An uncertain community
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21709341-indias-biggest-minority-grows-anxious-about-its-future-uncertain-community
India’s biggest minority grows anxious about its future
Oct 29th 2016 | DELHI | From the print edition
Timekeeper
FOR a community of 172m, almost 15% of the population, Muslims at first glance appear oddly absent from the pages of India’s newspapers. In fact, they crop up a lot, but not by name. Instead, reporters coyly refer to “a certain community”. The clumsy circumlocution is a way of avoiding any hint of stoking sectarian unrest. The aim is understandable in a country that was born amid ferocious communal clashes and which has suffered all too many reprises. But the dainty phrase also hints at something else. Since India’s independence in 1947, the estrangement of Muslims has slowly grown.
India’s Muslims have not, it is true, been officially persecuted, hounded into exile or systematically targeted by terrorists, as have minorities in other parts of the subcontinent, such as the Ahmadi sect in Pakistan. But although violence against them has been only sporadic, they have struggled in other ways. In 2006 a hefty report detailed Muslims’ growing disadvantages. It found that very few army officers were Muslim; their share in the higher ranks of the police was “minuscule”. Muslims were in general poorer, more prone to sex discrimination and less literate than the general population (see chart). At postgraduate level in elite universities, Muslims were a scant 2% of students.
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An uncertain community
A wrong direction in the steppe
Gift horse
Sibling rivalry
If you want it done right
A shrimp among whales
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A decade later, with most of the committee’s recommendations quietly shelved, those numbers are unlikely to have improved. Indeed, since the landslide election win by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, some gaps have widened. There are fewer Muslim ministers now in the national government—just two out of 75—than at any time since independence, even though the Muslim share of the population has grown.
India remains a secular country, yet some laws proposed by the BJP bear a disturbingly sectarian tint. One bill would allow immigrants from nearby countries who happen to be Hindu, Sikh, Christian or Buddhist to apply for citizenship, while specifically barring Muslims. Another would retroactively block any legal challenge to past seizures of property from people deemed Pakistani “enemies”, even if their descendants have nothing to do with Pakistan and are Indian citizens. Courts have repeatedly ruled in favour of such claimants—all of them Muslim—but their families could now be stripped of any rights in perpetuity.
Far more than such legislative slights, what frightens ordinary Muslims is the government’s silence in the face of starker assaults. A year ago many were shocked when a mob in a village near Delhi, the capital, beat to death a Muslim father of three on mere suspicion that he had eaten beef. Earlier this month, after one of his alleged killers died of disease while in police custody, a BJP minister attended the suspect’s funeral, at which the casket was draped, like a hero’s, with the Indian flag.
Earlier this month, too, newspapers reported a disturbing discrepancy between the fates of two men arrested for allegedly spreading religiously insulting material via social media. One of the men, a member of a right-wing Hindu group in the BJP-run state of Madhya Pradesh, was quickly released from custody after the customary beating. The arresting officers have been charged with assault; their superiors up to the district level transferred. In the other case, in the state of Jharkhand, a Muslim villager was arrested for posting pictures implying he had slaughtered a cow. Police claimed he died of encephalitis following his arrest. A court-ordered autopsy revealed he had been beaten to death. To date, no police officers have been charged.
The BJP’s handling of a popular uprising in India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, has also raised Muslim concern. Four months into the unrest, in which dozens of civilians have been killed and hundreds injured, with continuous curfews and strikes keeping schools and shops closed, the government still refuses to talk to any but the most supine local politicians. “You don’t understand,” snaps a cabinet minister, “It’s a violent movement to build an Islamic theocracy. No democracy can tolerate that.”
Omair Ahmad, a writer on Muslim affairs, scoffs at this. The problem, he says, is that Indian governments insist on treating Kashmir as a “Muslim issue” when the real question is one of democratic representation. Yet most Indian Muslims tend to toe the official line, either from a desire to appear loyal or because they genuinely feel only a faint bond with Kashmir.
The fact is that India’s Muslims are divided, not only between dominant Sunnis and a large Shia minority but also between starkly different social classes and regions: a Muslim in Bengal is likely to share no language and few traditions with a co-religionist far to the south in steamy Kerala. The divisions may soon get deeper. Both India’s supreme court and the national law commission, a state body charged with legal reform, are deliberating whether laws governing such things as divorce and inheritance should remain different for different religious groups, or should be harmonised in a uniform national code, as the constitution urges. Spotting another “Muslim issue”, past governments have let conservative clerics control family law. As a result India, unlike most Muslim-majority countries, still allows men to divorce simply by pronouncing the word three times.
The BJP, however, is calling for sweeping reform, with Narendra Modi, the prime minister, painting the issue as a straightforward question of women’s rights. Much as many Muslims heartily agree that change is long overdue, suspicions linger that the BJP’s aim is less to generate reform than to spark inevitable protests by Muslim conservatives, so uniting Hindus in opposition to Muslim “backwardness”.
This question may play out in elections this winter in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, nearly 40m of whose 200m people are Muslim. The state has witnessed repeated communal clashes since the destruction by Hindu activists, in 1992, of a medieval mosque said to have been built over an ancient temple marking the birthplace of Rama, a Hindu deity. Many expect the BJP to play the “Muslim card” in an effort to rally Hindu votes.
There is hope: a similar ploy flopped last year in the neighbouring state of Bihar. Whatever the outcome, India’s Muslims feel increasingly like spectators in their own land. “They called it a secular state, which is why many who had a choice at partition wanted to stay here,” says Saeed Naqvi, a journalist whose recent book, “Being the Other”, chronicles the growing alienation of India’s Muslims. “But what really happened was that we seamlessly glided from British Raj to Hindu Raj.”
From the print edition: Asia
An uncertain community
India’s biggest minority grows anxious about its future
Oct 29th 2016 | DELHI See article
Readers' comments
guest-owmeswe3 hours 36 mins ago
Why does economist always seem to convey that all the problems with Muslims in India has some connection with the present day government of India , i.e the BJP government.
