The State of Indian Muslims in 2025 with Christophe Jaffrelot

February 11, 2025·38 min·3 clips

A national survey found 47% of Indians believe Muslims are 'pampered'—even as economic data shows Muslims earning half the upper-caste Hindu average.

The anniversary gives the conversation its frame. Mukulika begins in 1950, when India became a republic and took on the work of building democratic institutions and a democratic society. That was a huge promise for a country with over 800 languages, all the world's religions, and wide differences in food, culture, manners, and customs. The episode tests that promise through the position of Muslims in India. Christophe is careful, but the picture he draws is bleak. He asks where the earlier Muslim political figures have gone, and who now speaks from that space in politics, education, and NGOs. Older institutions come into the story too. Aligarh Muslim University and other centers of leadership become part of a larger question about what happened to Muslim institutional authority. The research took more than four years, and the team added two concerns along the way: how the world reacts, and how social media changes the pattern. Christophe says reaction comes when the Prophet is insulted, while persecution of Muslims draws much less response from the West, the United States, or the Muslim world. Social media, in his account, is not background noise. Lynchings appear there and become part of a propaganda machine. Pragya pushes on the language. She asks whether listeners might reject terms like ghettoization and obliteration, arguing instead that Muslims chose to live together and kept personal law and institutions. The exchange stays calm. It lets the objection sit beside the research rather than turning into a shouting match. The episode ends with practical pointers: a new website, a forthcoming special issue of Contemporary South Asia by the end of the year, and a book planned with Ernst & Co. sometime in 2026.

As heard by us

A sober, wide-angle look at the pressures shaping Indian Muslim life.

The India Briefing frames Republic Day around a serious question: what India's constitutional promise has meant for its largest minority. Mukulika Banerjee and Pragya Tiwari supply the historical setup clearly, then Christophe Jaffrelot brings four years of research that gives…

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A measured Republic Day conversation about India, its Constitution, and the country’s largest minority community.

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