India's Muslims, lived secularism and realising citizenship

Abstract

This article examines the dissonance between Indian secularism in theory and secularism in practice for India's largest religious minority of Muslims. Marginalised and discriminated against in everyday life, India's Muslims are frequently constructed simply as victims without recourse to agency. This article challenges this narrative by documenting how Muslims living in Varanasi in North India actively sought to realise their citizenship and a sense of meaningful participation in society. The empirical insights illustrate that despite the failure of state secularism to protect the Muslim minority from discrimination and facilitate their realisation of equal citizenship, these Muslims did not reject the principle of secularism nor seek an alternative. To the contrary, the rhetoric of secularism offered spaces of opportunity through which Muslims could become political, challenge normative narratives and articulate themselves as citizens. The article develops an understanding of multiple and plural Muslim citizenship strategies that are enacted simultaneously across different spaces and scales within the state and society, where notions of the self and citizenship are always in the process of becoming.

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