If not for the blatant use of the community for vote bank politics and the gullability of the muslim community to be manipulated.
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NitNov 1st, 12:22
A typical mischief mongering article. Like it is written clearly..there is nothing in the constitution or otherwise that holds Muslims back..except they themselves.
They don't invest in education, live in ghettos are willing hostages to their own Islamic clerics and are generally backward in outlook.
A free market economy doesn't give too hoots about emotions...
Muslims despite having taken Pakistan still dream of a pan Islamic world order...that's all they invest in.
Muslims are not the most educated or contributing to science and technology in other parts of the world(compared to thier 1.6b population).
They feel entitled wherever they live... everyone should work for thier betterment except they themselves.
Sadly no one can help them...
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Bharat.in reply to NitNov 1st, 20:16
Islam is a backward culture in every country in the world - including Germany where the Turkish community is supposedly the most advanced of all Isalmic society
Point of reference : turkey translates fewer books in. Year then Spain does in one week.
Why?
Because the Koran says that it has all the knowledge
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guest-ajwinselNov 1st, 08:05
Islam is not religion of peace.if any country wants peace ban islam otherwise gradually muslims will increase in population they will demand islamic law will start killing other religious people.
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AdTCCiX23qNov 1st, 07:55
This article tries to project the Indian Muslim community as 'victims'. Nothing can be further than the truth. Here are some facts:
1. India is the only country in the world where all 72 sects of Muslims exist. This is something that no Islamic country can claim - a telling evidence of the liberal environment within India.
2. Despite being a secular, democratic country, Indian Muslims have their own Personal Laws. This is despite the Indian Constitution urging that India have a uniform civil code for all its citizens. Many Indian Muslim men have abused marital provisions that make it easy to divorce their wives by giving Triple Talaq. This has affected a very large number of Muslim women in India. Many Islamic countries too do not allow for this provision. In an era of women emancipation, why is The Economist trying to project this as an example of oppression against Indian Muslims or electoral politics? If Indian Muslim Women are not allowed to progress, then 50% of Indian muslims are being pegged down economically and socially. TE cannot pretend that the problem does not exist and then when the problem is being sorted out, it cannot claim that this is a part of a Hindu agenda!
3. Hindus, globally, are a hard working, industrious group which places a high emphasis on Education - they have a dedicated Goddess of Knowledge, Sarasvati, which is revered and invoked in every educational endeavor. In contrast, Indian Muslims have preferred to send their children to Islamic schools called Madrassas which are creating unemployable graduates and who often have a prejudiced view of serving India in many ways. Ironically, Muslims have abused their freedom to build their own educational institutions (which is, incidentally, denied to Hindus in India) to create products who do not have a modern disposition or aptitude to fit into modern professions.
4. It is pertinent to point out that Muslims in the US have one of the lowest per-capita income while Hindus in the US have the highest per-capita income ( higher than the Jews too). The Economist is advised to see Pew Research. Now do we expect TE to say that the US discriminates against Muslims and gives preference to the Hindus?
5. The Muslims, if you see the map provided in the article, are creating large scale social disturbances in states where they have more than 20% of total population in India (like in France and other European centers). In Kashmir, they are burning schools down. In Bengal, they prevent the Hindus from worshiping. In Kerala, they have chopped the hand of a teacher in front of his students. In Uttar Pradesh, local Hindu/Jain/Sikh businessmen are intimidated, face harassment causing many businesses to shut down or pay a form of Jiziya like extortion. The Economist will never report this - it is to be expected.
6. With the growing influence of Arabic Wahabism on Indian Muslims and their weaning away from Hindu cultural influences which is being done by design in many Islamic Seminaries, an environment of aggressive confrontation is being set up by some instigators. These instigators include: Pakistan & its Jihadi machinery such as JeM & LeT; Wahabi sponsors and a motley crew of regional Indian Political parties that have NO developmental ideology except a lazy way of ruling some of the Indian states where Muslims are a significant part of the electorate. In a quid-pro-quo, Muslim thugs are given an opportunity to run various extortion rackets, cattle-rustling, kidnapping, allowing illegal Muslim infiltrators to come into India from Bangladesh etc. when these regional parties come to power. Look at the Map in the article once again and you will see this happening in West Bengal, Bihar, UP, Kashmir, Kerala.
Conclusion: The article is extremely biased, inflammatory and a part of the politics of creating a feeling of victimhood amongst Indian Muslims by The Economist - it is an article designed to create incitement precisely because it has no insight.
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Nitin reply to AdTCCiX23qNov 1st, 12:23
This reply is better than the biased and ill intended article itself! Thanks for posting this.
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guest-ajwioseoNov 1st, 00:48
Modi has an inborn talent to become a leader and finally became the PM of India. Since Modi's taking office as Prime Minister, his administration has turned towards modernizing India's infrastructure and government. His attempts were in favor of increased foreign direct investment, improving national standards of health and sanitation and improving relation with foreign countries. Earlier, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi's economic policies had shown an encouraging economic growth in Gujarat, a fact nobody can deny although his administration has been criticized for failing to significantly improve the human development in the state and for failing to prevent the 2002 riots. It is a policy of success under taken everywhere every time. If we look to ancient history, Krishna took evil or immoral tactics to defeat Karna, or Duranacharjya to win the war for Pandavas, American President Truman took the decision to drop Atom Bomb to end the War. There was destruction in Japan but the same US had did their best to raise the country and to make it the electronic giant. Modi did the same in 2002 to come to light to become the Chief Minister and now the PM. He is under pressure of RSS no doubt but he is for the nation, he is for all Hindus as well as for all Muslims, the structure of India what is destroyed by Gandhi and Jinnah by mutual understanding without taking the consent of the Muslims by division by making the Indian Muslims a suspected citizens who were Indians by birth, by making Pakistan an enemy country and killing and displacing millions of Hindus of Punjab and Bengal, What For? It was Just to make Nehru the PM, just to get rid of Jinnah to make space for Nehru and finally to make name and fame for self in disguise.
