Himal interviews: Media-fuelled Islamophobia in India

In June 2025, Himal Southasian launched a podcast series titled Partitions of the Heart in collaboration with Karwan-e-Mohabbat, hosted by the peace activist Harsh Mander. The inaugural season, called ‘Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi’s India’,  focuses on the deepening crisis of Muslims in the country. Since 2017, Mander and Karwan-e-Mohabbat have done the extraordinary and difficult work of documenting a rising wave of hate and crimes against India’s Muslims, 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.”

This series is part of the effort to bring forward meaningful conversations on the increasing marginalisation and vilification of Muslims in India. In the season’s first episode, Mander spoke to Hilal Ahmed, an academic and writer about his positionality as a practising Muslim and as a scholar looking at Muslim lives and the Muslim experience. 

This interview was recorded on 4 March 2025. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You can listen to audio versions of this conversation on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

Glossary

Babri Masjid: A 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya in India. A section of Hindus claim that the mosque was built at the site of the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram and that the Mughal emperor Babur destroyed a temple to build the mosque. On 6 December 1992, a mob of Hindutva activists demolished the mosque. It remained a disputed site for decades. In February 2024 when India’s prime minister Narendra Modi consecrated a new Ram temple at the same site. 

Kalyan Singh: A politician from the Bharatiya Janata Party and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh where Ayodhya is situated when the Babri Masjid was brought down 

Tata: One of the oldest business houses and largest multinational conglomerates in India

Nano: The Tatas planned to build the Nano – billed as the world’s cheapest car - in West Bengal. However,  after violent protests over its acquisition of land for the project it had to shift to Gujarat where the project was facilitated by the chief minister at the time, Narendra Modi 

Ambani: The business family that runs Reliance Industries. Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries, is India’s richest man and is seen to have a close relationship with Narendra Modi

Adani: An industrial group led by Gautam Adani, one of the richest men in the world whose fortunes have soared since the BJP and Modi came to power in 2014. Adani has also been a vocal champion of Modi and his government 

Hanna Arendt: A German-Jewish political philosopher who was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and settled down in the United States. She is best known for her study of totalitarianism especially with regards to the Nazi and Stalinist regimes 

Ghuspetiya: The Hindi word for “intruder”. Modi and the home minister Amit Shah have used the word in thinly veiled references to Muslims

Godse: Nathuram Godse assassinated Mohandas Gandhi in 1948. Some right-wing groups celebrate Godse as a Hindutva icon

RSS sarsanghchalak: The supreme leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is the organisational and ideological parent of the BJP

Thook jihad: Spit jihad, an Islamophobic conspiracy theory and a pejorative term coined to accuse Muslims of trying to defile Hindus by spitting in their food or on public surfaces as part of an alleged deliberate, malicious campaign by Hindu nationalist accounts and right-wing groups in India

Love jihad: An Islamophobic conspiracy theory, originating in India and spread by right-wing Hindu nationalist groups, which alleges that Muslim men conspire to deceive non-Muslim women into marriage as part of a plot to convert them to Islam and alter the religious demographics of India 

Tablighi Jamaat controversy: A 2020 media controversy involved intense scrutiny and sensationalised reporting by Indian mainstream media insinuating that a religious gathering at the group’s headquarters in Delhi was instrumental in spreading Covid 

Triple talaq law: Indian law that criminalises the practice in which a Muslim man can instantly divorce his wife by saying “talaq” three times or via text/digital means).

Viksit Bharat: Developed India – the Modi government’s vision to transform India into a completely developed country by 2047, marking the 100th anniversary of its independence.
Satyagraha: The philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance, a form of civil disobedience using peaceful means.