How oppressed are Muslims in India?

Nida Kirmani
Updated about 10 hours ago

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Muslims offer Eid prayers at the Jama Masjid, Delhi | Reuters
Muslims in India form the largest religious minority in the country. According to the
2011 Census, they comprise 14.4 per cent of Indias total population roughly 174
million people. To use the word minority for them, therefore, is misleading: they are
the third-largest Muslim population anywhere in the world, after Indonesia and
Pakistan. Minority status, however, refers to a groups relative power vis--vis other
groups rather than to its numbers alone (note the case of women everywhere or
blacks in South Africa during the apartheid). In that sense, then, Indian Muslims
certainly are a minority, particularly when one considers the growing influence of
Hindu right-wing forces since the 1980s.
But just how oppressed are Muslims in India? For Pakistanis and particularly for
those whose families migrated from India this question is a source of endless
curiosity, not the least because the answer either justifies or undermines the very
notion of the Pakistani nation-state. If Indian Muslims, in fact, are oppressed then
regardless of Pakistans myriad internal troubles the people of Pakistan can still
breathe a sigh of relief that they live in a land of their own. On the flip side, if Indian
Muslims are not oppressed, then what exactly was the Partition trauma about? As
academic literature produced on Indian Muslims in recent years tells us, there are no
simple answers to these questions.
This sense of marginalisation has been steadily increasing since the rise to
prominence of Hindu right-wing ideologies
Scholarly interest in Indian Muslims is not recent and can be traced to the colonial
period. Orientalist scholars during the British era presented the subcontinent as a
patchwork of different religious groups an understanding that informed the
policies of the colonial state and made its task of ruling its Indian subjects
manageable. This understanding was echoed by the indigenous Hindu and Muslim
elites who used religious identity as a means of shoring up their own power (a

practice that continues even today on both sides of the religious divide and, indeed,
on both sides of the India-Pakistan border). On the whole, this approach hindered the
fluidity of beliefs and religious practices across communal boundaries which has
always existed in the subcontinent, and which persists despite hindrances even
today.
Saba Naqvi has documented the subcontinents syncretic traditions in her book In
Good Faith: A Journey in Search of an Unknown India. She highlights many instances
of boundary crossing that regularly take place across religious divides despite the
best efforts of right-wing forces. For the most part, however, scholarship on religious
communities in India has continued to repeat the notion that the most significant
divide in that country and the one that creates conflict most frequently is the one
between Hindus and Muslims. While this simplifies a much more complex reality, it
subtly reinforces the logic of the two-nation theory.
Most of the scholarship on Indian Muslims produced in the last 50 years mimics the
Orientalist approach in two important ways: it views one of the largest Muslim
populations in the world as a homogenous and unified group; and, for the most part,
it views that population through the lens of the north Indian urban elite. Books such
as Hasan Suroors Indias Muslim Spring: Why is Nobody Talking about It? deny the
vast diversity that exists among Indian Muslims in terms of region, class, sect,
gender, and caste.
Hindu extremists demolish Babri mosque in Ayodhya, triggering widespread HinduMuslim violence in 1992 | AFP
His work, instead, focuses largely on middle-class, urban, north Indian Muslims as he
argues that there has been an awakening among Indias Muslims which is driving
them away from their supposed historical insularity and conservatism. In order to
underscore his argument, he implies that there are two categories dividing the
Muslim population of India: good Muslims, who are liberal and moderate in their
political and religious leanings, and bad Muslims, who are conservative and
fundamentalist in their outlook. Such a division is not just without any scholarly
basis, it is also troubling as it drastically reduces the myriad political and religious
views prevalent among Muslims living in different parts of India.
Similarly, Salman Khurshid, a prominent Congress politician since the 1980s, has
recently made his own attempt to diagnose the problems of Indian Muslims. His book
At Home in India: A Restatement of Indian Muslims is more a memoir than an
academic study, but it suffers from a similar malaise as some other books, in that it
attempts to represent all Indian Muslims through the experience of a few members
of the urban elite. Much of the book is dedicated to revisiting debates over Muslim
personal law which preoccupied many writers throughout the 1980s and the 1990s
along with recounting of the history of Aligarh Muslim University, the quintessential
bastion of the north Indian Muslim elite.
Though both Suroor and Khurshid raise the issue of a growing sense of
marginalisation among Indian Muslims, neither is able to deal with this question in a
meaningful way because their work is not sufficiently grounded in field research.
Both are also, sadly, apologetic in tone, taking great pains to prove that Muslims are
loyal subjects of the Indian state a strategy used by minority elites to secure their
position within the power structure since the colonial period.
Fortunately, such simplistic approaches to the study of Indian Muslims are waning. A
new generation of scholars is emerging from different disciplines whose work is
grounded in empirical research. Two recent books, for instance, shed light on the
complexity and diversity among Muslims in India through the lens of political history.