In a big country like India the incidents such as cow slaughter or torture of any individuals did not count the policy of a nation. Yes Muslims were few in higher education; it was a fact of history where once Muslims were not interested with foreign education. Yes, Muslims were few in armies. Who is responsible for that it was the Muslims, they did not vehement ally oppose Jinnah to create a separate country Pakistan. Jinnah wanted a separate homeland for Muslims of India. Jinnah making an understanding with Gandhi formed Pakistan kicked out all the Hindus from Pakistan but India did not do the same. It was because of the formation of Pakistan Muslims of India who did not oppose, became a suspected citizen. Now Modi is trying to remove this suspicion which is prevailing in the minds of RSS people. The laws of uniform civil court and uniform marriage are a necessity for a civilized nation. Any prejudices like Sati Dahio, or Tin Talak should not be encouraged in the civilized world. Such an article is not a befitting article to represent the true picture of present India.
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Bharat.Oct 31st, 23:50
What will make the Muslim community very uncomfortable is when India kills a few Pakistani soldiers every time the Pakistani Huriyat burn a school on Kashmir..
Hopefully the hate preachers will not resort to Suicide bombing
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guest-neisjwwOct 31st, 23:20
Another anti Indian news article, well done ET.
This article talks about problems Muslims are facing but not the reasoning behind it.
1. Why not talk about Muslims being allowed to have multiple wives in India as they want to follow sharia and not uniform civil code, men are allowed to divorce by just saying "Talaq" (divorce) three times or sending the message via whats app
2. Muslims are not in top universities as they marry 3-4 women and have 25 kids(Kids are gift from Allah, even using a condom is prohibited) which stay in same 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom apartment, will it effect their upbringing and studie, ET can talk about this in next article.
3. Muslim men don't want muslim girls to go for schooling, yes that will drop their percentage in universities. remember Malala from Pakistan, but ET can talk about that some other day.
4. Very few Muslims are in Army and not only top posts or as officers as this is their personal choice, if it would have been about studies we might have seen more muslims as sepys and not officers which is not the case, the reason is Muslims are taught in their mosques to fight for their religion and not country..
5. They selectively follow sharia and Indian law as per their convenience, for example they follow Indian law where they can drink alcohol, their hand will not be severed for stealing, they will not be stoned to death for raping but when it comes to multiple marriages, oppressing their women they start following Sharia.
I can go on but its just waste of my precious time.
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LIVE-IN-HOPEOct 31st, 19:47
Every and any historical record shows that a majority Muslim country tends to be intolerant of minorities, often genicidal, and usually ethnically cleansing.
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With the Muslim population growing exponentially in India, we have the same fear as does Europe and USA.
In all those lands, th infidels will be a minority, and the IS dreams will come alive and prosper
And we will be back to goat habits and stone age culture. The worst of it all will be pqdophillic habits as laid down by the Prophet of Islam
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LIVE-IN-HOPEin reply to LIVE-IN-HOPEOct 31st, 19:58
India's greatest fear is that a big increase in the Muslim population in India will lad to Taliban land and th wholesale killing of minorities.
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Looking at the exponential growth of th Muslim population and their treatment of women , plus ther hat of infidels ( examples as laid down by the paedophilic prophet ) all civilisation will disappear as it has done in Pakistan.
As Churchill once said, slavery (of women ) will only wither with the disappearance of Islam
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Bharat.in reply to LIVE-IN-HOPEOct 31st, 21:55
If I(slam is a religion of peace, then stand up and be counted. Tell the world that Kashmir's ethnic cleansing is unacceptable\
.
Tell the world that killing violent terrorists is good.
even if they are Sunni Muslims
.
tell the world that the culture of cross border terrorism is not acceptable
.
and stop protesting against the laws that increase gender equality
Step upto to current civilized standards
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Man_Fromm MayberryOct 31st, 17:46
Terrible article - full of half-truths and outright lies. The irony is this - these Brits have been preaching the Indians for ions about the virtues of 'tolerance' of the other....but now that the Moslem exceptionalism has arrived on their little shores (in form of Pakistanis and ME immigrants) - the mood of the common people there has soured towards 'their' Moslem co-citizens. Today the majority of Brits feel Moslem values are 'alien' to their way of life and that they (the Moslems) will never integrate in British/English society. Despite that the pontificating elites (the same who were scaring their own people with 'Brexit') continue to lecture us from their ivory towers. TE is a fine example of that. Moslems in India (with active encouragement from the forebears of these pathetic elites) carved out Pakistan in the name of their religion. Despite that India has done more than any country for its Moslems who opted to stay behind. But lectures don't cease. Shame on TE and the high horse it likes to ride on.
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AflatuneOct 31st, 16:46
This is a truly sad thing
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Bharat.in reply to AflatuneOct 31st, 21:48
why?
because the prophet's triple talaq is indefensible ?
Or the fact that comparison with Pakistan's Genocide and ethnic cleansing should not be done?- although the world fears that this nazi type genocide and intolerant ethnic cleansing is cultural ?
or
Kashmir Sunni Muslim's ethnic cleansing through the violent Huriyat is unacceptable?
or the sunni hate for the shias is unacceptable ?
.
Time to contain the evil intolerant habits of a culture that would would harm infidels and women.
Let there be discomfort for the savages
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grandaxeOct 31st, 14:50
The BJP and Modi have to be careful when dealing with the Muslims. We are not a fanatical religion, and we must see that every single right of the Muslims are protected, and that they get opportunities that Hindu's get. There are all kinds of Muslims sects in India, and they should not be put under Hindu laws and prejudice. We have to accommodate them and see that they enjoy all the benefits of what India has to offer. If the BJP gets fanatical in its approach to Muslims, I guess their leaders will be put in jail. We will not tolerate Religious Fanatics getting out of control. Hindu's must realize that they share India with the Muslims, and that India is not Hindustan. Thank God for the enlightened freedom fighters of India, whose vision for India was an inclusive one for all religions.
