Abstract

The Muslim community at around 145 million is the largest minority community in India and the third largest grouping of Muslims in the world. Earlier, the Muslim immigrants, notably the Mughals scattered throughout India and became indistinguishable from the original inhabitants. Islam with its egalitarian tones was embraced by many lower class Indians. However, the contemporary ethnically Indian Muslim is mired in economic backwardness and finds his identity threatened in a social environment prone to systematic and more worryingly, increasing marginalization of the Indian Muslim. This paper attempts to explain the very complex issue of the sociology of the Indian Muslim deprivation in the light of the rise of the divisive religious ideology of ‘Hindutva’, which threatens the secular and democratic fabric of India by spawning a one culture and one people concept of nationhood. Also discussed as a fundamental issue is the role of the contemporary Indian Muslim amongst his peers and how the overlapping of and interplay between these various factors affects the fortunes of the Indian Muslim.