Disputed Pasts, Violent Present: Examining Anti-Muslim Discourses in Contemporary India

Since the 2014 formation of the central government by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, violence against minorities has increased significantly. Of particular note is the violence against Indian Muslims, the largest religious minority in India. Databases compiled by different civil society organisations have documented incidents of Muslims being lynched to death, mostly on accusations of cow slaughter or petty theft. This talk will examine the discourse of anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India, and attempt to answer why hate crimes against Muslims are rising with little to negligible public indignation. Violence against Muslims in India today will be interrogated vis-à-vis India’s anti-colonial/postcolonial pasts, which witnessed militant ‘cow protection movements’ in which the beef-eating Indian Muslim was identified as the chief antagonist. Indian Muslims have also been burdened with the guilt of the Partition of India. The cumulative effect of these disputed pasts is that in the present, Muslims can hardly take legal recourse against the hate crimes committed against them without being further victimised. This has led to Indian Muslims existing under conditions of what Judith Butler has called “precarious life” (2004).

Heba Ahmed is an emerging scholar whose work addresses the violence against Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002 (and in particular efforts to commemorate the violence).

Organized by the Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster, in collaboration with the Centre for India and South Asia Research.

(Poster Image source: http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2019/jun/27/delhi-waqf-board-promises-rs-5-lakh-job-to-wife-of-youth-lynched-in-jharkhand-1996099.html