In most Islamic finance markets, a regulator defines what counts as Shariah-compliant. In India, nobody does: SEBI operates no Shariah framework, and neither does RBI or IRDAI. Into that vacuum step the Shariah indices. The screens behind the Nifty50 Shariah, Nifty500 Shariah and BSE 500 Shariah define the practical halal universe for every fund, PMS and screening app in the country, which makes their thresholds India's most consequential Shariah numbers. This guide explains each index, who screens it, and which products track it. Sources: the NSE Indices methodology document of August 2026, index factsheets as on 31 Jul 2026, fund filings and the IFN Annual Guide 2026, crawled 2026-08-06.
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The screening partner: TASIS
NSE Indices Limited has contracted with Taqwaa Advisory and Shariah Investment Solutions (TASIS), the Mumbai Shariah advisory firm, to provide the Shariah screens for its index family. TASIS's Shariah Supervisory Board, printed in the methodology document, comprises Mufti Abdul Kadir Barkatulla (a London-based Shariah judge with an economics background), Mufti Khalid Saifullah Rahmani (General Secretary of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, India) and Dr Hafiz Mohammad Iqbal Nadvi (PhD in Fiqh from Ummul Qura University, Makkah, and chairman of the Shariah Board of Canada). We profile TASIS itself, including its certified-clients ledger and its public disclaimers, in a dedicated guide.
The financial screens, as printed in the methodology: interest-based debt at or below 25% of total assets; interest income at or below 2.5% of total income; and receivables plus cash and bank balances at or below 90% of total assets. Business screens exclude conventional financial services, alcohol, tobacco, pork and non-halal food, vulgar entertainment, hotels and restaurants serving non-permissible products, gambling and narcotics. The methodology notes these norms are deliberately more conservative than peers: AAOIFI-style screens typically allow 5% impure income and about 30% debt. An Income Purification Ratio is defined so investors can purge pro rata interest income from whatever the screens let through.
Nifty50 Shariah: the concentrated flagship
The Nifty50 Shariah is the compliant subset of the Nifty 50, launched 19 February 2008 with a base date of 29 December 2006 and base value of 1000. The constituent count is variable, and that variability is the story: at 31 Jul 2026 only 17 of the 50 Nifty stocks passed the screens. Removing every bank and financial from India's benchmark index leaves an IT-heavy remainder: Information Technology was 37.38% of the index weight, with Infosys at 16.75%, TCS at 10.20% and Sun Pharma at 8.91%. The index applies a 33% single-stock cap and a 62% top-3 cap at rebalancing, and has returned 9.47% annualised in total-return terms since inception. It is screened monthly, with replacements implemented from the last working day of the month. Nippon India's Shariah BeES ETF (NSE: SHARIABEES) is the one product that tracks it directly, and inherits both its discipline and its concentration.
Nifty500 Shariah: the real investable universe
The Nifty500 Shariah, launched on the same dates, is the compliant subset of the Nifty 500, and at 198 constituents (31 Jul 2026) it is the closest thing India has to a broad halal benchmark. Its since-inception total return runs around 10.5% annualised. This is the index that matters most for fund investors: Tata Ethical Fund and Quantum Ethical Fund both benchmark to the Nifty 500 Shariah TRI. When you evaluate those funds' performance, this 198-stock screened universe is the yardstick.
Nifty Shariah 25: the strict-entry variant
The Nifty Shariah 25 (base date 1 January 2009) is a fixed 25-stock index with a distinctive entry rule: a stock must show 24 months of continuous Shariah compliance before it can join. It carries a 10% per-stock cap, semi-annual reviews and monthly compliance checks. No retail product tracks it that we could verify, but its design answers a real problem in screened investing: companies that flicker in and out of compliance at the ratio boundaries. Requiring two years of continuous compliance filters for stability, not just a point-in-time pass.
