Understanding the Transactional Framework of Hindutva Intellectual Discourse

by Bulbul-e-Bangal

The contemporary Hindutva intellectual project, as articulated by figures like J Sai Deepak, presents what appears to be an invitation to dialogue and common ground between Hindus and Muslims in India. However, a closer examination of this framework reveals a fundamentally transactional dynamic in which Muslims are asked to demonstrate their belonging through specific forms of identity performance and political acquiescence. The examples held up as models, particularly KK Muhammad and APJ Abdul Kalam, are instructive not merely for who these figures were, but for what precisely made them acceptable within Hindutva discourse. Understanding this reveals the depth and nature of what is being asked of Indian Muslims in exchange for their place in the national imaginary.

J Sai Deepak and similar intellectuals frame Hindu-Muslim coexistence not as a matter of mutual accommodation or constitutional equality, but as requiring Muslims to align themselves with what is termed a “dharmic” or “Indic” civilizational identity. This framing is significant because it positions such alignment not as one option among many for expressing Indian identity, but as a precondition for Muslims’ legitimate belonging in India. The dharmic framework is presented as the authentic, indigenous civilizational core of India, with Islam positioned as necessarily foreign, imported, and therefore requiring some form of reconciliation or subordination to the native tradition.

The case of KK Muhammad, the archaeologist who worked on the Ayodhya excavations, is particularly revealing. Muhammad is celebrated within Hindutva circles primarily because he publicly supported the Archaeological Survey of India findings that indicated the presence of a temple structure beneath the Babri Masjid. More significantly, he broke ranks with what he characterized as the secular and leftist historical establishment that had questioned or disputed these findings. In doing so, Muhammad effectively validated a core Hindutva narrative about historical wrongs committed during Muslim rule that required correction or restitution. His acceptability stemmed not from his scholarly contributions per se, but from his willingness to support a narrative in which Islamic architecture and Muslim historical presence in India are reframed as conquest and dispossession rather than as legitimate parts of India’s composite history.

APJ Abdul Kalam presents a somewhat different but equally instructive case. The former president is lionized across the political spectrum in India, but his particular appeal to Hindutva intellectuals derives from specific aspects of his public persona and political positioning. Kalam played a central role in India’s nuclear program, embodying nationalist and civilizational pride in technological achievement. Crucially, he wore his Muslim religious identity extremely lightly in public spaces, rarely if ever engaging with Islamic theology or Muslim communal concerns in his public statements. He never positioned himself as an advocate for minority rights or Muslim-specific issues, instead consistently prioritizing a nationalist identity that transcended religious particularity. Kalam quoted extensively from Hindu sacred texts, displayed comfort and fluency in Hindu cultural spaces, and presented himself as a thoroughly nationalist Muslim whose religious identity was essentially private and culturally vestigial rather than publicly salient or politically relevant.

What emerges from these examples is a clear pattern of expectations that defines the terms of Muslim acceptability within the Hindutva intellectual framework. The first and perhaps most fundamental expectation is historical validation. Muslims are required to accept and endorse Hindutva historical narratives that characterize Muslim rule in India as inherently oppressive, and extractive of an authentic Hindu civilization. Islamic architecture, particularly mosques built during Mughal and pre-Mughal Muslim rule, must be understood primarily as symbols of conquest and humiliation rather than as legitimate expressions of Muslim presence and contribution to Indian civilization. The corollary to this historical framing is that contemporary “corrections”, whether the demolition of the Babri Masjid or demands for temple reclamation at other mosque sites, are not acts of majoritarian aggression but rather historical justice. Muslims who wish to be acceptable must not merely tolerate this narrative but actively validate it, as KK Muhammad did.

The second expectation concerns identity minimization. Religious identity, particularly Muslim religious identity, should be maintained as a private, cultural, almost decorative aspect of one’s person rather than a publicly salient or politically relevant identity. Public expressions of Muslim-ness (whether in dress, dietary practices, religious observance, or communal assertion) are interpreted not as legitimate religious freedom but as evidence of refusing to integrate into the broader national culture. The acceptable Muslim is one whose Islam is so thoroughly privatized and culturally attenuated that it poses no challenge to Hindu cultural dominance in the public sphere. Kalam’s appeal lies partly in his embodiment of this ideal: a Muslim whose religious identity was known but rarely visible, who caused no discomfort to Hindu sensibilities, who never asked for accommodation or raised concerns about Muslim marginalization.

Closely related to this is the expectation of community dissociation. The acceptable Muslim does not advocate for Muslim concerns as Muslim concerns. Issues affecting Muslims( whether communal violence, lynchings, discriminatory policies, economic marginalization, or social boycotts) should either not be raised at all or must be reframed through nationalist or civilizational lenses that avoid any suggestion of Muslim particularity or minority grievance. To speak about anti-Muslim discrimination as a communal issue, to organize politically as Muslims, to assert Muslim interests or perspectives is to mark oneself as divisive, sectarian, and insufficiently committed to the nation. The acceptable Muslim transcends such narrow communal concerns and speaks only in the idiom of national unity and civilizational pride.

