India Must Reform Islam To Save Its Muslims — Here's Why And How

In April 2025, terrorists affiliated with The Resistance Front (TRF) killed 25 Hindu tourists in Jammu and Kashmir after identifying them by religion. In June 2024, terrorists opened fire on a bus en route to Mata Vaishno Devi, killing nine Hindu devotees and injuring 42 others. A few months before that, in December 2023, an ISIS-affiliated module was busted in Kerala, planning attacks on Hindu temples.

These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a growing pattern of radical Islamic terrorism within India’s borders, feeding off ideological extremism that has festered for decades.

The Indian subcontinent has long been a breeding ground for Islamist radicalism. However, India, despite being home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations, is yet to take meaningful steps to address the theological and institutional roots of the problem.

While we have strengthened our counterterrorism apparatus significantly in the recent past, little has been done to reform the religious ecosystems that incubate radical ideologies.

The uncomfortable truth is this: Islamic thought in India, much like in other parts of the Muslim world, has not undergone the kind of theological reformation that its Abrahamic cousins, Christianity and Judaism, experienced centuries ago. Without such a reckoning, no amount of policing will stop the cycle of indoctrination and violence.

Islam’s Unfinished Modernisation

Both Christianity and Judaism, despite their own histories of violence and orthodoxy, evolved and modernised through transformative reform movements.

Christianity underwent a major transformation during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. The Reformation broke the monopoly of the Catholic Church, leading to the creation of multiple Christian denominations such as Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism.

This fragmentation made it increasingly difficult for any one group to maintain absolute religious authority, gradually opening space for the concept of religious diversity and, eventually, toleration. Importantly, the Protestant Reformation also helped fuel the Enlightenment, which promoted tolerance between different faiths.

Judaism, too, saw deep reform in the 19th century through thinkers like Abraham Geiger, the pioneer of Reform Judaism. He argued that religious practices needed to evolve with contemporary realities.

For instance, he challenged the mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, seeing it as an outdated sentiment that hindered Jewish integration into modern nations. He urged German Jews to view Germany, not ancient Israel, as their homeland and to express full loyalty to the state of their birth.

Reform Judaism thus allowed Jews to reconcile their faith with modern civic identity, enabling the Jewish community to flourish in secular societies without renouncing their religious heritage.

By contrast, Islam has not undergone a comparable theological or institutional reformation, leaving many of its dominant interpretations rooted in rigid orthodoxy. Reformist efforts within Islam have often been met with hostility, and there has been little space for reinterpretation of doctrine, keeping up with modern democratic values or national identity.

Consequently, Muslims who are too rooted in faith often find it difficult to strike a balance between religious and national identity. As Dr B.R. Ambedkar sharply observed, “the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the Muslim, ibi bene ibi patria [where it is well with me, there is my country] is unthinkable.”

This idea that religious identity overrides national belonging was precisely what reformers like Abraham Geiger sought to change within Judaism. Such a shift was possible in Judaism because of a reform movement that critically re-examined tradition and adapted it to modern civic life.

In Islam, the absence of such a reformation has meant that questions of national identity, tolerance for other faiths, and civic integration remain deeply fraught, especially in countries like India.

A Community Left Behind

The absence of reforms in Islam has made life worse for crores of practising Muslims in India. Successive Congress governments appeased the radical elements within the Muslim community as they outsourced moral and intellectual leadership to Maulanas, who often have little interest in social reform.

The result is a tragic paradox: while Congress appeased Muslims, it remained an economically and socially backwards religious community in the country.

Based on NFHS (2019–21) data, Muslims remain one of the poorest communities. Only around 19 per cent of Muslims make it to the top wealth quintile, less than half the share of Hindu Forward Castes (HFCs) at nearly 38 per cent.

On average, Muslim households spend just 77.7 per cent of what HFCs do each month. Education paints a similarly bleak picture. Only 5.7 per cent of Muslims aged 25 and above have attained post-secondary education, far below the 22.8 per cent seen among HFCs.

