Where Sharjeel Imam’s Arguments on Constitutionalism and Secularism Fall Short

Imam’s account of the freedom struggle is reductive, and his assertion that secularism is a trap is unpersuasive.

Sharjeel Imam’s account of the freedom struggle in his interview is reductive, and his assertion that secularism is a trap is unpersuasive.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

(The following article is a rebuttal to the central claims made by Sharjeel Imam in his interview published on 29 September 2026.)

The Constitution does not make civil liberties contingent on a citizen’s political ideology, however repugnant. Nor can speech be criminalised without establishing the requisite legal nexus between it and the violence alleged. Associational proximity cannot substitute for evidence of individual culpability, and the distinction between the core and periphery of an alleged conspiracy cannot, by itself, justify prolonged incarceration.

Sharjeel Imam’s entitlement to bail must be assessed on the applicable legal standards, not the acceptability of his politics. The Indian judiciary’s credibility depends on its willingness to protect liberty even when the accused is politically unpopular.

That, however, is distinct from endorsing Imam’s political worldview.

His interview with The Quint raises serious historical and ideological questions that cannot be evaded merely because he is facing prosecution.

Equally, criticism of his politics cannot excuse silence about the denial of liberty. The challenge is to defend the individual without sanctifying his ideology, and to scrutinise the ideology without legitimising State repression.

#1: A Reductive Reading of India's Freedom Struggle

Sharjeel Imam’s account of the freedom struggle is reductive, often collapsing the history of Partition into a Congress-versus-Muslim League binary while relegating British power to the background. His apparent project is to rehabilitate Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Muhammad Iqbal, presenting the former as a lone figure confronting an overbearing Congress. Yet the British remained central to the negotiations and the political settlement.

Writing about the principal actors between 1939 and 1942, Mukul Kesavan observes, “A re-invented, populist All-India Muslim League, ruthlessly stewarded by Jinnah, stood centre-stage in Indian politics, its claim to represent India’s Muslims increasingly seconded by the Raj.”

This history cannot be reduced to Muslim victimhood and Congress aggression. The problem is not that Jinnah, Iqbal or Syed Abul A'la Maududi should be beyond rehabilitation or criticism. It is that their political ideas must be examined in their entirety.

What did they envisage for non-Muslim minorities? How did they understand intra-Muslim minorities in the territories which formed the state of Pakistan on 14 August 1947, federalism, pluralism and the relationship between religion and political authority? How did their ideas accommodate those who dissented from their preferred conception of the community?

These questions matter not only to historians but also to contemporary Muslims who invoke constitutionalism and secularism across the subcontinent. If these figures are to be reclaimed as political or intellectual resources, their positions on minority rights and democratic citizenship must be confronted rather than selectively remembered.

#2: Where Imam's Secularism Argument Falls Short

Imam’s assertion that secularism is a trap, and his apparent equation of secularism with Hindutva, is similarly unpersuasive.

Shabnum Tejani’s Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950 offers a more historically grounded account of the competing ideas that shaped Indian secularism. Its limitations cannot simply be attributed to an alliance between the Congress and Hindutva.

We must also ask why constitutional secularism did not produce a deeper social and political secularisation, and why personal and community rights have so often remained insulated from robust scrutiny on grounds of gender equality.

Imam’s critique of the Constitution through the Perry Anderson example is valid and important, but limited and selective. For instance, the exclusion of personal law from the definition of “law” under Article 13, raises precisely this problem. The provision’s implications for fundamental-rights scrutiny and gender justice deserve serious examination.

It is not enough to condemn constitutional majoritarianism while overlooking the ways in which constitutional arrangements may accommodate regressive practices within religious communities.

Scholars such as Ian Copland, Pritam Singh, Uday Mehta, Tarunab Khaitan, Pratinav Anil, and Gautam Bhatia have interrogated different aspects of Indian constitutionalism, including its design questions, majoritarian biases, and centralising drift. Imam’s selective engagement with this critical tradition raises a fair question: what, precisely, is original in his account, and what does it leave unexamined?

#3: On Electoral Politics and Muslim Representation

His electoral prescription is equally troubling. Imam suggests that Muslims should contest elections where they have the numbers to win and rely on coalition partners elsewhere. What would happen if electoral politics were organised on the same communal logic by a Hindu majority backed by State power? Would a handful of additional seats compensate for the weakening of cross-community political alliances?

The asymmetry of power between majority and minority communities is real, but that is precisely why electoral strategies must be assessed for their consequences for democratic coalition-building, not merely their immediate arithmetic.

The 1937 elections in the United Provinces demonstrate that electoral representation alone does not guarantee the protection of minority rights.

Ismail Khan and Khaliquzzaman, two Muslim League representatives were elected, yet the Congress formed the government without them, exposing the limits of representation in a communally structured political system. Identity-based politics must therefore be assessed not merely by the seats it secures, but by its ability to negotiate and safeguard the rights of those it claims to represent.

