The 242-page judgment delivered by the Division Bench of Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla and Justice Alok Awasthi goes far beyond a conventional determination of competing religious claims. The Court purportedly undertook an exhaustive examination of archaeological surveys, inscriptions, architectural remains, historical literature, colonial gazetteers, legislative history, constitutional principles, Hindu endowment law, Islamic waqf doctrine, and the jurisprudential framework evolved by the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya judgment.

At the heart of the ruling lies the Court’s conclusion that the present structure standing at Bhojshala was constructed after the destruction and alteration of an earlier temple complex and that the continuity of Hindu worship at the site “has never been extinguished”.

The Bench ultimately quashed the 2003 arrangement framed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to the extent that it permitted Friday namaz while restricting Hindu worship inside the complex. At the same time, the Court attempted –not very convincingly–to balance competing religious claims by observing that the Muslim community may apply to the State for allotment of an alternative site in Dhar district for construction of a mosque.

The ruling is likely to have profound legal and political implications, not merely because of its conclusions regarding Bhojshala, but because of the constitutional and evidentiary methodology adopted by the Court — one that unmistakably draws from and expands the contentious principles articulated in the Supreme Court’s decision in Ayodhya Verdict.

Dismantling the 1991 Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act

What is crucial for the citizen and legal mind to understand and assimilate is what the Courts are themselves doing to an existing law, the 1991 Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act. Passed in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992, this law that received resounding support of the legislature after it was tabled by the Narasimha Rao government (that incidentally also was in power when the illegal act of the demolition took place) is currently under constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court of India.

Ironically, the last time that the “challenge to this law” was heard by the apex court was in December 2024 when the matter was supposed to be heard after four weeks. While this has not happened, verdicts such as the Bhojshala verdict, again, seek to undermine this law. The Supreme Court’s December 12, 2024 order –albeit directed at trial courts—asked them to refrain from registering new suits and passing any effective orders (including survey orders), in cases challenging the religious character of places of worship pending the challenge to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991.

This order was passed by a bench, led by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and comprising Justices PV Sanjay Kumar and KV Viswanathan and the Judges had then emphasised emphasised that such proceedings violate the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991. This law prohibits altering the religious character of places of worship as they stood on August 15, 1947.

The Court’s intervention in December 2024, after years of pendency and delay (notice was issued on these petitions in 2021) came amidst a rising tide of petitions and suits challenging the status of religious sites, many of which are medieval mosques and shrines. At the time, a November 2024 survey order by a trial court regarding the 16th-century Sambhal Jama Masjid in Uttar Pradesh escalated communal tensions, culminating in violent clashes that claimed four lives in November. While the court had then stated that it would begin hearing the challenges to this law, the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, this has not yet happened. Read on those developments here.

Context and broader implications of the PWA 1991

The 1991 Act was introduced to prevent the conversion of the religious character of places of worship, with an exception only for the Babri Masjid site, which was the subject of the Ayodhya dispute. The Act, which has been subject to increasing challenges, seeks to ensure that no new legal disputes are initiated over the status of religious places, especially those with historical significance, as of August 15, 1947.

Read this crucial reference on ‘When and How Ram Vilas Paswan made a strong pitch for the Places of Worship Act, 1991 here: A powerful leader from Bihar, unkindly known as the shrewd weatherman of Indian politics, Ram Vilas Paswan, then a member of the National Front, spoke powerfully from the Opposition benches, in support of the proposed law and scathingly of the BJP’s destructive politics of demolishing places of worship (Babri masjid, December 6, 1991) while not sparing the Congress either.

Read about the Babri Masjid demolition and also extensive analyses of the flaws in the Babri Masjid judgement here, here and here.

Even as we understand and analyse the flaws behind the ‘Bhojshala’ verdict –and there are several—it is crucial to also understand what the courts are themselves doing to this law. Across several states and sites, courts are reaching the same destination through different presumptions and conclusions. As a result, now the ‘Bhojshala Order’ just like several others that are being conclusively passed while the constitutional challenge to a vital law hangs in judicial limbo, effectively is doing to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, what neither parliament nor the Supreme Court has been willing to do. The Act is not being amended. It is not being struck down. It is being made rendered ineffective and inapplicable to those it was written to protect, one site at a time, through a different doctrinal route each time.

Incidently, the Bhojshala verdict delivered on Friday (May 15) by the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court is the latest expression of this pattern. It is also the most ambitious. The Bench comprised Justices Vijay Kumar Shukla and Alok Awasthi. It has held the 1991 Act inapplicable to Bhojshala. The ground is that the site is a centrally protected monument under a different statute. The route that this bench has introduced was not, until now, judicially available. This verdict now sets another precedent for those litigating sime verdict adds a sixth procedural pathway to a map that already had five.

As the Hindustan Times has reported, litigation similar to Bhojshala is now alive in courts from Uttar Pradesh through Karnataka. The geographic spread is itself the analytical fact. What follows is the spread, read against the Act it is dismantling.

Section 4 of the 1991 Places of Worship Act law says that the religious character of a holy site “shall continue to be the same as it existed” as it was on August 15, 1947, the day of independence. The only exception, under Section 5, said: “…nothing contained in this act shall apply to the place or place of worship commonly known as Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid situated in Ayodhya.”

However be it Gyan Vapi Mosque (Varanasi) or the or the suits related to the 13.37-acre land of Katra Keshav Dev Temple, seeking the removal of the 17th-century Shahi Idgah mosque, there are cases pending across courts that violate this law passed by Parliament. At least 18 suits for possession of land after removal of Shahi Idgah Masjid as well as for restoration of the temple and for permanent injunction are pending before the high court. The case was first heard on October 18, 2023 and the next hearing date is not available.

Apart from the Sambhal Shahi Masjid site in western UP, the site of the Idgah maidan dispute in Hubali, the Baba Boudhangiri syncretic shrine in Chikmagalur, Karnataka and the Malali Mosque in Malali village Mangaluru are already under similar litigation by far right Hindu organisations.

A dispute rooted in competing historical claims

The Bhojshala dispute –on which the MP HC pronounced its verdict on May 15–concerns an ASI-protected medieval structure in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, long claimed by multiple religious communities. While Hindu groups have since the early 1990s claiming that the structure has historically been regarded as Bhojshala — a temple of Goddess Saraswati and a renowned centre of Sanskrit learning established by Raja Bhoj, the celebrated Paramara ruler associated with scholarship, literature and temple patronage, the site has Mosque located there too..

The Muslim community, however, has been worshipping here at the Kamal Maula Mosque, claiming that the site functioned as a mosque for centuries and relying upon historical references from the Khilji period as well as a 1935 Ailan issued by the erstwhile Dhar State recognising it as a mosque.

A separate set of claims was raised by Jain petitioners, who argued that certain recovered idols and iconographic features suggested that the site was originally a Jain temple associated with Goddess Ambika or Jain Vidyadevi traditions.

The dispute had for years been governed by a 2003 administrative arrangement framed by the ASI under which Hindus performed puja on Tuesdays while Muslims offered namaz on Fridays.

The litigation intensified after petitions were filed seeking recognition of the site as a Hindu temple and restraining namaz within the complex. During the proceedings, the High Court ordered a scientific survey of the site by the ASI — an order that briefly reached the Supreme Court before the survey process was ultimately permitted to continue under judicial supervision. The resulting ASI report became the backbone of the High Court’s eventual conclusions.

The Court’s Central Finding: Bhojshala was a Saraswati Temple and centre of Sanskrit learning

The High Court concluded that the cumulative historical and archaeological material overwhelmingly established Bhojshala as a temple dedicated to Goddess Saraswati and a Sanskrit educational institution associated with Raja Bhoj.

The Bench recorded:

“We have noted the continuity of hindu worship at the site through regulated over time has never been extinguished. We record finding that historical literature placed established that the character of the disputed area was Bhojshala as a Centre of Sanskrit learning associated with Raja Bhoj of Parmar dynasty and the literature and architectural reference including those connected with the period of Raja Bhoj indicate the existence of temple dedicated to the goddess Saraswati at Dhar.” (Para 210)

Crucially, the Court clarified that it was not adjudicating a civil title dispute in the conventional sense. Unlike the Ayodhya litigation, which arose from suits concerning ownership and title over land, the Bhojshala matter, according to the Bench, primarily concerned determination of the “religious character” of the disputed structure through archaeological, historical and documentary evidence.

This distinction allowed the Court to focus extensively on patterns of worship, inscriptions, architectural continuity, historical references and archaeological findings rather than conventional proprietary claims.

The ASI Survey: The foundation of the judgment

The most decisive aspect of the ruling was the Court’s reliance on the scientific survey conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India.

The Muslim parties had strongly challenged the fairness and methodology of the survey, raising objections regarding excavation practices, debris contamination, recovery of artefacts and interpretation of findings. The Court, however, categorically rejected allegations of bias or procedural impropriety.

The Bench noted that the survey had been carried out by a core technical team of senior archaeologists under the supervision of an Additional Director General of the ASI. It also recorded that officers belonging to the Muslim community participated in the process and that representatives of all contesting parties were present during videography and photography throughout the survey proceedings.

The Court held:

“We find that the survey was conducted by adopting scientific method in a fair and impartial manner. The presence of representatives of the petitioners and the respondent can be very well seen in the videography. The method which has been adopted by the experts was as per their expertise. The carbon dating method is used to determine the age of material itself and not for the age of construction period.” (Para 195)

Rejecting allegations regarding plastic waste and modern debris allegedly found at the site, the Court accepted the ASI’s explanation that such material was located only in upper heterogeneous debris layers containing modern dumped material, wrappers and conservation waste, and did not compromise the archaeological integrity of deeper strata.

The Bench further accepted the ASI’s clarification that carbon dating was not necessary because the purpose of the survey was not to determine the age of isolated organic material but to identify the architectural period and historical evolution of the structure itself.

Some facts about the History & structure

For 700 years, the Kamal Maula Mosque had been a place of worship for Dhar’s Muslims. Following the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, and the political ascendance of Hindutva majoritarianism, the efforts to twist and misrepresent archaeology and history both at Faizabad-Ayodya and elsewhere had begun. In fact, in May 2003, a year after the Gujarat pogrom, Communalism Combat, had published a detailed list –sourced from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)—of dozens of such “site on Hindutva’s hit list.” These may be read here.

Coming back to the Kamal Maula Mosque. History tells us that, in 1903, a British-era education officer named K.K. Lele while viewing a structure that locals called “Raja Bhoja ka Madrassa” decided to call it Bhojshala. Every British officer before him had called it a mosque. John Malcolm visited Dhar in 1822 and removed an inscribed panel from the structure. Of the building, he said only that it was a “ruined mosque.” William Kincaid, writing in 1888 about his years in Malwa, documented local legends about Raja Bhoja extensively and never once mentioned a Bhojshala. Then, in 2003, after the matter was contested in the courts, that is one hundred and twenty-three years later, the ASI submitted a 2,000-page report to the Madhya Pradesh High Court where this nuance around nomenclature was erased and only “Bhojshala Temple” appeared throughout. For locals, the structure that had stood in Dhar since 1304 CE is the Kamal Maula Mosque. Yet this history stands erased by this verdict of the MP High Court.

“Evidence of a pre-existing Temple structure”

The High Court repeatedly returned to one central conclusion drawn from the voluminous but flawed ASI report: that the existing structure was built upon and through the remains of an earlier temple complex dating to the Paramara period.

The Court observed that the remains of the earlier structure still survive beneath the present complex and that numerous inscriptions, sculptures and architectural fragments embedded within the existing structure clearly belonged to an earlier Hindu religious monument.

The judgment notes that hundreds of large and small inscription fragments were found in and around the structure, demonstrating that the site once possessed a substantially different architectural and religious identity.

The Court noted from the brief findings of the survey:

“Fragments of inscriptions, sculptures and architectural members suggest that superstructure of this stone structure was later modified and converted into mosque.” (Para 173)

The ASI findings also became central to the Court’s conclusion that the pillars and pilasters used in the present structure originally belonged to temples. There was no attempt by the Court to test the independence or autonomy of the ASI itself or seek expert autonomous opinion on the structure.

The Bench referred extensively to sculptural remains depicting:

• Ganesh,
• Brahma with consorts,
• Narasimha,
• Bhairava,
• divine and semi-divine figures,
• animal and human carvings,
• and temple motifs such as kirtimukhas.

According to the Court, many of these figures had been intentionally defaced, mutilated or chiselled out before reuse in the later structure.

The Court specifically noted that anthropomorphic depictions are generally inconsistent with mosque architecture and treated the mutilation itself as evidence that temple material had been repurposed during construction of the mosque structure.

The Bench also relied on the ASI’s observation that the present structure lacked architectural symmetry and appeared to have been assembled hurriedly from reused material of varying periods and styles.

The Paramara Dynasty, Raja Bhoj and the dating of the site

A substantial part of the judgment is devoted to dating the earlier structure to the 10th–11th centuries CE during the rule of the Paramara dynasty.

The Court relied upon:

• Paramara-era pottery,
• Indo-Sassanian coins,
• Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions,
• temple architectural remains,
• iron objects,
• mutilated Vishnu sculptures,
• and historical references associated with Raja Bhoj.

The Bench referred to the ASI’s finding that the earliest coins recovered from the site belonged to the Indo-Sassanian period, corresponding to the time when the Paramara kings ruled Malwa from Dhar.

One of the most important inscriptions discussed in the judgment contained two Prakrit poems consisting of 109 stanzas each associated with Raja Bhoj.

The Court noted that the inscriptions reportedly opened with invocations such as:

“Om Sarasvityanamah”

“Om Namah Shivay”

The Bench regarded this as significant evidence that the site possessed a deeply rooted Sanskritic and Hindu religious identity prior to later Islamic inscriptions. Importantly, the Court also observed that the Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions predated all Arabic and Persian inscriptions found at the site.

Bhojshala as a great centre of Sanskrit learning

The High Court accepted the argument that Bhojshala was not merely a temple, but a renowned educational institution associated with Sanskrit learning under Raja Bhoj.

The Court relied on several historical texts and administrative publications, including:

• the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908),
• publications of the Royal Asiatic Society,
• G. Yazdani’s Mandu: The City of Joy,
• archaeological reviews from 1972–73,
• and educational records from the Dhar State.

The Bench repeatedly referred to the famous “serpentine grammatical inscriptions” found at the site — Sanskrit grammatical formulae carved in serpent-shaped arrangements on floor slabs and architectural members.

These inscriptions became central to identifying the structure as “Bhojshala” or “Hall of Bhoja”. Historical literature cited before the Court described the structure as: “Raja Bhoja ka Madrassa” or Raja Bhoja’s School.

The Court treated these records as corroborative evidence establishing the site’s longstanding association with scholarship, Sanskrit education and Goddess Saraswati.

The Court’s Conclusion: The existing structure was built from Temple remains

The judgment repeatedly emphasises that the current structure reflects unmistakable evidence of reuse of temple material after demolition or dismantling of an earlier Hindu religious structure.

The ASI report, extensively reproduced in the judgment, stated that the structure appeared to have been assembled rapidly using material from an earlier building without regard for symmetry or consistency.

The Court pointed to:

• reused basalt pillars,
• temple-style columns,
• mutilated deity carvings,
• reused sculptural blocks,
• and fragmented inscriptional material embedded within the mosque structure.

According to the Court, the cumulative architectural evidence clearly established that temple components had been dismantled and incorporated into the later Islamic structure.

Why the Court rejected the Mosque claim

One of the most consequential portions of the judgment concerns the Court’s rejection of the claim that the disputed structure was originally and validly a mosque. The Muslim parties had relied on historical references from the Khilji period and the 1935 Ailan recognising the structure as a mosque.

The Court, however, concluded that none of the historical material produced by the Muslim side established that the structure existed as a mosque prior to the already established 1034 AD Hindu religious structure. More significantly, the Bench held that there was no evidence establishing the site as valid waqf property.

The Court undertook a detailed discussion of Islamic waqf doctrine, referring to Sir Dinshaw Mulla’s Principles of Mahomedan Law. It observed that a valid waqf requires:

• ownership by the waqif,
• dedication of the property to Almighty God,
• and extinction of the waqif’s ownership.

The Bench held that no evidence showed that the disputed land had ever been dedicated as waqf property.

