India as Dar Ul Harb.
(Chapter 9)
Modern Jihad has another face. Flag of India is always under challenge. Often disputes ensue between the people carrying flag of India and Muslims challenging the display of flags. There are many instances of riots which even extended to murder of Chandan Gupta in 2018.
The Kasganj Violence
On January 26, 2018, Republic Day, a group of young men associated with ABVP and other Hindu organisations took out a Tiranga Yatra, a tricolour bike rally, through Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh. When the procession entered a Muslim-majority locality, clashes broke out. Stones were pelted, the national flag was allegedly snatched, and gunfire occurred. Shops were burnt and vehicles damaged.
Chandan Gupta, a 22-year-old commerce student and ABVP activist, was shot dead at point-blank range during the violence. Another person, Naushad, was also wounded by a bullet. The prime accused in the shooting was Saleem Javed, along with a mob of others.
The NIA investigated the case. In January 2025, a special NIA court in Lucknow convicted 28 persons for murder, rioting, and related offences. On January 3, 2025, Additional District and Sessions Judge Vivekanand Sharan Tripathi sentenced all 28 convicts to life imprisonment along with fines. The judge described the violence as a premeditated conspiracy.
The judgment drew attention beyond the conviction itself. The court observed that multiple NGOs, both Indian and foreign-linked, had provided very expensive legal aid to the accused. Some lawyers reportedly charged ₹5 lakh or more per hearing, with total legal expenses running into crores of rupees. The judge explicitly questioned what interest these NGOs had in a local communal clash in Kasganj a small but remote town in northern India.
The organisations paying legal cost included Citizens for Justice and Peace, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Rihai Manch, and United Against Hate. Foreign-linked bodies named included the Alliance for Justice and Accountability based in New York, the Indian American Muslim Council based in Washington DC, and the South Asia Solidarity Group based in London.
The court directed the Union Home Secretary and the Bar Council of India to formally inquire into the funding sources of these NGOs, their objectives, and their pattern of providing high-cost legal defence in similar cases. The judge noted that providing legal aid is the state’s duty. When NGOs step in with costly lawyers, he observed, it raises suspicions of ulterior motives and possible interference in the judicial process.
The Flag and the Flashpoint
The Indian national flag has repeatedly become a point of violent conflict when processions or displays pass through certain localities. The pattern is consistent: a Tiranga Yatra or flag march enters a Muslim-majority area, tensions rise, and stone-pelting or worse follows. The Kasganj murder of 2018 is the deadliest example, but it is not the only one.
Four years later, in May 2022, a different but structurally similar dispute erupted in Jaipur. Hindus had placed a saffron flag on a roundabout in a mixed locality during Parshuram Jayanti. Muslims allegedly removed it. Hindus replaced it. On Eid, an attempt was made again to remove the saffron flag. The dispute escalated into stone-pelting, firebombs, and attacks on police. Authorities eventually removed the saffron flag and hoisted the Tricolour to restore order. Several people were injured.
Also in 2022, during the protests that followed the Nupur Sharma controversy, an incident in Mehboobnagar, Telangana took a different form. Protesters replaced the Ashok Chakra on a national flag with the Kalma, an Islamic verse, and waved the altered flag outside a mosque. Police registered cases under the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971.
After the communal clashes in Jahangirpuri, Delhi in April 2022, Hindu and Muslim residents jointly organised a Tiranga Yatra to signal reconciliation. Many homes in the Muslim-majority locality also hoisted the national flag. It stood as a deliberate counterpoint to the violence.
The broader pattern repeats most visibly on Republic Day and Independence Day. In towns across Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, flag marches have faced opposition, stone-pelting, or attempts at obstruction when routes pass through Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods. Objections are sometimes about the route itself and sometimes about accompanying slogans, particularly “Jai Shri Ram,” which organisers often include and which residents of those areas often perceive as a provocation. Police responses have generally involved rerouting processions or removing disputed elements before violence can escalate.
During the CAA protests of 2019 and 2020, many Muslim demonstrators at Shaheen Bagh and elsewhere prominently displayed the Tricolour to assert their patriotism and contest the narrative that they were anti-national. At the same time, isolated incidents of flag desecration or burning were reported at the fringes of some protests, though these remained far less common than the route-based clashes during flag marches.
The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 protects the flag, and courts have acted when it is disrespected or when processions are violently obstructed. The recurring difficulty is that the law protects the right to march and the right of the flag to be respected, but it cannot by itself resolve the underlying territorial and communal tensions that turn a national symbol into a cause of conflict.
The Dar ul-Harb and Dar ul-Islam Division
Medieval Islamic jurists divided the world into two zones. Dar ul-Islam, meaning “abode of Islam,” referred to territories governed by Islamic law. Dar ul-Harb, meaning “abode of war,” referred to territories outside that governance. A third category, Dar ul-Ahd or “abode of treaty,” was added by some scholars to cover territories with peace agreements.
