Here’s why I think comparing India with Pakistan on minority rights makes no sense. Pakistan was carved out of British India in 1947 for an explicitly communal reason: as a separate homeland for Muslims based on the belief that Indian Muslims constituted a distinct nation, and that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in peace as compatriots. In the past, I’ve argued that though most Pakistanis are not Islamists, the country’s founding ideology made its elites especially receptive to both Islamism and global jihadism. By contrast, independent India was founded as a multi-religious nation with a Hindu majority but a secular constitution.
Most official symbols in Pakistan — from the flag, to the name of the capital (Islamabad), to the dark green of passport jackets and the cricket team’s uniform — signal the centrality of Islam to that nation’s idea of itself. By contrast, India’s national symbols are mostly religiously neutral. (The cricket team wears blue, not saffron, the color of Hinduism.)
In terms of demographics, too, the two countries present striking contrasts. In undivided British India, in 1941, the areas that constitute today’s Pakistan were about 78% Muslim; the rest of the people were Hindu, Sikh and Christian. Today Pakistan is 97% Muslim. The most significant minority, the beleaguered Shia community, are Muslims in an Islamic republic. By contrast, in India the Hindu majority has declined gently from 85% of the population in 1951 to a shade under 80% today. In short, religious minorities have shrunk dramatically in one country while growing over time in the other.
In terms of extremist ideology, obviously Islamism provides a unique challenge in today’s world, not comparable in either scale or violence with other forms of religious extremism. Moderate Pakistanis pushing back against a rising tide of Islamism, such as my co-panelist Pervez Hoodbhoy, are among the bravest and most principled people anywhere in South Asia.
Of course, none of this suggests that we should be sanguine about minority rights in India. In recent months, I’ve written about a spate of “beef lynchings,” and about the hardline turn of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. But while it’s legitimate to express concerns about India, it remains borderline ludicrous to compare it with Pakistan.
https://www.aei.org/publication/it-...igious-majoritarianism-in-india-and-pakistan/
It's not Hindu Taliban = Muslim Pakistan, it is:
Muslims of India = Muslims of Pakistan.
Birds of the same feather flock together!!
Most official symbols in Pakistan — from the flag, to the name of the capital (Islamabad), to the dark green of passport jackets and the cricket team’s uniform — signal the centrality of Islam to that nation’s idea of itself. By contrast, India’s national symbols are mostly religiously neutral. (The cricket team wears blue, not saffron, the color of Hinduism.)
In terms of demographics, too, the two countries present striking contrasts. In undivided British India, in 1941, the areas that constitute today’s Pakistan were about 78% Muslim; the rest of the people were Hindu, Sikh and Christian. Today Pakistan is 97% Muslim. The most significant minority, the beleaguered Shia community, are Muslims in an Islamic republic. By contrast, in India the Hindu majority has declined gently from 85% of the population in 1951 to a shade under 80% today. In short, religious minorities have shrunk dramatically in one country while growing over time in the other.
In terms of extremist ideology, obviously Islamism provides a unique challenge in today’s world, not comparable in either scale or violence with other forms of religious extremism. Moderate Pakistanis pushing back against a rising tide of Islamism, such as my co-panelist Pervez Hoodbhoy, are among the bravest and most principled people anywhere in South Asia.
Of course, none of this suggests that we should be sanguine about minority rights in India. In recent months, I’ve written about a spate of “beef lynchings,” and about the hardline turn of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. But while it’s legitimate to express concerns about India, it remains borderline ludicrous to compare it with Pakistan.
https://www.aei.org/publication/it-...igious-majoritarianism-in-india-and-pakistan/
It's not Hindu Taliban = Muslim Pakistan, it is:
Muslims of India = Muslims of Pakistan.
Birds of the same feather flock together!!
