Minorities
Statutory institutions created to protect the rights of religious minorities, bodies empowered by law and mandated by the constitution, are increasingly dysfunctional. Some exist only on paper. Others operate without leadership, members or transparency. Together, they form a pattern that critics say amounts not to neglect, but deliberate institutional hollowing. Minority Watchdogs Without Teeth: The Silence Behind Hollowed Out Statutory Protections - The Wire
The erosion of these institutions raises a fundamental question: can minority rights be protected when the bodies designed to safeguard them are systematically weakened?
For nearly 20% of India’s population, these commissions and councils are not symbolic gestures, but mechanisms of accountability. Their paralysis leaves grievances unheard, violations undocumented, and constitutional promises unfulfilled.
In an era of heightened communal tension, the absence of functioning minority institutions is not a bureaucratic drift – it is a political signal. Whether by design or indifference, India’s statutory minority safeguards are being hollowed out from within, and the cost is being borne by those they were meant to protect.
04/02/2026
When the NRC (National Register of Citizens) was introduced in Assam, about 3 crore Muslims in West Bengal were anxious and worried and started digging in the sands of papers. The never-so-politically conscious Bengali Muslims of Bengal had neither any clues nor did they have leaders from their communities who could guide them in the exercise. https://thewire.in/communalism/what-it-means-to-be-a-bengali-muslim-in-india-today
Time is a monster. It eats up everything. And poverty and hunger are more conspicuous than anything. So, COVID-19 and the lockdown thereafter lulled the villainous NRC and thousands of migrant workers again started their journey in search of roti to different states, crammed into the general compartment of trains from Bengal to other places like Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu. All of them had the same name: migrant workers.
Bengali Muslim migrant workers are caught in the vortex of this and several have been mistreated and pushed into Bangladesh.
With the SIR implemented in Bihar, which the state’s people are calling votebandi (vote ban), the people of West Bengal, who are widely suffering from it, are calling it a new form of NRC. As a result, the ghost of 2019 NRC exercise has returned, or perhaps, it never died at all. People are once again running from pillar to post correcting names.
How can one correct the name of their dead ancestors? The answer remains unknown.
Why Muslim Names Are Often Misspelt And Mispronounced
There are many reasons for this to happen. Arabic names with colloquial pronunciations sometimes make it difficult for data collectors to spell names correctly. At the same time, the role of job stress among contractual workers, who are given this work, can’t be ignored.
by Moumita Alam
07/08/2025
A proposal to amend a decades-old law that governs properties worth millions of dollars donated by Indian Muslims over centuries has triggered protests in the country. Waqf bill: Why many Muslims in India are opposing an amendment in a property law
The properties, which include mosques, madrassas, shelter homes and thousands of acres of land, are called waqf and are managed by a board.
The new bill - which introduces more than 40 amendments to the existing law - was introduced in August but was later sent to a joint committee of MPs for discussion.
On 13 February, the committee's report on the bill was tabled in both houses of parliament amid protests by opposition leaders.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government says that the changes they have proposed to the bill are necessary to root out corruption in the management of these properties and address demands for reform from the Muslim community.
But several Muslim groups and opposition parties have called the changes politically motivated and an attempt by Modi's Hindu nationalist party to weaken the rights of minorities.
by Meryl Sebastian & Neyaz Farooquee
BBC News
14/02/2025
In Tanweer Fazal’s book, 'Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India', he explains how this state-sponsored identity flattens the Muslims into a homogenous community. https://thewire.in/books/how-the-indian-state-constructs-muslimness-through-law-and-violence
Tanweer Fazal’s book, Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India, is an investigation of how a singular discourse of ‘Muslimness’ has been produced in India in defiance of the fact that the Muslims are a heterogenous and internally variegated community with divergent religious practices and beliefs. This book asks what binds a Bengali Muslim in Assam, with a Qureshi meat-seller in Uttar Pradesh and a Muslim villager in Bhagalpur Bihar, to a Muslim worshipper in Ayodhya or an Arzal Muslim seeking to be recognised as a scheduled caste person, notwithstanding their varied lived contexts? According to Fazal, it is their experience of ‘state’, not only in times of crisis but at an everyday level. This experience, Fazal argues, is not internally generated but produced externally, as a result of state practices, law-making and law-enforcement.
03/09/2024
It is still unclear whether the joint committee will only consider the content of the Bill or also address broader issues, such as encroachments on Waqf properties and their management. https://thewire.in/government/waqf-bill-row-joint-parliamentary-committees-terms-of-reference-priorities-remain-unclear
Parliament has announced a 31-member joint committee to examine the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, but its terms of reference remain unclear. The committee, consisting of 21 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, was established on August 9, the last day of the Budget session. This joint committee is tasked with studying the amendment bill and is expected to submit its report during the first week of the winter session of Parliament. Among the significant changes, the Bill seeks to substantially alter the existing framework of Waqf law. The proposed amendment would shift the governance of Waqfs from the Boards and Tribunals—currently overseen primarily by the Muslim community – to the state governments.
12/08/2024
- India’s Muslim ‘ghettos’ aren’t just a product of prejudice – they result from forced displacement
- The EAC-PM's Paper on 'Muslim Population' Is a Travesty of Research Practices
- A Disingenuous Report on India’s Religious Demography
- Over 10,000 Teachers and 26 Lakh Students Left in Lurch With UP Madrasa Act Struck Down
- WAQF JUDGEMENT RESERVED.