It observed:

“No material suggests that the part of the land No.604 (Old No.313) is a Waqf property and the same was dedicated or could be dedicated to Waqf. It is imperative under Muhammadan Law that property must belong to waqif and the owner must belong to waqif and the owner must dedicate the property to the Almighty. Historical material placed before us could not show that waqf has been created and therefore, there can be no presumption regarding existence of a mosque in the disputed area which is prima facie established to be constructed as Bhojshala and temple of goddess Vagdevi (Saraswati) a place of learning Sanskrit language in 1034 AD.” (Para 192)

The Court further reasoned that land already vested in a Hindu deity could not validly become waqf property.

The 1935 Ailan declared constitutionally unsustainable

The Court also rejected reliance on the 1935 Ailan issued by the ruler of Dhar State recognising the site as a mosque. The Bench held that the order could not automatically survive after the Constitution came into force.

Invoking Articles 13 and 372 of the Constitution, the Court observed that pre-Constitution executive orders remain operative only if they conform to constitutional principles. According to the Court, the Ailan was inconsistent with the overwhelming archaeological and historical evidence establishing the site’s Hindu religious and educational character.

The Court further held that because the site had already been notified as a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904, the Dhar ruler lacked authority to alter its essential legal status in 1935.

The Jain claims and the British museum idol

The judgment devotes considerable attention to claims raised by Jain petitioners who argued that certain idols and iconographic features established the site as a Jain temple. Particular emphasis was placed on an idol presently located in the British Museum and identified by some petitioners as Ambika, a Jain goddess. The Court, however, rejected the argument that the disputed structure was a Jain temple.

The Bench held that no historical literature, ASI findings or architectural material supported the conclusion that the site functioned as an exclusively Jain religious structure.

It observed:

“Whether the idol is of Saraswati or of Ambika would not render much assistance to his submission that the disputed area was a Jain temple as we held that no material has been placed before us either by way of historical literature, architectural features or in ASI survey suggesting that the disputed area was a Jain temple.” (Para 209)

The Court noted that Saraswati is worshipped in both Hindu and Jain traditions as a deity associated with learning and wisdom.

The Bench also referred to iconographic features such as books held by the deity, accompanying figures and seated ascetic forms.

In one of the most controversial observations in the judgment, the Court stated that Jainism and Hinduism evolved alongside each other and referred to statutory provisions under the Hindu Marriage Act and Hindu Succession Act to note that Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs are treated within broader Hindu legal frameworks for certain civil purposes.

The Court therefore concluded that the presence of Jain-associated iconography did not alter the essential Hindu character of the site.

The Saraswati Idol and the possibility of repatriation

The High Court also considered requests seeking the return of the Saraswati idol presently believed to be housed in the British Museum.

The Bench noted that representations had already been submitted to the Union Government seeking repatriation of the idol and observed that the Government of India may consider taking steps to bring the idol back and reinstall it within the Bhojshala complex.

The Court referred to inscriptions associated with the idol mentioning Vararuci, an official in the Paramara kingdom, who had commissioned images of Vagdevi and Ambika.

How the High Court imported the Ayodhya framework into Bhojshala

Perhaps the most legally significant feature of the judgment is its explicit adoption of principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya verdict. The High Court treated the Ayodhya decision not merely as persuasive precedent, but as a foundational jurisprudential framework for resolving historical-religious disputes.

The Court identified several governing principles:

• disputes over ancient religious sites must be decided on the civil standard of “preponderance of probabilities” rather than proof beyond reasonable doubt;
• courts must focus on continuity of worship, patterns of religious use and historical belief;
• destruction or removal of idols does not extinguish the underlying religious endowment;
• ASI reports deserve substantial evidentiary weight because they are prepared by technical experts;
• and archaeological remains, inscriptions and religious motifs possess strong probative value in determining the historical religious character of a site.

The Court also emphasised that faith cannot always be tested through rigid secular logic or documentary proof and that longstanding continuity of belief deserves legal recognition where corroborated by historical circumstances.

Final directions of the court

The High Court ultimately:

• declared the religious character of the disputed site to be Bhojshala, a temple dedicated to Goddess Saraswati;
• recognised the site as a Sanskrit learning centre associated with Raja Bhoj;
• quashed the 2003 ASI arrangement permitting namaz at the site;
• directed the Union Government and the ASI to formulate arrangements for administration and management of the temple and Sanskrit learning centre;
• clarified that the ASI would continue exercising overall statutory control over the protected monument;
• and observed that the Muslim community may apply for allotment of alternative land for construction of a mosque in Dhar district.

The Bench further stated:

“Every Government has the constitutional obligation to ensure preservation and protection of not only the ancient monuments and structures including temples of archaeological and historical importance, but also of sanctum sanctorum as well as the deity of spiritual importance. There is a constitutional duty even to sanction funds for providing basic amenities to pilgrims, proper arrangements for shelter places, maintenance of law and order and the preservation of purity and pristine character of the deity. We have noted the continuity of hindu worship at the site through regulated over time has never been extinguished. We record finding that historical literature placed established that the character of the disputed area was Bhojshala as a Centre of Sanskrit learning associated with Raja Bhoj of Parmar dynasty and the literature and architectural reference including those connected with the period of Raja Bhoj indicate the existence of temple dedicated to the goddess Saraswati at Dhar.” (Para 210)

Why the judgment will matter far beyond Bhojshala

The Bhojshala judgment is likely to become one of the most consequential religious-site rulings in India after the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict, not merely, because of what it decided, but because of the legal framework, it normalises and expands. The judgment represents a significant moment in the evolution of Indian constitutional jurisprudence on contested religious spaces, where courts are increasingly being called upon to adjudicate centuries-old historical, theological and civilisational disputes through the language of archaeology, faith, continuity of worship and constitutional law.

At the heart of the ruling lies a judicial methodology that goes far beyond the facts of Bhojshala itself. The High Court explicitly imported and applied core principles from the Ayodhya judgment — particularly the reliance on “preponderance of probabilities”, continuity of worship, archaeological interpretation, and the survival of religious endowments despite destruction of structures or idols. In doing so, the Court has effectively reinforced and expanded a legal template through which competing historical claims over religious sites may increasingly be litigated and judicially resolved.

The judgment is particularly significant because it elevates archaeological evidence to a position of extraordinary constitutional and evidentiary importance. The Court repeatedly treated the ASI report as a highly persuasive and technically authoritative document capable of determining not merely architectural history, but the religious character and historical evolution of the site itself. Although the Court formally acknowledged that expert reports are not conclusive, the structure of the judgment demonstrates that the ASI findings became the backbone of almost every major conclusion ultimately reached by the Bench.

This growing judicial centrality of archaeology is likely to have implications far beyond Bhojshala. The ruling strengthens the idea that excavation reports, inscriptions, iconography, architectural fragments and material remain can decisively shape constitutional adjudication concerning religious identity and historical memory. In practice, it signals a judiciary increasingly willing to reconstruct medieval histories through archaeological interpretation and then attach contemporary legal consequences to those reconstructions.

Equally significant is the Court’s treatment of continuity of worship. The Bench repeatedly emphasised that Hindu worship at the site had “never been extinguished”, even if regulated or interrupted over time. This formulation mirrors a crucial aspect of the Ayodhya framework: that religious continuity may survive political conquest, structural alteration or physical destruction. The judgment therefore deepens the doctrinal move away from viewing religious disputes purely as questions of title and possession, and toward a broader inquiry into historical faith, devotional memory and civilisational continuity.

The ruling may consequently influence future litigation concerning other disputed religious sites where arguments are framed around claims of interrupted worship, historical destruction or continuity of sacred identity despite architectural transformation.

At the same time, the judgment raises serious constitutional, factual and secularism-related concerns. The Court repeatedly entered deeply partisan and contested theological and historical terrain, particularly while discussing the relationship between Hinduism and Jainism. Its observation that Jainism is “a branch of Hinduism”, supported through references to personal law statutes such as the Hindu Marriage Act and Hindu Succession Act, is likely to invite substantial criticism from constitutional scholars, historians and members of the Jain community. Critics are likely to argue that civil statutory classification for limited legislative purposes cannot automatically determine independent religious identity or theological distinctiveness.

The judgment also raises larger concerns regarding the role of courts in resolving historical controversies that are often shaped by fragmentary evidence, competing interpretations and politically charged narratives. By relying heavily on bodies like the ASI that are neither independent nor autonomous, the kind of “literature, inscriptions and archaeological reconstruction” that the ASI has indulged in without the expertise of subject experts –that too, to determine the “religious character” of a centuries-old structure—is seriously questionable. The Court has moved the judiciary further into the terrain of subjective adjudication — an area where legal institutions may struggle with methodological and (absence of expertise) limitations.

Another critical aspect of the ruling is its treatment of waqf doctrine and mosque status. The Court concluded that no valid waqf existed because there was insufficient evidence showing dedication of the property by a lawful waqif. It further suggested that a mosque constructed upon a pre-existing Hindu religious structure could not acquire legitimacy in the absence of valid waqf dedication. This reasoning and subsequent conclusion is inherently problematic. Besides, it could have repercussions on future litigation involving mosque structures standing over sites claimed to have earlier religious histories.

Importantly, the judgment also reflects the continuing constitutional afterlife of the Ayodhya verdict. Ayodhya was initially presented by many as a singular and exceptional resolution to an unusually complex dispute. However, judgments such as Bhojshala indicate that the legal principles evolved in Ayodhya are now becoming part of a broader and expanding jurisprudential framework governing religious-site litigation across India.

The Bhojshala ruling therefore marks more than a adjudication of a long-running dispute in Dhar. It signals the consolidation of a new judicial approach in which courts are increasingly prepared to engage with questions of untested sacred geography and ‘historical grievance’ through constitutional adjudication. This kind of approach is unlikely to be healthy for a modern constitutional approach that is required to lean not on majoritarian contestation of historical fact –like in Faizabad-Ayodhya but on a sober evaluation of all aspects of such engendered conflicts.

The complete judgment may be read below:

Related:

Ayodhya, January 22: Growing influence of religion in state & society matter of disquiet say 65 former civil servants

Babri-Ayodhya verdict: Will appeal for peace apply to Hindutva hardliners in future?

Reading SC order on Ayodhya: Condemn the Sin but Concede to Sinners

Political dimensions of Ayodhya verdict

Ayodhya Verdict: Has Faith Prevailed Over Justice?

The post Bhojshala Judgment: MP High Court declares Dhar site a Saraswati Temple, ends Namaz rights at complex appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The paper proceeds in four major movements. First, it situates Baghdadi biographically, tracing his formation from an obscure religious student in Baghdad through his radicalisation at Camp Bucca and his eventual ascension to the leadership of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Second, it dissects the theological architecture of his ideology, identifying six primary pillars: the absolutism of divine sovereignty (hakimiyyah), the weaponisation of excommunication (takfir), the hegemonic caliphate claim, apocalyptic eschatology, ultra-literalist hermeneutics, and sectarian hatred. Third, it traces the intellectual genealogy of these doctrines from Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood through Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Baghdadi’s own synthesis. Fourth, it proposes a comprehensive Islamic humanist response grounded in the higher objectives of Islamic law (maqasid al-sharia), the primacy of reason (aql), contextual Quranic hermeneutics, and the recovery of pluralist and humanitarian traditions within the faith.

The Crisis of Authority

When Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri mounted the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul on the last Friday of June 2014 and announced that he was henceforth to be known as Caliph Ibrahim — Commander of the Faithful — the act registered across the Muslim world as something more disturbing than mere political theatre. It was, in the first instance, a breath-taking claim of religious authority, one that had not been formally asserted since the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924. Yet it was also, and more fundamentally, a theological provocation of the gravest kind: the assertion that God’s sovereignty on earth could be concentrated in the person of one man, backed by a private army, and enforced through mass violence, slavery, and public execution.

Baghdadi was not, as some early commentary suggested, a simple warlord who had stumbled into religious rhetoric. He was, at heart, a theologian — one who had earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad and who understood, with considerable precision, the power of religious language to mobilise, to legitimise, and to sanction violence. His message was internally consistent: divine law demanded obedience, the existing Muslim world had apostatised by submitting to human-made governance, and the sword was the only instrument adequate to the scale of that apostasy. In this reading, cruelty was not a deviation from his theology — it was the very expression of it.

To defeat the ideology that Baghdadi represented — and that continues to inspire violence across the world even after his death in a United States Special Forces raid in October 2019 — it is necessary to understand it from the inside. This demands something more rigorous than a catalogue of atrocities or a chronology of military defeats. It demands a sustained theological engagement: an examination of the doctrinal claims upon which the Islamic State’s authority rested, a tracing of their intellectual genealogy, and a systematic refutation grounded in the very tradition that Baghdadi claimed to represent.

That refutation is the business of this paper. It proceeds from a foundational conviction of Islamic humanism: that the Quranic tradition, rightly understood through its historical contexts, its ethical objectives, and its overarching commitment to mercy and justice, is not merely consistent with the dignity and freedom of every human being but actively demands it. The Quran’s insistence that God sent the Prophet Muhammad as a mercy to all the worlds — and not as a commissioning agent for a caliphate of terror — is the ultimate theological rebuttal to everything Baghdadi built.

Historical Background: The Making of a Caliph

Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri (Baghdadi’s real name) was born in 1971 in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad, into a family that claimed descent from the tribe of Quraysh — the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad. That genealogical claim, contested by many scholars who found no independent verification of it, would later become central to his bid for caliphal legitimacy. His early religious formation took place within the Sunni Muslim communities of central Iraq, and he proceeded to the Islamic University of Baghdad, where he eventually completed a doctorate in Quranic studies with a concentration in jurisprudence and Islamic history. This academic background was unusual among jihadist leaders and afforded him a scholarly credibility that figures such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had conspicuously lacked.

His radicalisation appears to have accelerated dramatically in the years following the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The dismantling of the Iraqi state, the de-Baathification of the army and civil service, and the emergence of virulent sectarianism between Sunni and Shia communities created conditions of extreme political and social dislocation that extremist ideologies were uniquely well positioned to exploit. Al-Badri was detained by American forces in early 2004 and held at Camp Bucca, a detention facility in southern Iraq that has been described by former inmates and intelligence analysts alike as an unwitting incubator for the very extremism the United States sought to suppress. Thousands of jihadist militants, former Baathist officers, and would-be ideologues were held together in conditions that facilitated networking, indoctrination, and the forging of alliances that would later prove decisive in the formation of the Islamic State.

Released in mid-2004, al-Badri — now increasingly operating under the alias Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — rose through the ranks of the organisation that would eventually become the Islamic State of Iraq. He served as a sharia adjudicator and propagandist, ensuring that the group’s activities were clothed in religious legitimacy. Following the deaths of senior leaders in a United States raid in 2010, Baghdadi was elevated to the leadership of the Islamic State of Iraq. He proved a more capable administrator, strategist, and propagandist than his predecessors. He exploited the civil war in Syria — which erupted in 2011 — to expand his organisation’s reach, dispatching fighters across the border and eventually attempting to absorb the rival jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra under his authority. This manoeuvre brought him into direct conflict with the central leadership of al-Qaeda, which disowned the Islamic State in February 2014.

The capture of Mosul — Iraq’s second city — in June 2014 provided the dramatic platform for Baghdadi’s caliphal declaration. The subsequent months represented the high-water mark of his movement: at its territorial zenith the Islamic State controlled an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, spanning parts of Iraq and Syria, governed by Diwans (ministries), sharia courts, a tax system, and an oil revenue stream. It attracted foreign fighters from dozens of countries and produced multilingual propaganda of considerable sophistication. The physical caliphate was progressively dismantled by military campaigns between 2014 and 2019; Baghdadi himself died on 26 October 2019 during a Special Operations Forces raid in Idlib Province, Syria. His death, however, did not extinguish the ideological project he had embodied.

The Theological Pillars of Baghdadi’s Project

Baghdadi’s ideology was not improvised from raw ambition. It was constructed with theological deliberateness upon six interlocking doctrinal pillars. Understanding each pillar in detail is essential not merely for analytical purposes but for the practical work of refutation: an ideology can only be effectively dismantled where it stands, and it stands on specific claims.

The concept of hakimiyyah — the absolute sovereignty of God — was the ideological keystone of Baghdadi’s entire project. He did not originate the concept; he inherited it, primarily from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb, whose prison writings of the late 1950s and early 1960s had transformed it from a theological observation into a revolutionary programme. In Qutb’s formulation, the recognition that God alone possesses the right to legislate entails a corresponding rejection of all human-made legal systems as acts of idolatry — specifically the unforgivable sin of associating partners with God (shirk).

