Habib Siddiqui: India’s Muslims and the Crisis of Constitutional Secularism by Serajul I. Bhuiyan

There has been a row involving three common phrases, Assalamu Alaikum, Inshallah, and Jazakallah, that has led to much bigger discussions about secularism, citizenship, and nationalism in modern-day India. On September 13th, 2026, Bushra Bano, an IPS officer from India and Additional Superintendent of Police in Kharagpur, West Bengal, uploaded a video about her experiences as an IPS officer and the role played by the Residential Coaching Academy of Aligarh Muslim University.

The Hindu Legal Fund lodged a complaint with the West Bengal Home Secretary regarding whether a serving officer should use such religious expressions and why she did not resort to expressions like “Jai Hind” or “Vande Mataram” instead. The next day, Bano was transferred from Kharagpur and was made the Deputy Commandant of the State Armed Police. Both the complaint and the transfer have been reported. Nevertheless, the state government has not officially proven that she was transferred because of her religious vocabulary. This is why the controversy matters, since it raises the following question: What does secular citizenship mean when the religious language of a minority becomes politically suspect, and the symbols of the majority increasingly align with nationalism?

The Constitutional Promise

India’s constitutional identity is clear. The preamble declares India to be a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic.” Furthermore, the Constitution guarantees equality before the law and freedom of conscience and religion. The Apex Court upheld in November 2024 the use of the terms “socialist” and “secular” in the Preamble and reiterated that the idea of secularism is an integral part of the Constitution of India and pointed out that the Constitution was “secular in spirit” even prior to the insertion of the 42nd Amendment.

India’s problem, therefore, is not the absence of constitutional secularism. The deeper concern is the potential widening distance between constitutional principle and political practice.

Constitutions cannot implement themselves. Political leaders, bureaucracies, police, courts, civil society and citizens transform constitutional principles into everyday reality. This produces a difficult democratic question: What happens when institutions charged with administering a secular republic operate within a political culture increasingly shaped by majoritarian definitions of nationhood?

Hindutva and Constitutional Citizenship

An important distinction must be maintained between Hinduism and Hindutva. Hinduism is an ancient and extraordinarily diverse religious and philosophical tradition. Hindutva is a modern political ideology that conceptualizes Indian national identity substantially through Hindu civilization and culture. The Bharatiya Janata Party has longstanding ideological connections with the broader Hindu nationalist movement, within which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh occupies a central position. But this debate should never be reduced simplistically to “Hindus versus Muslims.” Millions of Hindus remain committed to secular democracy, pluralism and minority rights. This deeper conflict is between constitutional citizenship and religious majoritarianism. Constitutional citizenship means that whether an Indian says Namaste, Assalamu Alaikum, Sat Sri Akal, Jai Hind, or just Good morning, he or she remains an Indian citizen. Patriotism must not be dependent on any religious terms.

There could also be another, unwritten test, based on which nationalism of the majority could make it necessary for minorities to show their loyalty to India in terms of majority culture.

And this is why the Bano case is important because when Inshallah makes one suspect, but words associated with majority culture are taken as patriotic, then there will be an asymmetry of secularism. Secularism cannot mean that Muslims must become less visibly Muslim in order to prove that they are Indian.

A Pattern Larger Than One Officer

No single administrative decision can define the experience of roughly 200 million Indian Muslims. The Bano controversy becomes more consequential, however, when placed alongside documented disputes involving citizenship, demolitions, vigilantism, hate speech and treatment of Bengali-speaking Muslims.

The Citizenship Amendment Act has been attacked for bringing religion into the expedited process of citizenship through which specific non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan become eligible. Proponents claim that it gives asylum to religiously persecuted minorities but does not take away citizenship from Indian Muslims. They see the inclusion of religious criteria in citizenship procedures as undermining equality in a secular state.

“Bulldozer Justice” is another matter of dispute that involves demolition of houses and property due to charges of crime or communal unrest. The Supreme Court has stopped such demolition practices in 2024, whereas Human Rights Watch has found such demolitions being undertaken predominantly against Muslims.

The attacks by cow vigilante groups have also been raised as a matter of human rights violation. Human Rights Watch found attacks carried out in 2024 in which a Muslim migrant laborer was killed in Haryana on the charge of consuming beef.

The concerns continued into 2025. Human Rights Watch reported that hundreds of Bengali-speaking Muslims were expelled toward Bangladesh without adequate due process and that some were Indian citizens. It also documented demolitions, expulsions and intensified anti-Muslim rhetoric following the deadly attack in Jammu and Kashmir. They vary significantly in jurisdiction and legal and political responsibility. They cannot be taken for granted as instances of a centrally planned conspiracy. However, they pose an interesting question on whether all Indians have secular citizenship rights.

The Problem of Symbolic Secularism

India understandably presents itself internationally as the world’s largest democracy and as a plural civilization in which Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Jews and others coexist under one constitutional order. That image has genuine foundations. Indian Muslims have contributed profoundly to politics, public administration, the armed forces, judiciary, universities, science, literature, music, cinema, business and culture. Courts, journalists, academics, activists and civil-society organizations continue to challenge majoritarian excesses.

It would therefore be inaccurate to describe India simply as a country in which Muslims possess no rights.

But precisely because India claims the mantle of pluralistic democracy, treatment of minorities deserves scrutiny. A contradiction emerges when pluralism is celebrated internationally while domestic rhetoric sometimes depicts Muslims as “infiltrators,” demographic threats, cultural outsiders or citizens whose patriotism requires repeated demonstration.

