India, Dec. 4 -- It was an election for 243 assembly seats in one state of the country but the Mahagatbandhan, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Opposition bloc, believed it would herald a sea change in the country's political trajectory. After all, the land of secularism and socialism had scripted unexpected changes in the past. Many Muslims were influenced by this powerful narrative as they had witnessed the JP movement of the 1970s in Bihar; and, again, in the early 1990s, it was here that the chariot of Lal Krishna Advani, leading the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign, was stopped by Lalu Prasad Yadav. In 2025, his young son, Tejashwi Yadav made a strong bid for power along with the Congress as an ally. By now, much of their anger against the Congress leadership had subsided. They had earlier accused the Congress leadership of being hand-in-glove with the Sangh Parivar, since the time the idols were surreptitiously placed inside the disputed structure in 1949 and until the demolition of the Babri Mosque in December 1992. The Muslims had also pinned their hopes on Tejashwi Yadav finally stalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi's juggernaut, riding a winning spree since 2014. Giving wings to their hope was the 2024 performance of the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh (UP), propelling it to the position of a third largest party in the Lok Sabha. But the November 2025 results dashed that hope. Modi's magic, home minister Amit Shah's strategy coupled with chief minister Nitish Kumar's popular base, decimated the Opposition and their ambitious plans. Instead, Bihar adopted Hindutva and embraced BJP. Locally, the Muslim community has two concerns: Nitish Kumar as chief minister is a symbol of succour as he, too, had grown in the same school of secularism and socialism but his age and health worry the community. The community, of course, still credits Nitish's stand against the Waqf bill in Parliament, which was subsequently referred to a parliamentary committee. The second concern is whether an obligated Nitish Kumar will be able to resist the BJP's dominance in governance. Nationally, there are pertinent questions haunting hundreds of millions of Muslims in India (172 million according to the 2011 census) as they, according to critics of the government, feel marginalised in the country's current socio-political environment. The community is apparently losing faith in the so- called 'secular parties' and their potency to protect them against BJP. Their worries are on two counts: One, the non-BJP parties whom they have supported for decades are growing reluctant to publicly raise or fight for their issues in fear of alienating the Hindu community. Second, which is apparently more alarming, is the success of BJP's experiment of occupying the secular space in states through their 'secular' allies while simultaneously bracketing the opposition bloc with Muslims, accusing them of appeasement, a word denounced by even those Hindus who decry unjust treatment to Muslims. Also, until now, the BJP won Muslim-dominated constituencies but now the NDA is winning states with sizable Muslim populations. BJP won by-polls in Kundarki in West UP and Samaguri in Assam in November 2024, that too amid the party's push on the Waqf Bill to change the laws, government Muslim endowment, and madrasa reforms. Many wanted to believe the wins were aberrations but they were a result of a foolproof strategy. Muslims form 60 per cent of Kundarki's population and 56 per cent in Samaguri. India has the third largest Muslim population in the world, next only to Pakistan and Indonesia. And, in five states, Muslims form a sizable population, though they are not in a majority. These states are Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. Because of their concentration in some areas, Muslims have often played a decisive role in elections with the BJP accusing the non-BJP parties of pampering them, which they describe as pseudo-secularism. But now they are losing states where they were once influential. The BJP-led NDA had earlier won Assam and UP. Now that they have cracked Bihar, a buoyed NDA is all set to take on Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal in 2026. Muslims fear the BJP-led NDA ruled states would implement certain controversial policies. UP, for example, has a number of firsts under the rule of chief minister Yogi Adityanath. From naming and shaming of anti-CAA protestors in the state capital to his bulldozer actions, which have been replicated by other BJP-ruled states. Uttarakhand, though a small state, became the first to implement the Uniform Civil Code while Assam updated the National Registers of Citizens. Now, Muslims face the challenge of the ongoing SIR, which they fear would divest them of their right to vote. Thus, it is not just their declining numbers in state legislatures or the Lok Sabha or the diminishing value of their voice or vote that worry them but their growing political irrelevance in the country. And they lack Muslim leadership when needed most. Historically, Muslims have not supported parties like the Indian Muslim League or even AIMIM as they preferred mainstream parties. The demand for a deputy chief minister from the community was raised ahead of the polls in Bihar, a state which had a Muslim CM in the mid-1970s. Tejashwi announced the deputy chief minister's post for Mukesh Sahani of the Vikassheel Insaan Party with a popular vote base of 2 per cent to 3 per cent. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) had, in fact, demanded the post as the community accounted for 18 per cent votes. The community's resolve is reflected in the election results of the 24 seats of Seemanchal in Bihar -14 were won by NDA, five by AIMIM, four by the Congress and one by RJD. The win is on the lines of the reserved constituencies where non-Dalits often hold the veto power but BJP wins most of the seats. Similarly, the division in Muslim votes gave seats to the BJP, which has enjoyed a monopoly over non-Muslim votes. After the loss in Bihar, the community is standing at the crossroads. Their dilemma is to find a formula to retrieve their political position and participation. There was a time when organisations like the All-India Milli Council used to conduct surveys and decide the winning horse among the so-called secular parties for their community. Not anymore. The youth are restless, in a disarray. What concerns them today, besides their representation in legislatures, are safety and religious freedom. In 1989, when Muslims had decided to dump the Congress after its government headed by Narain Datt Tiwari in UP granted permission for the foundation laying of the Ram temple, outside the disputed complex in Ayodhya, they had found their saviour in Janata Dal leader VP Singh and Chandrashekhar, besides regional satraps in different parts of the country - Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar. In the process, Muslims were divided across states as they did not support any one party at the national level. A churning is going on as they feel the time has come to unitedly support a national party to fight the BJP. The options are limited as Congress, in its current debilitated state, can't take on the robust BJP, which is building social alliances and using welfarism to their political advantage. As of now, this is a story about northern India. The situation in the south is different. The BJP has been making small inroads in Tamil Nadu while they have found a formidable and a secular ally in TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh....