Now, it has come to a point where the natural right of existence itself has turned into a constant fight determined by one’s identity, niching it to the religious minorities amidst the unilateral whim of layering the nation into the theocratic model.
For Indian Muslims today, existence is longer passive, it is a continuous negotiation tabled on the history, politics and social perceptions that are being drawn, and inherited, rather than rationalised. This has turned identity into no longer just a marker of faith but a lens through which citizenship, and opportunities are assessed, and tampered with.
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF MUSLIM ANTAGONISM-
The antagonizing of Muslims in India cannot be understood without trailing through the historical narrations forming the reality rather than framing it. The one-sided perception of the “Muslim invasions” has chained the present Muslims into the successors of invaders and being termed ‘aliens’. This has turned the blind eye towards the hidden truths other invasions like of Aryan invasions, Achaemenid invasions, Indo-greek invasions, Huna invasions, Portuguese invasions, etc. All this conveniently ignores the shared cultural spaces, Muslims contributors to art, architecture, economic growth, and knowledge systems that they brought to the sub-continent and shaped the country. Instead, historical memory has been curated to emphasize conflict over coexistence. The famous saying of historian Romila Thappar befits this situation- “To categorize some people as indigenous and others as alien, to argue about the identity of the first inhabitants of the subcontinent, and to try and sort out these categories for the remote past, is to attempt the impossible.”
Aggravated further by the Colonial period, where the required demands for separate classifications for channelising the path of dignity of the minorities was perceived as anti-national. A younger sibling seeking for the protection from the dominance of elder siblings is not termed as a peace-breaker in the family. So as the case of the requisite demands of Muslims during the colonial rule. While the parallel demands by the ‘Savarkar-Gowalkar denominations’ of the majoritarian communities held the same perception of separation for both communities but they are still perceived as justifiable rather than anti-national, unlike Muslims. This led to the storm of Partition following the bloodshed, which is being still being prevalent, with the burden of proving loyalty being lingered on the current Indian Muslims.
POST-INDEPENDENCE CONTINUITIES AND POLITICAL WEAPONISATION-
Yet, India continues to be politically instrumentalised, attacking the essence of secularism and equality. Religious identity became a tool for mobilizing selective support, often reducing Muslims to a vote bank rather than equal stakeholders in development. With the ‘cornered beliefs’ being carried by one generation to another, mistrust is flourishing the seeds of hate. Over the decades, the social heath of Indian Muslims was repeatedly reshaped by political currents, without offering a needful panacea to their marginalisation. The 1983 Nellie massacre, where vulnerability was not accidental but layered through societal processes and viewing Muslims as ‘outsiders’ without evidencing the allegations. Therein thousands of murder complaints were shut down with the doors of justice. The 1992 Babri Masjid case, an double-jerked answer to the claims that were however defied by the ASI reports but the sponsored defence for consolidating the attackers, symbols the quote- “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Indicating that power dipped in extremism can do away with the facts easily. Then the 2002 Gujarat violence, where communal attacks were retaliated rampantly and victims were victmised based on their identities and culprits garlanded boldly.
CITIZENSHIP UNDER STRAIN
The strategic isolation of the Indian Muslims got more clearly mirrored when their existence and mitigation confronted in front of the newly enacted law of Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, spanning the perception that persecution is the Muslims language and so we are ready to replace them with the victims of persecutions hailing from ‘their’ countries. Ironically, power-holders through such legislation flag false narrative of welfarism for the Muslims communities and also determine the country of Indian Muslims based on their religion. Evident from the open remarks of ‘Puncture walas’, ‘Mullas’, ‘Ghuspitiyos’, ‘Miyas’, etc. Their sympathy in the form of criminalisation of Triple Talaq, Waqf Act 2025, Haj Committee Budgetary irregularity by the Centre, and many more speaks in volumes that very purpose of ‘so called welfare schemes for the Muslims’ seems to benefit the plutocrats and theocratic. We being the so called beneficiaries of such ‘schemes’ often questions that why then the cloud of suspicion towards us is intensifying rather than fading in the minds of fellow Indians? It is a strategic marginalization decoded by the out-lookers and not the onlookers.
The ruthless fact of the Kashmiri Muslims being prejudiced and unwelcomed outside their state, casts the regional based communalism as the easier way to demonize the whole community. The abrogation of Article 370 opened the doors for the Kashmir state to prosper economically though selectively but failed to open the same doors for the residents of Kashmir. These are not acts, but the process that often begins by the risen hate speeches disregarding Muslims. By pursuing ‘Hindu Men’ to marry ‘Muslim women’ as the conditions for the Hindu Men to get an employment, strategising the defeat of Indian Muslims by trapping the ‘Muslim girls’ into love, etc. This is heavily polarizing and normalizing the hatred. All this is justified after playing the ‘one-sided’ tale of the story for antagonizing Muslims. This remembers us with the saying- “The world is not divided into good and bad people, but into people who are less bad and more bad.”
COMMUNALISING THE OPPORTUNITIES, IGNORING THE MERITS-
The cumulative effect of these structured atrocities is a visible curtailment of opportunities. Access to education, employment and welfare becomes uneven. The discontiunation of schemes like the Maulana Azad National Scholarship raises questions about the state’s role in enabling upward mobility. The cutting-down the funds to minorities’ education, depredations of Muslims government officials, etc, are standing tall and rhetorically showing the new secularism, where practicing Islam is deemed punishable. Individuals like Justice M. Fathima Beevi, Azim Premji, Mohammad Shami, Sania Mirza, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, Begum Rokeya and numerous others have made significant contributions, demonstrating that capability or religion is not the issue, access and acceptance are.
At the same time, symbolic assertions- like the ‘saffronization’ of public places, diverging crores of national wealth to pursue the whim of majoritarian rule holds stark trait of ‘New India’.
Institutionalizing of communalism is best understood through the treatment of dissent of the Indian Muslims. The unlawful imprisonment of Muslim intellectuals like Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima, and many more, has raised debates about the boundaries of protest and free expression unlimited to the leniency for hate-mongers. Data reflecting a disproportionately high number of Muslim under-trials further raises concerns about systemic bias.The fear of the rise of vocal and vibrant Indian Muslims, are witnessing the fierce end, like the assassination of figures like Shahid Azmi, who even after more than a decade, awaits the expeditious justice unlike the cases where identity of the victim is reversed.
Many cases where mMuslims ‘in their names’ have been unlawfully caught and put behind the bars, but now after many years their acquittals are proving the tactics adopted to blemish the names of Indian Muslims. Mumbai blast cases, including the acquittals of many innocent Muslim people like- Wahid Sheikh, underscore the cost of wrongful detention.
UNJUST JUSTICE-
While justice is still prevalent in India, but only when the culprits are from the Muslim communities. The recent tragic killing of Tarun Kumar during the Holi festival and the tragic killing of Unaiz Khan, a minor child, are both the examples of how justice is unjustly granted. With the former case, culprits therein receiving most unlawful ‘bulldozer justice’ and the deceased of the latter still lingering on streets to be heard.
Not limited to this, instances of cow vigilantism, mob lynchings, and controversies such as the hijab row contribute to a perception of selective enforcement. The practicing and preaching of a religion is still well-preserved in the fundamentals of the Indian constitution that is not easier like the NCERT textbooks to be distorted. This rising communal hate in India speaks much to substantiate these hard-hit realities.
LAMENTING OR LAPSING THE HEAT OF WAVES-
The question remains intact- should society merely lament these conditions, or actively and collectively work to dissipate them? Lamentation risks normalizing injustice. What is needed is a conscious effort getting inspired from the effulgent examples of Mohammad Deepak, speaking for the righteous, Justice Atul Streedhan, speaking the language of equality before law, Teesta Setalvad, disseminating the legal and civil aid for communal violence victims and displaying the truth with her bold reports and approaches, Ravish Kumar, who has proved that journalism is branded with a voice and not by a offical news channel platform.
The disparities being endured by Indian Muslims is not a community issue. It is a reflection of the sickness being suffered by our nation that risk the true development and peace of the country as a whole. But if addressed with courage and mindfulness, the existent devastation of the social and mental intellectualism of the Indian society can be guarded. Ending with the hooking words of Martin Luther King Jr.- “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”
