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By:

Abhiram Ghadyalpatil

10 May 2026 at 12:01:04 pm

Can Muslims Reimagine the BJP?

As the BJP expands its political dominance, Indian Muslims need to rethink old electoral assumptions in engaging with the BJP. It is fascinating to read Arvind Singh’s ‘India’s Rogue Historians: How They Fought Hindus at Ayodhya & Lost’ (Redux Publications) in the context of the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s recent Bhojshala judgment. Singh, in his 830-page tome, explains how India’s Muslims, persuaded by the cohort of Marxist historians, squandered every opportunity to reconcile with the Hindu...

Can Muslims Reimagine the BJP?

As the BJP expands its political dominance, Indian Muslims need to rethink old electoral assumptions in engaging with the BJP. It is fascinating to read Arvind Singh’s ‘India’s Rogue Historians: How They Fought Hindus at Ayodhya & Lost’ (Redux Publications) in the context of the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s recent Bhojshala judgment. Singh, in his 830-page tome, explains how India’s Muslims, persuaded by the cohort of Marxist historians, squandered every opportunity to reconcile with the Hindu side’s religious, historical, and legal claim over Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. In November 2019, when the Supreme Court (SC) awarded the entire site to the Hindus to build the temple to Lord Ram, it only built on a series of legal interventions including the 1994 SC judgment which ruled that “a mosque is not an essential part of the practice of the religion of Islam”. Singh writes that right from 1858 when the then caretaker of the mosque filed the first complaint seeking an order restraining Hindus from praying inside the ‘mosque’ which the Muslim complainant himself mentioned as ‘janmasthan’, Ayodhya presented innumerable opportunities to the Muslims to accept the religious, historical, archaeological, and legal superiority of the Hindu claim over the site. Throughout the legal trajectory of the Ayodhya case post-independence, India’s ‘eminent historians’ took it upon themselves to represent the Muslim side and effectively stopped them from reaching any legal or out-of-court settlement, reconciliation, or just a pragmatic acknowledgement of the merit in the Hindu side’s claim which the SC upheld in 2019. Rogue Historians Singh’s account is an instructive read about the Hindu side’s nearly 500-year old struggle to reclaim Ayodhya, particularly the post-independence era, against all odds including the narrative war that “India’s rogue historians” fought on behalf of the Muslims but lost eventually, in the context of two recent developments- one, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in West Bengal and Assam elections that has triggered a curiously cynical response that Muslims do not matter any longer to the BJP. Two—and a more direct outcome of the 2019 Ayodhya verdict itself—the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s judgment declaring the Bhojshala complex in MP’s Dhar district a “temple to goddess Saraswati”. The MP HC based its judgment on the 10-points emanating from the Ayodhya verdict. It also ruled that the 1991 Places of Worship Act, widely cited by the entire spectrum of Muslim petitioners to politicians to “secular” parties to the “eminent historians”, did not apply to the Bhojshala temple as it was a “protected monument” under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958, a set of monuments the Places of Worship Act does not apply to. The argument that the Muslims do not matter to the BJP has not been made for the first time nor are we likely to see this reductionist tendency to interpret India die down anytime soon. The BJP has won Bengal and retained Assam with even higher numbers despite the unfavourable demographics in many constituencies in these states. It indeed is a paradigm electoral shift in the sense that the BJP has finally denied the Muslim vote bank, if not the Muslims, the exercise of its veto power. In several state and national elections, the Muslim vote bank, and the fantastically self-styled secular parties who court this vote bank, have exercised this veto power to either deny the BJP a majority or even a shot at power. Assam and West Bengal have changed this and hence the cynical argument that the Muslims (not just Muslim voters) do not matter to the BJP any longer. Cynical Template Why always use this reductionist template which gives just one task to the Muslims - defeat the BJP in elections? Why not ask Muslims to take a chance on the BJP and vote for it? Given the viscerally polarised political atmosphere it probably is a big ask of the Muslims. But in that shines a political opportunity that has the potential to change this very cynical ‘BJP versus Muslims’ template of Indian politics. A suggestion has been made that all non-BJP parties build a coalition of Hindu voters and Muslims to take on the BJP. But in order to build that Hindu-Muslim coalition, won’t these non-BJP parties have to give up at least some, if not all, of their nauseatingly Muslim-appeasing politics? There is absolutely no sign that the non-BJP parties are even thinking on these lines. But the Muslims already have an electoral choice in the BJP. Like any other successful political party in a democracy, the BJP caters to its constituency, which effectively is the Hindu constituency. With West Bengal and Assam, the BJP’s Hindu consolidation is at its peak. So, there is no electoral incentive for the BJP at least in near future to change this Hindu maximisation matrix. But there is an incentive for the Muslims to consider the BJP as an option- it has the potential to make them stakeholders in BJP’s reign and perhaps incentivise the BJP to speak to the Muslims without appeasement. Can the Indian Muslims be politically bold and creative to take a bet on the BJP? A large part of the answer lies in the Bhojshala judgment. A court has just pronounced the structure as a temple to Saraswati based on the solid archaeological, historical, and religious evidence. The Muslim clergy and politicians have reacted exactly in the same manner they did to the Ayodhya ruling. Seven years after the epic Ayodhya judgment, a splendid Ram Mandir stands on the site taking nothing away from the Indian Muslims. Can the Indian Muslims distinguish themselves from their clergy and political leadership this time around and revisit some of their positions in an India that looks vastly different from what it did in 1992 or even 2019? (The author is a senior journalist and Executive Director of Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini. Views personal.)

