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Last weekend, with Ramadan drawing to a close, on a hot and humid evening some friends and I went into Old Delhi.
Our destination was Jama Masjid, Old Delhi's magnificent mosque.
Here Muslims gathered for a traditional Iftar meal to break the daily Ramadan fast and celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month of fasting.
The holy month doesn't come at an easy time for the subcontinent's faithful — they must go without food and drink amid temperatures often 40 degrees Celsius or more.
So when the Sun finally set, most of those gathered in the mosque's magnificent red stone courtyard reached first for water, before the customary dried date.
Fasters then set about consuming all manner of high-calorie sustenance to get them through the next day, and it became rather more like gluttony for those of us not abstaining.
But right now, the celebratory air and buttery delights are difficult for India's Islamic community to enjoy.
This year, the situation is a bit grim.
The majority-Hindu nation is seeing a surge in nationalist sentiment driven by the ruling party's religious right, and India's Muslims feel their culture and traditions are being targeted.
One prominent Islamic figure fears it could be enough to push India's traditionally moderate Muslims towards the same sort of extremism being witnessed elsewhere in the world.
Some 180 million people — roughly 14 per cent of the 1.3 billion people in India — are Muslim, meaning this country is home to the world's second-largest Muslim population after Indonesia.
Having a cup of tea this week with Shahid Siddiqui, a former politician who is now editor of Urdu newspaper Nia Dunya, he painted their outlook in a gloomy light.
"Muslims feel that they are being targeted, that they are being encircled, mentally, socially, culturally and in every way, so there's a sense of sadness in this Eid," Mr Siddiqui said.
The subdued mood, he said, is due to recent moves by the Hindu-nationalist Government which Muslims feel target them and encourage their persecution.
Following thumping state election victories earlier this year, the ruling Bharatiya Janata party appointed Hindu hardliners in key positions, then several weeks ago slapped a nation-wide ban on the sale for slaughter of the cattle revered by Hindus.
That hit Muslim-dominated meat and leather industries hard.
There have also been several Muslim lynchings in recent months — each time mobs accused their victims of either killing cattle or eating beef.
Mr Siddiqui said many fear the Government and police are turning a blind eye to the violence.
"It is the victims who are being victimised," he said.
"The law is going against the victims not the perpetrators."
Hostility between the subcontinent's numerically dominant Hindus and its Muslims is at the very heart of India and Pakistan's division into separate countries, when Britain called time on its empire in 1947.
Seventy years on the two nations' relations are so bitter, that merely cheering Pakistan's cricket team in India is deemed "anti-national" and enough for colonial-era sedition charges.
Mr Siddiqui said that while the vast majority of India's Muslims are opposed to Islamic extremism, there is a risk that a small percentage could be radicalised if they feel marginalised by society.
"The way out of the trap is we must stand up against the idea of hate," he said.
"When the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, the secular, the liberal, the thinking people and others they come together, then that is India. And that India is the way out."
Topics: religion-and-beliefs, islam, human-interest, india, asia
First posted