notes on the Muslim question in India

More than half of all Muslims in the world live in South Asia. Only Indonesia (210 million) has more Muslims than Pakistan (154 million), with India close behind (138 million) and Bangladesh next (117 million).

Muslims make up 13.4 percent of India's billion-plus. They are the country’s largest and fastest-growing religious minority, and one of its very poorest and most backward communities by every measure: income, literacy, female literacy, access to piped water, access to electricity, employment, land ownership, SSC examinees (i.e., high school graduates). Muslim women are among the most subjugated, which in India is saying a lot.


Muslims and caste


the rise of anti-Muslim communalism


the 2002 Gujarat Massacre


untouchables and tribals in the Gujarat massacre


Congress and the Muslim question


Shah Bano and madrassas

Only workers states within a socialist federation of South Asia can protect the lives and rights of the tessellated religious, ethnic, and national minorities of the subcontinent. In the meantime workers organized across caste and communal lines must defend Muslims and all oppressed sections. The huge, organized, multi-communal working class of India has a basic interest in fighting communalism and the system that breeds it.

At the same time it is necessary to fight against all forms of social backwardness in every community, including the imposition of sharia law, the subjugation of women in the name of Islam or Hinduism, the substitution of religious schooling for secular education, manifestations of the caste system among Muslims as well as Hindus, and communal hatred on all sides.

(May 2005)