Beyond Cookies and Ice Cream: Why India Must Rethink Its Start-up Ambitions

India’s start-up dream will remain stunted unless it learns to bet on the improbable.

In a thought-provoking address at a recent start-up event, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal offered a candid diagnosis of the Indian start-up ecosystem. Comparing it with China’s, he questioned the overwhelming focus of Indian ventures on food delivery, gaming, celebrity-driven consumer apps, and other low-risk, low-tech business models. Goyal’s remarks resonated with many, not because they were entirely novel, but because they articulated an uncomfortable truth: India’s start-up ecosystem, while the third-largest in the world, is yet to mature into a serious force in deep technology or innovation-driven enterprise.


At the core of this concern lies the stark contrast with China. While Indian start-ups proliferate in service sectors, Chinese start-ups have made major strides in artificial intelligence, electric mobility, semiconductors, and smart manufacturing. They have done so by combining state support, private risk capital, and a strong culture of long-horizon innovation. China’s boldness in taking on ambitious, capital-intensive, and long-gestation projects has led to global players like DJI (drones), BYD (electric vehicles), and SenseTime (AI), some of which now rival American and European firms. Indian start-ups, by contrast, are rarely associated with such frontier domains.


Part of this imbalance stems from the risk appetite - or the lack thereof - among investors in India. Venture capital in India is often a misnomer; there is little ‘venture’ in venture capital when the preference is for safer, faster-return models. Sectors such as fintech, edtech, and e-commerce dominate funding flows, while genuine deep tech ventures in robotics, space, biotech, quantum computing or new materials remain starved of serious financial backing. A study by NASSCOM and Zinnov in 2022 found that fewer than 500 Indian start-ups (less than 2 percent of the total) qualify as true deep tech ventures. Of these, an even smaller number receive follow-on funding beyond seed stage.


The problem is compounded by the relatively shallow pool of capital made available by government schemes. While well-intentioned, the typical funding allocation of Rs. 25–50 lakh for start-ups is hardly sufficient for meaningful deep tech work. Developing a new semiconductor process, building a prototype of a biomedical device, or scaling an industrial AI solution often requires investments upwards of Rs. 5–10 crore just in early development. Moreover, the lack of continuity in public funding and bureaucratic delays further discourage high-risk, high-impact entrepreneurship. A serious start-up in quantum cryptography or advanced therapeutics cannot be built on frugality alone; it requires large, patient capital and institutional support over several years.


By contrast, countries that have taken deep tech seriously, such as the US, Israel, Germany, and now China, have put in place dedicated mechanisms to de-risk investment in frontier technologies. These include defence and space contracts, dual-use technology procurement programs, translational research parks, and matching funds that lower the risk for private investors. Crucially, they also have a venture capital culture that recognizes that failure is part of the game, and that the potential upside from a single breakthrough often justifies funding ten failed attempts.


India must learn from these models and create an ecosystem that encourages true innovation rather than low-risk replication. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and the emergence of global SaaS firms like Zoho and Freshworks are often cited as success stories, and rightly so. But they are not enough. To move beyond a service economy and become a global player in science and technology, India needs to build, not just scale. That means rethinking how we fund innovation at every stage, from seed to scale-up, and creating incentives for private investors to co-invest in moonshot projects.


This also calls for a cultural shift. Founders, investors, and policymakers must shed the obsession with early returns, vanity metrics, and unicorn valuations. What India needs are not just more unicorns, but more workhorses - start-ups that will solve hard problems in climate resilience, food security, space technology, medical diagnostics and materials science. Start-ups that will take a decade to mature but will redefine entire industries when they do.


Piyush Goyal’s comments, far from being a criticism, should be seen as a call to action. If Indian venture capitalists do not embrace risk, they forfeit the very principle of venture investing. If public funding continues to treat deep tech like a small business initiative, it risks underutilizing some of India’s finest scientific talent.


And if India continues to celebrate start-ups that merely resell foreign ideas with a local twist, it risks missing its opportunity to lead the world in original innovation.


The question, then, is not whether India can produce the next Google or Tesla. It is whether the system has the courage to support those who try. In the end, great ideas need more than applause - they need conviction, capital and the patience to let science take its course.

(The author is the former Director of Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, and a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Views are personal)

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