Backgrounder

India’s Muslims: An Increasingly Marginalized

Population
India’s Muslim communities have faced decades of discrimination, which experts say has worsened
under the Hindu nationalist BJP’s government.

WRITTEN BY
Lindsay Maizland

UPDATED
Last updated July 14, 2022 3:00 pm (EST)

Summary
Some two hundred million Muslims live in India, making up the predominantly Hindu country’s
largest minority group.

For decades, Muslim communities have faced discrimination in employment and education and
encountered barriers to achieving wealth and political power. They are disproportionately the victims
of communal violence.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling party have moved to limit Muslims’ rights, particularly
through the Citizenship Amendment Act, which allows fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslim
migrants from nearby countries.

Introduction
India is home to some two hundred million Muslims, one of the world’s largest Muslim
populations but a minority in the predominantly Hindu country. Since India’s
independence, Muslims have faced systematic discrimination, prejudice, and violence,
despite constitutional protections.

Experts say anti-Muslim sentiments have heightened under the leadership of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has pursued a
Hindu nationalist agenda since elected to power in 2014. Since Modi’s reelection in 2019,
the government has pushed controversial policies that critics say explicitly ignore Muslims’
rights and are intended to disenfranchise millions of Muslims. Under Modi, violence
against Muslims has become more common. The moves have sparked protests in India and
drawn international condemnation.

Who makes up India’s Muslim population?

India is a country of religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Its estimated two hundred
million Muslims, most of whom identify as Sunni, account for about 15 percent of the
population, by far the largest minority group. Hindus make up about 80 percent of the
population. The country’s Muslim communities are diverse, with differences in language,
caste, ethnicity, and access to political and economic power.
India’s Muslims as a Percentage of State
Population, 2011

Muslim population
50% or more
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

Note: The population of Lakshadweep, an archipelago off the coast of

Kerala not visible in this map, was 96.6% Muslim in 2011. Orissa was renamed
Odisha in 2011. Telangana was created in 2014. In 2019, Ladakh was separated
from Jammu and Kashmir.
How did India’s partition influence Hindu-Muslim relations?
Some of the animus between India’s Hindus and Muslims can be traced to the cataclysmic
partition of British India in 1947, scholars say. Economically devastated after World War II,
the British lacked the resources to maintain their empire and moved to leave the
subcontinent. In the years before partition, the Indian National Congress party, under the
leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, pushed for independence,
organizing civil disobedience and mass protests against British rule. Meanwhile, the All-
India Muslim League political group, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, called for a separate
state for Muslims.

In 1947, a British judge hastily decided the borders for a Hindu-majority India and a
Muslim-majority Pakistan (including what is today Bangladesh). The partition sparked
deadly riots, gruesome communal violence, and mass migrations of Muslims to Pakistan
and Hindus and Sikhs to India. Survivors recall blood-soaked trains carrying refugees from
one country to the other, towns burned to the ground, and bodies thrown in the streets.
Historians estimate between two hundred thousand and two million people were killed.

Why communities that had coexisted for hundreds of years attacked each other remains
unclear. Some experts fault the British and their “divide-and-rule” strategy, which provided
some electoral privileges for the Muslim minority, about 25 percent of the population.
Others point to tensions between Hindu and Muslim political movements, which rallied
constituents along religious lines. Around thirty-five million Muslims stayed in India after
partition.

How did religion factor into India’s constitution?

The country’s now seventy-year-old constitution [PDF] enshrines egalitarian principles,
including social equality and nondiscrimination. The word “secular” was added to the
preamble in 1976, but the constitution does not explicitly require the separation of
religion and government.

Leaders of the Congress party who fought for independence advocated for an India that
recognized all citizens and faiths as equal. Gandhi, who envisioned a secular state free
from discrimination, was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu nationalist. Nehru, India’s first
prime minister, believed that secularism was essential to building a peaceful society and
avoiding another tragedy like what followed partition; he saw those trying to divide India
along religious lines, especially Hindu groups, as the nation’s greatest threat.

How did Hindu nationalists come to power?

Hindu nationalism was first articulated in the 1920s by Indian author and politician V. D.
Savarkar in his book Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?. Hindu nationalists believe Hindus are the
“true sons of the soil” because their holy lands are in India, whereas the Christian and
Muslim holy lands are outside it. They generally champion policies intended to make India
a Hindu state. Many see Indian Muslims as suspect foreigners, despite the fact that most
are descendants of Hindus who converted to Islam. Hindu nationalists point to partition
and the creation of Pakistan as the ultimate manifestation of Muslim disloyalty.

Political tensions started to strain India’s secular model in the 1980s. After suffering an
electoral defeat in 1977, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi exploited religious divisions to help
return the Congress party to power. Gandhi, who was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards in
1984, was succeeded by her son, Rajiv, who further favored Hindus. “Congress’s sustained
move toward Hindu majoritarianism over several decades created fertile ground for the
more extreme ideology of the BJP,” Kanchan Chandra writes in Foreign Affairs.