Perhaps most fundamentally, Muslims are expected to accept a position of civilizational subordination. The dharmic framework posits that Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism share a common civilizational essence rooted in Indian soil, while Islam (and Christianity) remain inherently foreign imports. This is not presented as a neutral historical observation but as establishing a hierarchy of belonging. Indigenous religions have a natural, organic relationship to Indian civilization, while foreign religions exist contingently, their presence tolerated but their claims to equal cultural status inherently problematic. Muslims must accept that their religious and cultural traditions are guests in a civilizational space defined essentially by dharmic traditions, and that this asymmetry is natural and appropriate rather than a denial of equal citizenship.

What makes this framework particularly asymmetrical is its lack of reciprocity. Hindus are not asked to give up anything in this formulation of common ground. There is no expectation that Hindus interrogate caste practices, abandon claims to disputed religious sites, moderate majoritarian assertions, or acknowledge historical violence committed in the name of Hindu identity. The burden of accommodation, compromise, and identity modification falls entirely on Muslims. The “common ground” being offered is not a middle space where both communities make adjustments, but rather Muslim acceptance of a Hindu nationalist frame as the baseline for national belonging.

From the perspective of Indian Muslims navigating this discourse, the problems with this transactional framework are multiple and profound. Most fundamentally, it transforms citizenship from a constitutional right into a conditional status dependent on cultural performance and political acquiescence. Rather than belonging to India by virtue of birth, residence, and constitutional guarantee, Muslims are positioned as needing to prove their belonging through adoption of prescribed attitudes and behaviors. Citizenship becomes something earned through correct performance rather than something inherently possessed.

This framework also pathologizes ordinary Muslim identity and practice. When Kalam is held up as a model, the implicit message is that visible Muslim religious practice, communal organization, or assertion of Muslim cultural identity represents a problem requiring correction. The ordinary Muslim who prays five times daily, wears religious dress, observes dietary restrictions, or participates in communal religious festivals is implicitly contrasted with the exceptional Muslim who has transcended such particularities. Hindu religious practice, by contrast, is naturalized as cultural expression rather than sectarianism, devotion to Hindu causes is nationalism rather than communalism, and Hindu cultural dominance is treated as the normal state of affairs rather than majoritarian assertion.

The historical dimension of this framework requires Muslims to engage in a form of self-negation that many find deeply troubling. Muslims are asked to view their own history, including ancestors who may have built mosques, practiced their faith, contributed to Indo-Islamic art and architecture, participated in syncretic cultural traditions, through the exclusive lens of conquest and oppression. The Mughal period, which produced some of India’s most iconic architecture and significant administrative innovations, must be understood primarily as an era of Hindu subjugation. Muslim rulers must be judged by their actions toward Hindu temples rather than by any broader assessment of their governance, cultural patronage, or historical complexity. For Muslims, this demand essentially requires disowning or viewing with shame a heritage that they might otherwise claim as part of their family and communal history.

Moreover, the standards for acceptance remain perpetually elusive. Even Muslims who adopt these positions and perform the prescribed identity are not fully embraced but rather celebrated precisely because they are exceptions. Kalam and Muhammad are “good Muslims” in a framework that implicitly understands most Muslims as problematic. Their exceptionalism reinforces rather than challenges the stereotype. They become tokens whose existence proves that Muslims could be acceptable if only they would all behave similarly, while their rarity proves that most Muslims refuse to do so. No amount of individual Muslims performing acceptable identity seems to shift the underlying framework that views Muslim collective identity and interests as inherently problematic.

This framework also requires erasing or denying the actually existing syncretic reality of Indian civilization. India’s historical and cultural development involved deep Hindu-Muslim synthesis in language, music, architecture, cuisine, religious practice, and social organization. Urdu emerged from the interaction of Persian, Arabic, and indigenous languages. Hindustani classical music developed through exchanges between Hindu and Muslim musicians. Sufi and Bhakti movements influenced each other. Mughal miniature painting synthesized Persian and indigenous styles. Indian cuisine as it exists today is unimaginable without the contributions of Muslim culinary traditions. To demand that these be separated into “dharmic” versus “Islamic” civilization is to deny this syncretic inheritance that belongs to all Indians regardless of religious identity.

The deeper issue at stake here is whether the Indian Muslim can belong as a Muslim, with full religious and cultural identity, with their own historical narratives and memories, with their concerns as a minority community, or whether they can belong only as Muslims who have accepted a subordinate position within a Hindu civilizational framework. When Sai Deepak invokes Kalam and Muhammad, he is not celebrating Muslim contributions to India as Muslims, but rather celebrating Muslims who validated Hindu nationalist narratives or minimized their Muslim identity to the point of near-invisibility. The transaction being offered is clear: Muslims may belong if they accept that their belonging is conditional, that their identity must be privatized, that their history must be repudiated, and that their political interests must be subordinated to a Hindu majoritarian framework presented as national interest.

For many Indian Muslims, this transaction is incompatible with dignified, equal citizenship. It asks them to participate in their own marginalization, to provide intellectual and moral cover for frameworks that ultimately deny them equal status, and to accept a vision of India in which they are perpetual supplicants rather than equal inheritors of a shared national project. The question that remains is whether Indian democracy can sustain a model of citizenship that demands such asymmetric concessions, or whether genuine pluralism requires a more fundamental rethinking of how religious communities relate to national identity and to each other.