The recent enactment of India’s Waqf Act 2025, alongside the political reactions following the Pahalgam attack, has once again ignited intense debate around the condition and perception of Muslims in India. It has reopened old wounds and deepened existing anxieties within the community about their place in a rapidly changing and increasingly polarised India.Across large sections of India’s urban middle and upper classes – particularly in the Hindi-speaking northern heartland–there exists a pervasive perception that Muslims are backward, insular, ill-educated, and inherently communal. This sentiment, once geographically limited, is now slowly permeating even the southern parts of the country.A crisis withinThere is no denying that India’s Muslim community faces a profound internal crisis. A lethal mix of educational backwardness and lack of visionary leadership, both political and intellectual, has left the community vulnerable and adrift. Socially and economically marginalised, many Muslims live in ghettoised neighbourhoods, cut off from the mainstream economy and society. The situation of women, particularly in impoverished areas, remains especially dire.Religious institutions meant to safeguard community interests – such as Waqf Boards that manage charitable properties – are often mired in corruption and inefficiency, often in collusion with their own officials. The clergy, several of them still rooted in outdated 18th-century ideas, are ill-equipped to offer intellectual nourishment or reformist direction. Instead of guiding the community forward, they often act as gatekeepers of a nostalgic past, stifling progress and engagement with the modern world.Several children from poor Muslim, rural families are forced to study in madrasas. Madrasas, or religious schools, frequently lack modern curricula and career-oriented training. Village leaders often resist or fail to implement modernisation of these institutions. As a result, students forced to go here are disadvantaged, and left ill-prepared for meaningful employment. Girls, more often than not, are denied even this limited access to education.Without exposure to pluralistic ideas or insights into other religious traditions, many Muslim youth risk growing up with limited understanding of the diverse society they live in.A shrinking public spaceYet the internal challenges tell only part of the story.Equally troubling is the external environment in which Indian Muslims now find themselves. Over the past decade, the community has been vilified and targeted in ways that have left them struggling to comprehend their status in modern India.Muslim homes and livelihoods are destroyed by state bulldozers under the guise of law enforcement. Hijab bans in educational institutions restrict women’s rights to religious expression. Public prayer spaces are increasingly denied. Historic mosques and Islamic heritage sites are subjected to politicized disputes, and the mere suspicion of eating or transporting beef can result in brutal lynchings.Hate speech is commonplace.The threat of communal violence – often with the tacit or active complicity of law enforcement–hangs over daily life in many regions. In such an atmosphere, the civic and constitutional space for Muslims is contracting at an alarming pace.This is occurring in a nation that proudly proclaims its secular democratic credentials, where the Constitution enshrines liberty, equality, and fraternity as guiding principles. Today, however, in schools and colleges, conversations that should focus on ideas, economics, or science have been replaced with triumphalist narratives that claim “Muslims are finally being put in their place.”Hope and resistanceThere are, thankfully, glimmers of resistance.Civil society, some independent media, retired bureaucrats, and NGOs continue to raise their voices against the normalisation of religious hatred. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)–India’s most powerful Hindu nationalist organisation–its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has been wanting to be seen taking steps toward ‘interfaith dialogue’. Over the past few years, he has met with religious leaders and concerned citizens to foster a more inclusive narrative.As the RSS marks its 100th year, Bhagwat feels the need to at least project India to the rest of the world as country where internal peace and social cohesion prevail. But given the RSS’s history and founding principles, to counter those who are working towards demonizing Muslims as historical adversaries, is a tall order.The rewriting of history is especially dangerous. In India’s revised school textbooks, Muslim rulers are often depicted only as invaders or oppressors, while their contributions to the subcontinent’s composite culture are erased. This narrow lens threatens to raise a generation that sees coexistence as capitulation, and secularism as betrayal.Even the most moderate among the nationalist leadership have echoed these views. In 2002, then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee – widely regarded as a statesman – stated in Singapore: “Wherever Muslims live, they don’t like to live in peaceful co-existence with others… they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats.” This mindset, fostered by the Sangh and entrenched over decades, will not be easy to dislodge.A path forwardIndia stands at a moral and political crossroads.While the Muslim community must initiate internal reform – especially in the fields of education, gender equity, and interfaith engagement – the onus cannot rest on them alone.Muslim schools and madrassas must adopt modern curricula at a faster pace than it has been doing over the years. This includes English, science, mathematics, and moral philosophy. This may sound very ambitious, but madrasa education should venture to introduce students to Hindu scriptures – a basic familiarity with the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita, and the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata – in addition to Islamic texts.Likewise, Hindu children, in Hindu-oriented schools, Gurukuls and shishumandirs should learn about Islam, Christianity, and other faiths – not from polemic but from texts rooted in respect and scholarship. Gandhi’s favourite hymn still rings with timeless wisdom: “Ishwar Allah tero naam” – God is one, whether you call Him Ishwar or Allah.India’s greatness has always rested on its pluralism, its ability to hold contradictions and differences in balance. If the country truly aspires to be a global leader–economically, culturally, and morally–it must confront and overcome the forces of exclusion, fear, and majoritarianism.We are very far from realising that dream.As India marches forward in the 21st century, it must remember that no nation can rise by suppressing a part of itself. If India is to meet its long-promised “tryst with destiny,” it must first reclaim its commitment to justice, equality, and fraternity–for all Indians.The writer is Former Lt Governor of Delhi and Vice Chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia.