In the autumn of 2022, a woman laid out a prayer mat outside the ward of a public hospital in Prayagraj, formerly Allahabad, in Uttar Pradesh. I do not know if the patient in the hospital ward was her husband, her son, her brother or her father. But this we know, that he had been diagnosed with dengue and she was anxious for his life. She silently lowered her head on to the hospital floor, bowed in prayer.
Some people spotted her. They photographed her offering namaz and uploaded the pictures on social media. Outrage quickly stirred, as many clamoured that “it is illegal to offer prayers in public places”. The Chief Medical Officer of the government-run Tej Bahadur Sapru Hospital shared their indignation. “We have issued a strict warning against such activities in the ward, “ he said to reporters. “It is a public place. We have instructed all ward in-charges not to allow such a thing. We told the woman not to do it again, too. We will decide on further action after our probe report is in.”
The police also investigated. Fortunately, they later announced that their inquiry “found that the woman in the video was offering namaz without any wrong intentions, and without obstructing any work or traffic, for quick recovery of the patient. This act does not fall into any category of crime”.
But many others around the country are not so lucky. If you are Muslim in new India, praying is fast becoming a crime. Emblematic of this was a video that surfaced in the spring of 2024 from Inderlok in the national capital. Men had gathered for the Friday prayers at the mosque in Inderlok. The mosque had filled up, so some of the men were praying on the road outside the mosque.
The video shows a policeman of the Delhi Police kicking and beating with a baton, men who were prostrated in prayer. The Congress Rajya Sabha MP Imran Pratapgarhi declared in anguish, “This Delhi Police soldier kicking a person while offering namaz probably does not understand the basic principles of humanity. What is this hatred that is filled in the heart of this soldier?”
In the Lulu Mall in Lucknow, freshly inaugurated by chief minister Adityanath, activists from some Hindutva groups raised a storm when in the summer of 2022 another video surfaced of some men offering namaz in a corner of the mall. The activists noisily interrupted the prayers and countered the Muslim prayers with loud recitations of Hanuman Chalisa.
The Uttar Pradesh Police filed criminal charges against the men who offered namaz under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint), 505 (statements conducive to public mischief) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code. Dozens of policepersons dramatically raided after midnight the home of one of the young men who had offered prayers – a pharmacology student, Rehaan – who they took into custody. They also arrested his two friends Luqmaan and Nomaan, small tea vendors.
The same summer, three men, two from Hyderabad and one from Azamgarh, chose to offer prayers in the mosque in the Taj Mahal in Agra. The police arrested them, and once again charged them with promoting enmity between religious groups under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code.
During Eid in 2022, 1,700 people were charged with criminal offences for offering namaz on the roads outside mosques in three areas of Kanpur without police permission. The complaint was filed by a senior sub-inspector of police. The charges were under sections 186 (obstructing public servant in discharging duties), 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 283 (danger in public way), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint), and 353 (criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), of the Indian Penal Code.
Hindutva activists sometimes violently halted congregational prayers even in mosques. Early in 2022, in the village Mora in Gujarat’s Surat men chanting “Jai Shri Ram” stormed a mosque, disrespectfully wearing their footwear, and drove the devotees out. The Imam of the mosque Aaqib Ansari later recounted to Clarion India what happened. The mob of around 100 men demanded, “Shut down the mosque, namaz won’t be allowed here”. They started throwing out the prayer mats on which the worshippers were sitting. “They did not allow us to offer Juma namaz”, he said, and “namaz could not resume at the mosque ever since. We took our complaint to the local police station. The policemen on duty there tried to play down the offence of the Hindu men…”
On the auspicious day of the Shab-e-Baraat on March 18, 2022, the Delhi Police abruptly, without orders in writing, prevented the weekly congregational prayers in 16 mosques, many of these historic mosques where Muslim believers have offered prayers for hundreds of years.
Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet during the holy month of Ramzan. It is customary to hold Tarawih prayers during which long portions of the Quran are read through the month of Ramzan. Rana Safvi, religious scholar, records that this tradition goes back 17 centuries. The prayers can be offered at home, alone, in a congregation, or at a mosque. The prayers are often offered together because Muslims want to complete a full reading of the Quran during Ramzan. In India, Tarawih prayers have been offered peacefully for generations. People frequently collect in homes, mosques, halls, even cafes for these collective prayers. Yet, especially from 2022, even such gatherings have become fraught with both Hindutva mobs and the police disrupting and preventing such gatherings.
In 2022, the Uttar Pradesh police in Moradabad booked 26 Muslims who had gathered in two private houses for the Tarawih prayers. These 26 persons were charged for “assembling at the house of two locals without any notice and offering prayers” despite the “objections from neighbours belonging to another community”, under Section 505 (2) (making statements conductive to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.
The next year, a Muslim businessman, Zakir Hussain, owner of the Zakir Iron Store, was charged again for praying by the Moradabad police. He had gathered with over a dozen members of his family in a godown that he owns in Moradabad’s Lajpat Nagar, for Tarawih prayers. Suddenly Bajrang Dal men barged in and stridently demanded they terminate their prayers. A group of policepersons arrived ultimately and dispersed the Bajrang Dal members and the gathering were able to complete their prayers that night. But the police directed them to perform Tarawih from then on at the designated religious places or at their own homes.
Hussain argued, “It was our personal arrangement to pray together with my family members and we were offering it within the confines of our own property. This should not be an issue for anyone”. They were surprised further when a few days later, an additional city magistrate served notice on Hussain and nine members of his family under Section 111 of the Criminal Procedure Code, alleging that their offering of prayers could “disrupt peace” in the area. They were made to sign a muchalka (an obligation or bond) of Rs 5 lakh each affirming that they will be responsible if any untoward incident occurs in their area. The notice to them read, “It is apprehensive (sic.) that you might disturb peace and therefore in my opinion there are enough grounds to take action against you.”
Supreme Court advocate Shahrukh Alam aptly described this as a “heckler’s veto”. Now “the very act of reading namaz even inside someone’s own house might provoke people. The very existence (of Muslims) is provoking people”, she said. “Why is this notice served to Zakir Hussain? Who will disrupt peace? The other party will disrupt peace. But even that responsibility is fixed on Hussain. It’s like saying ‘please don’t do something that will make the other person do something wrong’. The blame of violence has shifted from the actual perpetrators to apparently those who cause them to do violence,” observed Alam to Article 14.
Objections by neighbours to Tarawih prayer gatherings (always held without any loudspeakers) grew during the Ramzan of 2023 even in upmarket condominiums in Greater Noida, and Noida, in the Uttar Pradesh part of the National Capital Region. Article 14 reports that on March 24, 2023, in Supertech Ecociti in Noida sector 137, some eight or 10 people from the residential society forcefully stopped the Tarawih prayers that were organised in a small party hall on the first floor of the society.
Police later said that the Tarawih broke the law because Section 144 CrPC, prohibiting the gathering of four or more people, was in force in the district. This is absurd, as advocate Alam explains, “Even when Section 144 is in place, to my mind, it does not apply to qualified public places like a restaurant, mall, or a society. These people had taken permission from the society to read Tarawih. You can’t stop people from gathering at qualified public places. Are you also going to ask people not to eat in a group of more than five at a restaurant?”
A few days later, in Supertech Eco Village-2 in Greater Noida, again residents from the society raised objections to Muslims coming from other societies to offer namaz in a vacant room on the third floor above the commercial market of the society. The Muslims stopped the prayers after this.
Professor of Hindi in Delhi University Apoorvanand recalls incandescently for our divided times that Munshi Premchand, one the most celebrated 20th century writers of the Indian subcontinent, was captivated by the collective prayers by Muslims.
In his evocative description of the congregational namaz of Muslims in his classic story Eidgah, Munshi Premchand writes: “No one bothers about wealth or position here. Everyone is equal in the eyes of Islam. … How beautifully it is managed and organised. Thousands of heads bow together and then rise to their feet together; again, they bow together and rise to their feet together, like thousands of electric bulbs lighting up together and then dimming together. … What an exceptional sight it presents with its collective actions and unending expanse – filling the heart with reverence, pride and inner joy. As if one single thread of brotherhood connects all those souls, creating an unbroken chain.”
The prayers of our Muslim brothers and sisters had filled Munshi Premchand with reverence, pride and joy. Today why have our hearts so narrowed that these stir, instead, in many Hindu hearts, resentment and grievance, and sometimes whip up violence?
Today, when small groups of disaffected people in condominiums object to gatherings of Muslim prayer and succeed in getting these halted, why do a thousand or more residents of the same housing complexes remain silent?
In any hospital in India, it is not uncommon to see anxious relatives praying fervently for the recovery of their loved ones. Many hospitals even have small Hindu shrines. Then how can a hospital manager warn only an ostensibly Muslim woman against praying?
In the country of my childhood, if someone in a crowded train wished to offer namaz, other passengers would respectfully make space for him and take care to stay silent so as to not disturb the prayer. Today, it requires courage to “come out” as a Muslim seeking to pray in a train, and if you do, you risk a rowdy pack of young men provoking you by raucously reciting the Hanuman Chalisa.
If you are Muslim, the act of praying is in constant danger of being treated as a crime. Few voices are being raised to ask by which legal and humanist principle can people praying be charged with the crime of stoking hate against people of other faiths?
Today, why is it that the simple act of Muslim prayer provokes many people into grievance and violence and the police into establishing their criminal culpability?
I can barely recognise the India of today. It has changed beyond recognition from the country I was raised in.
I am grateful to Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi for his research support.
Harsh Mander, justice and peace worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign to counter hate violence with love and solidarity. He teaches at FAU University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Heidelberg University, Germany; Vrije University, Amsterdam; and IIM, Ahmedabad.
