The Islamic Perspective on Religious Politics in India

India is home to the world’s third-largest Muslim population – over 200 million people spread across a vast and culturally diverse subcontinent. Yet, speaking of “the Islamic perspective” on politics in India as a single, unified view would miss the point entirely. Muslim political thought in India has never been monolithic. It is a rich and often contested landscape, shaped by centuries of theological debate, colonial disruption, and democratic participation. Understanding this diversity – particularly the divide between traditionalist and modernist Islamic approaches – is essential to understanding how religion and politics intersect in modern India.

A community defined by internal diversity 🔗

India’s Muslim community is internally divided by caste, class, region, sect, and theology. Muslim communities in India are divided by caste, class, region, and even religious lines, and engage with the electoral system in a variety of ways. The dominant sectarian divide within Indian Sunni Islam – between the Barelvi and Deobandi schools – has shaped not only religious practice but also political attitudes for over 150 years. Alongside these, the modernist Aligarh tradition opened a third distinct pathway. Together, these three currents have framed the Islamic debate on religion, identity, and political engagement in India.

The traditionalist response: purifying Islam 🔗

After the fall of the Mughal Empire and the trauma of the failed 1857 uprising, a section of Muslim scholars concluded that the community’s decline was rooted in spiritual corruption – specifically, the blending of Islamic practice with local Hindu and Sufi customs. Their response was to return Islam to what they saw as its original, unadulterated form.

The Deobandi movement 🔗

The Deobandi movement pioneered religious education through the Dars-i Nizami curriculum, with the goal of preserving traditional Islamic teachings from the influx of modernist and secular ideas during British colonial rule. Darul Uloom Deoband, founded in 1866, chose strategic retreat – rejecting British funding and aristocratic patronage and relying instead on small public donations. Its model was institutionally organized but intellectually conservative, building an ideological firewall against what it saw as corrupting Western and syncretic influences.

Deobandism is a revivalist movement that emphasises a return to the original practices of Islam – a back-to-basics approach. Deobandis focus on the study of Islamic texts and the promotion of Islamic education, particularly through madrasas. They reject the veneration of Sufi saints and emphasise strict adherence to Islamic law and practice. In political terms, the Deobandis were not disengaged – their clerical leadership participated in resistance movements including the Khilafat Movement and, later, opposition to the partition of India. Their political vision linked spiritual preservation directly to national independence.

The Barelvi school and syncretic Islam 🔗

The Barelvi school emerged as a direct counter to the Deobandi project. The movement emphasizes personal devotion and Sufi practices such as the veneration of and seeking help from saints, and defines itself as an authentic representative of Sunni Islam. Its founder, Ahmad Raza Khan of Bareilly (1856-1921), spent his life defending what he saw as Islam’s legitimate embrace of local South Asian culture.

More than two-thirds of India’s Muslim population prescribes to the Barelvi school, following an Islam enriched by its contact with local cultures and a reverence for Sufi traditions. Barelvis celebrate the Prophet’s birthday, permit music and devotional singing (qawwali), and recognize the intercession of Sufi saints – practices that Deobandis consider un-Islamic innovations. Barelvism aims at promoting an Indian version of Islam which respects and assimilates Indian cultural norms into Muslim society. For Barelvis, the deep intertwining of Islam with Indian cultural life is not corruption – it is heritage.

This difference is not merely theological. It carries political implications. In Northern India, 37% of Muslims identify with Sufism , and Sufi shrines and dargahs have historically served as spaces of social mixing and community solidarity. The Barelvi tradition’s embrace of this syncretic culture has generally positioned it as more accommodating of India’s plural democratic framework.

The modernist response: engaging with science and democracy 🔗

While traditionalist movements debated the boundaries of authentic Islamic practice, a separate current emerged that asked a different question altogether: how could Muslims thrive in a world shaped by Western science, colonial law, and modern institutions? The answer came most powerfully from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), founder of the Aligarh movement.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement 🔗

Sir Syed hailed from a privileged family during the late Mughal era. From his point of view, Muslim decline was a direct result of a fossilized view of religion and a lack of modern scientific knowledge. Rather than retreating from Western education, he argued that engaging with it was the only viable path forward for Indian Muslims.

Sir Syed felt that the socio-economic future of Muslims was threatened by their orthodox aversions to modern science and technology. He published many writings promoting liberal, rational interpretations of Islamic scriptures. His central intellectual argument was bold: that science and Islam were not in conflict. He asserted that accurate scientific knowledge only served to establish the existence of God and his rational religion, Islam.

