THE TALK
Who are the Indian Muslims?
Is it a monolith community practising a faith alien to India? Or are they diverse people geographically rooted in Indian cultural ethos? Are they different from other Muslims? Is there a thing called ‘Indian’ Islam — a religion that grew out of Arabia but was nurtured in India with local characteristics? Has Islam atrophied over the centuries because the faithful clutched the letter forgetting the spirit of the religion?
Answering these questions, Ghazala Wahab takes a hard and candid look at the way world’s second largest religion is practised in India. She tried to understand the factors that have stalled the socio-economic and intellectual growth of the Indian Muslims, by being both critical and empathetic.
Even as she points out the internal factors that have contributed to Muslims’ backwardness, such as disproportionate reliance on the Ulemas, she doesn’t hold back from highlighting how apathetic government attitude and institutional prejudice has contributed to Muslim vulnerability and insecurity.