Recently, I heard a podcast by a Hindu pseudo-intellectual in which he propagated the idea that if India had not been partitioned in 1947, Muslims would have consti­tuted around 30–35 per cent of the population and their con­dition would have been much better. I decided to write about this and put on record the cur­rent status of Muslims in Hin­du India, thereby deflating the vi­cious propaganda balloon of Hindu extremist thought.

The total population of undivided Brit­ish India in 1947 was estimated to be around 390 million. The population mix was Hindus at around 69.5 per cent, Muslims around 24.3 per cent, and Sikhs, Christians, and other religions making up the rest of the population. Thus, claiming that today the Muslim population would have jumped from 24 per cent to 35 per cent is simply preposterous.

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Without going into history, suffice it to say that hatred against Muslims was so strong, with RSS philosophy overpow­ering the secular façade, that Mahatma Gandhi, or Bapu as Indians called him, was assassinated by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse on January 30, 1948. He was an early member of the Rashtri­ya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist group. Godse felt that Gan­dhi’s efforts to end communal violence, including hunger strikes, prioritised Muslim demands, leading him to con­clude that Gandhi had to be killed.

While the word “secular” was added to the Preamble of the Constitution of India by the 42nd Amendment in 1976, establishing India as a secular nation, Article 25 remains the key foundation­al article guaranteeing freedom of con­science and religion to all citizens, form­ing the basis of India’s secular character. It is supported by Articles 26, 27, and 28, which further define state neutrality and religious freedom.

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