India's Musalman problem

The title of this article is taken from India's British-adopted way of speaking and dealing with what they saw as the problems posed by the area's Muslim population. When the British arrived in what became their largest colony in the empire that they built in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, they initially came as traders to the eastern part of the sub-continent.

Most of the trading the British were interested in was done by Hindu merchants. Delicate Indian silks and other hand-woven fabrics were popular with the residents of London and other large cities in Britain. Muslims were not traders and very few were weavers. Upper-class Muslims had ruled India not only as emperors, with Delhi as their capital, but also as princes governing hundreds of states scattered around the area.

To bring this class of Indians under their control, the British rulers needed a combination of show of force and royal rewards. Knighthoods were liberally handed out to Indian Muslims. Sir Muhammad Iqbal, the poet laureate of Pakistan, was one such beneficiary. In 1857, what came to be called the Great Indian Mutiny, most of those who took part in the rising were Muslims. The mutiny was put down using brutal force in which mostly Muslims suffered. This was then the background to what the British began to call their "Musalman problem." It is my contention that the current rulers of India are governing their country in a way that too has resulted in their "Musalman problem."

Under Narendra Modi, the long-serving prime minister, he and his political party, the Bharata Janata Party (BJP) have decided to bring Hindutva governance to the country. They have proclaimed that India - the country they prefer to call "Bharat" - is basically for Hindus. The 200 million followers of the Islamic faith, Modi believes, must respect Hinduism. They don't have to become Hindus, but they have to live in the country basically as second-class citizens. This second-class status was formally recognised by the Indian legislature by a law passed a couple of years ago. The Muslim population makes up 14 percent of the Indian population. Had Pakistan not been created in 1947 and not broken up in 1971 to create another avowedly Muslim state, India's combined Muslim population would have of the order of 620 million, about a quarter of the country's total population.

India's Muslim population is located mostly in the poor urban areas of the country. Several large cities have tightly packed slums where Muslims eke out modest living. The area around the grand mosque in Delhi is a good example of the way Muslims live. I once went to see the mosque and was driven in a car from the World Bank. It was a large Mercedes which stopped below the stairs of the mosque. My arrival was watched by a man who said he was in charge of the mosque. He took me to an Arab sheikh who had come to visit the sights in the Indian capital. "Let me show you around," he said and took me to the back of the mosque which overlooked a large slum.

"This is a Muslim colony, from where the residents were following the war between India and Pakistan. There were loud cheers whenever Pakistan scored a hit," he said. Having done the round of the mosque, he asked for a donation for the mosque, and I gave a hundred dollars. He brought out a register and asked me to write my name and address. I did, noting my address in Islamabad. He was shocked. "You are from Pakistan; I thought you are Arab. Please don't repeat what I said about the slum dwellers behind the mosque who cheered whenever Pakistan scored a hit against India."

India has uneasy relations with the Muslim states that are its neighbours. This is the case not only with relations with Pakistan but also with Bangladesh, the country that was created in part by Indian intervention. In December 1971, while the Pakistani army was attempting to overpower the mutiny by its Bengali citizens, India sent in its troops who beat back the Pakistani army and took thousands of prisoners who were then shipped to locations in India's south.

At the time of British India's partition into the independent states of India and Pakistan, the status of Kashmir princely state remined unresolved. The state was predominantly Muslim but was ruled over by a Hindu maharaja. Afterwards, the ruler dithered for a while but ultimately decided to accede to India. Pakistan did not accept this move and sent in its troops to bring Kashmir into Pakistan. India countered by sending in its army, resulting in the state being divided into two parts: Indian and Pakistani occupied portions of the state.

This division of the state has led to three India-Pakistan wars and several other near-wars. The most recent encounter was in 2024 when India, having blamed Pakistani based groups for the killing of dozens of Hindu pilgrims who had gone to Kashmir to sightsee, launched several attacks on Pakistan. Pakistan responded with attacks of its own. In the air battle that ensued, Pakistan appeared to have shot down seven Indian planes using the aircrafts initially supplied by China which Pakistan had begun to manufacture on its own. It was the intervention by Donald Trump, the American president, that resulted in a ceasefire between the two nations.

The turn to Hindutva for governance and the insistence that India is for Hindus have alienated large Muslim segments of the country's population. There are reports of attacks by local Muslim extremist groups on prominent Indian targets. One such attack was on the Mughal-era fort in old Delhi which killed several people. The attack was by Muslim extremist groups who are angry at the way the government by Hindu nationalists in the party and government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi are treating the Muslim population.

For the first time, the government did not blame Pakistan for the attack as it did when Hindu tourist's visiting Kashmir were attacked and killed. There is no immediate solution to the problem posed by the division of Kashmir. The latest findings by the United Nations Special Procedures experts listing the human rights violations endured by Kashmiris living under India occupation is one another reason for the reaction by the large Muslim community. Developments such as these are what I have called India's Musalman problem.