(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
The logic of partition was that separation would lead to peace, and even progress; now we realise that partition was not one event but an ongoing, endless process.
Three reported events this week point to campaigns that target religious coexistence in India.
In the first incident, some BJP leaders in Karnataka are opposing the State government’s choice of Banu Mushtaq, a Muslim author and winner of Booker Prize in 2025, to inaugurate the renowned Mysuru Dussehra festival on 22 September. Traditionally, the festival, known as “Nada Habba” (state festival), commences with religious rituals and prayers to Goddess Chamundeshwari at Chamundi Hill. Protesters say Ms. Mushtaq should proclaim her faith in the rituals or be excluded from the event. The Congress government in the State has rejected the demand, and the author has said the invite was an opportunity to fulfil a vow to Chamundeshwari Devi.
In the second, Pune-based social media influencer Atharva Sudame drew criticism, leading him to delete a reel promoting Hindu-Muslim interactions in the lead-up to the Ganeshotsav festival. Following significant backlash on social media, Mr. Sudame issued an apology, stating that his intention was not to offend religious sentiments. All he did was depict the living fact that some of those who make and sell Ganesh idols for the festival are Muslims.
In the third such incident, in Andhra Pradesh, the TDP government has ensured that Mumtaz Hotels Ltd does not build a five-star hotel near the Tirupati Venkateswara Temple. Since protesters felt hurt that a company with a Muslim name would build a hotel near the temple, the government and the board that governs the shrine facilitated a land swap deal through which the company got an alternative plot some distance away. Never mind the fact that Mumtaz Hotels Ltd is just a Special Purpose Vehicle fully owned by the Oberoi Group.
If people of different faiths come together to celebrate religious festivals, whether it is Dussehra or Eid or Christmas, is that something to be celebrated? Or something to be censured? Syncretism of faith practices, and the intermingling and interdependence of communities used to be a matter of pride and celebration in India, but there have also been efforts to separate communities from one another and to ‘purify’ one’s own faiths and practices. The Tablighi Jamaat, a global Sunni Islamic missionary movement founded in 1926 by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas in the Mewat region of northern India, sought to rescue Muslims from the alleged corruption of their faith by the accretion of Hindu practices. Arya Samaj, started in 1875, sought to bring back Hindus to its own version of pure Vedic life, including the discontinuation of idol worship, which was a later-day adoption that popularised and expanded early Brahminism. That a core kernel of a faith can be identified and codified is a claim that not only religious puritans, but also scholars of society and law make, in many instances. Extending this logic, some have argued that people who worship pirs or who do not pray five times, cannot be considered Muslims at all.
That different communities staying separate can be compatible with the principle of equality, as per the American legal doctrine of “separate but equal” established by its Supreme Court in 1896. This was the law of the land all the way until 1954, when it was overturned in the Brown vs Board of Education case.
When this logic of separatism based on purity was mixed with politics and used for mobilisation, it led to the Partition of the subcontinent. But the geographical partition did not end the quest for separation, which some scholars have argued is an ongoing process. Pakistan, by eliminating nearly all non-Muslims from its society over the decades, has now turned to further purifying Muslims themselves.
The campaign to separate communities and religious practices becomes infinite, because there will always be new frontiers where they continue to mix. India is currently in a phase in which many people are seeking to cleave all the liminal spaces into sharp categories. A prime-time news anchor recently wondered on TV why there were still Muslims in India, decades after Partition and the creation of a nation-state that was claimed to be for Muslims.
Customs and practices across the country, however, suggest a long history of coexistence and liminality. In my home district of Pathanamthitta in Kerala, the Sabarimala shrine — which was in news for the debate over allowing women of menstruating age to visit it — has a Muslim character associated with it. Vavar is a legendary Muslim warrior and a devoted companion of Lord Ayyappan, the presiding deity of the Sabarimala temple. According to folklore, Vavar was initially an adversary whom Lord Ayyappan defeated. Later, Vavar became his close friend and aide in various battles, and to this day many pilgrims who go to Sabarimala, also go to a mosque 50 kilometres away in Erumeli, associated with the legend. This narrative of friendship between a Hindu deity and a Muslim figure is one example of the numerous such stories that exist across the country. The expansion of Vedic, Brahminical practices went beyond the integration of animistic and tribal practices. Islamic practices also got absorbed into these traditions, and Islam in the subcontinent itself adopted many local practices. At the Sabarimala shrine itself, there is a separate place of worship called the Vavar Nada, which is kept without an idol, in respect of Islamic practices.
The existence of a mosque, a temple and a church, cheek by jowl in Palayam in Thiruvananthapuram, used to be often cited as a mark of Kerala’s communal harmony which has lasted for millennia, despite horrors such as the Malabar Riots of 1921. All religions of the world — including those that arrived from distant lands, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have had a long presence in Kerala. And the arrival of these faiths in Kerala had nothing to do with imperial conquests. The Palayam Mosque—Masjid-i Jahan-Numa—shares a wall with Palayam Ganapathy Temple, and St Joseph’s Metropolitan Cathedral is located just across the street.
One can find similar cases around the country. But alas, we are not celebrating them any more, and are trying hard to erase such symbols and erect new and higher walls of separation.
Federalism Tract: Notes on Diversity
Changing lands, changing identities
On July 31, 2015, Jehad along with 14,853 other residents of the 51 Bangladeshi enclaves located in Indian territory became Indian citizens in the Land Boundary Agreement signed between India and Bangladesh. Under the agreement, 111 Indian enclaves located deep inside Bangladeshi territory became part of the neighbouring country. My colleague Shiv Sahay caught up with these new citizens of India, after 10 years.
Border conspiracies
Union Home Minister Amit Shah thinks that demographic changes in the border regions of India are part of a “deliberate design” and asked Chief Secretaries of States and chiefs of forces that guard the borders to pay “attention to this issue”.
Published – August 29, 2025 12:24 pm IST