A Road less Travelled: Is India Ready for Islamic Banking?

Islamic Banking is an emerging model of banking which is currently practiced in several countries, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and the United Kingdom. Its most intriguing aspect is that this banking system works on a purely no interest basis. Given the fact that India is a country with one of the largest Muslim population in the world, we believe it is important to understand the awareness, acceptability,and feasibility of introducing this system of banking in India. This paper primarily aims at discussing the legal viability of introducing such a system in India, given the laws present in the country, as well as gathering information on how forthcoming the population will be towards this banking system. For this purpose, a sample of the population was chosen from Pune and New Delhi, and surveyed with the help of a simple questionnaire, leading to the inference that most people are open to the concept of interest-free banking but are hesitant in accepting the Islamic ideology behind it.