Every now and then, a familiar script returns to the Indian public sphere, one that turns every institutional action into a communal wound, every investigation into an assault on “all Muslims.” This week, it was Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind president Arshad Madani, who framed the investigation into Al-Falah University after the Delhi terror attack as an injustice against Indian Muslims.
As if accountability is persecution, as if institutions exist only to coddle religious sentiment. And then, almost theatrically, he drags in London and New York—“Muslims can become mayors there, but here they can’t even become vice-chancellors.” It is the kind of argument that sounds powerful in a rally microphone but collapses the moment it is held up to reality, or even to basic honesty.
From sports to courts
What Indian Muslims have achieved and how deeply they have shaped this country is not something that needs a list to defend itself. From science to sports, cinema to bureaucracy, the armed forces to the courts, the community has been stitched into every important field of national life. India has had Muslim presidents, governors, chief ministers, and even chief justices.
These are facts so ordinary and so public that Madani’s comparison to Mamdani abroad collapses under its own weight. But that is precisely the pattern: power-speaking voices never miss a chance to reduce an entire community to a single wounded narrative, because that narrative protects their own authority. The victimhood they manufacture is not for the poorest Muslim, the marginalised Muslim, or the voiceless Muslim—it is for the elite Muslim who fears losing relevance the moment the conversation shifts to real issues, real reform, and real accountability.
I could still understand if Madani had spoken about the socio-economic realities of Muslims, the everyday struggles of Muslim women, the stereotyping that shadows our lives, or the rise in hate speech. But no, his outrage circles back to men like SP leader Azam Khan, people who have held power for decades and are now facing scrutiny. And that, to me, feels like the same old cycle.
A familiar equation: elite discomfort dressed up as community victimhood. I grew up hearing this rhetoric—the idea that Muslims are under threat whenever powerful Muslim men are questioned. Only later did I learn how deeply this narrative harms ordinary Muslims, especially Pasmanda communities. Our issues never make it to the centre of the conversation. Our poverty, our lack of representation, our daily struggles are conveniently forgotten. Because the moment accountability arrives at the door of elite Muslims, the victimhood card is pulled out, and somehow, we are all expected to rally around their power as if our dignity is tied to theirs.
My question to Madani-saab is simple: the representation he suddenly cares so much about—has he ever asked that same question to the Ashraf elite who dominate every Muslim organisation in this country? Has he ever demanded to know why Pasmanda Muslims, who make up nearly 80 per cent of Indian Muslims, have no meaningful representation in bodies created in the name of “the community”? If not, then how exactly does he claim to speak for “all Muslims”? Does he understand that unless the Muslim on the margins, the hashiye ka Muslim, is acknowledged, represented, and given space to articulate their own problems, there will never be a real solution to what he calls “Muslim issues”?
If anything, this kind of messaging does far more damage to Muslim youth than any government policy ever could. It quietly plants the idea that the mainstream will never be theirs, that no matter how hard they study or how sincerely they try, the doors will always remain closed. It kills aspiration before discrimination even gets a chance. And for young people already battling poverty, limited access, and social stigma, this manufactured hopelessness becomes a second prison.
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Slow erosion of confidence
What Madani frames as “protection” is actually a slow erosion of confidence, teaching an entire generation that there is no use dreaming of jobs, universities, or public life because the world is already rigged against them. This is not leadership; this is generational sabotage.
The other tragedy in all this is Madani’s priorities. He seems far more disturbed by the probe into a university than by the far more frightening reality that some of our own children are being radicalised. That should shake every one of us. If institutions don’t investigate, if the community doesn’t introspect, the only people who will pay the price, again and again, are ordinary Indian Muslims caught between terrorism and the backlash it invites. That is what real leadership should worry about, not shielding powerful individuals or painting every lawful inquiry as an “assault” on the community.
Yes, Madani could have argued for fairness, for due process, for the state to act without haste or political pressure because the government carries a double responsibility: to deliver justice to victims and protect national security, while also ensuring it does not fuel the very grievance narratives terrorist groups rely on. That is a legitimate, thoughtful concern. But he did not go there. Instead, his outrage seems reserved only for safeguarding elite interests, not the safety or dignity of the community he claims to speak for.
We deserve better than this recycled helplessness. Our children deserve more than a future scripted by men who mistake their own power for the community’s survival. And the future of Indian Muslims will never be built by those clinging to old fears and inherited grievances—it will be shaped by voices that dare to be honest, that choose accountability over theatrics, and that finally gather the courage to reform from within.
Amana Begam Ansari is a columnist and writer. She runs a weekly YouTube show called ‘India This Week by Amana and Khalid’. She tweets @Amana_Ansari. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)