{"id":13789,"date":"2026-11-05T06:39:52","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T06:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=13789"},"modified":"2026-11-05T06:39:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T06:39:52","slug":"has-indias-democracy-failed-its-muslims-jailed-scholar-triggers-debate-government-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=13789","title":{"rendered":"Has India\u2019s democracy failed its Muslims? Jailed scholar triggers debate | Government News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Has the world\u2019s largest democracy failed the world\u2019s largest minority \u2013 its nearly 200 million Muslims? That question is at the heart of a polarising debate currently under way in India.<\/p>\n

The debate started with Sharjeel Imam, a 38-year-old Muslim scholar, who gave a lengthy interview to an Indian news website on September 29 from his prison cell in New Delhi.<\/p>\n

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Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n

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Imam covered a wide range of issues and raised uncomfortable questions about the place of the country\u2019s Muslim minority, which forms roughly 14 percent of India\u2019s 1.4 billion population.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are around 210 million Muslims in India \u2013 one of the biggest Muslim groups in the world, with practically zero say in this democracy,\u201d Imam told the Indian news outlet, The Quint<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He criticised the Indian constitution for its \u201censhrined centralisation\u201d of power and called its brand of secularism \u201cparticularly Islamophobic and parochial\u201d, adding that democracy was a tool to deny Muslims their political representation and rights.<\/p>\n

Who is Sharjeel Imam?<\/h2>\n

Hailing from Jahanabad district of Bihar, India\u2019s poorest state, Imam graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in computer science and worked as a software engineer before returning to academics. As a doctoral student at the Centre for Historical Studies at New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), his primary research area was the political history of India\u2019s Muslims.<\/p>\n

In 2019, months after winning a second term in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Hindu nationalist government passed a controversial citizenship law, which granted an expedited pathway to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from India\u2019s neighbouring countries. The United Nations called the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) \u201cfundamentally discriminatory\u201d against Muslims.<\/p>\n

The passage of the law ignited nationwide anti-CAA protests. Led by Muslims, mostly women, a weeks-long demonstration near Shaheen Bagh, a densely-populated Muslim ghetto on the southeastern edge of New Delhi, became the epicentre of those protests.<\/p>\n

Imam was one of the chief organisers of the Shaheen Bagh sit-in. He was arrested in January 2020<\/a> for inciting violence through speeches made at the protests.<\/p>\n

But there had been no violence until his arrest. It came the next month in northeast New Delhi where anti-CAA sit-ins organised in Muslim neighbourhoods were attacked by mobs, incited by hate speech from leaders from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).<\/p>\n

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A \u2018Free Sharjeel Imam\u2019 graffiti at New Delhi\u2019s Jamia Millia Islamia campus [Md Meharban\/Al Jazeera]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite him being already behind bars when the violence broke out, Imam was charged with rioting, murder, attempted murder, sedition, and \u201cpromoting enmity on grounds of religion\u201d under several laws, including a stringent anti-terror law.<\/p>\n

He was not the only one<\/a>. Nearly a dozen Muslim students and activists, including another JNU scholar Umar Khalid<\/a>, were arrested and imprisoned for being the alleged conspirators in the 2020 riots. They remain in jail without trial and repeatedly denied bail, with rights groups calling their continued incarceration a \u201cgross abuse of power\u201d and a glaring example of judicial oversight, in which the accused are \u201cguilty until proven innocent\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to Imam, such an alleged abuse of power \u2013 especially targeting Muslims \u2013 is systemic and goes back to the very ideas behind the founding of India as a Hindu-majority country.<\/p>\n

\u2018Secular and Hindutva frameworks share same ideas\u2019<\/h2>\n

In his interview with The Quint, he called India\u2019s independence icon Mahatma Gandhi a \u201cfascist\u201d for making Congress \u2013 the party that led India\u2019s freedom struggle and currently in the opposition \u2013 an \u201cessentially Hindu party\u201d and for allegedly endorsing certain ideas and practices now pushed by Modi\u2019s BJP and its ideological parent, the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).<\/p>\n

Founded in 1925 along the lines of the fascist parties in Europe, the RSS aims to turn a constitutionally secular India into an ethnic Hindu state.<\/p>\n

Imam also accused independent India\u2019s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of \u201cfalsehood and mythmaking\u201d for projecting India as an ancient, \u201cuniquely tolerant\u201d civilisation in his book, The Discovery of India.<\/p>\n

But Imam reserved his most scathing attack for India\u2019s pro-secular liberals, arguing that there is no difference between them and the supporters of the BJP and the RSS.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, both secular and Hindutva frameworks share the same core ideas \u2013 the myth of uniformity, centralisation and denial of sharing of power,\u201d he said. Hindutva refers to the Hindu supremacist movement championed by the RSS and the BJP in order to turn a constitutionally secular India into an ethnic Hindu state.<\/p>\n