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M RameshOct 31st, 12:22
The problem with you Westerners is, when it suits you, you take up exceptions and aberrations and put it forward as the norm. The killing of the muslim man on the suspicion of eating beef created a national consternation far more than killing of black men evokes in the US. It was an unfortunate, but an one-off incident. India is a huge country and aberrations do happen from time to time and the country's record of correcting itself, while not perfect, is pretty good. For balance, you should note that just as there are miscreants among Hindus, there are among other communities too, including muslims. But by far, there is harmony between Hindus and Muslims, aberrations excepted. You article is guilty of an unwarranted slant. Poor journalism.
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guest-ajwilwnaOct 31st, 10:12
Western media lacks depth and covers it up with linguistic and statistical mumbo-jumbo.
The stats are based on post-independence (60+ years) but the fault is with pro-Hindu BJP government of 2+ years!
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Tattvam AsiOct 31st, 02:28
Does this paper even bother to review facts? What the Government wants to do is to come up with a common/uniform civil code and stop having special laws for different religions, this article is complete bunkum.
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guest-ajwiwwjaOct 30th, 21:28
3 out of 13 Indian presidents were Muslims.
The day USA achieves this, mankind will reach Pluto-
The Muslim population of India is half of the entire US so the Economist should put this in perspective and stop fanning the fire between the 2 Indian communities who love India equally.
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guest-llneolsOct 30th, 15:35
It is unfortunate that the quality of the Economist has sunk so low in a single article
In the above article you have managed to justify police beatings,
The continuation of a regressive and anti women law because of "perception issues",and
Dismissed the very real concerns that people the world over have about growing Islamic radicalization that are sweeping the globe ,
Does this paper really think that threats to impose sharia law should not be taken seriously by a secular state just to appease a few radicals ? ,
This kind of Pigheadedness by insulated elites the world over has lead to the rise of crazies like Trump,
and the French governments insane efforts to tell women what to wear at the beach.
Unless this Newspaper returns to the roots of its founding of true Liberalism I am sad to say it might fade into irrelevance.
Maybe next time this Newspaper and its editors should spend more time researching an article rather than latching on to an established narrative to meet a deadline.
Yours truly and sadly
A long time reader
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guest-ajwiejswOct 30th, 13:08
"Having demanded the division of India and got Pakistan and Bangladesh where Hindus have been reduced to dwindling terrified silenced minorities, Muslims are now demanding the part of India that was set aside for Hindus as well. "What is mine is mine. What is yours we can share..."
I would correct that to "what is yours I will take over and violently separate". Kashmiri Hindus were driven out, butchered or converted to render the state muslim majority. Of course the British colonial mindset would overlook history and facts.
India gets routinely flogged by the righteous western media with double standards . Where were they when the hapless non muslim minority became extinct in muslim majority countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, whereas after partition the muslim minority has become a minority majority in India.
Only contonuing economic propsperity in India will shut these mischief making colonialist minded media.
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guest-ajwimosoOct 30th, 11:28
are muslims rally a 'minority' in India?
muslims are fastest growing lot in india... surely ecology must be conducive for fastest growth
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Kabeer KabeerOct 30th, 10:08
It's a very shallow article more of a south asian media's mediocrity than the one that befits The Economist. This kind of stuff appears frequently in the south asian press. I expect you to go a little deeper and put a more analytical picture.
1. With almost two third of the US Population in India, muslims can't be categorises as 'minority'; as one Zorastrian gentlemen suggested in a live TV show, muslims in India are the second largest Majority. THat is how one should view the minority context. You use the word minority who cant defend themselves for their rights. 200 million is hardly thenumber. In that sense, ZOrastrians and Jews are minorities as they are too small in numbers
2. British India was partitioned on religious lines; and that was not on Hindus and non Hindus base; it was a nation for Muslims and another for the rest. Seen from that context, those immigrants from the neighbouring countries into India cant be given a citizenship if they were muslim as atleast two neighbouring nations are actually formed 'for muslims' base and they are Islamic republics. India is already bursting at its seams. CItizenship is a bigger grant than in any other country. yet India is liberal. Unfortunately there are no Buddhist Republics, or ZOrastrian Republics, or Jain l, or Sikh republics in the world (except a Jewish republic) or even a Hindu republic so that India can turn them away to these republics as if they existed.
3. Muslims who remained in India are fewer very rich and larger very poor; and that organic growth remains in any society; when it does, they may be poorer in relation to other religions but have progressed nevertheless far ahead from what they were at the time of partition. Similarly there are sections in Hindus, say dalits who are more poorer than the muslims in many geographical areas, but then on this basis you cant say hindus have not progressed.
4. One has to understand the cultural perspective as well; progress is always measured in monetary terms which is only one of the measures. Certain societies place value on money where as some others not. In Gujarat both Hindus and Muslims (Khoja sect) are rich. Khoja muslims are richer than their own counterparts in other states. But that is not because of the state patronage or the lack of it. It is a certain community's attitude towards money.
Bengali Hindus are poorer than Muslim Khojas in Gujarat.
Hence this kind of analysis and inferences derived are fallacious and misleading which Economist should refrain from
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ntakleyOct 30th, 09:02
The Muslims of the Indian sub-continent were collaborators ,those in India voted for Pakistan in 1947, reward for being running dogs of the British during the freedom struggle . Given this they have been gifted two counties where they have shown their true colours . In India they have remained backward not because they were forced to but they want to .The BJP has no love lost for them , but the majority and the constitution protects them , there are no Trumps' or Xis' or European Xenophobes here , but then the Economist's correspondent are British , with a Brexit mindset ,nothing better can be expect from a Nation of Fish and Chips eaters who got plain lucky from 1800 CE . They are now reverting to the mean as are the Muslims of India . Those who are Indian Muslims will prosper , whose are Muslims in India will just wither away .Poor converts their masters lost .
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21709341-indias-biggest-minority-grows-anxious-about-its-future-uncertain-community
India’s biggest minority grows anxious about its future
Oct 29th 2016 | DELHI | From the print edition
Timekeeper
FOR a community of 172m, almost 15% of the population, Muslims at first glance appear oddly absent from the pages of India’s newspapers. In fact, they crop up a lot, but not by name. Instead, reporters coyly refer to “a certain community”. The clumsy circumlocution is a way of avoiding any hint of stoking sectarian unrest. The aim is understandable in a country that was born amid ferocious communal clashes and which has suffered all too many reprises. But the dainty phrase also hints at something else. Since India’s independence in 1947, the estrangement of Muslims has slowly grown.
India’s Muslims have not, it is true, been officially persecuted, hounded into exile or systematically targeted by terrorists, as have minorities in other parts of the subcontinent, such as the Ahmadi sect in Pakistan. But although violence against them has been only sporadic, they have struggled in other ways. In 2006 a hefty report detailed Muslims’ growing disadvantages. It found that very few army officers were Muslim; their share in the higher ranks of the police was “minuscule”. Muslims were in general poorer, more prone to sex discrimination and less literate than the general population (see chart). At postgraduate level in elite universities, Muslims were a scant 2% of students.
In this section
An uncertain community
A wrong direction in the steppe
Gift horse
Sibling rivalry
If you want it done right
A shrimp among whales
Reprints
Related topics
Politics
Government and politics
World politics
Asia-Pacific politics
Indian politics
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A decade later, with most of the committee’s recommendations quietly shelved, those numbers are unlikely to have improved. Indeed, since the landslide election win by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, some gaps have widened. There are fewer Muslim ministers now in the national government—just two out of 75—than at any time since independence, even though the Muslim share of the population has grown.
India remains a secular country, yet some laws proposed by the BJP bear a disturbingly sectarian tint. One bill would allow immigrants from nearby countries who happen to be Hindu, Sikh, Christian or Buddhist to apply for citizenship, while specifically barring Muslims. Another would retroactively block any legal challenge to past seizures of property from people deemed Pakistani “enemies”, even if their descendants have nothing to do with Pakistan and are Indian citizens. Courts have repeatedly ruled in favour of such claimants—all of them Muslim—but their families could now be stripped of any rights in perpetuity.
Far more than such legislative slights, what frightens ordinary Muslims is the government’s silence in the face of starker assaults. A year ago many were shocked when a mob in a village near Delhi, the capital, beat to death a Muslim father of three on mere suspicion that he had eaten beef. Earlier this month, after one of his alleged killers died of disease while in police custody, a BJP minister attended the suspect’s funeral, at which the casket was draped, like a hero’s, with the Indian flag.
Earlier this month, too, newspapers reported a disturbing discrepancy between the fates of two men arrested for allegedly spreading religiously insulting material via social media. One of the men, a member of a right-wing Hindu group in the BJP-run state of Madhya Pradesh, was quickly released from custody after the customary beating. The arresting officers have been charged with assault; their superiors up to the district level transferred. In the other case, in the state of Jharkhand, a Muslim villager was arrested for posting pictures implying he had slaughtered a cow. Police claimed he died of encephalitis following his arrest. A court-ordered autopsy revealed he had been beaten to death. To date, no police officers have been charged.
The BJP’s handling of a popular uprising in India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, has also raised Muslim concern. Four months into the unrest, in which dozens of civilians have been killed and hundreds injured, with continuous curfews and strikes keeping schools and shops closed, the government still refuses to talk to any but the most supine local politicians. “You don’t understand,” snaps a cabinet minister, “It’s a violent movement to build an Islamic theocracy. No democracy can tolerate that.”
Omair Ahmad, a writer on Muslim affairs, scoffs at this. The problem, he says, is that Indian governments insist on treating Kashmir as a “Muslim issue” when the real question is one of democratic representation. Yet most Indian Muslims tend to toe the official line, either from a desire to appear loyal or because they genuinely feel only a faint bond with Kashmir.
The fact is that India’s Muslims are divided, not only between dominant Sunnis and a large Shia minority but also between starkly different social classes and regions: a Muslim in Bengal is likely to share no language and few traditions with a co-religionist far to the south in steamy Kerala. The divisions may soon get deeper. Both India’s supreme court and the national law commission, a state body charged with legal reform, are deliberating whether laws governing such things as divorce and inheritance should remain different for different religious groups, or should be harmonised in a uniform national code, as the constitution urges. Spotting another “Muslim issue”, past governments have let conservative clerics control family law. As a result India, unlike most Muslim-majority countries, still allows men to divorce simply by pronouncing the word three times.
The BJP, however, is calling for sweeping reform, with Narendra Modi, the prime minister, painting the issue as a straightforward question of women’s rights. Much as many Muslims heartily agree that change is long overdue, suspicions linger that the BJP’s aim is less to generate reform than to spark inevitable protests by Muslim conservatives, so uniting Hindus in opposition to Muslim “backwardness”.
This question may play out in elections this winter in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, nearly 40m of whose 200m people are Muslim. The state has witnessed repeated communal clashes since the destruction by Hindu activists, in 1992, of a medieval mosque said to have been built over an ancient temple marking the birthplace of Rama, a Hindu deity. Many expect the BJP to play the “Muslim card” in an effort to rally Hindu votes.
There is hope: a similar ploy flopped last year in the neighbouring state of Bihar. Whatever the outcome, India’s Muslims feel increasingly like spectators in their own land. “They called it a secular state, which is why many who had a choice at partition wanted to stay here,” says Saeed Naqvi, a journalist whose recent book, “Being the Other”, chronicles the growing alienation of India’s Muslims. “But what really happened was that we seamlessly glided from British Raj to Hindu Raj.”
From the print edition: Asia
An uncertain community
India’s biggest minority grows anxious about its future
Oct 29th 2016 | DELHI See article
Readers' comments
guest-owmeswe3 hours 36 mins ago
Why does economist always seem to convey that all the problems with Muslims in India has some connection with the present day government of India , i.e the BJP government.
