the modern project of nation building,” said Mushirul Hasan, a Muslim who is a professor of modern Indian history. “If the government wants to create a modern state, it must call the bluff of the Hindu fundamentalists and show the danger they pose to the country.”

Stuti, a fourth-grader, traveled 170 miles from her native Banda to attend the camp in the northern industrial city of Kanpur. Both cities are in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

“This training will prepare me to fight the odds in the society confidently. They are killing Hindus everywhere to reduce us to a minority and this would help me to face that challenge,” she said.

The World Hindu Council’s main target is Muslims, who make up more than 12 percent of India’s 1.02 billion people. Some 84 percent of India’s citizens are Hindus, and the Hindu nationalists often warn of what they say are the growing militant ambitions of Muslims.

While the camps for girls are a relatively new phenomenon, the nationalist group has long conducted camps for boys, who attend them by the thousands.

A female cadet practices fighting skills with a bamboo stick at a Hindu nationalist training camp in Nadiyad, India. The World Hindu Council tells students they must learn to fight to protect their faith.

“The camps are not only organized to impart arms training and physical education, but also to give them an in-depth knowledge of Indian culture and traditions,” said Hari Agarwal of the camp in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh.

But Muslims are alarmed. In a rare move, a Muslim organization in Uttar Pradesh announced Monday it would distribute 5,000 tridents to Muslims next week to counter what they see as a growing threat.

The Hindu Council campaign has been bolstered by the 13-year Islamic insurgency in the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir. The council, an ideological affiliate of India’s ruling Baharatiya Janata Party, has used the insurgency to push its hardline brand of Hinduism, traditionally a peace-loving religion.

Minorities throughout India and those who defend the country’s secular constitution say training young Hindus how to use weapons is neither patriotic nor religious.

“These camps are being organized to scare the minorities,” said Sharif Khan Pathan, secretary of the Citizens Relief Service in Gujarat. “We understand that the state government is a sponsor of such activities, but the (federal government) should ban such training camps, as ultimately it is the Muslims who will suffer.”