The Human Rights Watch 2026 report claims that there was an increase in the vilification of Muslims in 2025 and mentions some policies and practices of discrimination, hate speech, expulsion, and abuse committed against religious minorities. This is according to Human Rights Watch’s observations, while the Indian government and BJP reject claims of anti-minority governance. The fundamental question, then, is not whether secular institutions still exist in India they unquestionably do but whether secularism is applied symmetrically.

Israel, India and a Contested Political Analogy

India’s increasingly visible strategic partnership with Israel introduces another controversial dimension. India established full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, while Narendra Modi’s 2017 visit the first by an Indian prime minister gave the relationship unprecedented political visibility. Cooperation has expanded across defense, security, technology, agriculture, trade and innovation.

When talking to the Israeli Knesset on February 25, 2026, he made reference to the Jews of Indian origin living in Israel, and said that to them, “Israel was the fatherland while India was the motherland.” This is very critical because when Modi was referring to the fatherland here, he was referring to Indian Jews who have moved to Israel.

Nevertheless, the imagery has entered a broader political discussion. Critics of Hindu majoritarianism have drawn comparisons do not equivalence between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and pressures experienced by sections of India’s Muslim population.

Such comparisons require intellectual discipline. India is not Israel; Indian Muslims are not Palestinians; and the historical, territorial, constitutional and security circumstances are profoundly different. Nor does evidence establish that New Delhi has simply imported an Israeli blueprint for dealing with Indian Muslims.

Rather, the more legitimate question may be how two dissimilar political systems still manage to share some common tendencies towards majoritarian nationalism, in which the majority religion blends together with national identity, making minorities prove their loyalty.

Constitutional distinction is especially important. Israel defines itself politically and legally as the nation-state of the Jewish people. India defines itself as a secular democratic republic. India must therefore be judged by India’s own constitutional promise.

The mere fact that two countries collaborate in their foreign policy need not necessarily indicate that one is imitating the other ideologically. But democratic nations have the right to investigate whether ideas related to politics, security, and nationalism travel with strategic alliances.

In the end, the credibility of India’s secularism will depend on how it treats its own people, not on whom it associates with abroad.

Secularism Cannot Require Cultural Surrender

The Bano controversy returns this debate to an elementary principle. Assalamu Alaikum means peace be upon you. Inshallah means God willing. Jazakallah conveys gratitude and blessing. None inherently repudiates India, Hinduism, Indian sovereignty or the Constitution.

A secular republic should not need to choose between Assalamu Alaikum and Jai Hind, or force Inshallah to compete with Vande Mataram. These expressions arise from different cultural and linguistic traditions, yet all can coexist within Indian citizenship. Forcing Muslim officials who serve the state to deny normal manifestations of their own religion will not make the state any more secular, but will rather result in the cultural preference of the majority dictating the definition of neutrality and patriotism. True secularism does not require citizens to erase religion from their identities. It requires the state neither to privilege nor punish them because of those identities.

The test is straightforward: if Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Assalamu Alaikum, Jai Hind and Good morning can all be spoken without changing the state’s judgment of a citizen’s loyalty, secularism is functioning. If one generates suspicion while another automatically signifies patriotism, the issue lies not in the words but in the political meaning attached to the speaker’s identity.

Constitutional India and Majoritarian India

India appears increasingly engaged in a contest between two conceptions of itself.

One is the republic of constitutional citizenship: secular, democratic, pluralistic and sufficiently confident to accommodate profound diversity. The latter is a majoritarian paradigm wherein Hindu civilization becomes the key language of national identity, and minorities become citizens but might come under pressure to accept an implicit cultural stratification. The former says: Are you a citizen of India? The latter might say: Are you sufficiently Indian? This is the difference between the unconditional, constitutionally guaranteed right of citizenship and a belonging that must be proved all the time. Thus, the Bano incident goes way beyond the three religious manifestations.

A secular democratic polity cannot ask for religious neutrality exclusively from minorities while accommodating majoritarian religious-cultural symbols in nationalism. It certainly cannot claim to espouse pluralism internationally when its citizens face suspicion simply because they manifest parts of their religious identities. India’s Constitution still stands as a powerful shield against any such tendencies. The Supreme Court of India is still upholding secularism, while journalists, academics, lawyers, and countless citizens in India are fighting for the plurality of India. Therefore, the battle must not be seen as that of India versus Muslims or Hindus versus Muslims.

It is a debate within India over what India itself means.

In the end, however, this is much more than an argument about Muslims, or Hindus, or even religion or secularism alone. This is an argument within India about what India means, and what kind of republic India will be. The true test of democracy in India will not be the mere toleration of minorities within India, but their ability to belong to India without sacrificing what makes India plural.

The ultimate question remains whether secularism will ensure the constitutionality of everyone being able to be different or whether belonging will come to depend on minorities becoming less different. Secularism may be declared through a constitution; it may be upheld through judicial means; a government may embrace pluralism in public appearances abroad. But secularism truly gains its deepest meaning from practice that is, when a Muslim policeman can say “Assalamu Alaikum,” a Hindu policeman says “Namaste,” a Sikh says “Sat Sri Akal,” a Christian says God, and an atheist says nothing, while the republic views them all with equal respect and equally considers them Indian citizens.

This is not tolerance granted to a minority by a majority. This is equality ensured by the Constitution. This is not tolerance of diversity, but power gained through diversity for India’s democracy. This is not just about protecting the Indian Muslims but about protecting the idea of India as envisaged in the Constitution. When a democracy starts demanding that its citizens reduce their identity to secure their right to citizenship, the principle being threatened is not minority rights but equal citizenship.

Perhaps no warning is more fitting than the words of B. R. Ambedkar, principal architect of India’s Constitution: “Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated.” India’s enduring challenge is to cultivate that morality so faithfully that no citizen must ever choose between the dignity of his or her faith and the dignity of being Indian.