Essay question: From prejudice to discrimination, are Muslims in India discriminated against or is it a case of religious competition?
According to Shaban (2018), most Muslims in India feel overly marginalized. Political analysts point out that the level of marginalisation has been increasing steadily after the rise of Hindu right-wing ideologies, which started in the 1980s. Election of Narendra Modi as the country’s prime minister worsened the situation as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party has and continues to partner with other organizations to campaign against minority religious communities, Muslims being their primary target.
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Against the Muslims, the campaigns protest against ‘love jihad,’ a practice where Muslim men are believed to lure women into Islam by tricking them into love affairs. However, other analysts point out that this should not be used as a reason to attack Muslims because Hindus are also engaged in a similar practice known as ‘ghar wapsi’ (homecoming). This practice involves converting Christians and Muslims ‘back’ to Hinduism (Shaban, (2018).Thus, they believe that the religious groups in the country are involved in healthy competition as each tries to win more converts. They argue that such practices should not be considered as discrimination against Muslims and other minority religious groups. In fact, they say that Muslims are using far worse tactics against other religious minorities in countries governed via Sharia laws.
Others believe that most of Indian Muslims’ problems are a result of their own cultural and social rigidity. Former Deputy President Hamid Ansari once claimed that Muslims were trapped in a vicious circle and defensive posture that limited their self-advancement. Ansari further pointed out that the traditional Muslims setting denied women and youths of today a chance to excel, as their aspirations are much different from aspirations of the traditional Muslim religious leadership (Shaban, 2018).
In conclusion, Sherman (2015) points out that this hatred between Muslims and Hindus can be traced to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. After the partition, India experienced several religious-based riots across the country. Individuals from both communities began to live in neighborhoods where their religious affiliation had majority members. From this time, a kind of hatred developed between the two communities, and it is getting worse. Shashikant Pandey, a renowned political scientist once said, “A sense of fear within the minority exists,” be it Muslims or Hindus.
- Shaban, A. (Ed.). (2018). Lives of Muslims in India: Politics, Exclusion and Violence. Taylor & Francis.
- Sherman, T. C. (2015). Muslim belonging in secular India: negotiating citizenship in postcolonial Hyderabad. Cambridge University Press.
