Muslim exclusion in India: A review of the literature

It’s been 7 years since Sachar Committee published its reports, highlighting the deep and extensive deprivations Muslims in India face on the range of counts. It has been as many years since the Central Government announced a programme of interventions to ameliorate the condition of Minorities and Muslims. Latest development data (India HDI 2011; NSSO, 2011; NSSO 2013) do not show any significant improvements in the conditions of Muslims. This is a serious failing. It is also true that data collection and systematic tracking and analysing of performance for Muslims have been patchy at best. Given the limited scholarly attention on Muslim deprivation and development, we are not yet sure, in a sufficiently nuanced way, what works and what does not for Muslims, nationally as well as in different regional settings. This is a significant gap, given how important Muslim outcomes are for national policies of inclusive growth and political stability. This paper is a review of the literature on exclusion of Muslims in India, and the varying understanding of the phenomenon, including its regional and local dimensions. It seeks to map the terrain, so to speak, in an effort to identify gaps and suggest research questions to better understand the drivers and facilitators of the exclusion, and how the developmental challenge for Muslims could be overcome.