Himal Interviews: India’s laws are being weaponised against Muslims

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 this conversation, Shahrukh Alam, a lawyer practicing in India's Supreme Court, dissects how the country's law and order machinery has been turned against its Muslim citizens in recent years. Alam talks about the criminalising of protest by Muslims and anti-constitutional arguments being made in the courts, how cultural narratives have shifted to allow these things to happen.
 

This interview was recorded on 6 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

Naroda Patiya: A village where nearly 100 Muslims were killed on 28 February 2002 during larger communal riots in the Indian state of Gujarat

Agamben: Giorgio Agamben is a leading political philosopher and political theorist

Sudarshan: Sudarshan news is a television channel in India known for its openly right-wing and anti-Muslim rhetoric