Baghdadi absorbed this framework entirely. In his speeches and in the extensive propaganda apparatus of the Islamic State — including the English-language magazine Dabiq and its Arabic counterpart Rumiyah — the contrast between divine law and the corrupt governance of existing Muslim states was presented as absolute, binary, and requiring violent resolution. Any Muslim who voted in an election, accepted employment in a secular state bureaucracy, served in a national army, or carried a state-issued passport was, in this reading, guilty of participating in a system of collective apostasy. This radical extension of hakimiyyah provided the theological foundation for what proved to be the Islamic State’s most audacious and destructive innovation: the systematic murder of fellow Sunni Muslims — imams, teachers, civil servants, police officers — on the grounds that they were apostates from the true faith.

The Islamic humanist response to hakimiyyah does not deny the sovereignty of God but challenges the inference that Baghdadi drew from it. The Quran’s own political ethics are far more complex, contextual, and attentive to human welfare than the hakimiyyah doctrine allows. Governance in the Quranic tradition is grounded in consultation (shura), justice (adl), and the protection of those under authority — values that are inconsistent with the dictatorship Baghdadi exercised.

From the absolute sovereignty of God flowed Baghdadi’s second and most lethal pillar: the industrialisation of takfir, the practice of declaring a Muslim to be an apostate and therefore — in the most extreme reading of Islamic law — a legitimate target for violence. Excommunication has a long and contested history within Islamic theology. Classical jurisprudence treated it as a grave legal matter, surrounded by procedural safeguards, requiring extraordinary certainty of proof, and generally avoided precisely because of the civil strife (fitna) it inevitably generated. The Prophet himself is reported to have warned his followers in the gravest terms against recklessly accusing their brothers and sisters in faith of unbelief.

Baghdadi’s organisation swept aside these safeguards with systematic ruthlessness. It did not merely declare Yazidis or Shia Muslims to be unbelievers — a horrifying enough stance that provided the theological licence for the Yazidi genocide and the massacre of Shia civilians — it extended takfir to any Sunni Muslim who refused to pledge allegiance to the caliphate, who participated in the political processes of existing states, or who belonged to rival jihadist organisations. The Open Letter to al-Baghdadi, signed by more than 120 leading Muslim scholars from around the world in September 2014, addressed this doctrine directly and at length, citing the Prophetic injunction that any person who declares the shahada — the testimony of faith — cannot be killed except for specific, legally determined violations. The letter emphasised that mainstream Sunni jurisprudence imposed such demanding conditions on excommunication that it could not legitimately be used to justify mass violence of the kind the Islamic State was perpetrating.

Takfirism, in the Islamic humanist analysis, is not merely a legal error; it is a theological inversion. It transforms the humility before God that authentic faith demands into a presumptuous claim to divine judgment, placing finite human beings in the seat of infinite divine authority. The Quran reserves final judgment on matters of faith and apostasy to God alone, and the tradition of Islamic scholarship has, with near unanimity, insisted that this reservation be respected.

The third pillar of Baghdadi’s theology was his claim to the caliphate itself. In classical Sunni political thought, the caliphate was the office of the Prophet’s successor as guardian of the Muslim community — an office with stringent requirements of scholarly learning, moral character, lineage, and, critically, communal consensus (ijma). Baghdadi claimed all of these, and upon his 2014 declaration in Mosul, demanded that every Muslim in the world pledge allegiance to him, on pain of spiritual — and ultimately physical — consequences.

The claim rested on two foundations, each deeply contested. First, Baghdadi asserted genealogical descent from the Quraysh, the Prophet’s tribe — a traditional caliphal requirement. His family did indeed make such a claim, but no independent scholarly verification was offered, and many scholars dismissed it as opportunistic fabrication designed to satisfy a formal requirement without substantive merit. Second, he pointed to the territorial control exercised by the Islamic State as practical evidence that a functional Islamic state — with courts, taxation, and defence — had been established, meeting the material conditions for a valid caliphate.

Both claims were systematically demolished by Muslim scholars. The Open Letter pointed out that a caliphate requires the consensus of the global Muslim community expressed through its recognised scholarly leadership — a consensus that was conspicuously absent from Baghdadi’s unilateral self-appointment. Historical precedent was equally unhelpful to Baghdadi: The Rashidun caliphs were selected through deliberation among the Prophet’s closest companions, not through military conquest and self-proclamation. The very concept of a caliphate that demanded global submission under threat of death contradicted the historical reality of the classical caliphate, which had always been characterised by a degree of political pluralism and which had never claimed theological authority over individual conscience.

The fourth pillar of Baghdadi’s theology was its apocalyptic character, and it is in some respects the most psychologically powerful and analytically interesting of the six. Unlike al-Qaeda, which concentrated its justifications for violence on political grievances against Western imperialism and apostate regimes, the Islamic State was animated by a conviction that it was not merely fighting a political war but fulfilling divine prophecy regarding the end of time. Specific hadith traditions regarding a final battle between the forces of true Islam and the forces of unbelief — located in the Syrian town of Dabiq — were not merely cited but made constitutive of the movement’s identity. The choice of Dabiq as the title of the English-language propaganda magazine was calculated and deliberate.

This eschatological framing was extraordinarily powerful as a recruitment tool precisely because it removed the ideology from the realm of rational deliberation. If one’s violence is understood not as a political act subject to human evaluation but as a divinely scripted role in the final drama of history, then conventional arguments — about proportionality, civilian casualties, or legal constraints — become irrelevant by definition. Setbacks and defeats could be reframed as preludes to prophesied martyrdom and ultimate divine vindication. The more the world opposed the Islamic State, the more its followers could perceive themselves as inhabiting the role of the persecuted righteous awaiting cosmic vindication.

The Islamic humanist response to apocalyptic theology is not to deny the eschatological dimension of Islamic faith but to insist, with the weight of classical scholarship, that the relationship between sacred history and human action is characterised by responsibility, restraint, and mercy — not by the nihilistic acceleration of violence in the hope of triggering divine intervention. The classical Islamic tradition approached apocalyptic hadith with considerable interpretive caution, recognising their metaphorical and contextual dimensions.

The fifth pillar of Baghdadi’s project was its hermeneutical method: a rigid literalism that insisted on reading Quranic verses and hadith in isolation from their historical contexts, their ethical objectives, the diversity of jurisprudential opinion within the tradition, and the fundamental principle that the Quran must be understood holistically rather than through selective extraction. This method — characterised by critics as the cut-and-paste approach to scripture — allowed Baghdadi’s organisation to cite individual verses in support of practices that the weight of Islamic scholarship had consistently regarded as forbidden or impermissible.

The most egregious example was the treatment of the so-called Verse of the Sword (9:5), which commands fighting against polytheists who have broken their treaties. Baghdadi’s ideologues cited this verse as a universal, permanent mandate for offensive warfare against all non-Muslims and all Muslims who refused submission. They insisted that it abrogated the hundreds of verses commanding peace, mercy, forgiveness, and equitable treatment of non-Muslims. Classical Islamic scholarship, by contrast, had consistently read this verse in its specific historical context — the breaking of treaties by the Meccan polytheists — and had explicitly rejected the claim that it constituted a universal licence for aggression. The Quranic injunction in verse 2:190 — to fight those who fight you but not to transgress — had never been abrogated in mainstream scholarship; it expressed a foundational ethical constraint on the conduct of armed conflict.

Beyond this specific misreading, Baghdadi’s theology required the erasure of fourteen centuries of Islamic intellectual history. The sophisticated legal reasoning of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, the philosophical contributions of figures such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, the spiritual depth of Sufi thought, the hermeneutical richness of classical tafsir — all of this was dismissed as innovation (bidah) and deviation from the pristine original. What remained was a radically impoverished version of the faith: hollowed of its cultural and intellectual complexity, stripped of its ethical nuance, and weaponised for the purposes of domination and violence.

The sixth and final pillar of Baghdadi’s theology was its profound sectarianism. The Shia Muslim community was portrayed not as a divergent school within the broad family of Islam but as a category of existential enemy deserving extermination. Sufi shrines were demolished. Yazidi communities were subjected to genocidal violence. Christian communities, which had maintained a continuous presence in Iraq and Syria for nearly two thousand years, were expelled or murdered. This sectarianism drew heavily from the most extreme strands of Wahhabi polemics against alternative Islamic traditions, intensified by Zarqawi’s particular fury against Shia Muslims and translated into a systematic programme of ethnic and religious cleansing.

The Quranic basis for this sectarianism was, to put it charitably, threadbare. The Quran repeatedly affirms the diversity of human communities as a divine creation to be respected (49:13) and commands justice even toward those with whom one is in conflict (5:8). The Prophet Muhammad’s own practice — including the Covenant of Medina, which guaranteed the rights of Jewish, Christian, and pagan communities alongside Muslims — provided a direct historical rebuttal to the Islamic State’s model of religious uniformity enforced by violence.

Intellectual Genealogy: From Qutb to the Caliphate

Baghdadi did not construct his theology in isolation. He was the heir to a specific intellectual tradition that had been developing within Sunni Islamism for most of the twentieth century, and his own particular synthesis represented the culmination of a trajectory that can be traced with reasonable precision.

The foundational figure in that trajectory is Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian literary critic and Muslim Brotherhood theorist who was executed by the Nasser government in 1966. Qutb’s most influential work, Milestones, written during his imprisonment in the late 1950s, advanced a revolutionary reading of the concept of hakimiyyah that broke decisively with the gradualist, social-reform orientation of the Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna. Qutb argued that modern Muslim societies — including ostensibly Muslim states such as Egypt — had fallen into a state of pre-Islamic ignorance so profound that only a vanguard of true believers, physically and spiritually separated from the corrupt society, could wage the violent jihad necessary to overthrow the existing order and establish God’s sovereignty. It is difficult to overstate the influence of this text on subsequent generations of jihadist ideologues; Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Baghdadi himself all drew directly from Qutb’s conceptual vocabulary.

The immediate intellectual channel through which Qutb’s ideas reached Baghdadi’s generation was the Jordanian-Palestinian scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, whose extensive writings from prison elaborated a rigorous Salafi creed that combined Wahhabi purism with the revolutionary political conclusions of Qutbism. Al-Maqdisi’s most important contribution was his systematic application of the charge of apostasy to Muslim rulers who governed by human-made law — an application that radicalised the takfir doctrine beyond even Qutb’s formulation. Al-Maqdisi became the mentor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who founded the organisation in Iraq that would eventually evolve into the Islamic State. Zarqawi added to this inheritance a particular ferocity toward Shia Muslims, whom he regarded not merely as theologically deviant but as agents of a cosmic conspiracy against Sunni Islam.

Baghdadi, rising through the ranks of Zarqawi’s successor organisation following his mentor’s death in a United States airstrike in 2006, inherited this entire theological toolkit. He was, however, more systematically educated than his predecessors, and he gave a more scholarly, jurisprudential veneer to the same core doctrines. Where Zarqawi had been a violent street-level operative who acquired his theology opportunistically, Baghdadi was a trained religious scholar who could deploy the classical categories of Islamic jurisprudence with the facility of someone who had spent years immersed in the tradition. This credential was essential to the Islamic State’s claim to be not merely a jihadist organisation but the legitimate restoration of the caliphate.

The wider Wahhabi tradition also contributed, more ambiguously, to this intellectual inheritance. The teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) — emphasising strict monotheism, the prohibition of innovation in religious practice, and the legitimacy of violence against those declared polytheists — provided an ideological arsenal that Baghdadi’s organisation drew upon selectively. Saudi-funded institutions, mosques, and madrasas had disseminated this tradition across the Muslim world since the 1970s oil boom, creating a doctrinal environment in which Baghdadi’s particular syntheses could find receptive audiences. The Saudi religious establishment itself condemned the Islamic State as a deviant movement, and mainstream Salafi scholars characterised it as a modern manifestation of the ancient Kharijite heresy — a sect that had been condemned by the Prophet’s own companions for its extremism. But this condemnation sat awkwardly alongside the structural role that Wahhabi educational institutions had played in creating the conditions for Baghdadi’s rise.

The intellectual genealogy is therefore clear in its broad outlines: The Muslim Brotherhood’s political vision, radicalised by Qutb’s revolutionary hakimiyyah; al-Maqdisi’s systematic Salafi jurisprudence of apostasy; Zarqawi’s sectarian fury; and the wider context of Wahhabi purism — all synthesised by a trained scholar who understood how to dress revolutionary violence in the authoritative language of classical Islamic jurisprudence. Each stage in this genealogy represented an intensification of the rejection of mainstream Islamic authority and a corresponding embrace of violence as the primary instrument of theological purification.

Socio-Political Conditions Enabling the Rise of the Islamic State

Theology does not operate in a social vacuum. The extraordinary resonance of Baghdadi’s message — which attracted foreign fighters from dozens of countries and inspired attacks across four continents — cannot be explained by doctrinal analysis alone. The Islamic State’s rise was simultaneously a product of specific socio-political conditions and an exploitation of them.

The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the chaotic, ill-planned occupation that followed, created the foundational conditions for the Islamic State’s emergence. The dissolution of the Iraqi army and the de-Baathification of the civil service threw hundreds of thousands of trained, armed, and profoundly alienated Sunni men into a social order from which they were now excluded. The subsequent political arrangements, which concentrated power in Shia-dominated governments that were widely perceived as Iranian proxies, intensified Sunni grievances to the point of desperation. Baghdadi understood these grievances with the clarity of personal experience and made their exploitation the centrepiece of his recruitment strategy.

The Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011 following the Assad government’s violent repression of peaceful protests, provided the Islamic State with both a territorial base and a continuous flow of recruits radicalised by the experience of watching civilian populations subjected to barrel bombs, chemical weapons, and starvation sieges by a regime that called itself the guardian of Arab nationalism. The combination of political marginalisation, economic collapse, and a sense of civilisational humiliation provided what Baghdadi’s propagandists accurately identified as fertile soil for their message of restoration, dignity, and divine vengeance.

Beyond the immediate regional context, the global appeal of the Islamic State’s message pointed to structural conditions that extended far beyond Iraq and Syria. Economic marginalisation, social exclusion, the experience of Islamophobia, and the crisis of identity among Muslim minorities in Western societies all contributed to the vulnerability of young people in Birmingham, Brussels, and Beirut alike to recruitment narratives that promised belonging, purpose, and significance. The Islamic humanist response to this reality must therefore be not merely theological but socio-economic: extremism flourishes in conditions of hopelessness, and those conditions cannot be addressed by fatwas alone.

The Islamic Humanist Critique

Islamic humanism is not an import from the Western Enlightenment awkwardly grafted onto an alien religious tradition. It is a recovery of modes of thought, ethical commitments, and interpretive practices that have deep roots within the Islamic tradition itself — in the classical rationalist theology of the Mutazilites and the Maturidis, in the philosophical humanism of the Andalusian Golden Age, in the legal theory of scholars such as al-Ghazali and al-Shatibi, and in the prophetic practice of a Muhammad who described himself as sent to perfect noble character. Against Baghdadi’s theology of power and death, Islamic humanism offers a theology of mercy and life.

The most powerful analytical instrument that Islamic humanism offers against Baghdadi’s literalism is the framework of maqasid al-sharia — the higher objectives of Islamic law — developed most systematically by the Andalusian scholar Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi in the fourteenth century but rooted in centuries of earlier jurisprudential reflection. This framework argues that the Sharia is not an end in itself but a means to specific human goods: the protection of life, the protection of intellect, the protection of faith, the protection of lineage and social order, and the protection of property. Any legal ruling, any interpretation of scripture, any exercise of political authority that demonstrably undermines these goods is, on this account, a false interpretation — regardless of the literal support it can muster from individual texts.

When the maqasid framework is applied to the practices of the Islamic State, the verdict is unambiguous and devastating. Mass executions destroy life. The suppression of education and critical thought destroys intellect. The imposition of a singular, totalitarian theology by violence destroys freedom of conscience in matters of faith. The systematic looting of minority communities and the destruction of the cultural heritage of human civilisation — including the deliberate dynamiting of ancient Assyrian ruins at Nimrud and the burning of the Mosul Library — destroys the accumulated property and intellectual heritage of humanity. The Islamic State was not, on any serious reading of the maqasid tradition, implementing Islamic law; it was systematically violating every value that Islamic law exists to protect.

The Quranic tradition places extraordinary emphasis on the exercise of reason. The Arabic root aql — denoting the faculty of rational comprehension — appears in various forms dozens of times in the Quran, almost always in the context of a divine invitation to observe, reflect, reason, and understand. The Quran repeatedly chastises those who follow custom and inherited authority without thinking for themselves and praises those who use their rational faculties to perceive the signs of God in creation and in human history. This Quranic rationalism was developed into sophisticated philosophical and theological traditions by scholars from al-Kindi and al-Farabi in the early medieval period through to Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and his commentaries on Aristotle, which profoundly shaped European scholasticism.

