SUMMARY
Muslims (India) is a label encompassing all people of this faith in India. The Muslims constituted approximately 14 percent of India’s total population in 2011, or 170 million out of a total population of 1200 million, making Islam the largest of the minority religions. A majority of the Muslims were Sunnis, and there have been tensions between the Sunni and Shi’a communities. Muslim sects such as Bohras, Isma'ilis and Ahmadiyas are also present in India. The Muslim community is a heterogeneous group divided along ethnic, cultural, lingual, and economic lines. In northern India, many Muslims speak Urdu.
The Muslim population is dispersed across the entire country, with particularly high concentrations found in the states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, and Kerala; Jammu and Kashmir is the only state with a Muslim majority population. India’s secular Constitution has not provided any particular benefits or recognition of the Muslims as a group, for example by reserving seats in parliament or positions within the civil services. As such, the Muslims do not enjoy the same structural benefits as India’s Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes, which are recognized in the constitution. The Muslims have suffered from both political and economic discrimination; for example, Muslims occupied only 3 percent of all government and public sectors jobs in the mid-1990s. In general, the socio-economic status of the Muslims is worse than for other comparable groups, especially the Hindus.
Islam was introduced in India via a series of Arab and Muslims invasions between the eight and twelfth centuries, and spread as particularly members of the lower Hindu castes converted to Islam to escape persecution from higher-caste Hindus. The Muslim community in India closely identify its own history with that of the Muslim Mughal Empire, which was present in India from the 1500s to the mid-1800s; the decline of the Mughals is equated to the decline and marginalization of the entire Muslim population. The Mughal past was also directly linked to the controversy over the Babri Masjid mosque, which was built by a Mughal general on the site believed by the Hindus to be the birthplace of the deity Rama. During the colonial era, particularly the British marginalized the Muslim population in favor of the Hindus.
Hindu nationalists have often branded the Muslim community in India as a dangerous and foreign element, which is not truly a part of the Indian nation. According to Hindu nationalists, the Muslims constitute a homogenous bloc that actively withhold Hindu rights by abusing their voting-power in the democratic system. Much of the sectarian antagonism between the Muslim and Hindu communities can be traced to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and to related events both before and after the actual partition. It has not been uncommon for Muslims to be branded as “pro-Pakistan”, which reflects the impact of international relations on the communal/sectarian tensions in India.
The Muslim community has been the target of considerable remittance from labor migrants working in the Middle East. As was common elsewhere, mosques and madrasas in India have been funded by external actors, particularly from the Middle East.
Formally organized armed groups, such as the Indian Mujahideen and al-Umma, have claimed to fight for the Muslims in India; it was not uncommon for the activities of these groups to be at least nominally connected to the Hindu-Muslim communal conflicts.