BSE 500 Shariah: the other family
On the BSE side, the BSE 500 Shariah index (renamed from S&P BSE 500 Shariah effective February 2018) is the Tier-1 benchmark of Taurus Ethical Fund. Its administrator's site was unreachable during our crawl (a DNS failure at asiaindex.co.in on 2026-08-06), so we document it from fund filings and industry reporting: ShariahCap Advisors' screening table published in the IFN Annual Guide 2026 shows total debt to total assets capped at 25% and an interest-income cap revised from 4% to 3%. The index has been the quiet star of Indian equities: 15.82% compound annual growth from January 2020, against 13.13% for the Sensex. Historical footnote: BSE launched India's first Shariah index, the BSE TASIS Shariah 50, with TASIS back in 2010-11; the current index descends from the S&P BSE partnership era.
Why screened indices have beaten the market, and why they might not always
The outperformance of Shariah indices over recent years has a structural explanation: the screens exclude highly leveraged companies and conventional financials, which tilts the universe toward cash-rich IT, pharma and consumer businesses. In periods when those sectors lead, screened indices win. In periods when banks lead, they lose, sometimes badly: the Nifty50 Shariah lost -13.35% in the year to 30 Jun 2026 while the plain Nifty 50 TRI lost only -5.42%. The screens are a permanent sector bet, not a free lunch. Any honest halal investing plan in India prices that in; our guide to the concentration problem in halal portfolios goes deeper.
How to use the indices as an investor
Three practical uses. First, as benchmarks: judge Tata and Quantum against the Nifty 500 Shariah TRI and Taurus against the BSE 500 Shariah TRI, not against the Sensex. Second, as a free compliance reference: the Nifty500 Shariah's 198 constituents are a TASIS-screened stock list updated monthly, and screening apps like IslamicTijarat, whose screening TASIS itself supervises, should agree with it. Third, as a reality check on concentration: if the flagship halal index holds 17 stocks, your do-it-yourself halal portfolio of 10 large caps is probably less diversified than you think. The indices are the infrastructure of Indian halal investing; every product we cover stands on them. Verified 2026-08-06.
Reading an index factsheet like an investor
The monthly factsheets NSE publishes for these indices reward five minutes of attention. Constituent count tells you the diversification reality (17 in the Nifty50 Shariah, 198 in the Nifty500 Shariah at 31 Jul 2026). Sector weights tell you the concentration story (IT at 37.38% of the flagship). Top constituents tell you the single-stock exposure (Infosys 16.75%, TCS 10.20%, Sun Pharma 8.91%). Valuation lines (the Nifty50 Shariah printed a P/E of 24.06) let you compare the screened universe's price against the broad market's. And the returns table, read against the unscreened parent index, quantifies what the screens cost or contributed in any period: the flagship's 9.47% annualised total return since inception is the long-run number, and the year-by-year divergences are the sector bet showing its two faces. Every number above is from the July 2026 factsheets, and next month's will differ, which is the point: this is living infrastructure.
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Frequently asked questions
Can I invest in these indices directly? Only the Nifty50 Shariah has a tracking product (SHARIABEES). The Nifty500 Shariah and Nifty Shariah 25 have no domestic tracker, which is the most obvious product gap in Indian halal investing; funds benchmark to the Nifty500 Shariah but none passively tracks it. Who checks TASIS's work? Nobody, formally: SEBI regulates the index provider's operations but not the Shariah layer. The discipline comes from reputation and the monthly publication of constituents, which any scholar or investor can audit against the published screens. Why did BSE's index administrator site fail during your crawl? asiaindex.co.in returned a DNS failure on 2026-08-06; we documented the BSE 500 Shariah from Taurus's fund filings and IFN's published data instead, and flag the sourcing so you know exactly how much weight it carries. Do the indices pay dividends? Total return (TRI) versions include reinvested dividends, and those are the versions funds benchmark against; when you compare a fund's return to an index, confirm both are TRI or both price-only, or the comparison misleads. Verified 2026-08-06.