In the first lines of their book entitled People Without History. India’s Muslim Ghettos, Seabrook and Siddiqui (1988, p. vi) express the lament that ‘rulers of India have become complacent.’ They argue that this results from two causes: ‘the flattery’ that the latter ‘have received, much of it from their erstwhile imperial masters’; and ‘the euphoria of high economic growth figures’ (Ibid.) which pushed, moreover, the privileged to look upon those left behind with suspicion. In their study published in 1988, the two authors examine the living conditions of Muslims in the slums of Kolkata. Their analysis remains of interest, since they underline that:

No longer responsive to injustice and inequality, the government of India appears content to attribute gratuitous malevolence to those who resist; and although the Maoists are currently the principal public enemy, Muslims are rarely far behind, since it is believed that they will not hesitate to use violence and terror as means of securing their aim – an aim which the Hindu Right sees, absurdly, distortedly, as dominance (Ibid.). 

Islam is, in India, the second most practiced religion, its adherents, comprising about 172 million people, according to the latest census of 2011. The country has the third largest Muslim population in the world (after Indonesia and Pakistan). Rather than considering such a dimension as an asset that would contribute to the influence of India, not least within the Muslim world, Hindu nationalists who have gradually asserted themselves to obtain, at the Centre, a large government majority, have consistently questioned the Indian Muslims’ loyalty to the nation. In this way, they have if not justified at least tacitly contributed to the discrimination of which this community is the target.

The first part of this article will look at the conclusions of the 2005 Rajinder Sachar Committee and the reactions these provoked. Three years before the submission of this report, the State of Gujarat, ruled by a Hindu nationalist administration, had been the scene of extreme communalist violence that particularly affected the Muslim community which will be explored in the second part of the article. Called to the polls in May 2014, the majority of Indian citizens, voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and especially for a man whom they considered to represent the future of a country they wished powerful: Narendra Modi. Since then, a part of the Indian media has reported on worrying incidents that target the Muslim minority, even as they question the overarching plans of a central government which has at the very least done little to prevent such developments. India’s civil society, for its part, notwithstanding its claims of continuing attachment to the principle of pluralism, has tended towards a studied timidity in its response. This will form the third part of the article.

Reference:

Jeremy S., and Siddiqui, I. A. 1988, People Without History. India’s Muslim Ghettos, London: PlutoPress.