In 1875, Sir Syed founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, later to become Aligarh Muslim University. This institution represented a groundbreaking synthesis of Islamic studies with modern subjects like mathematics, science, and English literature. The college’s curriculum deliberately included both religious instruction and secular subjects, demonstrating Sir Syed’s conviction that spiritual and worldly knowledge were complementary rather than contradictory.

The Aligarh movement, led by Syed Ahmad Khan, embraced modernity by advocating engagement with science, history, and ethical reform, positioning Islam as a tradition capable of dialogue with reason and modern institutions. This produced a new class of educated Muslim professionals and politicians who could navigate both the religious and the secular worlds – a generation that would go on to shape Muslim political consciousness in the twentieth century.

Political consequences of this divide 🔗

The theological differences between these movements translated into sharply different political orientations, particularly during the colonial period. Sir Syed discouraged Muslim involvement in the Indian National Congress, suspecting it would lead to Hindu majoritarian dominance in the proposed representative system. The Deobandis, on the other hand, maintained grassroots connections and provided leadership in movements such as the Khilafat Movement and in opposition to the partition of India.

The All India Muslim League was founded in 1906 during the annual session of the Muhammadan Educational Conference, directly linking Aligarh’s educational movement to Muslim political mobilization. The modernist stream, in other words, gave birth to the political machinery that would demand a separate Muslim homeland – a consequence Sir Syed himself had not necessarily envisioned, but one that flowed logically from his insistence on a distinct Muslim political identity.

Meanwhile, the Deobandi school’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, founded in 1919, took the opposite position – championing composite nationalism and opposing Pakistan’s creation on theological grounds, arguing that Indian Muslims and Hindus could coexist within a single democratic state. This represented a striking case where traditionalist religious authority aligned with secular democratic nationalism.

Islam and democratic politics in independent India 🔗

After independence, India’s Muslim community had to navigate a new political reality: a secular democratic republic in which they were a significant minority. A fundamental shift has occurred over the last 20 years from an identity-dominated, inward-looking approach by Muslim community leaders and Islamic authorities towards an inclusive debate centred on socio-economic marginalisation and minority empowerment.

Muslims do not participate in politics as a closed, homogeneous religious community. Surveys show that issues such as education, employment, and healthcare determine their voting preferences in different contexts. This reflects a profound sociological reality: the everyday concerns of Indian Muslims cut across the traditionalist-modernist theological divide. Muslim communities tend to describe growing unemployment, lack of development, price rise, and increasing economic disparity as their major concerns.

At the same time, religious identity has not disappeared from Muslim political life. Muslim, Sikh, and Christian communities have organized politically to safeguard their rights and interests. Religion becomes both a resource for empowerment and a tool for division in the political field. For Indian Muslims, this tension – between asserting a religious identity in the public sphere and negotiating citizenship on socioeconomic terms – remains very much alive.

Institutional expressions of Islamic politics today 🔗

The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, founded in 1941, advocates the establishment of an Islamic government and has been active in promoting education, social service, and ecumenical outreach to the community. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), led by Asaduddin Owaisi, represents a more assertive Muslim political voice – though as sociological research shows, its religious appeal does not always correspond to complex sociological and economic configurations at the constituency level, limiting its electoral success.

The Pew Research Center’s landmark survey on religion in India found that Indians across religious groups see religious tolerance as a central part of their national identity, with most saying it is very important to respect all religions to be “truly Indian.” Indian Muslims largely share this value – a finding that complicates narratives of inherent conflict between Islamic identity and democratic citizenship.

The broader lesson: diversity as a defining feature 🔗

What emerges from this survey of Islamic perspectives on religious politics in India is that there is no single Muslim political voice. The aims, tactics, and orientations of Islamic revival movements are shaped significantly by the social and economic conditions of Muslim communities, not only by religious doctrine. Traditionalists and modernists have debated the soul of Indian Islam for over 150 years – and that debate continues today, not as a sign of weakness, but as evidence of a community that thinks seriously about how to live its faith in a complex democratic society.

The Deobandi vision of Islamic purity, the Barelvi embrace of syncretic South Asian Islam, and the Aligarh legacy of rational modernism each offer a distinct answer to the same fundamental question: what does it mean to be a Muslim citizen in India? Their coexistence – contentious as it sometimes is – is itself a reflection of the pluralism that has always defined Islam on the subcontinent.

What do you think? Given that India’s Muslim community holds such diverse theological and political positions, does treating Muslims as a single “vote bank” by political parties actually serve their interests – or does it flatten a complexity that demands more nuanced representation? And in a democracy as diverse as India’s, can any religious community’s political identity be reduced to its faith alone?

References

1. https://www.amu.ac.in/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamiat_Ulema-e-Hind
3. https://aimim.org/
4. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/