When the pursuit of power takes precedence over the protection of rights, electoral victories risk becoming an empty spectacle.

Contemporary Indian Parliament, where a handful of Muslim MPs from non-NDA parties sit in Opposition, illustrates how minority representation without meaningful influence over government may fail to secure substantive safeguards.

#4: Muslims as a 'Homogeneous' Political Bloc 

The repeated invocation of “we”, “our” and “Qaum” compounds the problem. Imam’s language risks projecting Muslims as a homogeneous political bloc, obscuring disagreements of class, caste, gender, region and ideology. Where are the Pasmanda Muslims in this political imagination? Where is the question of gender justice, including the rights of women within Muslim communities? Who gets to speak for the Qaum, and whose experiences are rendered invisible when a singular political voice claims to represent it?

A politics that invokes collective marginalisation must also confront hierarchies within the community. Otherwise, the language of solidarity may reproduce the exclusions it claims to resist.

The conspicuous absence of Umar Khalid from the interview, and the limited recognition of the non-Muslims who helped organise and sustain the anti-CAA movement, also warrant scrutiny. The movement’s constitutional significance lay partly in its capacity to bring people across religious boundaries together.

To narrate it primarily through a communitarian lens risks appropriating a collective struggle and diminishing the very solidarities that made it politically consequential.

Rebutting Ibn Khaldun Bharati's Critique

Yet Ibn Khaldun Bharati’s critique of Imam is not beyond criticism either. I disagree with his claim that “Global Hindutva is a phantom that poses no challenge to Western civilisation, whereas Global Islam has demographically embedded itself in the West and is open about its intentions to destroy that civilisation”.

This is a sweeping and asymmetrical comparison.

Edward Anderson’s work on Hindu nationalism in the diaspora and the emergence of “Neo-Hindutva” shows how Hindu nationalist ideas and networks have entered diasporic institutions and political milieus.

The Leicester violence of 2022, in which tensions between Hindu and Muslim groups escalated after a cricket match, illustrates the potential consequences for multicultural societies. Anderson described videos circulating on social media of people shouting “Pakistan Murdabad” and chanting “Jai Shri Ram”, followed by retaliatory incidents, including the removal of a flag from a Hindu temple.

Leicester is an illustration, not proof that Hindu nationalism and Islamism are equivalent. Nor should the actions of some individuals be attributed to entire religious communities. But the episode makes it untenable to dismiss global Hindutva as politically inconsequential while treating global Islam as a singular civilisational threat.

Both movements must be examined through evidence, institutional reach, political objectives and actual conduct, without erasing their differences or generalising about their adherents.

This brings us to Bharati’s larger argument, which seems directed less at Imam alone than at the Liberal-Left and its relationship with Muslim political representation. His concern that constitutionalism and liberalism may be invoked selectively to shield regressive ideas deserves engagement.

Those who defend Imam’s liberty must not be expected to endorse his politics. But those who invoke constitutionalism cannot avoid questions about the political ideas they defend, excuse or decline to challenge in the name of solidarity.

If there is a substantive convergence between Imam’s politics and the positions of those defending him, silence cannot indefinitely substitute for explanation. At the same time, silence alone does not establish endorsement, and the views of particular individuals cannot be imputed to Muslims, the Left or liberal democrats as a whole.

Bharati’s own silence on the question of bail raises a parallel concern. It does not invalidate his historical or ideological critique, but it does leave an important question unanswered.

If constitutional liberty is worth defending, it must be defended even for those whose political ideas one finds objectionable. Criticising Imam’s worldview is no substitute for addressing the State’s obligation to justify his incarceration under law. 

Defending Liberty Without Sanctifying Ideology

The harder question, therefore, is whether both sides can accept a consistent standard. Muslims invoking secularism and constitutionalism, along with liberal democrats and the Left, must confront the possibility that these languages can be used to protect illiberal politics.

Bharati, in turn, must apply the same scepticism to Hindu nationalism that he brings to his critique of Islamism and Muslim political mobilisation. Neither historical victimhood nor present political vulnerability should confer immunity from scrutiny.

Fighting for Imam’s individual liberty is one thing; endorsing or remaining strategically silent about his political ideology is another. Equally, exposing the weaknesses in that ideology is one thing; treating his prosecution as unproblematic is another.

Constitutionalism loses credibility when it becomes a language of convenience rather than a principle applied consistently.

The Constitution must protect the liberty of those whose politics we reject. But that protection cannot require silence about the ideas they advance. Nor can the critique of those ideas justify selective blindness to majoritarian power. The task is to defend liberty without sanctifying ideology, and to scrutinise ideology without surrendering liberty.

(Md Zeeshan Ahmad is a Delhi-based lawyer. He has previously written for India Forum, The Leaflet, and LiveLaw. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint does not endorse or is responsible for them.)