For India to meets its challenges, Muslim politics has to change and embrace reform

If India is to meet its main economic, social and geopolitical challenges, Muslim politics has to change. The post-1947 approach of the “secular” parties - which has been about making symbolic concessions to appease Muslims and then dividing the Hindu vote using various means - is now past its sell-by date. Both Muslims and Hindus have seen past this strategy. Muslims are no longer buying the “secular” argument, though not in sufficient numbers yet to make a difference. They still vote en bloc to keep the “communal” BJP out. Hindus are also beginning to see the negative impact of divisive caste and Muslim appeasement politics, and sometimes choosing to vote in a tactical way - as they did in West Bengal and Assam in the recent assembly elections. 

In West Bengal, the widely expected Muslim polarisation in favour of Mamata Banerjee did not happen on a scale where she could have won. According to an analysis by The Times of India (5 May 2026), in the 142 seats where Muslim numbers were above the state average, the BJP won 72 seats and the Trinamool Congress 64. Mamata would probably have fared worse if the alliance between Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM and Trinamool dropout Humayun Kabir’s Aam Janata Unnayan Party had stayed in alliance and further had seat alignments with the Left or Congress. 

In Assam, thanks to the redistricting that restricted Muslim dominant seats to 22 against an earlier 35 out of a total of 26, the Congress and the Muslim-led AUDF got 20. Only in Keralam did the Muslim vote make a huge difference, with the United Democratic Front winning 38 of the 44 seats where Muslims numbered over 30 percent, and nine of the 11 seats in central and southern Keralam where they had significant numbers. But in Kerala the Muslim party, the Indian Union Muslim League, which campaigned for partition before 1947 and then changed its stripes, aligns with the Congress on its own terms. In short, there is no secular UDF, only a UDF that has Muslim, Christian and Hindu elements in it. There is no melting pot secularism in Kerala, with language being the main unifier.

In Tamil Nadu, an overtly minority-favouring and Hindu-baiting DMK has been shown the door in the assembly elections, with the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), led by a Christian, drawing a lot of Hindu votes - though not for religious reasons. Actor Joseph Vijay, who started the party barely two years ago, has broadly steered clear of the DMK’s divisive Dravidian politics and also kept himself equidistant from all religions - at least the part that is visible to the public. This suggests that performative politics will now determine the future of which community votes for whom in Tamil Nadu, and not which party represents which community the best.

In other elections, parties like the AIMIM have managed to knock out “secular” parties like Samajwadi in local body elections in Maharashtra, and other parties in assembly elections in Bihar.

The endless tapping into Muslim vote banks by “secular” parties is now slowly, if painfully, beginning to wane.

While this is the underlying message for all parties, including the BJP, how Muslims themselves embrace non-sectarian politics will be a crucial determinant of whether we end up with the separatist politics of MA Jinnah, or a genuine politics where communities keep their identities at bay, and work towards their collective good through dialogue and compromise.

The fact is even a Humayun Kabir seeks to get Muslim votes by proposing to build a Babri Masjid in West Bengal, and Owaisi has yet to reconcile with the reality of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Nor has he even acknowledged that there is some unfinished work to be done to assuage Hindu feelings in places where iconoclastic rulers destroyed temples repeatedly.

India will become less polarised and less sectarian when a Muslim can be elected from a Hindu majority constituency, and vice-versa. We are far from that situation now, as narrow-minded politicians want vote banks, not citizens. 

Muslims, for their part, should be asking themselves why reformists among them, like Arif Mohammed Khan, have to find refuge only in the BJP and are sometimes seen as traitors to the community. They should be embracing the politics of the late Hamid Dalwai, who sought deep reforms within the Muslim community, but the broader community never accepted him or his reforms. He is not a hero to the Muslim community even today, and for “secularists”, he is anathema. No “secular” party has asked Muslims to embrace reforms. On the contrary they oppose waqf or divorce reforms, or even the uniform civil code, in the belief that this is what Muslims want. The goal of our “secular” parties is to keep Muslims isolated and fearful.

It is time Muslims themselves stopped seeing themselves as only Muslims, seeking to differentiate and distance themselves from Hindus in every possible way, whether it is in adopting yoga for good health, singing Vande Mataram, or retaining some of their Hindu customs (which organisations like the Tablighi Jamaat want to eradicate).

They should be seeking wider relationships with fellow citizens. Their quam is not the global umma, but fellow Indians. Just as Hindu parties like the BJP should seek to understand and accommodate Muslim aspirations of a secular nature, Muslim politicians should be willing to espouse Hindu causes like - for example - the freeing of Hindu temples from state control and seeking a negotiated settlement for contested spaces like Kashi and Mathura in return for benefits to the community.

There are some hopeful signs, with RSS Sarsanghachalak Mohan Bhagwat meeting some Muslim intellectuals, and, more recently, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval meeting with Muslim leaders to understand the community’s concerns. After Operation Sindoor, Asaduddin Owaisi was a critical member of the national outreach teams sent to foreign countries to explain India’s position on Pakistan-based terrorism.

But these engagements are too sporadic and too meagre to bridge Hindu-Muslim mistrust. They have to be expanded.

And one cannot repeat this enough: It is also high time Muslims themselves took the trouble to engage with Hindus and Hindu organisations. It takes two hands to clap.