Anger in India as province scraps Friday prayer break for Muslim lawmakers

The provincial government of an Indian state has scrapped a two-hour Friday prayer break for Muslim lawmakers, kicking off a controversy that has echoed in the corridors of power in the country’s federal government in New Delhi.

The change in Assam – a north-eastern state close to Bangladesh and China – breaks an 87-year-old tradition in the Assam Legislative Assembly and was ostensibly done to discard a “colonial practice” that allegedly divided society along religious lines.

However, the move seems to have deepened the communal divide in the Hindu-majority—but constitutionally secular—country that’s home to the largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan.

“The two-hour break is a time-honoured tradition of the Assam assembly. All that the ruling alliance has demonstrated by scrapping the provision is their anti-Muslim bias,” says Ashraful Hussain, a regional lawmaker from the opposition All India United Democratic Front—the third-largest party backed mostly by Muslim voters in Assam.

Speaking to TRT World, Hussain said Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma wants to achieve a two-fold objective by stirring up this controversy: to curry favour with the right-wing nationalist Hindus who now dominate politics at the state and central levels and to put Muslims in their place by using majoritarian tactics.

“Muslims will say their prayers, break or no break. The extremists just want to harass Muslims,” he says.

Roughly 14.2 percent of the 1.4 billion Indians are Muslims. Human rights groups have accused the Modi government of advocating “hatred and violence” against the 200 million-plus Muslim population, thus altering the secular character of India.

Supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power at the central level since 2014, are accused of committing hate crimes against Muslims like punitive demolitions of their homes and places of worship.

Analysts say Muslims are often otherised in the world’s most populous country, sometimes as “inauthentic Indians” who are either the descendants of invaders from centuries ago or misguided converts who should embrace their Hindu past to reclaim their full status as citizens.

In 2023, research house India Hate Lab (IHL) recorded 668 hate speech events targeting Muslims. Three of every four such incidents took place in BJP-ruled states, such as Assam.

Assam is among a handful of Indian states with a relatively high Muslim population. Estimates show roughly 40 percent of Assam’s population is Muslim—a figure that chief minister Sarma has used to create alarm among his supporters that Assam is turning into a “Muslim-majority state”.

Only 31 legislators in the 126-member Assam Assembly are Muslim.

The Assam chief minister was among the three BJP leaders whom the hate-speech watchdog IHL held responsible for delivering the highest number of hate speeches in 2023.

Sarma weaponises Indian history and uses his “bully pulpit” to target Muslims frequently, the watchdog said.

Sarma frequently insinuates in his speeches that Muslims are “outsiders” as he boasts about closing down Islamic seminaries and demolishing Muslim-owned properties in Assam.

Incidentally, Sarma was once a member of the secular Congress party but switched sides to join Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalistic BJP ahead of the 2016 state elections.

Speaking to TRT World, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen spokesperson Waris Pathan said the scrapping of the Friday prayer break is part of the ongoing “war on Muslims” by the Hindu nationalist BJP.

“They believe in the politics of hate. They hate our clothing, they hate our food, they hate our seminaries, they hate our namaz, they hate our existence,” says Pathan, whose political party receives support mostly from Muslim and low-caste Hindu Dalit populations in a handful of states across India.

The BJP practises the politics of “Hindu appeasement” by pushing Muslims up against the wall, he adds.

“What they’ve done is unconstitutional. The right to practise one’s religion is part of the constitution. It’s sheer harassment at the hands of the majority.”

Meanwhile, at least two BJP-allied political parties—Janata Dal-United (JDU) and Lok Janshakti Party—have voiced their disagreement with the decision to cancel the Friday prayer break, saying the Assam chief minister should instead focus on serious issues like poverty alleviation.

“The decision… is against the core principles of the country’s constitution,” said Neeraj Kumar, a leader of JDU, whose support is crucial for the survival of Modi’s coalition government.

BJP spokesperson Ajay Alok welcomed the Assam government's decision, saying it was “made with everyone’s agreement” in the legislature.

“To those creating a ruckus over this issue, I want to ask one simple question. Where in the constitution is it written that a two-hour break should be given for namaz on Fridays? Nowhere.”