Founded in 1980, the BJP traces its origins to the political wing of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer group. The BJP
came to power in 1998 elections, though it shelved its more radical goals to hold together
a coalition it led until 2004 when the Congress party regained power. These goals included
ending the special status of Kashmir, a disputed Muslim-majority region; constructing a
Hindu temple in the northern city of Ayodhya; and creating a uniform civil code so all
citizens would have the same personal laws. (There is currently a separate Muslim
personal law for issues such as marriage and inheritance.)

In 2014, the BJP won a single-party majority for the first time in the Lok Sabha—the lower
house of parliament and India’s most influential political body—making party leader
Narendra Modi prime minister. The party again secured a majority in 2019 after a divisive
campaign filled with anti-Muslim messaging, and Modi’s government is expected to stay in
power for its full five-year term ending in 2024.
What types of discrimination do India’s Muslims face?
Muslims have experienced discrimination in areas including employment, education, and
housing [PDF]. Many encounter barriers to achieving political power and wealth, and lack
access to health care and basic services. Moreover, they often struggle to secure justice
after suffering discrimination, despite constitutional protections.

Over the last two decades, the representation of Muslims in parliament has stagnated:
after the 2019 elections, Muslims held just 5 percent of seats. That’s partly due to the rise
of the BJP, which by mid-2022 had no Muslim members of its party in parliament. 

Meanwhile, a 2019 report [PDF] by India-based nongovernmental organization Common

Cause found that half of police surveyed showed anti-Muslim bias, making them less likely
to intervene to stop crimes against Muslims. Analysts have also noted widespread
impunity for those who attack Muslims. In recent years, courts and government bodies
have sometimes overturned convictions or withdrawn cases that accused Hindus of
involvement in violence against Muslims. States have increasingly passed laws restricting
Muslims’ religious freedoms, including anti-conversion laws and bans on wearing
headscarves in school.

In addition, authorities have turned to extrajudicial means to punish Muslims, through a

practice critics call “bulldozer justice.” In 2022, authorities in several states destroyed
people’s homes, alleging that the demolished buildings lacked proper permits. However,
critics said they primarily targeted Muslims, some of whom had recently participated in
protests. In response, India’s Supreme Court said that demolitions “cannot be retaliatory,”
though the practice has continued. 

What controversial actions has the Modi government taken

with regard to Muslims?
In December 2019, the parliament passed and Modi signed the Citizenship Amendment
Act, which allows for the fast-tracking of citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi,
and Christian migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Critics say the law is
discriminatory because it excludes Muslims and applies a religious criteria for the first
time to the question of citizenship. The Modi government argues that the law is designed
to provide protection for vulnerable religious minorities who faced persecution in these
three Muslim-majority countries.

At the same time, the BJP promised in its 2019 election manifesto [PDF] to complete a
National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC was created in the 1950s for the unique case
of the state of Assam to determine whether residents were Indian citizens or migrants
from what is now neighboring Bangladesh. In 2019, the Assam government updated its
register, which excluded nearly two million people. If implemented nationwide, all Indians
would be required to prove their citizenship. Critics say this process could render many
Muslims stateless because they lack necessary documents and are not eligible for fast-
tracked citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act. 

Modi has meanwhile diminished the political standing of what was India’s only Muslim-
majority state: Jammu and Kashmir. In August 2019, the government split the state, which
lies in the mountainous border region in dispute with Pakistan, into two territories and
stripped away its special constitutional autonomy. Since then, Indian authorities have
cracked down on the rights of people in the region, oftentimes under the guise of
maintaining security. They shut down the internet eighty-five times in 2021, harassed and
arrested journalists, and detained prominent political figures and activists. Dozens of
civilians have been killed by armed groups since the division, despite government claims
that the security situation had improved.

“The longer Hindu nationalists are in power, the greater the change will be to Muslims’
status and the harder it will be to reverse such changes,” says Ashutosh Varshney, an expert
on Indian intercommunal conflict at Brown University.

What have been the largest outbursts of violence?

Babri Masjid, 1992. Disputes over the mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya have turned
deadly in recent decades. Hindus claim a general from the Muslim Mughal empire built
the mosque on the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram during the sixteenth century. In
1992, Hindu militants destroyed the mosque. An estimated three thousand people, most of
them Muslim, died in ensuing riots—the deadliest religious clashes since partition. In 2020,
Modi set the cornerstone for a new Hindu temple on the site after the Supreme Court
approved its construction.

Gujarat riots, 2002. Nationwide clashes broke out after a train of Hindu pilgrims traveling
from Ayodhya through the western state of Gujarat caught fire, killing dozens of people.
Blaming Muslims for starting the fire, Hindu mobs throughout Gujarat killed hundreds of
Muslims, raped Muslim women, and destroyed Muslim businesses and places of worship.
Opposition politicians, human rights groups, and U.S. lawmakers criticized Modi, then
Gujarat’s chief minister, and the BJP for not doing enough to prevent the violence and in
some cases encouraging it. An Indian government investigation said the train fire was an
accident, but conflicting reports have said it was arson.

