Indian Muslims are living their most horrible yet defining moment in post-Partition history: doomed if they don’t resist the threat to their existence and damned if they assert their identity in the grotesque secular-Hindutva political chessboard. Given the trajectory of events in past six years, we can say ‘Allah o Akbar’ is to the Indian State what philosophy, centuries ago, was to Catholic Europe—a blasphemy! Being Muslim in India is a blasphemy for which one could be put to death with impunity.

Philosophy eventually acquired the place of the white moon, second only to the shining sun, and came to shape modern Europe’s destiny. Will the white moon rise over Muslims or will they be consumed by the darkness India has descended into? Well, if the iconic images of Jamia Millia Islamia’s protesting female Muslim students and their incisive clarity on the subversion of Muslim politics in the post-colonial Indian imagination conveys anything, this is indeed the beginning of a new dawn.

The brutal state aggression on students of Jamia...