Muslim youth (18–25 years) have the lowest attendance in higher education, with a rate of just 15.6 per cent compared to 30.9 per cent for HFCs. This socio-economic disenfranchisement is not because of any discrimination, but it is the by-product of an internal resistance to modernisation fostered by religious institutions that prioritise orthodoxy over opportunity.

Worse still, this vacuum has allowed radical influences, often funded or inspired from across the border, to take root. The madrasa networks that continue to preach outdated and often inflammatory ideologies remain largely unregulated.

Clerics with little understanding of the modern world continue to shape the worldviews of millions of young Muslims. And in the absence of credible internal reform, extremism becomes an ever-tempting alternative.

Learning from the Soviet Model: Reform Through the State

For India to break this cycle, it must look to a surprising but instructive historical model: the Soviet Union’s Islamic policy in Central Asia. While Soviet methods were undeniably authoritarian, their core approach to Islamic reform holds valuable lessons for modern democracies grappling with religious radicalism.

In the decades following the 1917 revolution, the Soviet state took direct control over religious life in Central Asia. Quranic tribunals and religious schools were prohibited. Traditional clergy were stripped of unchecked authority. Many madrasas were closed or restructured.

Moderate, state-supervised Islamic institutions were established to replace radical ones. Most importantly, the Soviets integrated Muslims into secular education, civic life, and modern economic systems.

From the 1940s onward, the Soviet Union established four official Islamic administrative bodies (Muftiates), which promoted a moderate version of Islam that aligned with secularism and socialist values.

For instance, Soviet muftis denounced pilgrimages to local Sufi shrines and pushed for “rational” Islamic practices, such as framing ablutions as hygiene and prayers as physical exercise.

The long-term effects were striking. By the 1970s, countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan had high literacy rates, robust public health systems, and minimal religious extremism.

Even after the USSR collapsed in 1991, these societies remained largely secular and stable, resisting the kind of Islamist insurgencies that plagued places like Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Today, Central Asia is a region where Islam is practised but not weaponised. This stands in sharp contrast to the situation in countries like India, where religious orthodoxy’s control remains largely intact, becoming a fuel for radical extremists.

Lessons for India

India needs to borrow the political will of the Soviet Union and act on various fronts for Islamic reformation.

State-Supported Religious Reform: Just as the Soviet Union created official religious institutions to replace underground, orthodox networks, India can establish and promote state-regulated Islamic bodies that encourage moderate, reform-minded interpretations of Islam. These institutions should emphasise civic nationalism and constitutional values, countering hardline clergy who oppose integration.

Modernise Madrasa Education: The Soviets replaced traditional Islamic education with secular curricula and tightly controlled religious instruction. India must similarly reform madrasas by integrating regular subjects like science, mathematics, civics, and modern history, phasing out teachings that foster isolation from mainstream society. The goal should be to prepare Muslim youth for the modern workforce, not trap them in religious insularity.

Reduce Clerical Monopoly: In the Soviet Union, the influence of orthodox clerics was curtailed through a mix of state oversight and alternative leadership. In India, the state can support reformist Muslim voices such as academics and activists who are often marginalised by orthodox ulema. These voices can offer a more progressive religious and social outlook if empowered through platforms, funding, and institutional recognition.

Promote Civic Identity Over Sectarian Identity: One of the Soviet goals was to instil loyalty to the state over religion. Similarly, India must encourage Indian Muslims to see themselves first as citizens of a secular republic rather than as a religious minority in perpetual opposition. Public messaging, education, and policy must promote civic unity over religious identity politics.

Publicly Challenge Regressive Practices: The Soviets openly denounced practices like shrine worship and female veiling as regressive. India can adopt a constitutional but unapologetic approach to challenge regressive practices such as subjugation of women, not just through legal bans but through civil society campaigns and state-backed discourse.

What India can and must adopt from the Soviet experience is the clarity of purpose: the conviction that religious ideologies, including Islam, must evolve in order to be compatible with the norms of a modern, pluralistic, and secular republic.

India must not wait for reforms coming from within the current religious dispensation of Islam. It must be guided firmly and fairly by the state.