Baghdadi’s ideology was built on the systematic suppression of this rationalist tradition. It demanded blind obedience (taqlid) to a single, politically driven interpretation, condemned philosophical inquiry as heresy, and treated the exercise of independent legal reasoning (ijtihad) with the same suspicion it reserved for all human intellectual autonomy. The Islamic humanist response revives the Maturidi theological tradition’s insistence that good and evil are not merely arbitrary divine commands but realities that can be discerned through human reason — that cruelty and injustice are wrong not merely because God forbids them but because they contradict the nature of a rational moral universe that God has created. If an action is inherently cruel, it cannot be the will of a just God; and if an interpretation of scripture mandates cruelty, the fault lies with the interpretation, not with the God it purports to serve.

Against Baghdadi’s monolithic theocracy, Islamic humanism opposes a tradition of principled pluralism that is as old as the Prophet himself. The Covenant of Medina — the constitutional document established by Muhammad shortly after his migration from Mecca — created a multi-religious community of Muslims, Jews, and pagan Arabs with shared rights, shared obligations, and a shared commitment to mutual defence. This document is not a marginal curiosity of early Islamic history; it is a foundational precedent for the proposition that a polity guided by Islamic values can accommodate and protect the religious diversity of its members rather than demanding their conformity.

The historical record of the classical Islamic caliphate, for all its complexities and failures, is broadly consistent with this pluralist precedent. Non-Muslim communities — Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and others — lived under Islamic governance with a degree of legal autonomy and religious freedom that was, by the standards of the medieval world, considerable. The dhimmi system, which imposed certain civic disabilities on non-Muslims, is not defensible by contemporary standards of human rights; but it is radically different from the genocidal elimination of religious diversity that the Islamic State practised. Baghdadi’s model was not a restoration of the historical caliphate; it was a totalitarian innovation that had no serious precedent in Islamic political history.

At the ethical core of the Quranic message lies an affirmation of the sanctity of every human life that is among the most powerful moral statements in the world’s religious literature. The Quran declares that to kill one innocent soul is as if one killed all of humanity, and to save one soul is as if one saved all of humanity (5:32). This principle — cited in the Open Letter to al-Baghdadi as one of the central refutations of the Islamic State’s theology — reflects a Quranic anthropology that treats every human life as of infinite worth. It is complemented by the equally powerful declaration that God has honoured the children of Adam (17:70) — a statement of universal human dignity that applies to every human being regardless of faith, ethnicity, or political allegiance.

The theology of human dignity (karamah) that flows from these verses provides the most fundamental Islamic humanist rebuttal to Baghdadi. A theological system that produces mass graves, public beheadings, the enslaved auction of Yazidi women, and the deliberate targeting of mosques full of worshippers has not merely made errors of legal interpretation; it has committed the deepest possible betrayal of the faith it claims to represent. The Quran’s God is not the tyrant that Baghdadi worshipped; the Quran’s Islam is not the cult of death that Baghdadi built.

One of Baghdadi’s most consequential misappropriations was of the concept of jihad itself — a term whose Arabic root denotes effort, struggle, and striving that has been consistently understood by mainstream Islamic scholarship to encompass a wide spectrum of spiritual, moral, intellectual, and social endeavours, with armed conflict representing a specialised subset governed by strict ethical conditions. The inner jihad against one’s own moral failures, the intellectual jihad of scholarship and inquiry, the social jihad of working for justice and the welfare of the community — these were the primary forms of jihad in the understanding of scholars such as al-Ghazali, whose Ihya Ulum al-Din constitutes perhaps the most sustained exploration of the spiritual life in the Islamic tradition.

Even armed jihad, in the classical tradition, was understood as a defensive instrument, subject to conditions of proportionality, protection of non-combatants, and declaration by legitimate political authority — conditions that the Islamic State’s campaigns of aggressive, indiscriminate violence violated in every particular. Reclaiming jihad for Islamic humanism means restoring its primary meaning as a commitment to justice, moral discipline, and social reform, and insisting that armed struggle, where it is permissible at all, must be conducted within the ethical limits that the tradition has always imposed.

Quranic Hermeneutical Counter-Arguments

The most direct response to Baghdadi’s abuse of scripture is a rigorous, contextual hermeneutics — a systematic approach to the interpretation of the Quran and hadith that reads texts in their historical, linguistic, and ethical contexts and refuses the de-contextualising literalism upon which the Islamic State’s ideology depended.

Classical Islamic hermeneutics has always insisted on the importance of the occasions or causes of revelation in understanding Quranic verses. This principle holds that the meaning and application of a given verse cannot be understood apart from the specific historical circumstances in response to which it was revealed. The Prophet’s companions and their successors preserved extensive traditions about these circumstances precisely because they understood that without them, verses could be misapplied in ways that were both historically erroneous and ethically disastrous.

Baghdadi’s organisation systematically ignored these contextual traditions. Verses revealed in the context of specific military conflicts during the early Islamic period were universalised into permanent, global mandates. Verses addressing the particular situation of the Prophet’s community in Medina, surrounded by hostile powers and subject to constant attack, were stripped of their situational character and treated as timeless directives applicable to twenty-first-century conditions that bore no resemblance whatsoever to seventh-century Arabia. The humanist hermeneutical response insists that this de-contextualisation is not merely a scholarly error but a form of textual violence — a violation of the integrity of the revealed text and a betrayal of the tradition of scholarship that exists precisely to prevent such violations.

Baghdadi’s organisation treated certain verses as abrogating — that is, annulling — a wide range of other verses that enjoined peace, mercy, and equitable treatment of non-Muslims. This abrogation (naskh) argument, in its extreme form, claimed that a handful of so-called sword verses from the later Medinan period of the Quran had cancelled out the peaceable and pluralist verses from the Meccan period and the earlier Medinan period. This claim is not only historically unfounded — classical scholars disagreed significantly about the scope and application of abrogation, and many rejected broad claims of the kind that Baghdadi’s ideologues advanced — it is hermeneutically incoherent.

The Quran begins every chapter but one with the formula: In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. These are not decorative formulas; they are programmatic statements about the character of the God in whose name the text speaks and about the spirit in which it should be read. The Quran describes the Prophet Muhammad as a mercy to all the worlds (21:107) — not to Muslims alone, not to those who agreed with him, but to all created beings. The divine names that recur most frequently throughout the Quran are those of mercy, compassion, and generosity. Any interpretive method that reads these data as subordinate to a handful of contextually specific verses of warfare is not merely making a legal error; it is inverting the entire ethical orientation of the text.

The most significant institutional expression of Islamic humanist hermeneutics in response to Baghdadi’s ideology was the Open Letter to al-Baghdadi, released in September 2014 and eventually signed by more than 120 leading Muslim scholars from across the world. This document was remarkable in several respects. It was written not in the language of Western liberalism but in the classical Arabic of traditional Islamic scholarship, engaging Baghdadi on his own terminological and textual ground. It was not a political declaration but a fatwa-length juridical refutation, working through the Islamic State’s specific claims in detail and demonstrating, with copious references to the Quran, the hadith, and the classical jurisprudential tradition, that each of those claims violated established Islamic legal and ethical principles.

The letter addressed, in turn: the impermissibility of declaring fellow Muslims apostates without meeting the stringent conditions of classical jurisprudence; the requirement that a legitimate caliph be chosen by a council of recognised scholars rather than self-appointed; the absolute prohibition on the killing of non-combatants, clergy, women, and children in armed conflict; the illegitimacy of enslaving people or selling them in markets; the obligation to treat members of other faiths with justice and respect; and the dangerous misuse of the abrogation argument to dismiss vast portions of the Quranic ethical teaching. The letter concluded by warning Baghdadi that he had transformed Islam into a religion of harshness and brutality and that his actions constituted a grave offence against the faith, against Muslims, and against all of humanity.

The letter was not without its limitations. Some critics noted that it represented the perspective of established religious institutions whose authority the Islamic State had already rejected, and that it was unlikely to persuade committed adherents of the ideology. Others pointed out that the letter did not challenge the underlying assumptions of Salafi theology as thoroughly as a fully humanist critique would require. Nevertheless, as a demonstration that the Islamic State’s theology was not — as its propaganda claimed — the authentic expression of mainstream Islamic scholarship, but rather its radical repudiation, the letter remains an invaluable document.

Strategies for Ideological Defeat

The defeat of Baghdadi’s ideological legacy requires a multi-dimensional strategy that operates simultaneously on theological, educational, political, social, and psychological registers. No single approach is sufficient; each is necessary but none alone is adequate to the scale of the challenge.

The foundation of any effective counter-strategy must be a sustained programme of theological deconstruction — systematic, rigorous, publicly accessible refutation of the specific doctrinal claims upon which Baghdadi’s ideology rested. The Open Letter to al-Baghdadi provides an excellent template, but its impact has been limited by its accessibility only to those already engaged with classical Islamic scholarship. What is needed is a programme of translation, popularisation, and dissemination that brings the scholarly refutation of takfirism, false caliphal claims, and hermeneutical distortion to the widest possible audience within the Muslim world.

This requires investment — financial, institutional, and reputational — in the production of counter-theological materials that are both academically rigorous and accessible to non-specialist audiences. Islamic universities, particularly institutions such as al-Azhar in Cairo, Deoband in India, and Zaytuna College in the United States, have a crucial role to play. So do national religious establishments in Muslim-majority countries, provided they command sufficient credibility among the populations they seek to influence. The message must come from voices that are recognisably part of the tradition — not from governments seeking to weaponise religion for political purposes, and not from Western actors whose interference is likely to be counterproductive.

Baghdadi’s ideology thrived in the conditions created by educational systems that prioritised rote memorisation of religious texts over critical engagement with their meaning, historical context, and ethical implications. Any sustainable strategy for preventing the recurrence of movements like the Islamic State must therefore include a fundamental rethinking of religious education across the Muslim world — and, indeed, in Muslim community institutions in Europe and North America.

Educational reform in this context means moving from indoctrination to inquiry: teaching the diversity of opinion within Islamic jurisprudence rather than presenting a single school’s positions as absolute truth; introducing students to the history of Quranic revelation and the classical tradition of contextual interpretation; developing critical thinking skills that enable young people to evaluate competing claims rather than simply accepting the authority of the most confident voice. The Quran itself repeatedly invites its readers to think, observe, and reflect; an educational system that produces uncritical receivers of a pre-packaged orthodoxy is not Quranic in its spirit, whatever its content.

The curriculum must also reclaim the humanist heritage of Islamic civilisation — the extraordinary flowering of science, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and art that characterised the Abbasid period and the Andalusian Golden Age. Baghdadi’s ideology required the erasure of this heritage because it demonstrated, powerfully and concretely, that Islamic civilisation had been at its most creative, most influential, and most admired by the world when it was engaged in open intellectual exchange rather than self-imposed isolation. Reclaiming that heritage as constitutively Islamic — not as a historical accident that needs to be apologised for or explained away — is an important part of the counter-narrative.

The Islamic State was, among other things, a phenomenon of social media. Its sophisticated multilingual propaganda machine — producing magazines, films, and social media content in English, French, German, Russian, and numerous other languages — enabled it to reach radicalised or radicalisation-vulnerable young people in Birmingham, Brussels, and beyond with a message that was emotionally compelling, aesthetically sophisticated, and attuned to the specific psychological vulnerabilities of its target audience. Defeating that propaganda requires counter-narratives that are equally sophisticated, equally emotionally intelligent, and equally attuned to those vulnerabilities.

Effective counter-narratives must be produced by credible, authentic Muslim voices — not by government information agencies or Western media institutions whose messages will be dismissed by precisely the audience they need to reach. Former members of extremist organisations who have genuinely renounced their involvement and can speak with authority about the gap between the utopia promised by recruitment narratives and the grim reality of life within the Islamic State are particularly valuable voices. So are Muslim scholars, activists, artists, and community leaders who can articulate a vision of Islamic identity that is simultaneously faithful to the tradition and fully engaged with the realities of contemporary life.

The content of effective counter-narratives must also address the specific appeals that extremist recruitment messages make: the promise of belonging and brotherhood, the sense of cosmic significance, the claim to be on the right side of history, the expression of righteous anger at real injustices. Counter-narratives that simply assert that the Islamic State is un-Islamic, without addressing the underlying emotional needs that its recruiting exploits, are unlikely to succeed. Young people need not just theological refutation but alternative sources of meaning, belonging, and purpose.

Ideology does not operate in a vacuum, and counter-ideology alone cannot defeat extremism that is rooted in genuine political grievances. The sectarian marginalisation of Sunni communities in post-2003 Iraq, the Assad government’s mass violence against civilian populations in Syria, the experience of discrimination and social exclusion among Muslim minorities in Western Europe — these were real phenomena, and Baghdadi’s organisation exploited them with considerable skill. Any serious counter-strategy must therefore include advocacy for the political reforms and social investments that address the grievances that extremist movements feed upon.

This means, in the Iraqi and Syrian contexts, advocacy for genuinely inclusive political arrangements that protect the interests of all communities rather than reserving power for one sect or party. It means insisting on accountability for the atrocities committed not only by the Islamic State but by all parties to those conflicts, including state actors. It means supporting civil society organisations, independent media, and cultural institutions in Muslim-majority countries that provide alternatives to both authoritarian governance and extremist ideology. And it means, in Western contexts, opposing the rhetoric and policies of Islamophobia that reinforce the isolation and alienation of Muslim communities and thereby strengthen the recruiting narratives of radical movements.

Sunni-Shia reconciliation is not merely a pious aspiration; it is a strategic necessity for the defeat of extremist movements that depend upon sectarian hatred for their recruitment and their theological justification. The systematic demonisation of Shia Muslims that characterised Baghdadi’s ideology — and that drew upon a tradition of Wahhabi polemics stretching back several centuries — cannot be defeated without a sustained programme of inter-sect dialogue, historical honesty about the origins and instrumentalisation of sectarian divisions, and mutual recognition of the shared ethical commitments that transcend sectarian boundaries.

This is not a project that can be completed quickly, and it cannot be imposed from outside. It requires the willingness of scholars, community leaders, and ordinary believers from both traditions to engage in the difficult, sometimes painful work of confronting historical grievances without allowing those grievances to determine the future. Platforms for intra-Islamic dialogue, jointly sponsored by Sunni and Shia institutions, can play an important role in this process — as can the development of shared theological statements that affirm the common ground of Islamic ethical commitment even in the absence of full doctrinal agreement.

Extremist movements are structurally dependent on patriarchal control: the suppression of women’s agency, the instrumentalisation of women’s bodies as markers of group honour, and the exclusion of women from theological and political authority. Baghdadi’s organisation exemplified this dependence in its most extreme form, reviving the institution of sexual slavery, imposing totalising restrictions on women’s freedom of movement and dress, and excluding women entirely from any role in governance or scholarship.

The Islamic feminist scholarship that has developed powerfully over the past three decades — represented by scholars such as Amina Wadud, Fatima Mernissi, Kecia Ali, and many others — provides both a theological refutation of these practices and an alternative vision of gender relations within an Islamic framework. This scholarship demonstrates, through rigorous engagement with the primary sources, that the Quranic vision of gender relations is characterised by equity, complementarity, and mutual respect rather than by the hierarchy of domination that patriarchal readings have historically imposed. Amplifying these voices, supporting institutions that train women as scholars and religious leaders, and insisting on women’s full participation in the theological work of counter-extremism are all essential elements of a comprehensive humanist response.

The ultimate socio-political answer to Baghdadi’s theology of divine sovereignty enforced by violence is the construction of societies in which political participation is inclusive, governance is accountable, the rule of law protects the rights of all citizens, and peaceful avenues for political reform are genuinely available. This is not to claim that liberal democracy as currently practised in Western societies is the only or the ideal form of Islamic political organisation. It is to insist that the conditions under which extremist ideologies flourish — the closure of peaceful avenues for reform, the concentration of power in unaccountable hands, the systematic exclusion of minority communities — are themselves forms of political injustice that must be addressed if the ideological appeal of violent alternatives is to be diminished.

The promotion of the rule of law, accountable governance, and human rights in Muslim-majority societies is therefore not an imperialist imposition but a demand of Islamic humanism itself — grounded in the Quranic principles of justice (adl), consultation (shura), and the protection of human dignity (karamah) that mainstream Islamic political thought has consistently affirmed. Organisations such as the Cordoba Foundation and scholars such as Abdullahi An-Naim have argued persuasively that these principles are not merely compatible with contemporary human rights standards but that they provided their historical antecedents.

