A tale of two young men in India

[abhi182]

I do not know why I am even writing this as I know this thread will most likely degenerate in a mindless flame war but nevertheless....

But first some background...I stumbled upon this forum by accident and have been reading through several of the threads for the past several hours and I am more than surprised by the perception of India amongst the general pakistani populace (coming to think of it, folks on this forum would in general be the relatively more privileged and well educated Pakistanis)

I am not sure whether this stems from the propaganda spread by media/history books/what have you ..nevertheless, here goes....

I and a very close friend of mine (let's call him X) both come from middle class backgrounds from small towns


Neither of us is from a (purportedly) high caste or super-privileged background though both of us come from educated families.....

We met in Engineering college and have been close pals ever since...

Post engineering, we both did an MBA, albeit from different colleges..

Post MBA, we both switched a couple of jobs ...jumped across roles...the usual stuff....

Currently, both of us work in the same city (Chennai), earn a fairly decent living and enjoy a fairly good standard of living...both of us have traveled across the world on several business trips though neither of us have ever got a chance to visit Pakistan unfortunately....

He recently got married so we hang out a little less than before but nevertheless, we still do party out....

The only supposedly major difference between X and I is that he is a Muslim while I am a Hindu....

sorry for the long winded and boring story...but I am not sure what gives the average Pakistani the image that in present day India, Muslims are discriminated against (at least in the professional realm of modern Indian organizations)...

The reason why I talked about this is to illustrate from a personal experience that there is no discrimination within the professional sector at least)

I cannot vouch for the Govt sector, having no personal experience there....but the point I wanted to bring out was that in present day India, no-one can stop you from being successful if you are willing to work hard....
regardless of your caste, creed or religion....

Perhaps 25 years ago, my South Indian boss may have favored a local Tamil over me (I am a North Indian and do not even speak the local language..neither does X)..or the Hindu HR manager at X's firm may have chosen a Hindu fella over him....

But definitely not any more....


I do not know how it is in Pakistan..but what I do know is that India today is very different from what it was 25 years ago

Oh, and by the way we both cheer for the Indian cricket team when we watch a Indo-Pak match..the only difference is when we celebrate an Indian win with cheers, my glass has beer and his has Coke

 

[blain2]

Pakistan is the same. Minorities do come forward and are given opportunities, however there is always room for improvement. I am not one to say how Muslims are treated in India, although I know that Muslims are gradually becoming more viable economically in India in contrast to the past where the prospects for earning a good living were fairly bleak for them.

I grew up in Pakistan and two of my absolutely best friends were Christians (one whose family came from Goa and the other was from HK). Both of these guys got their education in Pakistani schools and have gone on to greener pastures in the US.

However I must point out that the strata of society that we all belonged to was what one would consider to be middle class. I am sure many more less fortunate were/are not so lucky. So while hard work can work in some cases, when the overall system is heavily stacked against a minority then you can't just say "work hard" and move on. This btw is also the reason that in the US, they have "Affirmative Action" to cater to inequities in terms of opportunities and backgrounds of people.

 

[abhi182]

The idea behind this post was that that the case I talked about is more of a rule rather than an exception......

In fact Parsis/Sikhs and to a certain extent christians tend to be more affluent/well educated than Hindus....

If there is a relative dearth of well educated Muslims today , it's not because of some sinister exploitation by the ruling classes (which is what the perception in Pakistan seems to be ).....

A potential cause cause for this anomaly could be due to the fact that in 1947, most of the affluent /majority of the middle-class muslims from India migrated to Pakistan in quest of the promised land....

A majority of those left behind were from the poor/non-privileged sections of the then-Muslim society who could not afford to move....
(though of course several affluent/middle class Muslims stayed behind, but the point here is that the majority who stayed back were from the underprivileged segments )

It would take India more than 50 years to move this underprivileged segment to a more enlightened /affluent section

Now from within this segment, there were some Muslims who chose to get a mainstream education for their children ...unfortunately, most did not..either because they could not afford to, or did not wish to because of a closed mindset (same holds true for the poor/underprivileged Hindus too)

The ones who did get into the mainstream are the ones who did well...needless to say the ones who stayed uneducated or studied in a traditional Madarassa were unprepared to be recruited in progressive workforce....