If not for the blatant use of the community for vote bank politics and the gullability of the muslim community to be manipulated.
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NitNov 1st, 12:22
A typical mischief mongering article. Like it is written clearly..there is nothing in the constitution or otherwise that holds Muslims back..except they themselves.
They don't invest in education, live in ghettos are willing hostages to their own Islamic clerics and are generally backward in outlook.
A free market economy doesn't give too hoots about emotions...
Muslims despite having taken Pakistan still dream of a pan Islamic world order...that's all they invest in.
Muslims are not the most educated or contributing to science and technology in other parts of the world(compared to thier 1.6b population).
They feel entitled wherever they live... everyone should work for thier betterment except they themselves.
Sadly no one can help them...
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Bharat.in reply to NitNov 1st, 20:16
Islam is a backward culture in every country in the world - including Germany where the Turkish community is supposedly the most advanced of all Isalmic society
Point of reference : turkey translates fewer books in. Year then Spain does in one week.
Why?
Because the Koran says that it has all the knowledge
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guest-ajwinselNov 1st, 08:05
Islam is not religion of peace.if any country wants peace ban islam otherwise gradually muslims will increase in population they will demand islamic law will start killing other religious people.
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AdTCCiX23qNov 1st, 07:55
This article tries to project the Indian Muslim community as 'victims'. Nothing can be further than the truth. Here are some facts:
1. India is the only country in the world where all 72 sects of Muslims exist. This is something that no Islamic country can claim - a telling evidence of the liberal environment within India.
2. Despite being a secular, democratic country, Indian Muslims have their own Personal Laws. This is despite the Indian Constitution urging that India have a uniform civil code for all its citizens. Many Indian Muslim men have abused marital provisions that make it easy to divorce their wives by giving Triple Talaq. This has affected a very large number of Muslim women in India. Many Islamic countries too do not allow for this provision. In an era of women emancipation, why is The Economist trying to project this as an example of oppression against Indian Muslims or electoral politics? If Indian Muslim Women are not allowed to progress, then 50% of Indian muslims are being pegged down economically and socially. TE cannot pretend that the problem does not exist and then when the problem is being sorted out, it cannot claim that this is a part of a Hindu agenda!
3. Hindus, globally, are a hard working, industrious group which places a high emphasis on Education - they have a dedicated Goddess of Knowledge, Sarasvati, which is revered and invoked in every educational endeavor. In contrast, Indian Muslims have preferred to send their children to Islamic schools called Madrassas which are creating unemployable graduates and who often have a prejudiced view of serving India in many ways. Ironically, Muslims have abused their freedom to build their own educational institutions (which is, incidentally, denied to Hindus in India) to create products who do not have a modern disposition or aptitude to fit into modern professions.
4. It is pertinent to point out that Muslims in the US have one of the lowest per-capita income while Hindus in the US have the highest per-capita income ( higher than the Jews too). The Economist is advised to see Pew Research. Now do we expect TE to say that the US discriminates against Muslims and gives preference to the Hindus?
5. The Muslims, if you see the map provided in the article, are creating large scale social disturbances in states where they have more than 20% of total population in India (like in France and other European centers). In Kashmir, they are burning schools down. In Bengal, they prevent the Hindus from worshiping. In Kerala, they have chopped the hand of a teacher in front of his students. In Uttar Pradesh, local Hindu/Jain/Sikh businessmen are intimidated, face harassment causing many businesses to shut down or pay a form of Jiziya like extortion. The Economist will never report this - it is to be expected.
6. With the growing influence of Arabic Wahabism on Indian Muslims and their weaning away from Hindu cultural influences which is being done by design in many Islamic Seminaries, an environment of aggressive confrontation is being set up by some instigators. These instigators include: Pakistan & its Jihadi machinery such as JeM & LeT; Wahabi sponsors and a motley crew of regional Indian Political parties that have NO developmental ideology except a lazy way of ruling some of the Indian states where Muslims are a significant part of the electorate. In a quid-pro-quo, Muslim thugs are given an opportunity to run various extortion rackets, cattle-rustling, kidnapping, allowing illegal Muslim infiltrators to come into India from Bangladesh etc. when these regional parties come to power. Look at the Map in the article once again and you will see this happening in West Bengal, Bihar, UP, Kashmir, Kerala.
Conclusion: The article is extremely biased, inflammatory and a part of the politics of creating a feeling of victimhood amongst Indian Muslims by The Economist - it is an article designed to create incitement precisely because it has no insight.
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Nitin reply to AdTCCiX23qNov 1st, 12:23
This reply is better than the biased and ill intended article itself! Thanks for posting this.
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guest-ajwioseoNov 1st, 00:48
Modi has an inborn talent to become a leader and finally became the PM of India. Since Modi's taking office as Prime Minister, his administration has turned towards modernizing India's infrastructure and government. His attempts were in favor of increased foreign direct investment, improving national standards of health and sanitation and improving relation with foreign countries. Earlier, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi's economic policies had shown an encouraging economic growth in Gujarat, a fact nobody can deny although his administration has been criticized for failing to significantly improve the human development in the state and for failing to prevent the 2002 riots. It is a policy of success under taken everywhere every time. If we look to ancient history, Krishna took evil or immoral tactics to defeat Karna, or Duranacharjya to win the war for Pandavas, American President Truman took the decision to drop Atom Bomb to end the War. There was destruction in Japan but the same US had did their best to raise the country and to make it the electronic giant. Modi did the same in 2002 to come to light to become the Chief Minister and now the PM. He is under pressure of RSS no doubt but he is for the nation, he is for all Hindus as well as for all Muslims, the structure of India what is destroyed by Gandhi and Jinnah by mutual understanding without taking the consent of the Muslims by division by making the Indian Muslims a suspected citizens who were Indians by birth, by making Pakistan an enemy country and killing and displacing millions of Hindus of Punjab and Bengal, What For? It was Just to make Nehru the PM, just to get rid of Jinnah to make space for Nehru and finally to make name and fame for self in disguise.
