If you have ever lived in an Indian city, or observed Indian weddings or festivals, you can understand that all conversations about traffic disruptions due to Eid and Friday Namaaz are distractions. If you have observed an election season in India, you know about the loud rallies and roadshows that go on for weeks. Why, then, is the Indian state so obsessed about restricting and criminalising only Muslim prayer in public space? What does this focus tell us about governmentality in India today?Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Let us begin with a larger question: What is the role of festive congregation and prayer in public space? Conceptually, public space is a realm where everyone, as Hannah Arendt said, can appear as they are – with their beliefs, opinions, bodies and identities – and as equal members of the society. Public space – streets, sidewalks, parks and markets – is where members of a society interact with others and encounter differences, negotiate conflict, and learn tolerance and solidarity.Festive congregation and religiosity form an integral part of this practice, especially across ethno-religious lines. Public space, when accessed responsibly and safely for public displays of religio-cultural expression, can be a site of inter and intra communal cohesion and learning. Celebrating festivals like Diwali in your local park, having public iftar during Ramzan, going to a Langar, or sharing cake on Christmas eve in your neighbourhood Church, are some commonplace examples. By enabling festive congregation and prayer, these instances enable citizenship and solidarity beyond, across and within religious identities. Public space is, therefore, the canvas of this politics.The role of the state in this context, then, remains that of a guarantor of safety and security – the enabler of this peaceful interaction. Simply put, the state is responsible for managing traffic, making sure there are no threats for those attendees and regulating space to prevent accidents like stampedes or fire.Also read: What Adityanath’s Speech on Namaz Was Really SayingCountries across the world – including India, in case of Hindu festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi – observe this very regularly. Internationally, The World Charter on the Right to the City treats public congregation and prayer as part of the broader right to the city – a necessary condition for a democratic urban life.But on the question of Muslims praying for half an hour for Fridays or Eid, the Indian state – hiding behind the logistics of traffic that they otherwise manage – assumes a punitive role. Moreover, conversations in defense of Muslim rights get muddled around issues like whether Muslims have enough mosques available to pray or not. These are all distractions. There is a deeper anxiety that the Indian state shows when it uniquely criminalises Muslim prayer in public spaces: The anxiety about emergence of a consciously Muslim politics – a politics that is aware of being both Indian and Muslim and does not hold Muslimness and Indian-ness as opposing binaries.India has the second largest Muslim population in the world and oppression of Indian Muslims is a fact. Additionally, Indian Muslims find themselves in a moment of disenfranchisement – both, directly through policies like the SIR, and indirectly through political untouchability and voter suppression. Indian Muslims are, therefore, an oppressed, disenfranchised community that is missing consciously Muslim politics. Barring rare examples, political success for Muslims is impossible and most movements for Muslim rights are either directly crushed or indirectly dismissed by the mainstream as being “communal.” Indian Muslims are denied a political consciousness of their own.Suppressing congregational prayer and public expressions of religiosity is integral to this denial. Praying on the street on Eid with equal rights just like members of a Ganesh Chaturthi celebration do, will cement Muslim citizenship without shedding an explicitly Muslim religiosity. Having the state play the role of guaranteeing safety and security to Muslims as they pray will make the state recognise Muslims as equal citizens and stakeholders of the Indian Republic. Having non-Muslim fellow citizens navigate diverted traffic just as Muslims do for non-Muslim processions, will teach them acceptance for a people in an inclusive urbanity. And finally, an expression of Muslim religiosity will also give Muslims hope and confidence in being accepted as equal citizens of India. Praying in public, therefore, will build a politics of solidarity within Muslims and recognise them as a legitimate political and ethnic group within the Indian nation.Under conditions of oppression, public acts of worship by the oppressed also build a moral core to their politics. During the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders used prayer publicly during protests and mass meetings – one well-known example is King leading prayer after marchers were arrested in Selma in 1965.Also read: Isn’t the Threat of Violence Against Muslims Already a Form of Violence?For King, public prayer was an important part of the movement’s life as it strengthened and unified participants. Gandhi also used public prayer as part of his political practice. His daily prayer meetings were public gatherings, and prayer services were an integral part of the Indian independence struggle. They functioned as visible acts of nonviolent resistance and witness. In both the cases, the American state and the British attempted to criminalise and violently suppress public prayer.In the Indian context, public Namaaz gains an even more urgent meaning. A community of 200 million cannot be confined to private invisibility without attacking the very idea of plural democracy. Public space being the canvas of pluralism, thus, is a critical site of Indian Muslim erasure. When a minority community is being harassed, surveilled, stigmatised, and publicly marked as dangerous or excessive, the act of gathering peacefully for prayer acquires the force of civic affirmation.Muslims praying publicly sends one message. It says: Muslims are here, they belong here, and they have the same claim to the city as anyone else. The Indian state seems very keen to ensure that these claims are not asserted, and they do not manifest into civic confidence for Muslims. The criminalisation of an obsessive focus on preventing public Namaaz reflects the Indian state’s anxieties about the emergence of a Muslim politics. The state controls public space and prayer to suppress Muslim politics and undermine communal solidarity.Fahad Zuberi is a PhD Student in History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He writes about architecture and cities through the lens of politics, culture and history.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.