Also read: Strangers in the house: The adverse effects of solidifying ethnic boundaries
The first, Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory,
Contestation by Hilal Ahmed takes an innovative approach to understanding the
evolution of Muslim politics in north India. The author focusses, in particular, on the
discourse related to Indo-Islamic historic buildings such as the Jama Masjid in Delhi
and the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya as a means for understanding the construction of
Muslims as a political group by a variety of actors. In the process of unpacking how
Muslim unity is asserted through these key sites, Ahmed cleverly demonstrates the
constructed, contested and evolving nature of Indian Muslim identity itself.
His approach is important in that it does not take the category of Muslims as a given;
rather, it traces the construction of this political category as a process that is both
contested and continuously evolving. The book also moves away from simplistic
binaries such as communal/secular that have plagued many other discussions of
Indian Muslims.
One of the most notable recent contributions to the understanding of Muslim
histories in India is Mohammad Sajjads Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours.
It moves away from the former centres of Mughal power which have generally been
the focus of studies on Indian Muslims. Sajjads carefully researched work outlines
the rich history of political mobilisation among Muslims in Bihar, the third-most
populous state in India and one with a significant Muslim population, from the
colonial period to the present. The author highlights the resistance amongst Bihari
Muslims to the two-nation theory. This has largely been overlooked in studies of the
pre-independence period which generally focus on Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal.
Sajjad, however, points out that Muslim political groups in Bihar were both anticolonial and anti-separatist in orientation and regularly allied with Hindu groups in
their political struggles. In the postcolonial period, he describes the movement for
the promotion of Urdu which began in the 1950s and continued through the 1980s
as a mass-based campaign, not carried out in religious and communal terms, but
instead, on the basis of the rights guaranteed to linguistic minorities in the Indian
constitution.
Sajjad points to another subject hitherto untouched by other scholars: the question
of caste among Muslims. Though Muslim elites in India would have us believe that
there is no caste system among Indian Muslims, the 1990s witnessed the emergence
of two significant movements: the All-India Backward Muslim Morcha and the All
India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz. These two movements campaigned for the rights of
lower-caste Muslims in Bihar.
Sajjads contribution is important in two ways. First, it focusses on a part of India that
is under-researched when it comes to the study of Indian Muslims. Second, it not only
highlights the issue of caste amongst Muslims but also focusses on mobilisation
among and also led by non-elite groups. For this reason, his is a welcome addition
to the existing literature on Indian Muslims.
Prayers being offered on the last day of the holy month of Ramzan at Jama Masjid,
Dehli | Reuters
Though many Muslims in India occupy various important positions in the state and
the society which mostly depends on where they come from and what are their
class, caste, and gender a growing sense of marginalisation among Muslims across
India is hard to deny. This sense of marginalisation has been steadily increasing since
the rise to prominence of Hindu right-wing ideologies and organisations during the
1980s, when the Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi issue was used to sharpen religious
divides across India. While the occurrence of communal violence has declined since

the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, the alienation felt by religious minorities including
Muslims and Christians has continued to increase, particularly after the victory of
Narendra Modi as prime minister in the 2014 election.
The marginalisation of Muslims in India is, indeed, well documented. In the mid2000s, the Indian government commissioned two studies the Sachar Committee
Report of 2006 and the Misra Commission Report of 2007. These highlighted a higher
prevalence of discrimination towards Muslims and socio-economic deprivation
among them as compared to other religious groups. Little concrete action, however,
has been taken to address these issues at the policy level. If anything, the situation
has only worsened.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its partner organisations in the Hindu
right have started a concerted campaign against all religious minorities, including
Muslims. The main features of this campaign include protests against the so-called
love jihad Muslim men allegedly converting Hindu women to Islam by trapping
them in love affairs and ghar wapsi (homecoming) initiatives which convert
Muslims and Christians back to Hinduism. Moves towards Hinduisation have also
been taking place across India.
While Hindu nationalist groups are waging a concerted campaign against all religious
minorities in their efforts to Hinduise India, Islamist forces are doing the same and
even worse to religious minorities on this side of the border.
For example, the government in the state of Maharashtra where the Shiv Sena has
successfully drummed up anti-Muslim sentiments for years recently imposed a ban
on beef trading. This will disproportionately harm poor Muslims working in meat and
leather industries. All of these are signs of growing intolerance and a gradual yet
steady process of de-secularisation, which do not bode well for religious minorities in
India.
As a result of these shifts in the Indian polity, academics have also begun to
investigate the issue of marginalisation more seriously. One issue that has received
attention in recent years is that of the spatial segregation of Muslims, particularly in
urban areas. Two recent books discuss this issue in depth. The first one, Muslims in
Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, is edited by two French scholars,
Christophe Jaffrelot and Laurent Gayer. It is a collection of studies on Muslim
mohallas exclusively Muslim neighbourhoods or ghettos in cities across India.
Each chapter is dedicated to a different city and includes portraits of major cities
such as Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Lucknow.
The book also includes research on cities which are rarely the focus of studies on
Indian Muslims. These include Cuttack in Orissa, Kozhikode in Kerala and Bangalore
in Karnataka.
By providing detailed studies of such diverse geographical sites, Muslims in Indian
Cities draws attention to the vast diversity of experiences that exists among Indian
Muslims. It provides a nuanced understanding of the issue of marginalisation,
highlighting the fact that the reasons for spatial segregation of Muslims vary in
different cities depending on the context. In cities such as Ahmedabad and Mumbai
where large-scale communal violence has taken place in the past the level of
spatial segregation and insecurity among Muslims is predictably high. In cities in
southern and eastern parts of India, where Hindu nationalist groups have historically
had less of a presence, Muslims are generally in a relatively secure position vis--vis
other religious groups. This may be changing, however, as the Hindu right wing
rapidly makes inroads into those parts of India as well.

