The phrase “Ghazwa-e-Hind” has stayed in India’s public conversation for decades. It shows up in extremist pamphlets, sermon clips, terror recruitment videos and, more recently, in social media reels that treat the slogan as a prophecy predicting an Islamic military victory in India. The term has taken on a life of its own, detached from the technical scholarship that determines whether such a claim even exists in Islamic tradition.
Once the slogan is separated from its political packaging and examined linguistically, scripturally and historically, the foundations look noticeably thin. In Hadith literature, the word “Ghazwa” has a clear and restricted meaning. It refers specifically to battles personally led by Prophet Muhammad. Military expeditions that happened without his direct participation are categorised separately, as “Sirayah”.
Islamic belief across sects maintains that the Prophet completed his earthly life and will not return to lead future armies. On linguistic and theological principles alone, therefore, describing any future conflict as a Ghazwa contradicts how the word is historically and theologically used.
Ghazwa-e-Hind: Scriptural grounding is thin
The scriptural support for the slogan typically rests on two narrations linked to Abu Huraira and Thawban, the Prophet’s companions. Both appear outside the most critically authenticated canonical Hadith compilations and are widely graded by major Hadith specialists as ”weak” due to issues in narrator reliability, chain continuity, and interpretive overreach. For example, one report often cited is found in Sunan al-Nasa’i al-Kubra and Musnad Ahmad, transmitted from Abu Huraira, mentioning an expedition towards al-Hind and al-Sind with promised reward in the hereafter; another is a narration from Thawban in works such as al-Tabarani’s al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir, which speaks of armies sent to India, whose transmitters and chains have been graded as weak or at best disputed by Hadith critics.
The broader historical frame of Hadith criticism also signals why scholars caution against turning these marginal reports into certainties. In early Islam, nearly 700,000 narrations circulated across learning centres and only about 7,000 passed the strictest isnad (chain verification) and matan (content reliability) filters to enter Sahih Bukhari, the most rigorously verified Sunni compilation. The narrations associated with Ghazwa-e-Hind sit far outside this tier of authentication.
What stands out even more clearly than the weakness of the texts is the silence around them for most of Islamic intellectual history. Major early historians, jurists, Hadith commentators and Indian archivists of prophetic material did not cite the phrase or treat these narrations as doctrinal belief, legal theory or political forecast.
Indian Hadith scholars such as Abdul Haq Muhaddis Dehlavi (1551-1642), Shah Waliullah Dehlavi (1703-1762), and his son Shah Abdul Aziz Dehlavi (1746-1824) — all of whom dealt extensively with prophetic narrations — did not develop any doctrine around the so-called Ghazwa-e-Hind. They documented large corpora of narrations, including prophecies about lands, rulers and wars, yet never framed this as a civilisational prediction or religious mandate. Sufi saints who arrived in the subcontinent through trade routes or missionary networks in coastal India, Gujarat, and Sindh also never referenced the phrase as an authorisation for conquest.
If a prophecy of such dramatic political consequence existed authentically in scripture, it is unlikely that Muslim scholarship, Indian Hadith compilers and theological discourse would have overlooked it for 13 centuries. The slogan thrives not on classical endorsement but on modern repetition.
Also read: Everyone misinterprets Ghazwa-e-Hind, but a Jamiat scholar explains what it really means
How ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ mutated politically
The phrase gained its current volume during a political moment when religious vocabulary became a vehicle for state-facing sentiment rather than juristic theology. In South Asian history, military conflicts, territorial disputes and security narratives across borders were repeatedly explained through ideological or theological framings by competing political actors.
Afghanistan’s Cold War conflict in the 1980s accelerated even broader reconceptualisation of Jihad. Thinkers such as Syed Abul Ala Maududi and Sayyid Qutb framed Jihad mainly as political revolution and confrontation. Classical Islamic juristic literature, however, preserved Jihad firstly as spiritual striving and self-reform and secondly as defensive resistance in circumstances of documented oppression.
Even during ideological reframing, mainstream Hadith experts did not elevate the Ghazwa-e-Hind reports to a level that could shape doctrine, holy-war mandate or political prediction. Its disproportionate prominence is better explained by strategic romanticisation of militancy, mass media amplification and grievance messaging — not traditional Hadith validation.
The long-term social consequences have been sharper than the scriptural foundations that were meant to justify the slogan. When unverifiable ideas become political theology by proxy, the slogan invites generalisation into public psychology. Most Indian Muslims consider their faith compatible with constitutional loyalty and see their civic identity as separate from conquest mythology. Yet a slogan built on disputed reports creates an environment where questions target citizenship, not sources.
What Indian Muslims’ response should be
Indian Muslims frequently face broad assumptions inferred from images, clips or messaging produced by foreign militant actors. These assumptions do not come from open access theological reading or Indian Hadith scholarship but from symbolic impressions made by global conflict imagery. It puts Indian Muslims between a politics-driven accusation loop on one side and recruitment narratives on the other. Neither extreme reflects everyday Indian Muslim aspirations for education, employment, mobility, religious expression, economic security and stable civic identity in a democracy.
A democratic state depends on critical engagement with claims, regardless of the direction they come from. Indian public conversation deserves academic rigour, interpretive honesty and a clear separation of theology from recruitment myth and security-romanticism. The damage is not within any one political ideology, but in the elevation of speculation into public identity and doctrine without authentication.
The most effective response to harmful slogans is not counter-slogans, but scholarly clarity and editorial responsibility with archival honesty. Debate is not the problem; misplaced certainty is. A modern state that can protect dignity and rights requires scepticism towards unverifiable scriptural marching orders. The strongest civic loyalty comes not through ideological myth or theological echoes but through rights, opportunity, intellectual transparency, and education.
Weak narrations can remain topics of academic interest, but civic trust and public theology must be built on verifiable sources, secure rights and constitutional clarity if Indian Muslims are to escape the accusation loop that slogans like “Ghazwa-e-Hind” create.
Dr Hafeezur Rahman is an author and Islamic scholar. He serves as Convenor of the Khusro Foundation, tweets @DrHafeezPasha, and can be reached via email hafeezpasha123@gmail.com. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)