Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi’s India: A podcast with Harsh Mander

This is the first season of Partitions of the Heart: Conversations with Harsh Mander, a Himal Southasian podcast series produced in association with Karwan-e-Mohabbat.

Since 2017, the peace activist Harsh Mander and his organisation, Karwan-e-Mohabbat, have done the extraordinary and difficult work of documenting a rising wave of crimes against Muslims in India, and of lending support and solidarity to victims of communal atrocities. In Mander’s words, “We live in deeply troubled times of visceral, everyday hate, violence, fear and division. The first step towards healing our growing fractures is to talk and listen to each other.” 

The inaugural season of Partitions of the Heart, a podcast series from Himal and Karwan-e-Mohabbat, focuses on the deepening crisis of Muslims in India. Mander hosts conversations with a powerful array of Indian Muslim figures both eminent and emerging, young and old – including Irfan Habib, Syeda Hameed, Afreen Fatima, Zeyad Masroor Khan, Seema Chishti, Manoj Jha and others. Together, they talk about the lived experiences of Indian Muslims amid the rise of the Hindu Right and escalating Islamophobia, as well as the politics and the history that have brought India to this shocking new reality.

Season One of Partitions of the Heart runs from 4 June to 20 August 2025, with a new episode released every Wednesday. This page will be updated with new episodes as they appear.

Himal’s podcast are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Episode 1: Afreen Fatima on bulldozers, the hijab and Muslim rage in Modi’s India

Episode 2: Hilal Ahmed on Indian Muslims' marginalisation and aspiration

Episode 3: Amirullah Khan on the deprivation of India's Muslims

Episode 4: Seema Chishti on media-fuelled Islamophobia and the “love jihad” fallacy

Episode 5: Shahrukh Alam on how India’s laws are being weaponised against Muslims

Episode 6: Aman Wadud on the plight of Bengali Muslims in Assam

Episode 7: Irfan Habib on the decay of socialism and secularism in India

Episode 7 (releasing on 23 July): Mohsin Alam on why the threat to minorities is an existential crisis for India’s democracy