Muzaffarnagar riots, 2013. In towns near the city of Muzaffarnagar, more than sixty people
were killed in clashes that broke out between Hindus and Muslims after two Hindu men
died in an altercation with Muslim men. An estimated fifty thousand people, most of them
Muslim, fled the violence; many lived in relief camps for months, and some never returned
home.

Anti-Muslim mobs. Hindu mob attacks have become so common in recent years that India’s
Supreme Court warned that they could become the “new normal.” One of the most
common forms of anti-Muslim violence is vigilante groups attacking people rumored to
trade or kill cows, which many Hindus believe are sacred. At least forty-four people, most
of them Muslims, have been killed by these so-called cow protection groups, according to a
2019 Human Rights Watch report. Muslim men have also been attacked after being
accused of “love jihad,” a term used by Hindu groups to describe Muslim men allegedly
trying to seduce and marry Hindu women to convert them. Hundreds of Muslim men have
been arrested for violating anti-conversion laws that several BJP-led states passed in an
effort to prevent love jihad.

New Delhi clashes, 2020. Violence broke out as Muslims and others protested the
Citizenship Amendment Act in New Delhi. Around fifty people were killed, most of them
Muslim, in the capital city’s worst communal violence in decades. Some BJP politicians
helped incite the violence, and police reportedly did not intervene to stop Hindu mobs
from attacking Muslims. A 2021 Human Rights Watch report found that authorities had
not investigated police complicity, while they had charged more than a dozen protesters. 

Protests over Islamophobic rhetoric, 2022. In May, two BJP officials made profane comments
about Prophet Mohammed, leading to deadly protests across India and condemnation
from Muslim-majority countries. The BJP suspended the officials. The following month,
two Muslim men killed a Hindu man who supported one of the BJP officials in an attack
they filmed and shared online. 

Critics say that BJP officials have ignored recent violence against Muslims. “During Modi’s
first five-year term, there were continuous attacks on Muslim individuals, which kind of
made the community feel under siege,” says Ghazala Jamil, an assistant professor at
Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “The idea was that if you were a Muslim, you
were liable to be attacked anywhere, anytime.” Hate speech and misinformation spread
online have also encouraged violence against Muslims.

Who wants to preserve India’s secularism?

Experts note that although anti-Muslim sentiment is rising among Hindus, not all Hindus
and not all people who voted for the BJP are anti-Muslim. Both Muslims and Hindus,
including activists, legal scholars, and students, have fought against the BJP’s moves to
undermine India’s secularism. For example, after the Citizenship Amendment Act was
passed, chief ministers of several states said they would not implement the law and nearly
two thousand academics and professionals signed a statement condemning it for violating
the spirit of the constitution.

How is the world responding to the rising discrimination in

India? 
Many foreign governments and international bodies have condemned the BJP’s
discrimination of Muslims, citing actions in Kashmir, the Citizenship Amendment Act, and
anti-Muslim rhetoric as particular concerns.
The UN human rights office described the Citizenship Amendment Act as “fundamentally
discriminatory.” Iran, Kuwait, and Qatar were among the Muslim-majority countries that
lodged formal complaints against India in 2022 over public officials’ Islamaphobic remarks.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a group of fifty-seven member states,
called on India to curb the “growing spate of hatred and defamation of Islam” and
“systematic practices against Indian Muslims.”

Successive U.S. administrations have been reluctant to publicly call out India’s abuses as
they have boosted ties with the country. For example, when President Donald Trump
visited India in February 2020, he praised Modi’s commitment to religious freedom and
said nothing about the outbreak of violence in Delhi. The Joe Biden administration has
reportedly voiced concerns in private, while expanding cooperation with India including
through the so-called Quad. Meanwhile, in its 2020 report [PDF], the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom, an independent government agency, classified India as a
“country of particular concern”—its lowest rating—for the first time since 2004. The latest
reports have maintained that designation and urged the U.S. government to sanction
Indian officials responsible for abuses. Some members of Congress have also expressed
concerns.
Recommended Resources
The 2006 Sachar Committee Report [PDF], commissioned by the Congress party–led government,
identified many inequities for India’s Muslim society.

Freedom House tracks the deterioration of freedoms and discrimination of Muslims in India.

For Foreign Affairs, Sumit Ganguly and Nicolas Blarel examine the costs of India’s Islamophobia
problem.

On The President’s Inbox podcast, CFR’s Manjari Chatterjee Miller unpacks India’s foreign policy
ambitions.

This Human Rights Watch report details discrimination against Muslims under India’s citizenship
policies.

Kanchan Chandra explains the roots of Hindu nationalism’s triumph in India for Foreign Affairs.
Sameer P. Lalwani and Gillian Gayner examine resistance in Kashmir before and after the Modi
government stripped the region’s constitutional privileges.

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