In a rebuttal in The Quint, legal scholar Mohd Zeeshan Ahmad said Imam \u201craises serious historical and ideological questions that cannot be evaded merely because he is facing prosecution,\u201d but that his \u201cequation of secularism with Hindutva is unpersuasive\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cImam\u2019s language risks projecting Muslims as a homogeneous political bloc, obscuring disagreements of class, caste, gender, region and ideology,\u201d Ahmad wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are the Pasmanda [less privileged castes] Muslims in this political imagination? Where is the question of gender justice, including the rights of women within Muslim communities? Who gets to speak for the \u2018Qaum\u2019 [community], and whose experiences are rendered invisible when a singular political voice claims to represent it?\u201d<\/p>\n

But Irfan Ahmad, professor of anthropology and sociology at Ibn Khaldun University in Istanbul, Turkiye, and author of several acclaimed books on the Muslim question in South Asia, told Al Jazeera that Imam is right in questioning whether there is a difference between the Congress and the BJP when it comes to secularism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndian nationalism rests on a false division between \u2018secular\u2019 nationalism of the Congress, especially through its figures like Nehru and Gandhi, on the one hand, and \u2018communal\u2019 right-wing forces on the other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is that from the beginning, the Congress had within what it depicted as its outside: ethno-racist-Hindu nationalists. The flow of leaders between the Congress and overtly Hindu parties was smooth,\u201d he added, citing Lala Lajpat Rai, K M Munshi, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, and Madan Mohan Malviya as examples.<\/p>\n

\u201cK B Hedgewar, the RSS founder, was himself earlier in the Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gandhi
Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu extremist believed to be a member of RSS [File: James A Mills\/AP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ahmad, the professor, said the difference between the Congress and the BJP is \u201cof the same nature as the one between Republicans and Democrats in the United States where both converge to advance \u2018American interests\u2019 and wage wars outside\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem Indian Muslims face is not of party politics but the very Indian\/Hindu nationalism which all political parties, including the Left, subscribe to, albeit not identically,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a democracy routinely makes a community, Muslims in this case, invisible in terms of representation in legislatures, then there is something fundamentally wrong with this democracy. Declining ratio of Muslims in parliament testifies to the silencing of Muslims.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahmad says the \u201cquestion worth asking is: how correct is the view of a secular India?\u201d<\/p>\n

On political empowerment of India\u2019s Muslims<\/h2>\n

In his interview with The Quint, Imam suggested that India should have \u201cconstitutional republicanism\u201d that guarantees decentralisation of power and more community rights. He argued that the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent \u2013 which gave birth to Muslim-majority Pakistan \u2013 \u201cwas forced by the Congress\u201d.<\/p>\n

He regarded Pakistan\u2019s founding leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah as \u201ca great, democratic leader\u201d and poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal as his political inspiration. Calling for a faith-based separation of power, Imam underlined Iqbal\u2019s call for the \u201ccreation of a Muslim India within India\u201d and demanded proportional representation as opposed to the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system in Indian elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Iqbal and Jinnah rightly foresaw, FPTP with no safeguards will lead to permanent marginalisation of Muslims who were, even before partition, the hated minority, the hated \u2018other\u2019 of the emerging nationalist discourse,\u201d he said. \u201cHistory has proved them right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
A young boy displays his country\u2019s national flag depicting portraits of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, left, and poet Allama Iqbal in Karachi, Pakistan, August 12, 2004 [File: Aamir Qureshi\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Responding to Imam, a columnist who goes by the pseudonym Ibn-e-Khaldun Bharati, wrote in The Print news website that Imam represents an \u201cIslamist agenda\u201d which \u201cdemands the status of a nation \u2013 a Pakistan within the borders of India\u201d.<\/p>\n

Calling him \u201cunapologetically anti-liberal, anti-secular, anti-democracy, anti-constitution \u2013 in a word, anti-national,\u201d Bharati claims Imam feels \u201can entitlement to the rulership of India, which has kept their thought-leaders confused about whether they are a nation or a minority\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cA nation needs a state, whereas a minority needs constitutional guarantees. Neither in theory nor in practice can one be both at the same time,\u201d he wrote. \u201cBut such has been the ingenuity of Muslim leaders that they have managed to be both simultaneously. They carved a country for themselves and also secured special privileges as a minority \u2013 a classic example of having one\u2019s cake and eating it too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questioning Bharati\u2019s submission, political analyst Asim Ali pointed out \u201cthe Kafkaesque nature of the whole affair\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a man who has now been behind bars for six years ostensibly for a speech advocating a \u2018chakka jam\u2019 [road blockade] without any call for violence alongside the even more absurd charge of conspiring to incite the Delhi riots that took place a month after he was already in jail,\u201d Ali wrote in a column for The Telegraph newspaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe space of experience for Muslims like Imam includes not only their personal experiences of discrimination but also of what they have learned about the history of recurrent communal pogroms, the framing of Muslim men in terror cases, the brutalities by policemen and so on,\u201d Ali wrote, citing several examples of police atrocities in the past decades.<\/p>\n