In a big country like India the incidents such as cow slaughter or torture of any individuals did not count the policy of a nation. Yes Muslims were few in higher education; it was a fact of history where once Muslims were not interested with foreign education. Yes, Muslims were few in armies. Who is responsible for that it was the Muslims, they did not vehement ally oppose Jinnah to create a separate country Pakistan. Jinnah wanted a separate homeland for Muslims of India. Jinnah making an understanding with Gandhi formed Pakistan kicked out all the Hindus from Pakistan but India did not do the same. It was because of the formation of Pakistan Muslims of India who did not oppose, became a suspected citizen. Now Modi is trying to remove this suspicion which is prevailing in the minds of RSS people. The laws of uniform civil court and uniform marriage are a necessity for a civilized nation. Any prejudices like Sati Dahio, or Tin Talak should not be encouraged in the civilized world. Such an article is not a befitting article to represent the true picture of present India.
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Bharat.Oct 31st, 23:50
What will make the Muslim community very uncomfortable is when India kills a few Pakistani soldiers every time the Pakistani Huriyat burn a school on Kashmir..
Hopefully the hate preachers will not resort to Suicide bombing
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guest-neisjwwOct 31st, 23:20
Another anti Indian news article, well done ET.
This article talks about problems Muslims are facing but not the reasoning behind it.
1. Why not talk about Muslims being allowed to have multiple wives in India as they want to follow sharia and not uniform civil code, men are allowed to divorce by just saying "Talaq" (divorce) three times or sending the message via whats app
2. Muslims are not in top universities as they marry 3-4 women and have 25 kids(Kids are gift from Allah, even using a condom is prohibited) which stay in same 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom apartment, will it effect their upbringing and studie, ET can talk about this in next article.
3. Muslim men don't want muslim girls to go for schooling, yes that will drop their percentage in universities. remember Malala from Pakistan, but ET can talk about that some other day.
4. Very few Muslims are in Army and not only top posts or as officers as this is their personal choice, if it would have been about studies we might have seen more muslims as sepys and not officers which is not the case, the reason is Muslims are taught in their mosques to fight for their religion and not country..
5. They selectively follow sharia and Indian law as per their convenience, for example they follow Indian law where they can drink alcohol, their hand will not be severed for stealing, they will not be stoned to death for raping but when it comes to multiple marriages, oppressing their women they start following Sharia.
I can go on but its just waste of my precious time.
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LIVE-IN-HOPEOct 31st, 19:47
Every and any historical record shows that a majority Muslim country tends to be intolerant of minorities, often genicidal, and usually ethnically cleansing.
.
With the Muslim population growing exponentially in India, we have the same fear as does Europe and USA.
In all those lands, th infidels will be a minority, and the IS dreams will come alive and prosper
And we will be back to goat habits and stone age culture. The worst of it all will be pqdophillic habits as laid down by the Prophet of Islam
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LIVE-IN-HOPEin reply to LIVE-IN-HOPEOct 31st, 19:58
India's greatest fear is that a big increase in the Muslim population in India will lad to Taliban land and th wholesale killing of minorities.
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Looking at the exponential growth of th Muslim population and their treatment of women , plus ther hat of infidels ( examples as laid down by the paedophilic prophet ) all civilisation will disappear as it has done in Pakistan.
As Churchill once said, slavery (of women ) will only wither with the disappearance of Islam
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Bharat.in reply to LIVE-IN-HOPEOct 31st, 21:55
If I(slam is a religion of peace, then stand up and be counted. Tell the world that Kashmir's ethnic cleansing is unacceptable\
.
Tell the world that killing violent terrorists is good.
even if they are Sunni Muslims
.
tell the world that the culture of cross border terrorism is not acceptable
.
and stop protesting against the laws that increase gender equality
Step upto to current civilized standards
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Man_Fromm MayberryOct 31st, 17:46
Terrible article - full of half-truths and outright lies. The irony is this - these Brits have been preaching the Indians for ions about the virtues of 'tolerance' of the other....but now that the Moslem exceptionalism has arrived on their little shores (in form of Pakistanis and ME immigrants) - the mood of the common people there has soured towards 'their' Moslem co-citizens. Today the majority of Brits feel Moslem values are 'alien' to their way of life and that they (the Moslems) will never integrate in British/English society. Despite that the pontificating elites (the same who were scaring their own people with 'Brexit') continue to lecture us from their ivory towers. TE is a fine example of that. Moslems in India (with active encouragement from the forebears of these pathetic elites) carved out Pakistan in the name of their religion. Despite that India has done more than any country for its Moslems who opted to stay behind. But lectures don't cease. Shame on TE and the high horse it likes to ride on.
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AflatuneOct 31st, 16:46
This is a truly sad thing
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Bharat.in reply to AflatuneOct 31st, 21:48
why?
because the prophet's triple talaq is indefensible ?
Or the fact that comparison with Pakistan's Genocide and ethnic cleansing should not be done?- although the world fears that this nazi type genocide and intolerant ethnic cleansing is cultural ?
or
Kashmir Sunni Muslim's ethnic cleansing through the violent Huriyat is unacceptable?
or the sunni hate for the shias is unacceptable ?
.
Time to contain the evil intolerant habits of a culture that would would harm infidels and women.
Let there be discomfort for the savages
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grandaxeOct 31st, 14:50
The BJP and Modi have to be careful when dealing with the Muslims. We are not a fanatical religion, and we must see that every single right of the Muslims are protected, and that they get opportunities that Hindu's get. There are all kinds of Muslims sects in India, and they should not be put under Hindu laws and prejudice. We have to accommodate them and see that they enjoy all the benefits of what India has to offer. If the BJP gets fanatical in its approach to Muslims, I guess their leaders will be put in jail. We will not tolerate Religious Fanatics getting out of control. Hindu's must realize that they share India with the Muslims, and that India is not Hindustan. Thank God for the enlightened freedom fighters of India, whose vision for India was an inclusive one for all religions.
