India too keen on pacifying leftover Muslims

Submitted by Devasahayam (United States), Jun 24, 2008 at 12:27

This--and the absurd viewing, by Indian Governments, of Muslims as a vote-bloc¹--have been snares to India's policies, both foreign and domestic. They refused till 1992 to even diplomatically recognise Israel--and suffered much consequence of that including pitiful economic growth rates; fast growth occurred only after Narasimha Rao extended diplomatic recognition.

Islam's impact in Sub-continent was obnoxious enough that even Ambedkar (a dalit) in 1935² stated it as being "worse than that of Hinduism". IMO, the only reason he didn't make the same comparison for impact outside India is due to non-impact of Hinduism in Europe and Muddle East to that time.

1. In 1951, the country had 3.3 crore (triple entire Australia population at that time) Muslims out of total 36.5 crore population; now 23 crores (bigger than Russia, Canada, UK and Australia combined) out of total 115 crores.
2. Ambedkar was born in 1891, and had by then accumulated lots of bitter experiences at the hands of "uppercaste" Hindus!

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".