the way the media/establishment deals with Hindus and Muslims

[cocacolamonster]

We're now into the second and third generations in the UK, and generally the Muslim and Hindu communities have remained as two seperate concepts, but the media is still dealing with ethnic relations among South Asians as if the communities shouldn't exists - mostly as if the Hindus are being Islamophobic and the Muslims are the underdog.

In Sri Lanka, where the Hindus and Muslims are identical to their Indian counterparts, the two have explicitly desired to remain two seperate offical ethnicities even into women and gays due to cultural issues. A similar situation exists, albeit informally, throughout large tracts of India where the governent informally treated the two groups as two ethnicities (notbaly all of South India).

I don't really identify with most of Muslim culture. Racism nowadays is also far worse between Hindus and Muslims, than between Hindus and whites or Hindus and Blacks. Even the majority of 'assimilated' Muslim communities in the UK don't mix with Hindus because we live in different areas usually.

Agreed. Hindus are very different and have very different cultural stories. Nearly every single rags to riches Indian / Ugandan story is on account of Hindus. There is no ‘Indian’ academic overachievement - there is Hindu overachievement with Indian Muslim communities not doing as well.

If my history is correct then Muslim Indians were invaders going back to the Mughal empire. In my head India is Hindu.

Well let’s not encourage Hindu/Muslim divides. In India it’s let to the brutal kidnapping and rape of an eight year old and people rallying in favour of the rapists.
I would rather integration was encouraged.

India is 85% Hindu but also one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. There is a lot of generalisation here. As a Bengali Hindu I identify a LOT more culturally with Bengali Muslims than with Tamil Brahmins even though we are all nominally ‘Hindu.’

The Sri Lanka example. Well there Hindus and Muslims have been at the mercy of the Buddhist majority leading to a civil war.

Also historically a lot of this communalism in India is a product of British rule. I can give you whole University reading lists on the subject. So it’s very bizarre to hear people asking the same British to treat them separately. They did. That’s what lead to this mess. And Partition.

This is why we need to teach history properly.

The couple who own my local newsagents are Hindu, they are truly lovely people who have integrated into village life the 6 years they have been here. They are well known and liked.
The Muslim family who own a restaurant in the village are very polite but keep themselves to themselves, their children don't go to the local school and they don't mix outside of their family.
I don't know much about the history between the two but I do remember the Hindu family making it clear that they were not Muslim when they moved to the area.
Off to have a google on Hindu/Muslim history.

@LucilleBluth There are two points to this.

Hinduism itself is a Persian (Middle Eastern and Muslim) word to descibe the forigerness of India. This was before the advent of Islam into India.

The region in north-west India is like a mixture of India and Middle East. A similar situation exists in South-Eastern Europe (lots of Muslims, Greece and Turkey share a lot of culture and racial similarities). It's just that a lot of Indians in the UK come from this border region.

In the Sri Lankan community it's more acceptable to do things that Indians consider Hindu Nationalist - neither the Christians nor Muslims here care about fighting it. It's like English culture in Ireland.

@ KoshaMangsho

Sri Lanka is a ethnolingustic conflict that had Christians on both sides - the Muslims are widely considered to be a seperate ethnic group throughout South India.

What I mean by the Muslim-Hindu divide is that Hindus and Muslims do share common cultural issues. For example, the Hindus in South India tend to speak the local/ethnic mother tougue language, whereas the Muslims often only speak Urdu in-line with North Indian Muslims.

But I agree that India is almost similar to Europe in terms of diversity. I think one of the problems with current views of South Asia is that people tend to view Pakistan (and maybe Punjabis/Gujratis) as the centre of Indian culture (almost like saying Greece and Turkey are the centre of European culture) which has a side effect of bringing in a lot of Middle Eastern culture.

Ah I see, very interesting. In total coincidence to this thread I have just booked a holiday for next Easter to Sri Lanka. My friend recently arrived back from a holiday there and said it was the best holiday they have ever had.

A large number of Muslims and Christians in India are Dalits/former Untouchables who converted out of Hinduism. This is also the root of Sikhism and Buddhism.

Well, not all of the South Indian Muslims are Urdu speaking...ie originated from the Persians
Most Muslims in Kerala and Tamil Nadu - speak the local dialect and were Islamic converts even before Mughal invasion of the north.
If you look at the Hindu Muslim conflict in a India it is mainly in the north - in my opinion both Hindu and Islam are moderate in nature in the south. South does not vote for Hindu nationalistic party but as it is completely outnumbered in population ( Higher literary, female education, good family planning provisions etc in the south) by the north, people from the south are not represented well in the parliament. You could rule India by just winning seats from North Indian states - religious parties exploit this a lot!!!!

This thread is in quite bad taste. It's on the news that an 8 yo Muslim girl was raped and murdered by a gang of 8 Hindu men in a temple in India.

The story is heartbreaking. What's worse is that Hindu nationalists are fighting for the killers to be freed in the name of Hinduism.

Some of you might find this interesting and it is not as simple as people make it to be..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.P..J.AbdullKalam

Lacuracha- I haven't seen that news, can't find it in the bbc website. Sorry, would have not posted if I had known

@CaoNiMa

Why?

There are massive socio economic reasons why British Hindus have integrated more than Muslims. British Hindus are overwhelmingly upper caste Hindus. British Muslims range from Somalians to Bangladeshis who don’t really practise the same kind of Islam. The reasons why their integration is less successful is more complex than ‘Islam is a frightening religion.’ I can send you a University reading list on the subject (again) if you are interested. Really, there is a LOT of research on this stuff.

Here is the event mentioned. An eight year old Muslim girl was gang raped, tortured and murdered in a religious hate crime.

Link here

Islam is a frightening religion

It's more frightening that you would blithely say that.

I think you're wrong because you've just presented a very distorted view. One could do the same by careful selection of Biblical passages too.