This was a political and legal framework developed by jurists like Abu Hanifa and Al-Shafi’i between the 8th and 10th centuries. It was designed to guide Muslim rulers on questions of war, taxation, citizenship, and diplomatic relations. It was never universally agreed upon even within classical scholarship.
Does It Explain the Flag Conflicts?
Partially, but the connection is indirect. The framework does carry an implication that non-Muslim sovereign authority is inherently provisional or illegitimate from a strict classical reading. A national flag representing a secular Hindu-majority state could, under an extremist reading, symbolise Dar ul-Harb governance over a Muslim population.
However, most mainstream Islamic scholars today, including in India, reject this binary as a medieval political construct with no binding religious force today. The Deobandi, Barelvi, and most other Indian traditions have long accepted Indian citizenship and constitutional authority.
Actual Cause of Conflicts
The flag incidents are better explained by a mix of factors. Territorial identity plays a large role. Dense urban neighbourhoods develop strong local identities, and a procession with chants is perceived as an assertion of dominance over that space. Political mobilisation on both sides, local power dynamics, and a perception of victim-hood compound this.
The Dar ul-Harb concept becomes relevant mainly when hardline or radicalised elements are involved. The “Sar Tan Se Juda” cases and the Chhangur Baba network showed explicit ideological framing.
Attributing all Muslim resistance to a single theological doctrine would be an oversimplification. Its roots, however, cannot be denied.
Analysis
The Dar ul-Harb framework does create a specific problem for Muslim integration into non-Muslim sovereign states. It is not the only factor, but it is a foundational one. It shapes how some Muslims conceptualise loyalty, sovereignty, and legitimacy of non-Islamic authority.
Khadduri (see reference below) himself argues that in classical Islamic jurisprudence, the state of war with Dar ul-Harb was the default legal condition. Peace was the exception, permitted only through temporary truces, not permanent treaties.
In the Indian context this has a specific history. The original opposition to the Indian national flag among some groups was not accidental. The Muslim League opposed the Tricolour before partition. This opposition peaked during flag adoption debates (e.g., 1931 Karachi Congress session), where Jinnah walked out over the tricolour. Some clerics declared that Muslims could not salute a flag bearing Hindu symbols. That theological and political resistance has a documented lineage.
The court’s observation that foreign-linked bodies from New York, Washington DC and London funded crores of rupees in legal defence for a Muslim accused in a murder case is revealing. It is a Dar ul-Harb intervention in financial form. Those NGOs are treating India as contested territory requiring external intervention.
The Result
The classical framework produces a spectrum of responses. At one end is quiet non-participation in national life. In the middle is communal separatism, parallel governance, and resistance to integration. At the far end is the explicit radicalisation seen in the “Sar Tan Se Juda” cases and the Chhangur Baba network.
These are not the same thing, but they share a common root assumption: that Islamic identity takes precedence over national identity, and that secular sovereign authority has a lesser or conditional claim on Muslim loyalty.
Why Mainstream Scholars Have Not Fully Resolved This?
The problem is that most mainstream Islamic scholars in India have accepted Indian citizenship in practice while not fully dismantling the theological framework that could justify resistance. That unresolved tension leaves space for hardline interpretations to fill.
Acknowledging this root is not the same as attributing every conflict to it. Both things can be true at once. The time for its resolution is overdue. But would it be possible in an atmosphere where bonding over hatred of non-Muslims on emotional pretexts continues unchallenged. That shall be the subject of next Chapter 10.
References:
- Division of world: https://www.islamiqate.com/3719/classical-hanafi-scholars-define-islam-harb-lands-islam-islam
- Al Shafi’s Kitab al-Umm: https://archive.org/details/KitabalUmm/alom00/
- Majid Khadduri’s War and Peace in the Law of Islam (1955): https://www.scribd.com/document/866929348/Majid-Khadduri-by-War-and-Peace-in-the-Law-of-Islam-z-lib-org
- National Symbol defaced in Kashmir:
- Quest for a national flag: https://flagstamps.blogspot.com/2010/07/quest-for-national-flag-for-india-part.html
- Fracture in concept of nationalism: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/indian-muslims-congress-rss-hindu-muslim-personal-law-board-hindutva-sachar-committee-5125398/
- Modern Jihad in Corporate World (Chapter 1): https://sandeepbhalla.in/modern-jihad-corporate-jihad-for-conversion-to-islam-1/
- Reply to Modern Jihad by a movie (Chapter 2): https://sandeepbhalla.in/dhurandhar-the-revenge-movie-and-its-subtitles-in-the-end/
- Modern Jihad and Terrorism (Chapter 3): https://sandeepbhalla.in/modern-jihad-and-terrorism/
- Modern Jihad through conquest of Humans (Chapter 4): https://sandeepbhalla.in/modern-jihad-victory-through-conquest-of-humans/
- AI and Islam (Chapter 5): sandeepbhalla.in/modern-jihad-ai-training-on-islam-and-jihad/
- Jihad in Gyms (Chapter 6): https://sandeepbhalla.in/modern-jihad-reaches-gyms-five-gyms-thirty-women-one-pattern/
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