Every morning in India now begins with two parallel news cycles. The first is broadcast on television with polished choreography: debates about Pakistan, paeans to Hindu pride, and endless theatre about a “New India.” The second, untelevised but more real, is the daily routine of Muslims being beaten to death, harassed, pushed into prisons, and stripped of their humanity.
Between these two tracks, the message lands with chilling clarity: either Muslim suffering is made to vanish, or it is turned into a mass spectacle—consumed as evening entertainment by the majority—while Muslims are forced to live as perpetual suspects, always accused, never heard.
Take, for example, the killing of a seven-year-old Muslim boy in Azamgarh last September. His body was found stuffed in a bag. Neighbours discovered him without the slightest alarm, only to be arrested later.
For a moment, local papers carried the story. Then it disappeared from prime-time bulletins, replaced by the din over “love jihad,” border tensions, or an India–Pakistan cricket match.
The death of a Muslim child did not fit the script of nationalist rage. It became another number in the archive of normalised violence. The sociologist Stanley Cohen once wrote about “states of denial”: not the concealment of atrocities, but their absorption until they lose the power to shock. That is today’s India: Muslims are killed in broad daylight while the majority registers it as background noise.
But hatred in India is no longer just silence; it is staging. When Muslims in Kanpur held banners reading “I love Muhammad,” the police did not protect them. Instead, they filed criminal cases against 1,300 Muslims and launched mass arrests.
Love itself was criminalised. Meanwhile, when Hindutva crowds gather in Maharashtra or Madhya Pradesh and chant openly for genocide, news cameras either amplify them or avert their gaze. Violence against Muslims has become public theatre: the Muslim cast as the eternal accused, Hindutva forces playing “guardians of civilisation.”
This selective visibility is not incidental; it is carefully produced. The rise of so-called “jihad-free markets” in Indore—where Muslim traders were expelled overnight—amounted to economic execution.
Entire families lost their livelihoods. Children were forced out of school. Women had to seek food from neighbours. Yet national media framed it as an “administrative adjustment,” paying no attention to human loss.
On social media, Hindutva groups celebrated, converting the displacement of Muslims into a form of mass entertainment. What should have been a national scandal was packaged as “routine local tension.”
The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, embodies this performance culture. From the podium of state power, he unleashes toxic rhetoric against Muslims, branding them “infiltrators” and “terror sympathisers.”
These are not fringe voices; they are the ruling elite. Yet opposition parties do not answer with moral clarity. They try to compete by offering milder versions of the Hindutva narrative, eager to prove who is “more Indian.” It has become painfully clear that Muslims are no longer political agents in India, merely props in a political scene.
The result is not only material; it is psychological and existential. To be Muslim in India today is to live as a permanent suspect: watched in the mosque, judged in the marketplace, doubted in the classroom. Even Jumu‘ah feels risky. Even the adhan, the pulse of community life, is treated by some as provocation.
The Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi once asked: “Where are those who once took pride in India?” The question still echoes: if this is India’s glory, why does it require the daily humiliation of Muslims to prove itself?
The Ugandan-born Muslim thinker Mahmood Mamdani offers a frame for this condition. In Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, he shows how states and societies divide Muslims into two: the “acceptable” Muslim who submits quietly, and the “dangerous” Muslim who resists or demands dignity.
In India, this division is a daily weapon. The Muslim who hides his faith and dissolves into the background is tolerated. But the Muslim who declares his identity—who says he loves the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, demands equal rights, or refuses erasure—is instantly branded a criminal. Mamdani reminds us this is not about theology; it is about power: who defines legitimacy, and who is forced to live inside the circle of suspicion.
This is why videos of lynchings circulate on WhatsApp like jokes. Why anchors smirk as they push conspiracy theories about a “Muslim population explosion.” Why do mobs laugh after burning shops?
Hatred is no longer a policy alone; it has become mass entertainment. When cruelty becomes comedy and humiliation becomes prime-time drama, the line between democracy and fascism collapses.
History warns us: societies that turn the suffering of minorities into entertainment are not immune to collapse. The silence of German liberals during Nazi marches, American indifference during the lynching of Black people, and crowds cheering Israeli bombs over Gaza—all testify that when hatred becomes spectacle, it eventually devours the society itself. India is no exception.
So I return to the question: are we Muslims—or criminals? Why must we live on trial every day while the killers walk free? Why is the death of our children buried in darkness while the state celebrates a “golden age”? The answer does not lie with Muslims alone; it lies with India’s majority. Will they keep watching hatred as if it were their favourite serial—or will they finally switch off the screen?
Because the day hatred becomes the nation’s only form of entertainment, the credits will not roll over Muslim bodies alone; they will be written on the death certificate of the republic. And history will not ask whether you were Hindu or Muslim, right-wing or liberal. It will ask only this: why did a society that boasted of civilisation turn cruelty into comedy, and silence into consent? The question before the majority is not about tolerance or secularism. It is simpler: can they still recognise the human in their neighbour?
Applaud the trial of a Muslim today—and you may wake tomorrow to find the homeland you cheered has turned into your prison. When that day comes, only the laughter of hatred will remain in this republic.
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