India has diverse ethnic and religious groups out of which Muslims are the largest minority group after Hindus accounting for 200 million population. Despite legal safeguards, Muslims in India have endured institutional racism, bigotry, and brutality since the partition. A term sub-altern coined by Antonio Gramsci is used to describe the phenomenon in which the native population of colonized states is subjected to low social classes and labeled as “Others’’ by colonizers. They are excluded from the hierarchy of politics, economy, or geography and placed at the margins. In simple words, these are the people who face subordination from dominating classes. In postcolonial literature, Sub alternation is used to describe the societies in which new elites oppress the country’s impoverished communities following independence. Pramod K. Nayar says that “postcolonial societies generated their subalterns” by setting out their own “minorities” as the “outsiders” Or Others. No doubt Muslims are among the most vulnerable targets of the elite ruling class of India who refuse them the freedom to dwell in the country. This phenomenon of subalternation, wherein minorities are “othered,” has expanded more ever since the Bhartia Janta Party BJP which is the prime advocate of Hindutva ideology seized power.
Hindutva is an extreme political ideology whose conservative agenda is centered on the idea that Hindus are a separate community whose history, cultures, traditions, and way of life have been mistreated over 200 years of Britain Raj and Muslim Mughal invasions. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is credited with developing the Hindutva philosophy in 1923. It was inspired by Nazism and fascism that considered one’s race superior to the rest and showed no tolerance towards other inferior races. The advocates of this ideology view Hindus as true Indians. For them Muslims are not faithful Indians, but rather foreigners and pro-Islamic due to their Muslim ancestry. Right-wing Hindu extremists despise them for their separate religious-cultural orientation. Indian Muslims are always under pressure to demonstrate their national loyalty and patriotism.
Khaled Beydoun, a very well professor, and Islamophobia researcher has unequivocally labeled India as the “epicenter of worldwide Islamophobia.” Following 9/11, the Indian extreme right-wing governing party, the BJP, made proper use of the hypoxic environment towards Muslims on the global stage to humiliate them locally. Ever since the Bhartiya Janata (BJP) took office for the second term in a row, anti-Muslim discourse and bigoted policies have increased. Hindutva extremists in India brutally killed Muslims for hesitating to pronounce the Hindu divine name, “Jai Shri Ram.” Verbal abuse and dehumanization of Muslims are common in journalism and public debates. Furthermore, Muslims are now being barred from public opportunities such as the army, administration, and Congress. Hindus and non-Hindus especially Muslims are divided into different groupings. The BJP has implemented extremist acts in several districts, particularly in attempts to protect cows and prohibit slaughters. Sanskrit as well as other Hindu dialects are leading over Urdu and Bengali. Acts such as burning or demolishing mosques, banning inter-faith marriages, giving importance to Hindu symbols and identity, and linking Hindu hood with national identity are common. The BJP party has also assigned Hindu deities titles exclusively for towns, motorways, and airlines. Hindus, or “true” Indians, they claim, include people who associate with Bharat as their original nation of birth. Ghar wapsi, or “go home,” are some common slogans chanted against Muslims today. Some of the key events that highlight the surge in extremist tendencies against Muslims within the state include the 2002 Riots in Gujarat, the Demolition of the Babri masjid and the RSS vigilante’s attempts to construct the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. Moving on, the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 only grants citizenship to six groups of immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh but Muslims are not included in this act while other minorities such as Christians, and Buddhists are granted citizenship. The bill separates immigrants between Muslims and Non-Muslims, fueling Islamophobia across the country. In addition, the Islamophobic narrative was nourished during Covid-19 when Hindutva advisers circulated false material with provocative terms like Corona Jihad to accuse Muslims and cover the government’s inability. During the pandemic, many Muslim sufferers weren’t even hospitalized by doctors over fear of public outrage against Muslims. Moreover, India’s Bollywood industry which is a strong soft power tool has always contributed to the growing religious tensions among Muslims and non-Muslims.Many Bollywood movies like Raazi (2018) and Uri:The Surgical Strike (2019) and the Kashmir Files(2022) released in the past few years have portrayed the negative image of Muslims resulting in causing enmity between different groups. And added fuel to the fire. Last but not least article 370 and 35A that granted a special status to the Kashmiris was abrogated by the government in 2019 so that the demographics of the majority Muslim states can be altered.
The paradox of being acclaimed as one of the biggest democracies in the world while experiencing the subjection of its Muslim majority remains a grim reality in the complex patterns of India’s diversified society. The hardships of Muslims in India offer a more nuanced image than the nation’s goals of harmony and unity in diversity might suggest. Muslims as well as other minorities have been negatively impacted by the toxic fusion of religious nationalism and political ambition.
Author:
Student of International Relations at National Defence University, Islamabad/ Researcher at Kashmir Institue of International Relations and Can be reached at ayeshasharif946@gmail.com
