Opinion In this moment, for India’s Muslims, internal reform is not a distraction from struggle for justice — it is part of it
A paralysing silence has taken hold. Muslim political leaders, religious authorities, and even many secular critics of the regime insist that this is not the time for internal debate. Any discussion of Muslim social problems, they argue, will be exploited by hostile forces to further stigmatise the community. This fear is not unfounded
Two realities must, therefore, be confronted. First, contemporary Muslim reform cannot be a nostalgic replay of 19th-century theological debates. The challenges Muslims face today demand practical responses rooted in lived experience. Second, Indian Muslims are not a monolith. Any serious reform agenda must recognise their plurality while identifying shared concerns. We write this not as abstract observers but as persons who have spent a lifetime within the Indian state and as Indian Muslims — listening to their anxieties, their silences, their resilience. Never before has the question of Muslim belonging in India been posed with such relentless suspicion. To be Muslim today is not merely to live with the ordinary burdens of citizenship; it is to live with the constant demand to explain oneself, to demonstrate loyalty, to prove nationalism, as though it were a conditional privilege rather than a constitutional right.
This burden is not imagined. It manifests daily in the lives of ordinary Muslims, more so in BJP-ruled states, where governance has acquired a distinctly ideological edge. Arbitrary police questioning, vigilante violence, selective demolition drives, and media-fuelled insinuations that precede legal process have created a chilling atmosphere. Citizenship itself feels provisional.
And yet, uncomfortable as it may sound, persecution — however unjust — cannot become the sole organising principle of Muslim public life. A community cannot endure by responding only to hostility, nor can it secure dignity merely by documenting its wounds. Moral survival demands something more difficult: The courage to look inward, to speak honestly about internal failures, and to reform without waiting for permission from either the state or its adversaries.
This is not an invitation to forget injustice. Nor is it an appeal to soften critique in the hope of acceptance. It is, instead, an assertion of agency. Reform is not capitulation; it is self-respect.
The idea of Muslim reform in India has been deeply corrupted by political appropriation. Hindutva discourse selectively parades issues such as triple talaq, women’s representation in waqf institutions, or caste stratification among Muslims — not to advance equality, but to project Muslims as uniquely regressive and therefore deserving of surveillance and control. Reform, therefore, becomes a civilising project imposed from above, wrapped in the rhetoric of nationalism. The unspoken aim is unmistakable: To discipline Islam and domesticate Muslims.
The criminalisation of triple talaq in 2019 captured this contradiction perfectly. There was little dispute that instant triple talaq was unjust to women. But by converting a civil matter into a criminal offence in a polarised climate, the state ensured that the reform would be viewed less as justice and more as punishment. Progressive Muslim voices were cornered — forced to choose between endorsing a law weaponised against their community or appearing to defend an indefensible practice. The moment for deeper internal reform was lost.
Since then, a paralysing silence has taken hold. Muslim political leaders, religious authorities, and even many secular critics of the regime insist that this is not the time for internal debate. Any discussion of Muslim social problems, they argue, will be exploited by hostile forces to further stigmatise the community. This fear is not unfounded. We have seen how half-truths are magnified into stereotypes and isolated practices turned into civilisational indictments. Nonetheless, silence carries its own danger. When reform is indefinitely postponed, it does not disappear; it is merely outsourced — to hostile courts, coercive laws, and majoritarian judgement.
Two realities must, therefore, be confronted. First, contemporary Muslim reform cannot be a nostalgic replay of 19th-century theological debates. The challenges Muslims face today demand practical responses rooted in lived experience. Second, Indian Muslims are not a monolith. Any serious reform agenda must recognise their plurality while identifying shared concerns.
Three such concerns demand urgent and collective attention.
The first is education. Decades after the Sachar Committee, the educational marginalisation of Muslims remains stark. High enrolment at the primary level conceals catastrophic dropout rates in secondary schooling, driven largely by poverty, insecure livelihoods, and the absence of institutional support. Children are pulled out of school not because parents reject education, but because survival leaves them little choice.
The responsibility of the state here is non-negotiable. A constitutional democracy that promises equality of opportunity cannot abandon an entire community to structural disadvantage. Yet communities, too, must act. One practical and powerful intervention lies in reimagining local mosques as community education centres — spaces for evening schools, remedial teaching, and skill training, open to all children regardless of faith. Such initiatives would not only support working-class Muslim families but also signal a deeper truth: That Muslim institutions belong to the civic life of the nation, not its margins. This also includes providing modern education in madrasas. Providing “diini taaliim (religious education)” is good but denial of English, math, or sciences is criminal.
This leads to the second concern: Muslim visibility. Over the past three decades, Muslim presence in public discourse has been reduced to a handful of rigid symbols — minarets, beards, hijabs. These images are endlessly recycled to suggest separateness, irrationality, and resistance to modernity. When mosques function as centres of learning, welfare and neighbourhood service — when they open their doors to the wider community — they quietly dismantle caricature. They reaffirm an Islamic ethic as old as the faith itself: That service to humanity is inseparable from devotion to God.
The third and most sensitive domain is gender justice within Muslim society. The obsession with triple talaq has obscured a range of less discussed injustices. Dowry has become deeply entrenched among Muslims. Women’s inheritance rights — affirmed in Islamic law — are ignored.
Here, religious leadership has been conspicuously hesitant. To acknowledge these failures is not to deny the efforts underway. Across India, Muslim women’s organisations, young lawyers, scholars, and grassroots activists are reclaiming egalitarian strands within Islamic tradition.
Hovering over all of this is the question of nationalism. Many Muslims today feel compelled to perform loyalty — to speak louder, apologise quicker, distance themselves from global Muslim suffering. This posture is neither dignified nor sustainable. The Constitution of India does not demand performative nationalism. It promises equal citizenship. It guarantees freedom of conscience, equality before law, and protection from discrimination. To invoke the Constitution is not to seek charity; it is to assert a right.
Internal reform, therefore, must be framed not as submission to majoritarian pressure but as constitutional confidence. Reform and resistance are not opposites. They are, in this moment, inseparable. Indian Muslims stand today at a stark crossroads. One path leads to permanent defensiveness, where every criticism is treated as betrayal and every reform deferred indefinitely. The other path demands courage: The courage to reform without surrender, to speak without fear, and to insist — quietly but firmly — on full and equal citizenship.
Therefore, in an age when Muslim identity is relentlessly politicised, reform is not a distraction from the struggle for justice. It is an essential part of it.
Jung is a former civil servant, vice chancellor Jamia Millia Islamia, Lt. Governor, Delhi, and currently, chairman, Advanced Studies Institute of Asia. Ahmad is author and professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
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