Conceptualizing Islamophobia in India

Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship between nation-making and the emergence of Islamophobia in India. Studies on anti-Muslim violence and Islamophobia in India either tend to dismiss the concept or limit its deployment by identifying it within the actions of Hindu nationalist groups situating their rise as an exception to India’s secular and multicultural trajectory. Premising on the idea that Islamophobia should be understood as the negation of Muslim political subjectivity, this article argues that Hindutva is not an aberration rather it is a continuation of the Indian nation-making project with the Muslim placed as the other of this project. This argument would include factoring in the systemic nature of anti-Muslim violence and social inequality by looking at the Muslim community’s lived socioeconomic experience, and analyzing the commentaries on them.