ABSTRACT
This chapter underscores factors that are not just due to discrimination in opportunities but also due to structural processes embedded in everyday life that altogether mutilate generational and life course dynamics for achieving equal outcome of opportunities by Muslims in India. It employs Johan Galtung's theory that classifies violence along three lines: structural, cultural and direct. This theory provides a framework explaining the interdependence between and functions of structural, cultural and direct violence in achieving a systemic exclusion of a population. The anxiety about the 'dying Hindu race' is of chief importance while exploring violence upon Muslims. It is clear that socio-economic inequality among Muslims not only arises out of a development deficit but is also an outcome of right-wing Hindutva majoritarianism thought that seeks to define and intertwine Muslim identity with myth, hysteria and hostility, to forge a 'self' in opposition to a society based on open-ended social segments.