An Indian Muslim man walks into a mosque in New Delhi. A portrait of Mahatma
Gandhi hangs on the wall of the Delhi Police Headquarters in the background | AP
My own book Questioning the Muslim Woman: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban
Indian Locality focusses on the issue of marginalisation and insecurity among women
living in Delhi. The book deliberately focusses on the experiences of Muslim women,
who had previously only been viewed in a simplistic manner through the lens of the
veil and personal law. Based on research conducted over the course of a year in
Zakir Nagar, a neighbourhood situated in Delhis Muslim belt, my book highlights
multiple and shifting factors that determine ones experience of insecurity even
within the same locality. If a range of experiences can exist within such a small
geographical area as Zakir Nagar, one can only imagine the diversity of experiences
that may exist within a huge country.
At the same time, Questioning the Muslim Woman demonstrates a growing sense of
marginalisation among all Muslims which is tied to the historical memory of various
incidents of violence, beginning with the Partition. I conducted my research almost a
decade ago and Muslim localities including Zakir Nagar have continuously grown
since then. This points to the fact that marginalisation amongst Muslims is not
decreasing, and may actually be growing as the forces of Hindutva become stronger
across India.
Also read: Who feels safe in Pakistan
The state, too, has contributed to this sense of marginalisation. Since the Mumbai
terror attacks in 2008, Muslim men have increasingly become the targets of the
states security forces. They face human rights abuses during siege and search
operations carried out under the pretext of anti-terrorism operations, both within and
outside the confines of the law. Two young men were killed in 2008 in the infamous
Batla House encounter, which occurred in the same area where I had conducted my
research; many others have been arrested without charge from that same area and
countless more from across India.
Manisha Sethis book, Kafkaland: Prejudice, Law and Counterterrorism in India,
carefully documents the dark underbelly of counterterrorism in which fake
encounters and illegal detentions are regularly used as a means of asserting state
power against unwanted citizens. Such state excesses have only increased the sense
of alienation among Muslims particularly those living in urban areas.
Consequently, along with Dalits and Adivasis, Muslims make up a disproportionately
high percentage of the prison population, mirroring the situation of African
Americans in the United States.
One positive outcome of these negative developments is that there seemingly is a
steady decline in generalist studies of Indian Muslims. Most of the recent literature,
instead, suggests a growing maturity among scholars marked by an awareness of
the diversity that exists within this vast population. There is also a shift towards
empirically grounded studies. There are, however, still several areas that require
further exploration, which is good news for budding scholars. These include the issue
of caste among Muslims (a subject that also requires attention in Pakistan), which
has remained a taboo for too long.
There is also a gaping hole in academic literature when it comes to studies of
Muslims living in the southern and eastern parts of India particularly in Assam
which houses the highest percentage of Muslims in the population of any state in
India.
Muslims offer Eid prayers at the Jama Masjid, Delhi | Reuters

In order to correct the elite bias that has existed for long within academic literature
on Indian Muslims and to properly understand the issue of socio-economic
marginalisation among the community, more research needs to be conducted on
poor and middle-class Muslims who comprise the vast majority of the Muslim
population in India. Finally, more attention must be paid to the gendered experiences
of being Muslim, moving beyond the simplistic notion of Muslim women behind the
veil and taking into account the growing insecurity among Muslim men.
Finally, to return to the fraught question with which I began this essay: just how
oppressed are Indian Muslims? Though the formulation of this question is
problematic for multiple reasons not least of which is the assumption of uniformity
amongst this group I will hazard an answer: while Indian Muslims are undoubtedly
facing increasing insecurity and marginalisation particularly as Hindu right-wing
forces become more powerful they are still in a more secure position than religious
minorities in Pakistan.
While Hindu nationalist groups are waging a concerted campaign against all religious
minorities in their efforts to Hinduise India, Islamist forces are doing the same and
even worse to religious minorities on this side of the border. The marginalisation of
Muslims in India, therefore, must be viewed within the wider context of growing
religious majoritarianism in South Asia as a whole a process that began picking up
steam in both India and Pakistan during the 1980s.
Also read: Heart of Darkness: Shia resistance and revival in Pakistan
Additionally, India is still officially a secular state where the rights of religious
minorities are enshrined in the constitution, despite Modi governments best efforts
to the contrary. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Pakistan where the
Objectives Resolution solidified a second-class constitutional status for non-Muslim
Pakistanis and where the definition of Muslim itself is continuously shrinking. Rightly
or wrongly, for many secular-minded Indians who are concerned about the
deteriorating situation of religious minorities in their country, Pakistan stands as a
warning of what might be in store for them in the not-too-distant future if they fail to
quickly correct their path.