In today’s India, hatred is not always rooted in knowledge — it’s often rooted in confusion. A strange cocktail of inherited biases, WhatsApp forwards, political rhetoric, and historical wounds has led many Indian Hindus to passionately despise something — but what exactly that “something” is, remains worryingly vague.
Ask a Hindu who rails against Muslims: “Whom exactly do you hate?” The answers vary, and none are fully formed.
Is it the Indian Muslim — your fellow citizen, your co-passenger in the crowded train, the man who sells you vegetables, the woman who teaches your kids Urdu, the friend who says “Salam” instead of “Namaste”? Is it that Muslim you fear?
Or is it the distant Muslim — the one who lives in the tax-free, oil-rich Gulf countries, who funds mosques and wears white robes? Because oddly enough, that same Muslim also gives employment to lakhs of Indian Hindus. From Kerala to Uttar Pradesh, entire families thrive because someone in their family is working in Qatar or Saudi Arabia.
Or is the anger aimed at Prophet Mohammed — a figure most Hindus have never read about, never studied, and mostly know through caricature, controversy, or condemnation? They hate him not through knowledge, but through third-hand retellings, usually designed to provoke.
Or is it Islam itself — a 1,400-year-old religious tradition that they claim is incompatible with peace, without once reading the Quran, or understanding Islamic law, jurisprudence, mysticism, or sectarian diversity?
This confusion isn’t harmless. It leads to a convenient dehumanisation — where any mention of the word “Muslim” activates a trigger response: suspicion, rage, or mockery. The target becomes an amorphous “them” — undefined, yet dangerous. A “them” that lives simultaneously in your country and in your head. A “them” who, in many cases, never did anything to you personally, yet is somehow responsible for your anxiety, your joblessness, your moral panic, your feeling of being under siege.
It’s easier to hate what you don’t understand — because ignorance creates room for imagination. And imagination, when fuelled by fear, becomes fantasy. You start believing that the Muslim man in your neighbourhood is part of a global jihadist network, that your classmate is doing “love jihad,” that halal certification is economic terrorism, and that 14% of the population is somehow about to outbreed 80% and “take over.”
The absurdity would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.
And yet, beneath this fog of resentment lies another question: Where does this hate really come from?
Is it history — the memories of invasions, the Mughal Empire, the Partition scars? But that’s convenient historical cherry-picking. Nobody seems to hate the British with the same intensity — despite their colonisation, looting, and cultural destruction. You don’t hear cries of “Churchill ki aulad” in the streets.
Or is it politics — a hate manufactured to consolidate Hindu vote banks, weaponised through selective outrage, amplified on social media? If so, then we are not even hating out of conviction, but out of programming.
Or perhaps the hate is a mask — hiding deeper insecurities. A fear of modernity, of identity crisis, of socio-economic decline, of emasculation, of loneliness, of spiritual hollowness. And like all unresolved fears, it finds a scapegoat.
Let’s not pretend Indian Hindus have understood Islam. Most have never read a line of the Quran in translation. Nor have they engaged in theological debates, or listened to serious Islamic scholars. Most of what passes off as “understanding Islam” is simply commentary by anti-Muslim influencers on YouTube.
So what we’re left with is performative rage — loud, passionate, shallow. A rage that burns flags, breaks shops, trolls stand-up comics, but doesn’t read books. A rage that boycotts biryani stalls during festivals, while sipping chai sold by Abdul in the corner. A rage that demands that Muslims “go to Pakistan,” while happily flying to Dubai for shopping and Haj subsidy loopholes.
This isn’t just about Muslims. It’s about the failure of critical thinking. About how easily hatred can be manufactured when we are too lazy to think, too scared to ask questions, and too addicted to belonging to a herd.
And so we return to the original question: Whom do you hate, really?
Your neighbour? The Prophet? The global Muslim? Or your own ignorance?
Because until that confusion is resolved, India will remain a nation divided not by religion — but by clarity.