Beyond the Caliphate of Apocalypse

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi built his authority on a theological architecture of extraordinary ambition and equally extraordinary moral depravity. Drawing upon the Qutbist doctrine of divine sovereignty, the classical language of Islamic jurisprudence, the apocalyptic traditions of Islamic eschatology, and the sectarian passions of a post-invasion Iraq torn apart by violence and humiliation, he constructed a movement that for a few terrifying years held territory, governed populations, and inspired violence across the globe.

That architecture was, however, built on doctrinal sand. Its literalism was selective; its historical claims were false; its genealogical pretensions were unverified; its jurisprudential reasoning was condemned by the overwhelming weight of mainstream Islamic scholarship; and its treatment of human beings as disposable instruments of a theological project was a direct violation of the Quranic affirmation of human dignity that constitutes the deepest ethical commitment of the faith. The Open Letter to al-Baghdadi demonstrated that the most powerful rebuttal to this theology was not a Western political argument but a Quranic verse wielded by scholars who knew the tradition from the inside and could demonstrate, with precision and authority, that Baghdadi had not revived Islam — he had betrayed it.

The physical caliphate was destroyed through military force, and Baghdadi himself died in humiliation rather than in the glorious martyrdom his eschatology had promised him. But the ideology he articulated remains alive — online, in the minds of isolated and alienated young people, in the prison networks of detained fighters, in the successor organisations that have already reconstituted themselves in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and sub-Saharan Africa. Defeating that ideology requires more than drones and special operations forces. It requires what has been argued throughout this paper: a revival of Islamic humanism, a recovery of the tradition of mercy, reason, pluralism, and human dignity that constitutes the ethical core of the Quranic revelation.

The Quran’s own vision of the human person — as the vicegerent of God on earth (2:30), honoured above much of creation (17:70), endowed with reason, moral agency, and the capacity for both justice and injustice (76:3, 90:10, 91:7-10) — is the ultimate theological rebuttal to Baghdadi’s vision of the human being as an instrument of divine violence. A theology that sees the face of God in the dignity of every human person (5:32, 49:13, 95:4), that understands the caliphate not as a vehicle for domination but as a trust of justice and service (4:58, 38:26, 57:25), and that reads the Quran not as a warrant for perpetual war but as a call to mercy, wisdom, and peace (16:125, 21:107, 41:34, 5:8, 8:61) — such a theology is not merely a counter-narrative to extremism. It is the authentic Islamic tradition that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sought to destroy and that must be reclaimed.

The ghost of the caliphate of apocalypse can only be finally exorcised by a more compelling vision — one that sees Islam not as a religion of fear and compulsion but as a religion that, in the Prophet Muhammad’s own words, was sent as a mercy to all the worlds (21:107). Building that vision, in mosques and madrasas, in classrooms and digital spaces, in the courts of law and the chambers of government, in the patient, sustained work of scholarship, education, and community (3:104, 16:90, 39:9, 58:11, 49:10) — that is the work of Islamic humanism. It is more difficult than declaring a caliphate, and more demanding than detonating a bomb. But it is the only work that will endure (13:17, 28:77, 41:33).

Bibliography

Fatima Mernissi. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland. New York: Basic Books, 1991.

Open Letter to al-Baghdadi. Signed by 126 leading global Muslim scholars, 2014. https://rissc.jo/open-letter-to-al-baghdadi/

Sayyid Qutb. Milestones. Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1990.

Robert G. Rabil. The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency. London: Hurst Publishers, 2015.

The Amman Message. Issued by His Majesty Abdullah II of Jordan and affirmed by over 200 leading Islamic scholars, 2004. https://ammanmessage.com/

The Marrakesh Declaration. Issued by the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, 2016. https://www.abc-usa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Marrakesh-Final-04-12-18.pdf

Amina Wadud. Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

….

V.A. Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specializing in Islamic humanism. With a deep commitment to advancing Quranic hermeneutics that prioritize human well-being, peace, and progress, his work aims to foster a just society, encourage critical thinking, and promote inclusive discourse and peaceful coexistence. He is dedicated to creating pathways for meaningful social change and intellectual growth through his scholarship…..

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post Extremist Theology: From Syed Qutb’s ‘Milestone’ to al-Baghdadi’s ‘Caliphate’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As reported by Live Law, the new order immediately nullifies the earlier 2022 government directive and expressly allows students to wear symbols and articles associated with religious or customary practice, including the hijab or headscarf, turban (Pete), sacred thread or Janeu (Janivara), Shivadhara, Rudraksha and other similar faith-based items. The government clarified that such symbols would be permissible so long as they do not interfere with institutional discipline, safety, identification of students, classroom functioning or public order.

The state government has framed the move as an attempt to balance constitutional values of equality, secularism and inclusion with the need to maintain institutional discipline. According to reports published by The Times of India, the order emphasises that educational institutions are constitutional spaces meant to cultivate scientific temper, rational thinking, fraternity, dignity, equality and mutual respect among students. The preamble to the order states that “secularism, in constitutional sense, does not mean opposition to personal beliefs,” but instead requires equal respect for all faiths, institutional neutrality and non-discriminatory conduct by the State and educational authorities.

The government further observed that institutional discipline and uniformity can be preserved “without mandatorily prohibiting limited traditional and practice-based symbols that students commonly wear.” Referring to provisions under the Karnataka Education Act, 1983 and Rule 11 of the Karnataka Education Institutions (Classification, Regulation and Prescription of Curricula etc.) Rules, 1995, the order states that limited faith-based practices may be accommodated so long as they do not disrupt teaching, safety or order within educational institutions.

Importantly, the circular also provides explicit protections against exclusion and humiliation of students. It states that no student wearing permitted symbols can be denied admission, attendance, participation in classroom activities, examinations, competitions or academic progress solely on that basis. The order further directs that no student shall be compelled to remove such symbols and that no institution or authority may forcibly remove them. School Development and Monitoring Committees (SDMCs), College Development Committees (CDCs), governing bodies and institutional heads have additionally been instructed not to humiliate, demean or subject students to insulting behaviour because of their attire or faith-based practices.

The order does, however, carve out a narrow exception for examinations, clarifying that dress code regulations prescribed for national or state-level examinations may continue to apply wherever required by examination authorities. At the same time, the government stressed that implementation of the new policy must remain free from communal or religious discrimination and be uniformly applied across institutions.

The circular also invokes the inclusive social philosophy of 12th century reformer Basavanna, quoting the phrase “Iva Nammave” (“They are ours”) and directing educational institutions to adopt this principle while dealing with students from different communities and backgrounds.

The reversal comes against the backdrop of the highly contentious hijab controversy that erupted in Karnataka in early 2022 after several Muslim students were denied entry into classrooms for wearing hijabs. The previous BJP government had issued the February 5, 2022 order mandating strict adherence to prescribed uniforms in educational institutions, effectively banning the hijab inside classrooms. The move triggered state-wide protests, counter-mobilisations by saffron scarf-wearing groups, intense political polarisation and legal challenges before the Karnataka High Court and later the Supreme Court.

In March 2022, the Karnataka High Court upheld the government order, holding that wearing the hijab was not an “essential religious practice” protected under Article 25 of the Constitution. Subsequently, a split verdict by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India in October 2022 resulted in the matter being referred to a larger bench, where the constitutional challenge to the hijab restrictions continues to remain pending.

The government’s latest move also appears to have been influenced by more recent controversies surrounding religious attire and symbols in educational spaces. According to The Times of India, the decision followed public outrage over an April 24 incident in which a student’s sacred thread was allegedly cut during an examination. Separately, the Karnataka High Court had recently issued notice to the state government in a public interest litigation challenging the action of Karnataka Examination Authority officials who allegedly prevented students wearing sacred threads from appearing in the Common Entrance Test (CET) 2025.

Defending the policy shift, Karnataka School Education Minister Madhu Bangarappa stated that the government order formally recognised long-standing religious and customary practices followed by different communities. He reportedly said that practices such as wearing the sacred thread, Shivadhara, turban, traditional attire, Jain customary clothing and hijab had now been properly specified and protected under the new order. He added that students from Class 1 to Class 12 should not face any obstacles for wearing such permitted symbols in educational institutions under the Education Department.

Karnataka Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao also defended the decision, stating that “limited customary practices are being allowed and nobody should be hurt because of this.”

The opposition BJP, however, sharply criticised the withdrawal of the hijab ban and accused the Congress government of engaging in appeasement politics. Leader of Opposition R. Ashoka alleged that the Congress government was reviving the hijab issue for electoral considerations and described the move as “anti-Hindu.” According to report carried by The Quint, BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya also criticised the decision, claiming that it institutionalised religious identity inside classrooms and undermined the idea of schools as spaces of equality and shared citizenship.

Despite the political backlash, the Karnataka government has maintained that the order seeks to protect constitutional freedoms while preserving institutional discipline and social harmony. The revised guidelines now apply across government, aided and private schools and pre-university colleges in Karnataka, marking a significant departure from one of the most contentious educational and religious policy decisions in recent years.

Detailed reports may be read here and here.

Related:

“How does dictating attire empower women?” Supreme Court partially stays Mumbai College’s Hijab Ban

Karnataka: Muslim girl asked to not wear hijab to school, after students protested wearing saffron shawls

Extremists assaulted Muslim woman; hijab stripped of in broad daylight in Bengaluru and Muzaffarnagar

Ex-Muslims observe ‘No Hijab Day’

The post Karnataka revises school uniform policy, permits religious symbols alongside uniforms appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Avani Rai did not actually set out to make a film about her father. What she wanted was to get to know him better by observing him on one of his photo trips. In the film that she ended up making anyway, father and daughter travel together to Kashmir, where political unrest prevails and violence is commonplace. They photograph their surroundings and each other, in the meantime reflecting on their lives, politics and his craft, which is richly illustrated with material from Raghu Rai’s archive.

The elder Rai started taking photos in the 1960s, and has now published more than 50 books. He is best known for his powerful series on the aftermath of the Bhopal toxic gas tragedy in 1984, portraits of Mother Teresa and Indira Gandhi.

Avani films and photographs her father as he works—and as he instructs her on viewpoints and framing. In the process, the film becomes a portrait not only of a passionate photographer, but also of a father-daughter relationship

Born in Jhang, British India (now in Pakistan), Rai was the youngest of four siblings. His family moved to Delhi after Partition in 1947, and he followed his father into civil engineering before a chance encounter with a donkey changed the course of his life. Accompanying his elder brother, the photojournalist S Paul, he became fixated on a stray donkey caught in a shaft of light and spent hours trying to frame it. The resulting photograph, made with a borrowed camera, was later published in the Times, London. Rai described the experience as his first sense of “the magic of holding a moment”, as the Guardian wrote in it’s obituary on his passing.

I could also connect with Raghu Rai in another way, his first wife Usha Rai was the well-known journalist and a colleague in the Time of India (where I worked for several years). She was also a fellow student at the Jesuit SFS College in Nagpur around 1960.

Prominent photographer Mukesh Parpiani and Neeraj recalled their association with Rai at the Press Club last Saturday. Avani said in response to questions that an exhibition of Rai’s works would be held in Mumbai soon. As Harish Nambiar of the Press club’s film group mentioned Rai reminded one of the works of Cartier-Bresson and Selgado.

The day before Gandhi’s assassination, Cartier-Bresson photographed the leader, who had been fasting to call for an end to the violence over the India-Pakistan partition, as he was physically—and perhaps emotionally—supported by his nieces. Cartier-Bresson returned the next day to interview Gandhi about the fast. On January 30, 1948, hours after their conversation, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu ‘nationalist’, Nathuram Godse. In the aftermath, Cartier-Bresson returned once again to Birla House to document Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s announcement of Gandhi’s death. Cartier-Bresson’s quiet pictures of Gandhi’s body lying in state led to a commission from Life magazine to document the funeral (the February 16, 1948 issue included nine of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs, compared to only five by Margaret Bourke-White, despite her close relationship to the magazine.)

Rai also reminds one of the renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who died in 2025 at age 81, Salgado, who in his lifetime produced more than 500,000 images while meticulously documenting every continent on Earth and many of the major geopolitical events since the second world war, will be remembered as one of the world’s most prodigious and relentlessly empathetic chroniclers of the human condition.

The Press club terrace overlooking Azad Maidan is one of the best spaces in Mumbai for a meeting and discussion. A most pleasant aspect of the venue is the lawn of the Museum flanked by the garden of the David Sassoon library on the other side of the road. We need more such open spaces that function so much better than closed spaces with air-conditioning.

Note: The Film Study Group (FSB) of the Mumbai Press Club paused its series of war movies to present Avani Rai’s intimate portrayal of her legendary father. Presented from a lens as a daughter of a celebrated father, the documentary brings an immediate urgency to the narrative that traces her father’s fraught journey from Pre Partition India and his steady, steely rise as photographer of international eminence. 

(The author is a veteran writer formerly with The Times of India group, Mumbai.)

Related:

‘The Elephant Whisperers’ & the banality of Hindu American Foundation’s Attempt to co-opt Adivasis

‘Newton’ An Allegory on Vulnerabilities of Indian Democracy

The post Through The Lens of Raghu Rai: An evening in Mumbai appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Not even the book, in fact. Just the title: Shivaji Kon Hota? (शिवाजी कोण होता?). This is in Marathi. The English translation is Who was Shivaji?

Now, who’d have a problem with this title, right?

Wrong.

Because those whose sense of self worth and identity is as fragile as it is testosterone-driven, feel offended all too quickly. In this case, by the use of the ‘ekeri’ for Shivaji.

Let me explain. Unlike in English, in Marathi we have three forms of address:

• the ekeri (एकेरी) or informal singular (for example, tu / तू), used with close friends, younger people, children, those lower in the social hierarchy, some relations (such as siblings, cousins, mother, grandmothers, grandaunts, uncles and aunts);
• the anekeri (अनेकेरी) or respectful singular or plural (tumhi / तुम्ही), used with elders, strangers, in formal situations, those higher in the social hierarchy, some relations (father, grandfathers and granduncles)
• the aapani prayog (आपणी प्रयोग) or respectful singular or inclusive plural (aapan / आपण), which is both ‘you’ in a highly formal context or ‘we’, which includes both the speaker and the listner.

Now, Shivaji Kon Kota? uses the ekeri or informal singular, and a man claiming to be Sanjay Gaikwad, member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from Buldhana rang up Mr Prashant Ambi, an activist, at 12:52 AM on April 22, 2026, and issued a threat to his life. Mr Gaikwad represents the Shiv Sena (the Eknath Shinde-led party). Not only did he use filthy language and abuses on the call, he also reminded Mr Ambi of the fate of the author of the book, in effect issuing a death threat.

The author of Shivaji Kon Hota? is Govind Pansare, a towering personality in Maharashtra. He was a leader of the Communist Party of India, a public intellectual, rationalist and trade unionist. On February 16, 2015, he and his wife were shot at when they were returning from a morning walk in Kolhapur, where they lived. His wife survived, but Pansare succumbed to his injuries on Feburary 20. He was 81. His biography of Shivaji has run into numerous editions and sold hundreds of thousands of copies since its first publication in 1988.

The assassination of Govind Pansare bore striking similarities to the killing of Dr Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in 2013. A Hindu extremist organisation, Sanathan Santha, was suspected to have been behind both assassinations. Unsurprisingly, with the right wing in power at both state and centre, the investigative agencies have not been able to nail the killers.

Mr Prashant Ambi is an activist who prints and sells inexpensive copies of Pansare’s Shivaji Kon Hota? He had the presence of mind to record the conversation and the courage to make it public. You can listen to the conversation (in Marathi) here:

In this time of easy rage-baiting on social media, it is perhaps too much to expect Mr Gaikwad to have actually read the book which he claimed to have insulted his icon. But the question is still worth asking: Why did Pansare use the informal singular for Shivaji? Why did he call him simply ‘Shivaji’, rather than ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’?

Since Pansare is no longer around to answer this, we can only speculate. I can think of two reasons.

One, as I said above, in Marathi, one of the uses of the informal singular is for people we are intimately close to, like our mother. The use of the informal singular is, in such cases, not an expression of disrespect, but its opposite – an expression of deep affection and respect that does not stand on ceremony. Strikingly, the bhakti-era poets of Maharashtra, such as Tukaram, use the informal singular when addressing the diety Vitthal (Vishnu in his Krishna avatar), who they endearingly call ‘Vithoba’.

Two, Pansare, though trained as a lawyer, was a genuinely good historian. He looked at his subject without blinkers, as a rationalist, on the basis of historical evidence.

