The situation in India

Submitted by Ramana Rajgopaul (India), Apr 15, 2008 at 06:15

India is in a peculiar situation vis a vis the Muslim population within its borders. India hosts the second largest Muslim population in the world, next only to Indonesia. India's traditionally hostile neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh, both Islamic countries, have less population of Muslims than India's. India has however a tradition of Secularism, defined by many as "Minority Appeasement" and therefore, pseudo secularism. This is for obvious vote bank politics.

There are as many hot headed Hindus who claim that the only unresolved problem of partition of the country is the Muslim population of India and are willing to be as virulent as the extreme right of Europe. There have been a number of Hindu/Muslim riots with the inevitable higher loss of life and property to the Muslims. Incidentally, there have been more incidences of terrorism on Indian soil than any other place in the world.

Economic refugees, Muslims, from Bangladesh are flooding many parts of India with the active support of some political parties for, vote bank politics. This again leads to communal riots with predictable results.

The so called Moderate Muslims of India, a minuscule minority of an already minority community do not seem to be able to influence the Muslims to become progressive. Vested interests within the community in search of temporal and political power and cheap labor, tend to keep the majority of Muslims ignorant and susceptible to violence and discrimination.

There are Muslims who wonder why is it that there is generally more poverty among Muslims than all the other religions of the world. In this scenario, a trend, albeit a very small and as yet insignificant one, has been exodus from Islam to Hinduism for practical and economic reasons. Anthropologists suggest that this could well turn out to be a flood tide if Hindus play their cards right. As a corollary, if Europe and the Americas play their cards right, this could be made possible.

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