Kashmir and the normalisation of exclusion in India

The shadow of Hindutva is slowly creeping up in Kashmir. The recent profiling of mosques and madrassas, and the decision to shut down a medical college after Muslim students earned most of its admissions, reflect this grim reality. What we are witnessing in Kashmir are not isolated incidents, but part of the broader, systemic exclusion and otherisation of India’s Muslims through institutionalised Islamophobia. Hindutva’s claws are now firmly embedded in the body politic and social fabric of India, which has been deeply damaged and distorted over the past decade.

Attempts at saffronising India’s secular republic are not new, but they have gained unprecedented momentum since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consolidated its grip over the state and large sections of the media. Saffronisation, or Hinduisation, is inseparable from Islamophobia and the marginalisation and ghettoisation of Indian Muslims. It has been made abundantly clear, time and again, that peaceful coexistence for the country’s largest minority is no longer a political priority. Muslims have become the primary targets of Hindutva’s hate machinery — whether through cow protection vigilantism, conspiracies like “love jihad” and “land jihad”, the demolition of mosques, public lynchings, or the bulldozing of Muslim homes in impoverished neighbourhoods.

Now, it is Kashmiri Muslims who are bearing the brunt of this project. Unlike the rest of India, Muslims are a majority in Kashmir. Yet Hindutva’s politics of fear, intimidation, and exclusion is working relentlessly to reduce them into a marginalised and suspect population. 

In recent weeks, Jammu and Kashmir Police have launched an invasive

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