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 profiling exercise targeting mosques and madrassas across the Valley. Multi-page forms have reportedly been distributed, demanding personal and financial details of imams, religious teachers, and mosque management committees. Officials claim this is a counter-terrorism measure. But for many in Kashmir, the exercise feels less about security and more about being collectively placed under suspicion, with everyday religious life turned into a matter of police scrutiny.

Religious leaders, civil society groups, and elected representatives have condemned this move as an assault on constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and privacy. Surveillance of religious institutions sends a message to the entire community that its faith and spaces of worship are objects of state suspicion. 

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The closure of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence in Jammu exposes another, equally disturbing dimension of exclusion. After 42 out of 50 students admitted to its first MBBS batch turned out to be Muslim — selected purely on merit through India’s national entrance exam — right-wing Hindu groups launched protests claiming Muslims had “no business” benefiting from an institution linked to a Hindu shrine. Soon after, the National Medical Commission withdrew the college’s recognition, citing infrastructural deficiencies that students and independent observers insist were either exaggerated or non-existent.

Taken together, these episodes show how Muslim life and achievement are treated as a problem to be contained. In Kashmir, this happens in a place already shaped by raids, checkpoints, and constant surveillance.

In November 2025, United Nations human rights experts sounded the alarm over India’s counter-terrorism operations in Jammu and Kashmir. Following the April 2025 Pahalgam attack, around 2,800 people were detained, including journalists and human rights defenders. Reports documented arbitrary arrests, torture, prolonged detention without trial, communication blackouts, punitive home demolitions, and the harassment of Kashmiri students across India. The experts warned that such measures amounted to collective punishment and violated both India’s constitution and international law.

Far from being exceptional, Kashmir increasingly reflects a national trend. India today is grappling with an unprecedented crisis of communal violence and hate speech. According to a report by the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, communal violence rose by 84 per cent in 2024, with Muslims accounting for the majority of deaths. Of the 59 communal riots recorded that year, 49 occurred in BJP-ruled states. Nearly 90 per cent of religion-based hate crimes between 2009 and 2019 occurred after the BJP came to power in 2014.

Hate speech has followed a similar trajectory. According to India Hate Lab, more than 1,300 hate speech events were documented in 2025 alone, overwhelmingly in BJP-governed states, targeting Muslims and increasingly Christians. Cow protection mobs, bulldozer justice, and discriminatory laws on citizenship and religious conversion have normalised collective punishment and impunity.

What is unfolding in Kashmir is the logical extension of the Hindutva project that thrives on exclusion and fear. Muslims already living under constant siege and surveillance are now being pushed further to the margins, excluded socially and institutionally on the basis of faith. 

As things stand, the future does not look bright for Muslims in India. Project Hindutva is advancing both subtly and ruthlessly, taking over institutions and sensibilities. However, it is for the people of India to decide whether they would let hate mongers and religious fundamentalists take over the largest democracy in the world and remake it into a state built on hate and fear, as envisioned by Savarkar or whether they will defend the secular republic imagined by Gandhi and Nehru.

For now, the answer offers little reason for hope.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.