Hindu-Muslim Conflict Quotes

At Indian Independence from Britain, people could choose whether they wanted to be citizens of India or the new Muslim state created because many Muslims insisted on living in a country that was majority Muslim. However, and what came as a great shock to the then new Pakistani leadership, the majority of the Muslims of India choose not to become citizens of the new Islamic state and preferred to stay in Hindu dominated India which they knew would be democratic, free, and would protect their right to practice Islam as they saw fit. Many feared that in Pakistan Islamic extremists would dictate the exact form of Islam that Muslims must follow, and that is exactly what happened in Pakistan—not only from government action proscribing religious practice but from the government tolerating and not interfering with Islamic fundamentalist extremist terrorists who often assassinated Muslims whose particular form of worship was offensive to them or people would call for reforms of the protection of human rights.

At the time almost everyone thought him overly pessimistic. Despite huge efforts to bridge the differences including the partition of India and creating a separate Muslim state, the Muslims have become even more discontented in modern times. The Muslim antagonism however has expanded beyond the Hindus, to include the Christians, Jews, Bhais, Buddhists and any other religion in control of land where there are Muslims or they feel should have Muslims. Today, as in 1925 however, the difficult was caused be a very vocal and often violent extremist minority of the Islamic population.

The Partition was accompanied by over 2 million murdered Indians as India was divided into a smaller India with almost all the Hindus and Sikhs and a slight majority of the Muslims and Pakistan with all Muslims who made that choice. Pakistan has been trying to de stabilize the area ever since to gain control of more land and became a theocracy and military dictatorship—sometimes de facto and sometimes de juro.

There were several difficulties in this definition even for those British and Indian Congress leaders who were willing to accede to an independent Muslim state. Two of the most important where the definition of areas. They could be so defined as to include majority Hindu or Sikh areas surrounded by larger majority Muslim areas—the classic problem of boundary districting and redistricting. This was an insurmountable problem in the Punjab and elsewhere. The 2nd was the undemocratic nature of the demand. The Muslim League, unlike the Congress Party, had never had a very large participation and its leaders were never elected over a series of free and fair elections. Many Muslims were opposed to the Muslim League and there were areas of India, like Kashmir, where a large proportion of the 70% Muslim population were opposed to partition and if there were to be one would prefer to remain with India. With virtually 100% of the Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians of Kashmir refusing to be part of a Muslim state, the majority in Kashmir would have then voted to remain a part of India but the Muslim League did not take account of democratic processes at the time. They changed their view later after they had infiltrated tens of thousands of semi nomadic Muslim Tribesmen across the border to gain the majority. Then the Indians would not accede to a plebiscite until the newcomers were removed and India has been in a constant war with Pakistan who has been trying to gain control of Indian Kashmir by war and terrorism.