Soon after Pansare’s murder, we at LeftWord Books decided to bring out an English edition of the book. Translated by Uday Narkar, the book has an Introduction by historian Anirudh Deshpande (no relation of mine) and an Afterword by economist Prabhat Patnaik. Without a doubt, Who was Shivaji? is a masterpiece of popular history writing. We published the book for its secular and rationalist telling of the life of one of the great figures of Indian medieval history, of course, but also as a tribute to its slain author, a man of immense humanity, empathy, courage and perseverance, a towering public intellectual, a comarde deeply loved by workers, and all those who believe in a humane future for all.

Of Pansare’s book, Anirudh Deshpande writes: “Shivaji Kon Hota? questions the way in which dominant Maratha historiography has enforced modern, i.e., colonial and post-colonial, religious categories on a past where people lived and did things differently compared with the age of modernity. Readers will not fail to notice the ease and humility with which the late Govind Pansare has raised and answered these questions. He does not claim originality, but only the ability to rationally re-interpret the facts of Shivaji’s career, for facts do exist — despite the claims of contemporary intellectual fashion to the contrary. Shivaji Kon Hota? shows how, with the help of reason, anyone can interrogate the past. We need not be scientists and historians to discover and understand ourselves by questioning the familiar tropes of history.”

I am happy to share a free PDF of Govind Pansare’s short biography of Shivaji:

If you’d like to have a hard copy, you can purchase it from the LeftWord website here.

Postscript. Please share this post if you can – to spread the word about the criminal intimidation by a person who is supposed to be a people’s representative, and to share Comrade Pansare’s immensely popular and readable book.

Courtesy: https://sudu26.substack.com/

The post Who was Shivaji? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

These controversies have been decades old. Early in the 2000s, the Shivaji Maharaj statue committee being headed by Babasaheb Purandare raised public ire as he was sought to be presented as a ‘Maharaj in Brahminical colours’. Another time, the decorative arch prepared during Ganeshotsva (Ganesh Festival) showing Shivaji stabbing Afzal Khan with a dagger provoked hate sentiments among sections of society. In contrast, in the early 2000s, a Handbook of History prepared by the educatinist-activist Teesta Setalvad recounted –with solid historical sources–the incident of Shivaji not being crowned by Brahmins as he was not a Kshatriya attracted violent protests from the far Hindutva right.

Currently two controversies have come up. One was the statement of Bageshwar Dham baba at a recent RSS function in Nagpur. Incidentally Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, the Baba, is resorting to blind faith techniques to attract a large following. In his bid to attract such a blind following, he takes out a chit to show the credentials of the people by using some tricks. He has attracted followers among the powerful and influential. Recently retired Chief Justice of India, BR Gavai visited him with his family to seek his blessings. Shyam Manav, working against blind faith has observed that during the central rule of BJP, blind faith has been given legitimacy and such ‘Baba’s have proliferated’.

Anyway, at this RSS function, this charlatan Baba stated that Shivaji Maharaj was tired of wars so he went to his Guru Samarth Swami Ramdas, put his crown on his feet and requested him to take over his kingdom. There were two gross fallacies in this statement. First, Ramdas was not Shivaji’s guru, this is a make believe Brahminical version of the Shivaji narrative. The matter had even gone to the Court which gave the verdict that Ramdas was not Shivaji’s Guru. There is no mention of such an incident in Shivaji’s life. This outrageous statement was made in the presence of RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, union Minister Nitin Gadkari and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, none of whom objected!

When a hue and cry was raised, the ‘Baba’ apologised saying that he draws his inspiration of Hindu Rashtra from Shivaji’s Hindvi swaraj among other things. This again is far from the truth. Shivaji’s Hindvi swaraj was area specific, Hind being a geographic term rather than a religious term. Shivaji’s life exemplifies this. He respected all religions. His army had nearly 12 generals who were Muslims, Siddi Sambal, Ibrahim Gardi, Daulat Khan were among them. He had also got a mosque made in his fort of Raigad for his Muslim officers and subjects. His confidential secretary was Maulana Haider Ali. He had a deep respect for women. After one of Shivaji’s military campaigns, his chieftains had brought the beautiful daughter in law of Muslim ruler of Bassein as a ‘gift for him’. Shivaji was outraged and objected to this conduct, returned the woman to her family home with due respect. The Brahminical version based of Shivaji on the basis of which Dhirendra Shastri made his recent remarks is the narrative which only the far right RSS promotes.

The other controversy relates to BJP ally Eknath Shinde Shiv Sena MLA from Buldhana, Sanjay Gaikwad. Shiv Sena MLA Sanjay Gaikwad triggered a controversy by threatening to “chop off the tongue” of a publisher of the 1988 book ‘Shivaji Kon Hota?‘ (Who was Shivaji?) by Govind Pansare. Gaikwad objected to the alleged disrespectful, singular reference to Shivaji Maharaj in the title and content, accusing it of distorting history. He called up the distributor of the book Prashant Ambi threatening him that he will meet the same fate as Govind Pansare. Rationalist Govind Pansare was shot at during a morning walk in Kolhapur, in February 2015 and succumbed to his injuries a few days leader. Far right Hindutva groups were responsible for the shooting—Narendra Dabholkar a few years previously, MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh thereafter were three more rationalists who met a similar fate. In a recorded phone call, Gaikwad allegedly used abusive language and threatened Kolhapur-based publisher Prashant Ambi, telling him that he would “meet the same fate as Pansare”.

Govind Pansare, the CPI leader and rationalist activist wrote this book, after painstaking research and titled in Marathi, Shivaji Kon Hota (Who was Shivaji). Addressing him in singular form. This form is used for most intimate persons. Gaikwad is objecting to that as an insult to Shivaji. The book was published in 1988 and since then has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has been translated in many languages. In fact, this book is a basic introduction to the iconic Shhivaji Maharaj. The contents reveal historical facts the concern of Shivaji for raiyats (poor farmers) and respect for all religions. His grandfather Maloji Rao Bhosle had prayed at a Sufi saint (Shah Sharif) Dargah, as he had no children. Later when he got two sons, he named them Shahji and Sharifji. Shivaji was son of Shahji Bhosle.

Shivaji built his kingdom by attacking the neighbouring Hindu Kings like Chandra Rao More. In his fight with Afzal Khan, the general of Adil shah of Bijapur, he was given the iron claws by a Muslim bodyguard, Rustom-e-Jaman. Interestingly Afzal khan had performed a Yagna through local Brahmins to defeat Shivaji. In addition, his secretary was Krishnaji Bhaskar Kulkarni. Interestingly Shivaji’s humane values were matchless. He did kill Afzal Khan but later he also built a tomb for Afzal Khan, which is present even today. The likes of Gaikwad and Hindu nationalist narratives omit these aspects of Shivaji in their bid to serve political propaganda: to present him as an anti-Mulim King, which he was not. In Maharashtra and now all over India the propaganda being promoted by the far right is that Shivaji was an anti-Muslim ruler. This narrative falls flat if we study the life and work of Shivaji. His main concern was the poor peasants for whose protection he stopped the atrocities of middlemen, to a great relief for the poor peasants.

Therefore, the Brahminical tendencies interpret and propagate Maharaj as anti-Muslim, distorting the whole truth; this is what Gaikwad is aiming at. Dhirendra Shastri and RSS combine want to project this interpretation of Shivaji to promote their agenda of a Hindu Rashtra, while his Hindvi was not synonymous with Hindu Rashtra.

The most interesting part of the whole controversy is that most booksellers are facing the demand for this book in increasing numbers. At the same time, the Human rights groups are organizing the mass reading of the book, a very healthy response to this vilification of a great ruler!

Related:

Shivaji in ‘secular’ Maharashtra

The post Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj: An inclusive ruler appeared first on SabrangIndia.

At the heart of FSC’s report lies a central claim: that the crisis of press freedom in India is no longer episodic or incidental, but structural. It manifests not only through spectacular acts of violence—murders, assaults, targeted attacks—but equally through the slow, grinding violence of the legal system. Arrests under expansive national security laws, prolonged pre-trial detentions, repeated transfers across prisons, and endless procedural delays together form a continuum of control that ensures dissenting voices are not merely challenged but systematically neutralised.

This broader climate is reflected in India’s ranking of 157 out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which categorises the country’s press conditions as “very serious.” FSC contextualises this ranking by pointing to the consolidation of media ownership, the overt political alignment of major news platforms, and the increasing vulnerability of independent journalists who operate outside institutional protection. In such an ecosystem, the cost of critical reporting has escalated dramatically.

Even the apparent absence of journalist killings in official records for 2026, FSC notes, is misleading. The killing of Andhra Pradesh-based journalist Jaganmohan Reddy, reportedly targeted for his investigative work on red sanders smuggling, occurred just days before the RSF report was released. His death, along with the severe injuries inflicted on his colleague, underscores the persistent dangers journalists face when exposing entrenched criminal-political nexuses. This incident joins a disturbing continuum that includes the killings of Mukesh Chandrakar in Bastar and Rajeev Pratap in Uttarakhand, as well as the deeply disconcerting acquittal of powerful figures in the long-pending murder case of journalist Ram Chandra Chhatrapati. The message, FSC suggests, is unmistakable: impunity remains the norm.

Yet, the report is careful to emphasise that the contemporary threat to press freedom is not limited to physical violence. Increasingly, repression operates through what FSC identifies as “lawfare”—the strategic deployment of legal frameworks to intimidate, harass, and incapacitate journalists. In this paradigm, the law is not merely an instrument of justice but a mechanism of control. Criminal provisions, anti-terror laws, defamation suits, and regulatory processes are mobilised not necessarily to secure convictions, but to entangle journalists in protracted legal battles that drain resources, erode morale, and ultimately silence dissent. The process itself becomes punitive.

It is within this framework that the cases of Rupesh Kumar Singh and Irfan Mehraj acquire particular significance.

Rupesh Kumar Singh: Incarceration as extended punishment

Through Ipsa Shatakshi’s deeply personal account, FSC offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lived experience of a journalist’s incarceration—not only from the perspective of the detainee but from that of the family left behind. Rupesh Kumar Singh, known for his uncompromising reporting on state violence and the marginalisation of Adivasi communities in Jharkhand, has been imprisoned since July 17, 2022, under the UAPA. His work, which exposed alleged excesses committed in the name of anti-Naxal operations, placed him in direct confrontation with state narratives.

What emerges from Shatakshi’s account is a pattern that goes beyond mere detention. Rupesh’s incarceration has been marked by a series of punitive administrative decisions: multiple cases filed in succession, repeated transfers across prisons in Jharkhand and Bihar, and prolonged confinement in high-security cells typically reserved for the most dangerous offenders. These measures, FSC suggests, are not incidental but deliberately designed to isolate, disorient, and weaken.

The material conditions described are stark. Solitary confinement, inadequate nutrition, lack of proper medical care, and a monotonous, nutritionally deficient diet point to systemic neglect, if not outright cruelty. The description of inmates being served the same vegetable—jackfruit or radish—for days on end is emblematic of a deeper disregard for dignity within the prison system.

Equally significant is the impact on the family. Shatakshi’s inability to communicate with her husband for extended periods, the bureaucratic opacity of prison authorities, and the sheer logistical difficulty of arranging prison visits across distant locations together create a regime of extended punishment. FSC underscores that in such cases, incarceration is not confined to the individual—it radiates outward, affecting families, relationships, and support networks.

Irfan Mehraj: Pre-trial detention and the silencing of Kashmir’s narrative

The account of Irfan Mehraj presents a complementary but distinct dimension of the same phenomenon. Arrested on March 20, 2023, by the National Investigation Agency after being summoned for questioning, Mehraj has spent over three years in pre-trial detention, with proceedings yet to meaningfully commence. His case exemplifies a central feature of UAPA prosecutions: the inversion of the presumption of innocence through stringent bail conditions and indefinite delays.

Mehraj, a journalist deeply engaged with Kashmir’s political, cultural, and human rights landscape, was not merely reporting events but documenting lived realities—particularly allegations of torture and state violence. His work with the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and his role in producing meticulous human rights documentation positioned him as a critical voice in a region already marked by intense contestation.

FSC situates Mehraj’s arrest within the broader transformation of Kashmir’s media environment, especially following the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 and the introduction of the 2020 media policy. Journalists in the region now operate under pervasive surveillance, with routine summons, interrogations, and implicit threats forming part of their professional landscape. The boundaries between reporting, dissent, and criminality have become increasingly blurred.

The personal consequences of Mehraj’s detention are equally severe. Lodged in Delhi’s Rohini prison, far from his home in Srinagar, he remains physically cut off from his family, including a father in declining health and a spouse with whom he had barely begun his married life. The structure of prison mulaqats—conducted through glass partitions and intercoms—further underscores the emotional distance imposed by the system.

FSC also highlights the broader chilling effect of such arrests. Mehraj’s detention sent ripples across the Kashmiri media community, reinforcing a climate of fear and self-censorship. Statements of concern from national and international organisations—including journalists’ bodies and human rights groups—contrast sharply with the silence of many mainstream media institutions within India, a silence that FSC implicitly critiques.

UAPA and the normalisation of exceptional power

A recurring thread across both accounts is the role of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act as a central instrument in the state’s approach to dissent. FSC’s report engages critically with the law’s expansive scope, arguing that it enables the state to construct broad and often ambiguous categories of “threat,” within which journalists, activists, and human rights defenders can be easily subsumed.

Crucially, FSC points out that while convictions under UAPA remain relatively rare, the law’s true power lies elsewhere—in its ability to justify prolonged detention, delay trials, and effectively remove individuals from public life. The legal process, in this sense, becomes indistinguishable from punishment. Years lost in incarceration, professional disruption, and social isolation achieve what formal convictions may not.

Memory as resistance

The report concludes on a note that is both sombre and quietly defiant. In the face of systemic silencing, what remains is memory—the act of remembering those who have been removed from public discourse. As one of Mehraj’s colleagues poignantly observes, remembering political prisoners becomes a form of resistance in itself.

Through its detailed documentation and narrative depth, the Free Speech Collective does more than chronicle individual injustices. It exposes a pattern—one in which violence, law, and institutional inertia converge to create an environment where journalism itself becomes a risky, even punishable act. The stories of Rupesh Kumar Singh and Irfan Mehraj are not outliers; they are emblematic of a broader democratic unravelling.

On a day meant to celebrate the ideals of a free press, FSC’s intervention serves as a sobering counterpoint. It forces a reckoning with a difficult truth: that in contemporary India, the freedom to report, to question, and to dissent is increasingly contingent, fragile, and, for some, altogether absent.

Related:

J & K: Attempt to muzzle FoE, Media? Police summons to media, journalists

“This system breaks the body when it cannot break the spirit” — Ipsa Shatakshi on her jailed husband, journalist Rupesh Kumar Singh

How the noose tightened: understanding modus operandi of killers who took the life of journalist-activist, Gauri Lankesh

Journalists’ bodies strongly condemn sedition charges against Siddharth Varadarajan, Karan Thapar of The Wire

The post Caged Voices, Silenced Truths: FSC’s expansive indictment of India’s press freedom crisis appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Complaint and allegations

The application, filed under Section 175(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), was moved by Manisha Pande on behalf of six complainants, all media professionals associated with the digital platform Newslaundry. The complainants alleged that Mitra had, through a series of posts on his X handle, repeatedly used sexually derogatory language to describe them, including referring to them as “prostitutes” and characterising their workplace in deeply offensive and demeaning terms.

The complaint specifically relied on multiple tweets, including one dated April 28, 2025, containing explicit and abusive language directed at the organisation and its women employees. Another tweet dated February 8, 2025, targeted Pande individually with sexually explicit and degrading remarks. Screenshots of these posts were placed on record before the Court.

Court’s Findings: “Sexually coloured remarks” and prima facie offence

Judicial Magistrate First Class Bhanu Pratap Singh, after examining the material on record, found that the content of the tweets clearly fell within the category of “sexually coloured remarks.” The Court noted that the language used was not merely offensive but carried a clear intent to demean and insult the dignity of the complainants, particularly as one of the tweets explicitly named Manisha Pande.

On this basis, the Court held that the allegations, supported by documentary material, prima facie disclose the commission of cognizable offences under:

• Section 75(3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which penalises sexually coloured remarks, and
• Section 79 of the BNS, which deals with acts, intended to insult the modesty of a woman.

The Court’s reasoning underscores a recognition that online speech, when sexually abusive and targeted, can attract serious penal consequences under criminal law.

