A video clip of an incident that happened in Khubbapur village in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, where a Muslim boy was slapped by his classmates on the instruction of their teacher is Islamophobic. In this case, the victim and the perpetrator belong to the Tyagi clan. Despite hailing from different religions they share a cultural bond. Their neighbourhood was not directly affected during the Muzaffarnagar riots in U.P. in 2013 and has an established history of social harmony between the Hindu Tyagis and Muslim Tyagis. This is why reconciliation could happen so swiftly. It also highlights the roots of the indigenous Indian Islam. Yet, Islamophobia has reared its ugly head and left the sacred trust between teacher and student broken. This is how much India has changed.
Concepts and explanations
Islamophobia is a global phenomenon. But the sources and issues from which it emanates vary from region to region. What is being witnessed in India is quite different from what is seen in the West. In India, Islamophobia, communalism and intolerance are some of the key concepts used to explain the troubled Hindu-Muslim relations. Of the three, the use of the notion of communalism has disproportionately dominated scholarly works particularly during the 20th century. In a Rawlsian sense, each is a freestanding concept, but possesses overlapping attributes. It is only by unravelling these attributes that the threat that Islamophobia poses to India’s secular social order can be understood. With its pejorative connotation, the concept of communalism is applied exclusively in a South Asian context; the concepts of Islamophobia and intolerance are universal in usage.
