Who Gets to Think in India?

In a democracy, the right to speak freely is foundational. But in today’s India, that right is increasingly filtered through religious identity. The recent detention of Ali Khan Mahmudabad – historian, author and professor – reveals an unsettling truth: for Indian Muslims, speech itself has become a liability.

Mahmudabad’s supposed offence was not sedition, hate speech or incitement; it was a Facebook post – carefully worded, analytically restrained, almost academic in tone. In the post, he commented on India's shifting military doctrine in its handling of Pakistan, criticised the politics of war and reflected on how symbolic optics, like Muslim women in military press conferences, cannot replace structural justice. He mourned the cost of conflict, especially for the poor. He called for political accountability, not revolt.

There was nothing inflammatory or irresponsible. And yet, for this, he was arrested.

Also read: For Mahmudabad's Bail Observations, We Cannot Blame Just the Supreme Court

This episode is emblematic of a broader crisis. In today’s India, a Muslim public intellectual does not need to be radical to be punished – one needs only be visible.

What Mahmudabad wrote was, in any functioning democracy, a part of legitimate public discourse. But the reaction to his words tells us something far more dangerous: that Muslims are not allowed to think aloud even within the safest boundaries of reasoned critique. This is not about national security. It is about the politics of identity and the narrowing of democratic space.

As political theorist Mahmood Mamdani observed in the wake of 9/11, liberal states often distinguish between the “good Muslim” and the “bad Muslim.” The good Muslim is quiet, compliant and loyal without question. The bad Muslim is the one who asks, mourns, remembers or analyses, thus becoming a threat. 

In India today, Mahmudabad becomes a “bad Muslim” not because of what he said, but because he refused to remain silent in a moment of escalating jingoism.

The Hindu nationalist project that now animates India’s politics demands a specific kind of Muslim: one that is both grateful and invisible; one who praises the state, erases solidarity with the global Muslim suffering and cheers military violence as the only proof of loyalty. Even that, often, is not enough.

This is the deeper story beneath Mahmudabad’s detention: the unspoken criminalisation of Muslim political thought. The state does not just want Muslims to follow the law. It wants them to surrender their ability to think, reflect, and speak from their history. The Muslim who quotes Gandhi, speaks Urdu, or remembers Palestine is seen as potentially subversive. The Muslim professor is as suspect as the Muslim protester.

Also read: The Sole Reason Behind Ali Khan Mahmudabad’s Arrest Is That He Is a Muslim

In this narrowing space, liberal Hindu critics still retain a degree of tolerated dissent. They can sound warnings, write op-eds, appear on panels. They are scrutinised, yes, but not criminalised simply for reflecting. For the Muslim, however, every word becomes a test, every silence a strategy.

This double standard is not incidental – it is structural. It is, in Ghassan Hage’s terms, the “fantasy of the white nation” transposed into a brown-majority state. In his book White Nation, Hage explores how dominant groups construct fantasies of national belonging that exclude others even as they claim to include them. India today performs its inclusivity through military optics, tokenised diversity and curated spectacles but withdraws rights and protections from those very communities behind the scenes.

Take, for instance, the case of Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, one of the two women featured in the military press conference that Mahmudabad commented on. She was lauded one day and abused the next. A minister from the ruling party communalised her name, implying betrayal by default. This isn’t just bigotry. It’s a clear reminder: Muslims can be shown off as symbols, but never allowed dignity as citizens.

What we are witnessing is the performance of “diversity” without rights; representation without inclusion. Zoya Hasan, in her work on secularism and political representation, has long argued that Indian secularism has become a conditional bargain – where minorities are recognised symbolically but stripped of power substantively. Muslims are displayed, but not defended. Celebrated, but not safe.

And as Arundhati Roy rightly put it, “There’s no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” Muslims today are being rendered both. They are silenced through fear, and unheard even when they speak. This is not just about speech – it is about the systematic denial of subjectivity.

This climate of fear has produced a crisis not only of politics but of memory. Muslims are being asked to forget – to forget Gujarat, to forget lynchings, to forget Babri and to forget Palestine. Any memory that connects them to global or local Muslim histories is painted as foreign or disloyal. In such a landscape, to remember is to resist.

The irony is that Mahmudabad’s post was not a call to resistance. It was a call to caution, to responsibility, to peace. It condemned violence, highlighted hypocrisy and warned of the cost of conflict. But even this – perhaps, especially this – is threatening to a regime that thrives on conflict, fear and spectacle.

The question we must now ask is: Who is allowed to think in today’s India?

If Muslim academics can be detained for Facebook posts, if Muslim soldiers can be slandered by ministers, if Muslim families can be evicted without trial, then this is not simply Islamophobia – it is a collapse of constitutional citizenship. It is a regime of suspicion, where identity becomes evidence and silence becomes survival.

And yet, as Mahmudabad himself wrote, the press conference that sparked his reflections also revealed a glimpse of another India – an India where difference still exists, where dignity still flickers, where the constitution is not yet a corpse. That India is bruised, battered and beleaguered – but not dead.

It is that India we must now fight for – not just with slogans and speeches, but with scholarship, solidarity and steadfastness. We must protect the right to speak, and especially the right of those whom the state most wishes to silence. Not because they are voiceless, but because their voices remind us of what democracy truly means.

Mahmudabad’s words were not dangerous. But the idea that Muslims can still think critically and speak publicly in this country – that idea terrifies the state. And that, more than anything else, is why his detention matters.

Ismail Salahuddin has an MA in Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policy, Jamia Millia Islamia. Mohammad Aaquib has an MA in Political Science, Calcutta University.

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