Necessity of police investigation in cyber context

The court order emphasised on the need for a police investigation, particularly given the digital nature of the alleged offences. Observing that the acts were committed in cyberspace, the Court held that investigative intervention was necessary to:

• Verify the authenticity and ownership of the X account from which the tweets originated, and
• Trace and recover the electronic devices used to publish the content.

Court criticises inadequate police response

The Court also expressed dissatisfaction with the Action Taken Report (ATR) filed by the police. It noted that the report failed to consider the specific tweets relied upon by the complainants, thereby rendering the response incomplete and inadequate.

In light of its findings, the Court directed the Station House Officer of Malviya Nagar Police Station to:

• Register an FIR against Abhijit Iyer Mitra under Sections 75(3) and 79 of the BNS, and
• File a compliance report by May 4, 2026.

The application under Section 175(3) BNSS was accordingly disposed of.

Parallel defamation proceedings before Delhi High Court

The criminal proceedings arise alongside a pending civil defamation suit before the Delhi High Court, where the complainants have sought a public apology and damages amounting to ₹2 crore. In those proceedings, the journalists have contended that Mitra’s posts were not only defamatory but also deliberately malicious and intended to harm their professional reputation and dignity.

The High Court had earlier taken note of the objectionable content and reportedly admonished Mitra, following which the posts in question were taken down. An application seeking rejection of the defamation suit remains pending adjudication.

The order may be read here:

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Victory for Forest Rights: Allahabad HC recognises land claims of Tharu Tribes, strikes down decision of DLC

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Delhi, Mumbai: Media organisations sharply criticise UNI eviction

The post Delhi court orders FIR against Abhijit Iyer Mitra for sexually abusive posts targeting women journalists appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Though often overlooked in official narratives, Shariati remains one of the most influential intellectual figures behind the Iranian Revolution. His ideas, which linked Shi’ism with modern revolutionary theories drawn from thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Jean‑Paul Sartre, helped shape the ideological climate that culminated in 1979.

Revisiting his legacy is essential not only for understanding Iran’s modern history but also for examining the broader intersections of religion, social justice, and political transformation in the Muslim world.

Born in 1933 in Mazinan, Shariati grew up in a religious household during a turbulent era. The 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Shah’s subsequent modernization drive—perceived by many as an attempt to erase cultural and religious roots in favor of Western approval—formed the backdrop of his intellectual evolution. Shariati’s activism led to imprisonment, and later, study in Paris, where exposure to existentialist and anti‑colonial thought profoundly shaped his worldview. He rejected Marxist materialism but embraced its critique of inequality, reinterpreting Islamic history to highlight figures such as Abu Dharr al‑Ghifari as symbols of resistance and social equality.

From this synthesis emerged Shariati’s concept of “Red Shiism,” a dynamic, activist Islam rooted in sacrifice, justice, and resistance, inspired by the legacy of Karbala. His slogan “Return to the Self” urged Muslim societies to break from blind imitation of the West and rediscover their intellectual heritage. His lectures and writings reframed Islam not as a passive spiritual refuge but as a force for liberation, capable of mobilizing the masses against tyranny. By the late 1970s, his ideas circulated widely among students and activists, laying the intellectual foundations of revolution.

Shariati’s critique extended beyond Marxism to liberalism and existentialism, which he faulted for neglecting the spiritual dimension of humanity. In works such as Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique, he argued that Islam offered its own emancipatory paradigm, distinct from Western secular traditions. He did not seek to make Islam socialist but rather employed Marxist sociological tools to galvanize Muslims into revolutionary action. His criticism of Iran’s Marxist Tudeh Party underscored his insistence on adapting political thought to Iran’s cultural and religious context.

Although Shariati died in 1977, two years before the revolution, his intellectual imprint was unmistakable. Pakistani writer Mukhtar Masood recorded that Iranians across social strata identified Shariati as the architect of the movement. Yet, as the revolutionary state consolidated power, charismatic leadership overshadowed intellectual activism, and Shariati’s role receded into obscurity. His story illustrates how revolutions often celebrate political victories while neglecting the thinkers who shaped their ideological foundations.

Shariati’s legacy endures as a reminder that religion, when reinterpreted through the lens of justice and resistance, can become a powerful agent of social transformation. His vision of Islam as a force for liberation continues to resonate in debates over faith, identity, and political change across the Muslim world.

Author is freelance journalist.

Courtesy: CounterView

The post Faith recast as social justice? Revisiting Shariati’s vision of Islam as liberation appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Yet, almost as quickly as the legal process began, the case moved beyond its evidentiary foundations. Across television debates, digital media platforms, and social media networks, it was reframed as something far more expansive: a coordinated religious conspiracy, a conversion racket, even what some political figures and commentators began calling “corporate jihad.” These framings did not emerge from the FIRs, nor from confirmed findings of the investigation. Instead, they were constructed through a mix of speculation, political rhetoric, and amplified media narratives.

Media coverage and television debates across channels began invoking terms like “corporate jihad” and “love jihad” shortly after the first FIR was filed on March 26, 2026, even as the investigation was still in its initial stages. The first FIR centred on a complaint filed by a 23-year-old employee at Tata Consultancy Services’ Nashik unit, who alleged that a colleague, Danish Shaikh, had induced her into a relationship on the false promise of marriage, engaged in a physical relationship with her, made derogatory remarks about Hindu deities, and spoke in praise of Islam. According to Newslaundry. she further alleged that she later discovered he was already married with two children. These framings, which did not appear in the FIRs themselves, played a key role in shifting the narrative from specific allegations to a broader, and as yet unsubstantiated, claim of organised conspiracy.

This trajectory is not without precedent. The murder of Shraddha Walkar—a case that was, at its core, one of intimate partner violence and extreme gender-based brutality—was similarly pulled into a communal frame in sections of media and public discourse. What should have remained a conversation about violence against women, coercive relationships, and systemic failures was, in many instances, recast as evidence of a larger religious conspiracy. The language of “love jihad,” which had circulated in political discourse earlier, found renewed force in Maharashtra in the aftermath of that case. It was no longer invoked as an abstract claim; it was anchored to a specific, widely publicised crime.

Detailed report may be read here.

The consequences of that shift were not merely rhetorical. The communal framing of the Walkar case fed into mobilisation on the ground, with far-right groups organising rallies and demonstrations that explicitly linked individual acts of violence to broader claims of religious targeting. These mobilisations, in turn, contributed to a political climate in which the idea of regulating interfaith relationships—particularly those involving conversion—gained renewed traction. Over time, this discourse fed into legislative developments, including the push for and eventual passage of strict anti-conversion frameworks in Maharashtra. What began as a criminal case involving one victim and one accused thus became part of a larger ideological and policy arc.

Detailed reports may be read here and here.

The pattern is instructive. Individual acts of violence or alleged wrongdoing are lifted out of their specific contexts and embedded within broader narratives about community, identity, and threat. In the process, the nature of the case itself changes. What begins as a question of individual accountability and institutional responsibility is transformed into a story about collective identity and civilisational conflict. The focus shifts away from the victim, the evidence, and the mechanisms of justice, and towards questions of community, intent, and imagined networks.

The TCS Nashik case now sits within this pattern. Its rapid reframing as a case of organised religious conspiracy echoes earlier moments where gender-based violence or criminal allegations were communalised to serve broader political narratives. To understand it fully, it must be read along two tracks—what the FIRs and investigation actually establish, and what the public narrative has turned it into. The distance between these two is not incidental; it is the story itself.

The Genesis of the FIRs: Intervention, mobilisation, and legal framing

What remains crucial—but often underexplored—in the public telling of the case is the genesis of the FIRs themselves. The trajectory from an individual complaint to the registration of nine FIRs within days raises important questions not only about the allegations, but also about how the case entered the criminal justice system.

According to statements made to Newslaundry, Nitin Gaikwad, a local leader affiliated with the Shiv Sena, acknowledged that he and members of Hindutva groups were involved from the very beginning. He stated that they met the complainant and “counselled her for at least two to three days,” after which they accompanied her to the police station to register the FIR. He further claimed that “all Hindu organisations” had come together in this process under the banner of a united “Sakal Hindu Samaj,” though he did not name specific groups.

Gaikwad also indicated that this involvement did not end with the filing of the first complaint. He stated that they continued to assist the police by identifying other individuals and sharing information, following which further action was taken. This account suggests that the case evolved not solely through institutional mechanisms, but through a combination of community mobilisation, political involvement, and police action.

The first FIR reportedly named three individuals. In the span of the following week, eight additional FIRs were registered, all at the same police station, with some filed in rapid succession, including multiple complaints in a single night. The pattern and pace of these filings point to a case that quickly expanded in scope, moving from a single complaint to a cluster of allegations involving multiple accused.

Instead, several FIRs invoke Section 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS)—the provision relating to acts done in furtherance of common intention. This suggests that the police are, at least in part, examining the allegations through the lens of possible coordinated conduct among individuals, rather than as evidence of a broader, ideologically driven conversion network.

This brings the focus back to a critical question: do allegations of workplace sexual harassment—undoubtedly grave and demanding institutional accountability—necessarily require immediate criminalisation through police intervention, particularly when workplace redressal mechanisms exist? Or does the route through which these complaints were mobilised and formalised reflect a more complex interplay of legal process, social intervention, and political framing?

Data from the Maharashtra State Commission for Women for 2023–24 provides important context for understanding how workplace-related complaints are typically registered and addressed. Out of a total of 12,019 complaints handled during the year, the overwhelming majority relate to marital disputes (4059 cases) and broader social issues, including rape (2940 cases). In comparison, complaints specifically categorised as sexual harassment at the workplace number just 69, with 44 disposed of during the same period. This indicates that while such cases are serious, they form a relatively small proportion of the overall complaints landscape.

A broader category of “harassment at the workplace” records 667 complaints, suggesting that workplace grievances are more frequently framed in terms of general harassment, hostility, or discrimination rather than strictly sexual misconduct. At the same time, the disposal rate across categories remains relatively high, with over 10,000 complaints resolved. However, sexual harassment cases show a comparatively slower rate of disposal, pointing to the complexity and sensitivity often involved in such matters, including evidentiary challenges and institutional processes.

This data also offers insight into how such complaints are usually processed. Workplace harassment cases are, in most instances, expected to be addressed through internal mechanisms such as POSH committees and institutional grievance systems, with criminal law typically invoked in more escalated or severe circumstances. The relatively low number of cases reaching the Commission under the category of sexual harassment suggests either under-reporting, reliance on internal processes, or both.

Against this backdrop, the TCS Nashik case—marked by the rapid filing of multiple FIRs within a short span—appears unusual in its trajectory. The scale and speed of criminalisation stand in contrast to broader trends, raising questions not about the seriousness of the allegations themselves, but about the process through which workplace complaints move from internal grievance to criminal prosecution, and whether that transition, in this instance, followed the typical institutional path.

The answer to that question does not diminish the seriousness of the allegations. But it does underscore that the making of the case—how it was initiated, expanded, and framed—is as important to examine as the allegations themselves.

The Legal Core: What the FIRs actually establish

The legal foundation of the case rests on nine FIRs registered between March 26 and April 3, 2026, across Deolali Camp and Mumbai Naka police stations. These FIRs, taken together, form the only formal basis on which the case currently stands, and any assessment of the matter must begin with them.

The first FIR, registered at Deolali Camp Police Station, outlines a relationship between the complainant and the primary accused that allegedly evolved from a prior acquaintance into a personal and intimate association. According to the complaint, the accused established sexual relations with the complainant under the promise of marriage, a promise that she later discovered to be deceptive when she was informed by another woman that the accused was already married and had children. The FIR further records that during the course of their interactions, discussions relating to religion took place, and certain remarks were perceived by the complainant as derogatory towards Hindu beliefs. It also alleges that the complainant faced pressure and intimidation in connection with both the relationship and its possible disclosure.

As with all FIRs, these allegations represent the complainant’s version of events. They initiate a legal process but do not constitute proof. Their veracity must be tested through investigation and, ultimately, adjudication.

In the days that followed, eight additional FIRs were registered. These complaints describe a range of alleged misconduct within the workplace, including unwanted physical contact, inappropriate remarks, coercion, and the misuse of authority by senior employees. Some FIRs also refer to behaviour perceived as affecting religious sentiments, and in at least one instance, a male complainant alleged that he was pressured in relation to religious practices. The FIR compilation indicates that these allegations span a period from 2022 to 2026 and involve multiple accused individuals, some of whom are named across more than one complaint.

The sections invoked under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita include provisions relating to sexual harassment, outraging modesty, criminal intimidation, and acts affecting religious sentiments. Taken together, the FIRs suggest the possibility of a pattern of alleged misconduct within the workplace. At the same time, they do not establish guilt, nor do they conclusively demonstrate the existence of any organised conspiracy. This distinction remains central, even as it is frequently blurred in public discourse.

The Investigation: Scope, Method, and Limits

The Nashik Police constituted a Special Investigation Team to examine the allegations. As part of the investigation, several accused individuals were arrested, statements were recorded before magistrates, and digital and documentary evidence began to be scrutinised.

What makes the trajectory of this investigation particularly unusual is its point of origin. As reported in Hindustan Times through its article dated April 13, the case did not begin with a formal workplace complaint or even an immediate allegation of harassment filed with the police. Instead, it appears to have been triggered by a complaint from a political party worker regarding a woman employee’s religious practices. In the report of Times of India dated April 16, it was provided that according to Nashik City Police, the complaint alleged that a Hindu woman in her early 20s had begun following Islamic practices under workplace influence. This led to a covert police operation, during which personnel were reportedly deployed undercover within the workplace. It was only after this phase that the first FIR was registered on March 26, followed by additional complaints.

As the investigation progressed, the SIT examined not only the allegations in the FIRs but also the functioning of internal workplace mechanisms, particularly the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) framework. The role of supervisory personnel, including HR officials, came under scrutiny in light of allegations that complaints may have been discouraged or ignored.

Crucially, police statements reported indicate that, at this stage, there is no confirmed evidence of any organised or externally funded conversion network linked to the case. While inputs have been sought from agencies such as the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and the National Investigation Agency (NIA), this appears to be a response to claims circulating in the public domain rather than confirmation of those claims.

This distinction—between investigating allegations and endorsing narratives—remains one of the most important, yet least emphasised, aspects of the case.

The Company Response: Institutional responsibility under scrutiny

TCS, in its official communications, has stated that it has taken the matter seriously, suspending or terminating employees named in the FIRs and cooperating fully with law enforcement authorities. The company has reiterated its commitment to a zero-tolerance policy towards harassment and has initiated an internal inquiry.

Public statement by Mr. K. Krithivasan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, related to the recent matter in Nashik. All details here: https://t.co/sOEGI7jmtV pic.twitter.com/iTfu1yeCuz

— Tata Consultancy Services (@TCS) April 17, 2026

At the same time, the case raises deeper questions about institutional responsibility. Several accounts since April 14, including those reported by outlets such as NDTV, suggested that employees who experienced harassment may not have found effective redress through internal mechanisms. If complaints were indeed raised and not acted upon—or if employees felt unable to use formal channels—it would point to significant gaps in the implementation of POSH guidelines.

The role of HR personnel is particularly significant in this context, especially because one of the most widely circulated claims in the case—that Nida Khan was the HR head—has been explicitly contradicted by both company statements and subsequent reporting. In the early days of the controversy, several media reports and television debates repeatedly described Nida Khan as an “HR manager” or even the central authority responsible for handling complaints. 

A detailed report by AltNews dated April 18 showed that since April 14, 2026, NDTV reporters claimed that Nida Khan was an HR official at TCS Nashik. The same claim was made in multiple bulletins on the channel by Shiv Aroor.  

However, a report by Times of India as well as the statement of TCS of April 17 clarified that she held no leadership responsibilities, was not part of the HR structure, and had no role in recruitment or institutional decision-making. Instead, as per Hindustan Times dated April 17, she was employed as a process associate/telecaller at the BPO unit, not a senior managerial figure.

Godi Media Anchor @anjanaomkashyap says Nida Khan is the main Mastermind and was a HR Manager. But Nida Khan was an employee and not HR Manager. HR manager was Ashwini Chainani, the HR head and operations manager of the company who was arrested recently. Ashwini Chainani is… pic.twitter.com/Y3M7tHzJtf

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) April 17, 2026

In the #Nashik #TCS case, not only Arnab Goswami’s Republic made Nida Khan a “terrorist,” even Vijeta Dahiya, script writer for Dhruv Rathee, went a step further and called her and other accused “Islamist terrorists,” dragging an entire religion into it.

