Muslim Contributions to India’s Independence Under Siege Amid Rising Violence

Muslim Contributions to India’s Independence Under Siege Amid Rising Violence

As India marked its 79th Independence Day this August, historians and community leaders decried the systematic removal of Muslim heroes from the national narrative just as anti-Muslim violence reaches alarming levels.

Key figures such as Bahadur Shah Zafar, Tipu Sultan, Begum Hazrat Mahal, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad are increasingly absent from school syllabuses and official commemorations, a trend described by experts as a deliberate rewriting of history to marginalize Muslim heritage in the nation’s narrative, said an article by Clarion India.

In New Delhi, Dr Shahid Qureshi warned that “without Muslim blood, there would have been no freedom,” recalling how figures from Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor who served as the symbolic leader of the 1857 uprising, to ordinary villagers fought and died alongside Hindus to oust British rule. He and others point to the Ganga-Jamuni culture—a centuries-old symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity—that once galvanized millions against colonial power but is now overshadowed by divisive politics.

Accounts of 19th- and early 20th-century Muslim leaders have been stripped from school syllabuses and public commemorations, the article mentions, adding that this erasure extends to Muslim champions of the Indian National Congress.

At the same moment, hate-motivated attacks and legal exclusion of Muslims have surged. United Nations experts have documented how state authorities—from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh—have enforced discriminatory land-use and demolition orders against mosques and shrines while leaving adjacent Hindu sites intact, and have prosecuted Muslims under draconian cow-protection laws. Observers see these acts as part of a broader pattern of selective enforcement targeting Muslim faith and livelihoods.

Civil society organizations, including the Association for Protection of Civil Rights, report that such incidents coincide with spikes in hate speech, threats and physical violence recorded across at least 19 states—often with little or no accountability from local police. United Nations experts warn that dehumanizing rhetoric has been fostered at the highest levels of government, emboldening extremist vigilante groups and undermining India’s secular constitutional guarantees. They call on New Delhi to ensure impartial investigations, restore demolished sites, and reaffirm the pluralistic ideals for which India’s freedom fighters—including countless unsung Muslim martyrs—bled and died.