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M RameshOct 31st, 12:22
The problem with you Westerners is, when it suits you, you take up exceptions and aberrations and put it forward as the norm. The killing of the muslim man on the suspicion of eating beef created a national consternation far more than killing of black men evokes in the US. It was an unfortunate, but an one-off incident. India is a huge country and aberrations do happen from time to time and the country's record of correcting itself, while not perfect, is pretty good. For balance, you should note that just as there are miscreants among Hindus, there are among other communities too, including muslims. But by far, there is harmony between Hindus and Muslims, aberrations excepted. You article is guilty of an unwarranted slant. Poor journalism.
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guest-ajwilwnaOct 31st, 10:12
Western media lacks depth and covers it up with linguistic and statistical mumbo-jumbo.
The stats are based on post-independence (60+ years) but the fault is with pro-Hindu BJP government of 2+ years!
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Tattvam AsiOct 31st, 02:28
Does this paper even bother to review facts? What the Government wants to do is to come up with a common/uniform civil code and stop having special laws for different religions, this article is complete bunkum.
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guest-ajwiwwjaOct 30th, 21:28
3 out of 13 Indian presidents were Muslims.
The day USA achieves this, mankind will reach Pluto-
The Muslim population of India is half of the entire US so the Economist should put this in perspective and stop fanning the fire between the 2 Indian communities who love India equally.
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guest-llneolsOct 30th, 15:35
It is unfortunate that the quality of the Economist has sunk so low in a single article
In the above article you have managed to justify police beatings,
The continuation of a regressive and anti women law because of "perception issues",and
Dismissed the very real concerns that people the world over have about growing Islamic radicalization that are sweeping the globe ,
Does this paper really think that threats to impose sharia law should not be taken seriously by a secular state just to appease a few radicals ? ,
This kind of Pigheadedness by insulated elites the world over has lead to the rise of crazies like Trump,
and the French governments insane efforts to tell women what to wear at the beach.
Unless this Newspaper returns to the roots of its founding of true Liberalism I am sad to say it might fade into irrelevance.
Maybe next time this Newspaper and its editors should spend more time researching an article rather than latching on to an established narrative to meet a deadline.
Yours truly and sadly
A long time reader
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guest-ajwiejswOct 30th, 13:08
"Having demanded the division of India and got Pakistan and Bangladesh where Hindus have been reduced to dwindling terrified silenced minorities, Muslims are now demanding the part of India that was set aside for Hindus as well. "What is mine is mine. What is yours we can share..."
I would correct that to "what is yours I will take over and violently separate". Kashmiri Hindus were driven out, butchered or converted to render the state muslim majority. Of course the British colonial mindset would overlook history and facts.
India gets routinely flogged by the righteous western media with double standards . Where were they when the hapless non muslim minority became extinct in muslim majority countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, whereas after partition the muslim minority has become a minority majority in India.
Only contonuing economic propsperity in India will shut these mischief making colonialist minded media.
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guest-ajwimosoOct 30th, 11:28
are muslims rally a 'minority' in India?
muslims are fastest growing lot in india... surely ecology must be conducive for fastest growth
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Kabeer KabeerOct 30th, 10:08
It's a very shallow article more of a south asian media's mediocrity than the one that befits The Economist. This kind of stuff appears frequently in the south asian press. I expect you to go a little deeper and put a more analytical picture.
1. With almost two third of the US Population in India, muslims can't be categorises as 'minority'; as one Zorastrian gentlemen suggested in a live TV show, muslims in India are the second largest Majority. THat is how one should view the minority context. You use the word minority who cant defend themselves for their rights. 200 million is hardly thenumber. In that sense, ZOrastrians and Jews are minorities as they are too small in numbers
2. British India was partitioned on religious lines; and that was not on Hindus and non Hindus base; it was a nation for Muslims and another for the rest. Seen from that context, those immigrants from the neighbouring countries into India cant be given a citizenship if they were muslim as atleast two neighbouring nations are actually formed 'for muslims' base and they are Islamic republics. India is already bursting at its seams. CItizenship is a bigger grant than in any other country. yet India is liberal. Unfortunately there are no Buddhist Republics, or ZOrastrian Republics, or Jain l, or Sikh republics in the world (except a Jewish republic) or even a Hindu republic so that India can turn them away to these republics as if they existed.
3. Muslims who remained in India are fewer very rich and larger very poor; and that organic growth remains in any society; when it does, they may be poorer in relation to other religions but have progressed nevertheless far ahead from what they were at the time of partition. Similarly there are sections in Hindus, say dalits who are more poorer than the muslims in many geographical areas, but then on this basis you cant say hindus have not progressed.
4. One has to understand the cultural perspective as well; progress is always measured in monetary terms which is only one of the measures. Certain societies place value on money where as some others not. In Gujarat both Hindus and Muslims (Khoja sect) are rich. Khoja muslims are richer than their own counterparts in other states. But that is not because of the state patronage or the lack of it. It is a certain community's attitude towards money.
Bengali Hindus are poorer than Muslim Khojas in Gujarat.
Hence this kind of analysis and inferences derived are fallacious and misleading which Economist should refrain from
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ntakleyOct 30th, 09:02
The Muslims of the Indian sub-continent were collaborators ,those in India voted for Pakistan in 1947, reward for being running dogs of the British during the freedom struggle . Given this they have been gifted two counties where they have shown their true colours . In India they have remained backward not because they were forced to but they want to .The BJP has no love lost for them , but the majority and the constitution protects them , there are no Trumps' or Xis' or European Xenophobes here , but then the Economist's correspondent are British , with a Brexit mindset ,nothing better can be expect from a Nation of Fish and Chips eaters who got plain lucky from 1800 CE . They are now reverting to the mean as are the Muslims of India . Those who are Indian Muslims will prosper , whose are Muslims in India will just wither away .Poor converts their masters lost .
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