The mob attack on a Muslim family and lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq Saifi at Dadri in December last year along with the Jawaharlal Nehru University sedition cases in early February have shifted the rhetoric and discourse of conceiving the Muslim in India. From the category of “religious minority,” which was passionately argued about throughout the periods of the Constituent Assembly debates, the Muslim question today is being increasingly constituted by “names” and food habit. The implications are far from merely rhetorical or symbolic.