While Ali argued that Imam\u2019s depiction of Gandhi and Jinnah is \u201cgrossly distorted\u201d and his reading of the pre-independence and partition history as \u201cwarped\u201d, he conceded that there is \u201cspace for a person like Imam in a radical democratic project that strives for equality and liberty for everyone\u201d in India.<\/p>\n

\u201cImam envisages a role as the head of an intellectual pressure group of middle-class Muslim activists displacing the clerical establishment as the principal voice articulating a \u2018positive\u2019 agenda of \u2018Muslim demands\u2019,\u201d Ali wrote.<\/p>\n

Sharjeel Imam v Umar Khalid: The \u2018model\u2019 Muslim<\/h2>\n

When it comes to the question of future intellectual Muslim leadership, comparisons are often made between Imam and Khalid. Both of them are often accused of being the \u201cmasterminds\u201d of the 2020 New Delhi riots and are currently in the same jail in the Indian capital.<\/p>\n

But that is where their similarities end.<\/p>\n

Khalid, 39, is a left-wing activist who does not reject the Indian constitution \u2013 or its version of democracy or secularism \u2013 as explicitly as Imam does. He has also frequently cited Gandhi and his message of non-violent resistance in his speeches and writings.<\/p>\n

\"A
A protester in New Delhi displaying a recently published book by Umar Khalid [Md Meharban\/Al Jazeera]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Khalid is hailed by India\u2019s Marxists and liberals as a \u201cmodel Muslim\u201d who is being punished by an anti-Muslim government for his campaign against the BJP\u2019s hate politics. Global figures and rights groups frequently call for Khalid\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

Among them is New York City\u2019s mayor Zohran Mamdani, who, while delivering the inaugural keynote address at the Nelson Mandela Global Leadership Forum in July this year, questioned Khalid\u2019s imprisonment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy must we wait as Umar Khalid enters his sixth year of captivity in Delhi \u2013 a political prisoner jailed under the same manufactured charges of terrorism levelled against Madiba,\u201d he said, using the name for Mandela commonly used by South Africans.<\/p>\n

It was the second time Mamdani, who has Indian roots, had talked about Khalid since being elected as mayor. In January, he met his parents and left the following handwritten note for him: \u201cDear Umar, I think of your words on bitterness often, and the importance of not letting it consume one\u2019s self. It was a pleasure to meet your parents. We are all thinking of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Ireland-based human rights organisation Front Line Defenders in Dublin announced Khalid as the winner of the 2026 Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.<\/p>\n

Imam does not evoke such global solidarities, which are mainly limited to India\u2019s Muslim community.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake the example of Zohran Mamdani,\u201d says Ahmad, the professor. \u201cWhile Mamdani spoke about Umar Khalid, what prevents him from even mentioning \u2013 let alone pleading for \u2013 names like Sharjeel Imam?\u201d<\/p>\n

He says figures like Mamdani or left-wing liberals in India \u201cfind it convenient to speak for Umar Khalid because he is \u2018secular\u2019, in that he doesn\u2019t posit himself as a Muslim nor uses the vocabulary of Islam to articulate his politics\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut these figures maintain an eerie silence about Imam, who conducts his politics in an Islamic vocabulary \u2026 The eloquence of liberals about Khalid and their silence about Imam is a sign of intellectual confusion, if not moral cowardice.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if he foresees Imam playing a role in an intellectual project of Muslim empowerment, Ahmad said while he had \u201cno secret key to unlock the future\u201d, he did fear that the \u201ccurrent regime is set to suppress such voices\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways, the treatment of Imam by the regime resonates with the imprisonment of Italy\u2019s Antonio Gramsci in 1926. At Gramsci\u2019s trial, the prosecutor said: \u2018For 20 years, we must stop this brain from functioning.\u2019 Imam has already been unjustly languishing in jail for nearly seven years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahmad concluded by citing the 19th-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau to highlight the imprisonment of Imam, Khalid and other \u201cprisoners of conscience\u201d \u2013 both Muslims and non-Muslims.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019The true place for a just man\u2019 in an unjust order \u2018is also a prison\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Has the world\u2019s largest democracy failed the world\u2019s largest minority \u2013 its nearly 200 million Muslims? That question is at the heart of a polarising debate currently under way in India. The debate started with Sharjeel Imam, a 38-year-old Muslim scholar, who gave a lengthy interview to an Indian news website on September 29 from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_templately_pack_id":"","_templately_imported_at":"","_templately_source":"","_templately_import_session_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t