From prime-time TV to… pic.twitter.com/iDBTP4pFeW

— Meer Faisal (@meerfaisal001) April 17, 2026

‘दबंग मैम’ निदा खान ऑफिस में सबको सिखाती थी बुर्का पहनना, बड़ा ही खूंखार था TCS एचआर हेड का प्लान

नासिक के TCS बीपीओ में ‘दबंग मैम’ कही जाने वाली HR मैनेजर निदा खान की तलाश तेज हो गई है. उस पर धर्मांतरण और यौन उत्पीड़न के गंभीर आरोप लगे हैं. FIR में दावा है कि वह कर्मचारियों को… pic.twitter.com/xDARj2rURy

— AajTak (@aajtak) April 16, 2026

TCS में घर्मांतरण के खुलासे का पार्ट-2
TCS में HR मैनेजर निदा खान के कारनामों की पूरी रिपोर्ट#BlackAndWhiteOnAajTak #TCS #CorporateControversy #HRManager | @anjanaomkashyap pic.twitter.com/8jZLVLSvvn

— AajTak (@aajtak) April 16, 2026

This distinction is crucial because the investigation has, in fact, identified actual HR officials—including a senior HR functionary linked to the POSH Internal Committee—whose roles are under scrutiny for allegedly ignoring or failing to act on complaints. Yet, in public discourse, the focus disproportionately shifted to Nida Khan as the “face” or even “mastermind” of the case, often accompanied by an inflated portrayal of her authority.

The result is a telling gap between institutional responsibility and narrative construction. While those with formal power within the workplace structure—particularly within HR—are central to questions of accountability, public attention has instead been redirected toward an individual whose organisational role was misrepresented, reinforcing a narrative that is not fully aligned with the evidentiary record.

Victim Narratives: Allegations of control, coercion, and silence

Accounts from complainants and witnesses, as reported in media interviews including those aired by NDTV, describe a workplace environment marked by control, coercion, and silence. One employee recounted being isolated from colleagues and made to work separately, while others described a culture in which younger employees were allegedly targeted and subjected to inappropriate behaviour.

These narratives also suggest that attempts to raise concerns internally did not lead to meaningful intervention. In some accounts, employees described a sense that even HR mechanisms were ineffective or inaccessible. Such descriptions, if borne out by investigation, would indicate not only individual misconduct but a systemic environment in which alleged abuse could persist.

These accounts are serious and must be treated as such. At the same time, they remain part of an ongoing investigation and must be evaluated through due process rather than selectively amplified or reframed to fit broader narratives.

The Narrative Shift: From workplace crime to communal conspiracy

As the case unfolded, a significant shift occurred in how it was publicly framed. What began as allegations against specific individuals was rapidly transformed into a narrative about an entire community.

Television debates, including those hosted on prominent channels such as played a significant role in shaping the public narrative around the case. Primetime discussions on these platforms frequently moved beyond the contents of the FIRs and the scope of the police investigation, framing the allegations within broader themes of religious targeting and organised conspiracy. In several instances, the language used in these debates echoed terms such as “conversion racket” and “corporate jihad,” often without clear attribution to verified investigative findings.

Grooming Syndicate Busted

The Hindu women employees in TCS were allegedly groomed systematically through a WhatsApp group formed by their team leads. They approached TCS authorities, including the HR manager, multiple times—raising complaints of rape, forced conversion, being… pic.twitter.com/IbZxUUkEfl

— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) April 14, 2026

This mode of coverage did not merely report on the case; it actively contributed to its reframing. By foregrounding speculative links and emphasising identity over individual conduct, these debates helped shift the focus away from the specifics of the allegations and towards a generalised communal narrative, shaping public perception in ways that extended far beyond the evidentiary record.

Political figures played a visible role in this shift. On April 17, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis publicly framed the case in broader ideological terms while responding to media queries. While noting that Tata Consultancy Services had taken the allegations seriously, he described the matter as a cause for concern, suggesting it pointed to what he termed “corporate jihad.” In his remarks to NDTV, Fadnavis linked the case to earlier narratives such as “love jihad” and “land jihad,” arguing that the present allegations reflected a new and serious manifestation of a similar pattern.

Political responses to the case extended beyond formal statements of concern and moved into broader ideological framing. Devendra Fadnavis’s spouse, Amruta Fadnavis, in remarks reported by The New Indian Express on April 18, linked the allegations to wider claims of “forceful conversion” and “love jihad,” urging women to remain vigilant and framing the issue in terms of cultural awareness and the need to reinforce traditional values among youth.

Maharashtra minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nitesh Rane, speaking to the press in comments reported by Press Trust of India on April 16, described the case as indicative of a growing phenomenon he termed “corporate jihad.” He further suggested that employment spaces were being misused for religious conversion and argued that prioritising Hindus in hiring had become “the need of the hour” to counter such alleged activities.

Taken together, these statements illustrate how the case was not only treated as a matter of criminal investigation but also embedded within a larger political narrative—one that framed the allegations as part of a broader pattern of religious targeting, despite the absence of conclusive findings to that effect in the investigation at the time. These statements were subsequently amplified across television and digital platforms, contributing to the rapid communalisation of the case.

Amid the controversy surrounding the allegations at the TCS Nashik unit, The Print report dated April 21 provided that that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, escalated the issue beyond the immediate case by reaching out to major industry bodies. Its general secretary, Bajrang Bagda, wrote to organisations such as FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM, NASSCOM and others, urging immediate steps to address women’s safety in corporate workplaces. 

While referring to the ongoing SIT probe into multiple FIRs alleging harassment, coercion, and other offences, Bagda framed the issue as one that had eroded public trust in corporate environments. Significantly, he argued that the allegations should not be seen as isolated acts by individuals, but as part of a “collective conspiracy”, a claim that extends beyond what has been established in the investigation so far.

This transformation did not merely add a layer of interpretation; it altered the nature of the story itself, shifting the focus from individual accountability to communal identity. Even the highest court in the country was not left out of this, with Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay filing a plea in the Supreme Court on April 16, 2026, requesting that deceitful religious conversions be classified as “terrorism” and “organized crime,” following reports of forced conversions and sexual harassment of female employees at a TCS facility in Nashik. The plea calls for stringent central action, special courts, and to treat the issue as a threat to national security. Ashwini Upadhyay has formerly also been spokesperson for the Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

You may find CJP’s Hate Busters on four of Upadhyaya’s claims here, here, here, and here.  

The Making of a “Mastermind”: The case of Nida Khan

No aspect of this transformation is more illustrative than the portrayal of Nida Khan. In the FIRs, she is named as one among several accused, with allegations that relate primarily to interactions and remarks perceived as religiously offensive. There is no clear indication in the FIRs that she held a position of authority within the organisation or that she exercised control over institutional processes.

However, in media coverage and public discourse, she has frequently been described as the “mastermind” of the case. Television debates and social media commentary, as evident from the links attached above, have at times portrayed her as an HR manager or a central figure orchestrating a larger conspiracy. This portrayal stands in contrast to clarifications issued by the company, which state that she was a process associate and did not hold a managerial or HR role.

TCS Nashik case ‘mastermind’ Nida Khan’s bail hearing likely today pic.twitter.com/1bDo4yQgae

— NDTV (@ndtv) April 20, 2026

Nashik BPO Case | Who Is Nida Khan? Mastermind Behind Harassment Cover-Up Under Police Lens

Watch video: https://t.co/qWRbVPjzqc#NidaKhan #Nashik #TCS

— News18 (@CNNnews18) April 17, 2026

Nashik ‘Conversion’ Row | First picture: Nida Khan alleged mastermind of the gang is cureently absconding@sujata_dwivedi shares details with @ankit_tyagi01 pic.twitter.com/xVOINfq5Hu

— NDTV (@ndtv) April 14, 2026

In a further development, reports indicated that Nida Khan was in Mumbai and was pregnant with her first child. Even as the Nashik Police’s Special Investigation Team continued its probe and the National Commission for Women took cognisance of the matter, sections of the media continued to describe her as the “mastermind” of the case.

This characterisation, however, has been contested by her legal counsel. Advocate Baba Sayyad pointed out that her name appears in only one complaint and that the FIRs do not substantiate claims of a larger conspiracy. He further clarified that she was not part of the HR structure but worked as a process associate/telecaller, a position also reflected in company records. According to him, the primary allegation against her relates to remarks affecting religious sentiments, raising questions about the disproportionate portrayal of her role in public discourse.

According to the report by Hindustan Times dated April 17  Nida Khan is not absconding in the conventional sense being portrayed in some media narratives. She is reported to be in Mumbai, at her residence with her husband, where she had moved earlier this year after her marriage. Her family and lawyer have also claimed that police had not visited their residence looking for her at the time of reporting. This re-framing or ‘clarification’ on Nida Khan’s position in the company came several days after reports in news channels and newspapers, often showing her photographs and name, framed her as the ‘mastermind.’ The damage then, in a sense, had been done.

This discrepancy highlights how narratives can elevate certain individuals into symbolic figures, often in ways that are not supported by the evidentiary record. At the same time, individuals who may have held actual institutional authority—such as HR officials with decision-making power—have received comparatively less attention in public discourse.

It is essential to note here that on April 20, Nida Khan was denied interim relief by a Nashik court.

Media Conduct: Language, framing, and responsibility

The role of the media in shaping the trajectory of this case has been central. One of the most concerning aspects of coverage has been the frequent collapse of the distinction between allegation and fact. Reports and debates have often presented claims as established truths, omitting qualifiers such as “alleged” and thereby pre-empting the outcome of the investigation.

Equally significant has been the shift in framing from individual conduct to communal identity. Instead of focusing on specific allegations against named individuals, many narratives have generalised the case into a broader story about Muslim men targeting Hindu women. This framing transforms a legal case into a communal narrative, with implications that extend far beyond the facts of the case itself.

The amplification of unverified claims has further contributed to this distortion. Assertions about international links, funding networks, and organised conversion efforts have circulated widely across television and social media platforms, despite the absence of corroborating evidence. In some cases, even routine investigative steps—such as seeking inputs from central agencies—have been interpreted as confirmation of these claims.

This pattern reflects not just a failure of verification but a broader shift in how stories are framed and consumed.

The APCR Findings: A critical intervention in a distorted narrative

The fact-finding report by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) stands out as one of the most detailed attempts to bring the TCS Nashik case back to its evidentiary core. Based on field visits, court observations, interactions with lawyers and families, and a close reading of FIRs alongside media coverage, the report maps a widening gap between what is formally on record and what has come to dominate public discourse.

At its heart, the report makes a crucial clarification: the case, as reflected in the nine FIRs, concerns serious allegations of workplace misconduct—including sexual harassment, coercion, intimidation, and conduct perceived as affecting religious sentiments. These allegations, spanning multiple complainants and a period of several years, are undeniably grave and warrant thorough investigation. At the same time, the report underscores that FIRs represent claims to be tested, not conclusions, and must be evaluated through due process.

What the report does not find, however, is equally significant. It notes that there is, at present, no conclusive material establishing the existence of any organised or systematic religious conversion network—a claim that has nevertheless come to dominate media and political narratives. Terms such as “corporate jihad,” widely used in television debates and public commentary, are identified as originating not from the FIRs or the investigation, but from interpretation and amplification.

The report also documents the trajectory of the investigation itself. A Special Investigation Team has been constituted, multiple arrests have been made, and police have examined each complaint individually. Even the involvement of agencies such as the ATS or NIA, it notes, has been framed as precautionary rather than confirmatory. Crucially, authorities have not, at this stage, substantiated claims of a coordinated or externally funded operation, despite the prominence of such assertions in public discourse.

At the same time, the report does not minimise the allegations made by complainants. It records accounts that point to a hostile work environment, possible targeting of employees, and a lack of effective institutional response. This is juxtaposed with the company’s position that no formal complaints were received through internal POSH mechanisms prior to the FIRs, highlighting a potential gap between lived experiences and formal reporting structures. Whether this reflects under-reporting, institutional failure, or both remains a key question.

A particularly striking aspect of the report is its focus on how individuals have been portrayed in the public sphere. It notes that Nida Khan has repeatedly been described as the “mastermind” of the case and as an HR official with significant authority—claims that are not consistently supported by the FIRs or company records. In fact, available information indicates that she held a non-managerial role, raising concerns about how her position and involvement have been reshaped to fit a broader narrative.

More broadly, the report highlights the role of media ecosystems—particularly television debates and social media—in amplifying unverified claims, including assertions of international links, funding networks, and coordinated targeting. It identifies a dual media landscape, where factual reporting based on police statements coexists with speculative and often hyperbolic commentary, creating confusion and polarisation.

The report ultimately calls for a return to evidence-based investigation and responsible public discourse. It urges authorities to clearly distinguish between criminal allegations and unverified labels, recommends closer scrutiny of workplace grievance mechanisms, and cautions political and media actors against communalising the issue. Its core message is straightforward but significant: that the integrity of the investigation—and the possibility of justice—depends on maintaining a clear boundary between what is being investigated and what is being imagined.

Voices of Dissent and Solidarity: A counter-current emerges

Amid the dominant narrative that has framed the case in sharply communal terms, a quieter but significant counter-current has begun to emerge—one that calls for restraint, due process, and a return to facts. Across social media platforms, independent commentators, academics, and civil society voices have expressed concern not only about the allegations themselves, but about the manner in which the case has been publicly framed.

One such intervention came from Sumathi, whose widely circulated post reflected a tone markedly different from the prevailing discourse. Addressing Nida Khan directly, she wrote from the standpoint of shared humanity rather than communal identity, expressing remorse for the suffering faced and emphasising that fear and isolation are not burdens any individual should be made to carry. The post underscored a key point often missing in louder debates—that regardless of the outcome of the investigation, the dignity and rights of individuals must remain central.

Dear Nida Khan,

As an Indian Hindu woman, I lower my head in deep remorse for the suffering you have faced. Such pain cannot be confined to one faith; it resonates within the shared conscience of us all. When a woman is forced to carry fear along with the life she nurtures, it… https://t.co/j8cMhy4Pmz

— Prof Sumathi (@ProfSumathi) April 19, 2026

Similar sentiments have been echoed by other users and commentators who have questioned the speed with which the case was communalised. Some have pointed out inconsistencies in media reporting, others have highlighted the lack of verified evidence for sweeping claims, and many have simply urged that the investigation be allowed to proceed without prejudice. These voices do not deny the seriousness of the allegations; rather, they resist their transformation into a broader indictment of an entire community.

Nida Khan, 26, is pregnant, is in Mumbai, as per her family.

She has been witch hunted as mastermind of running religious conversion racket at TCS bpo in Nashik by many media houses.

TCS clarified she was working as a tellecaller n not in any leadership role to have influence…

— Varsha Torgalkar (@varshasuman) April 18, 2026

This emerging strand of solidarity is important for what it represents. It signals that even within a highly polarised media environment, there remains space—however limited—for empathetic engagement, critical questioning, and a refusal to collapse individual cases into communal narratives.

What Is at Stake: Justice, truth, and public harm

The stakes in this case are both immediate and far-reaching. If the allegations are substantiated, the victims are entitled to justice, and the accused must be held accountable in accordance with the law. Institutions must also answer for any failures that allowed such conduct to occur.

At the same time, the communalisation of the case carries its own risks. When narratives outpace evidence, investigations can be distorted by public pressure, due process may be compromised, and entire communities may be subjected to collective suspicion.

Perhaps most importantly, the pursuit of justice itself may be undermined. When cases are reframed through communal lenses, the focus shifts away from evidence and accountability and towards identity and ideology.

Conclusion: The danger of stories that outrun evidence

The TCS Nashik case remains under investigation. The facts are still being established, and the outcome is yet to be determined. Yet, in the public sphere, a conclusion has already been constructed—one that extends far beyond the evidence currently available.

This is the central danger. When allegations are transformed into narratives, and narratives into communal truths, the space for careful, evidence-based inquiry begins to shrink. In such an environment, justice is no longer the outcome of a process; it becomes collateral damage.

There is no contradiction in insisting that serious allegations be investigated thoroughly while also rejecting their communalisation. On the contrary, both are necessary.

Because without accuracy, there can be no accountability. And without accountability, there can be no justice.

Related:

Allahabad High Court flags surge in “false” conversion firs, seeks accountability from UP government

Censorship and the Drumbeats of Hate: Mapping the state of free speech ahead of the 2026 polls

Maharashtra’s Anti-Conversion Bill: Legislating suspicion in the name of “love jihad”

The post From FIRs to “Corporate Jihad”: How the TCS Nashik case was transformed from an investigation into a communal narrative appeared first on SabrangIndia.