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> India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social inequality. Is the current BJP administration trying to do that, or is that the

> India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social inequality. Is the current BJP administration trying to do that, or is that the long-term trend? Also, is the BJP trying to help the Muslim minority or only Hindus?

Manishearth 11y ago
It's a long term trend. As far as the Muslim minority is concerned, there haven't been any changes in law that I am aware of regarding them (besides, India has a bunch of laws that make it hard to remove laws pertaining to minorities without involvement from minority leaders. Or something like that). There probably have been internal policy changes. I don't know. One would expect them to focus on fixing "Hindu rights" issues over Muslim rights, sadly. I'm not sure what they have done so far in that direction (and there's a lot of debate over this right now; whether or not the atmosphere in the country has changed due to them). I'd rather not get into that debate here.
- iofj 11y ago
  The thing I don't get about Indian politics is this : given what has happened to the Hindu majority in Pakistan and the Hindu minority in Bangladesh [1] [2] [3]. Given that, how can you possibly defend that muslims in India are anything but a clear and present danger to both national security itself (ie. the democracy, but generally all state institutions and Indian territory), but more importantly, to the very lives of a majority of Indians ? (judging by what happened in Pakistan and Bangladesh, even to a very significant fraction of their own lives) Note that you might say that those were rebels, specific leaders, but accounts of the various massacres say differently, and all say roughly the same thing: it was ordinary muslims, neighbors, friends, villagers, who suddenly started massacring everyone. It wasn't armies, it was certainly not an organised military force, it was ordinary muslims (this is the same thing being reported from the isis/daesh areas in Iraq and Syria however). And whilst I don't mean to say Hindus never commit violence upon muslims, far from it (even increased recently), the scale of it just doesn't compare. No massacres (plenty of events that were fights between mobs being reported as massacres on muslims, especially in Western press, but nothing that anyone can reasonably consider a massacre : people going to houses and executing whoever they find inside). If you say 100 million Hindus were killed or forcibly oppressed in the last century in India, that's a conservative figure. You'd never get anywhere near 10 million muslims being affected. The general population certainly doesn't see things this way, when I find it extremely hard to argue anything else, given recent Indian history. I don't understand why. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Bangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Banglade... [3] article, as illustration: http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-blasphemy-142524012.html http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-bl...

Manishearth 11y ago

It's a long term trend. As far as the Muslim minority is concerned, there haven't been any changes in law that I am aware of regarding them (besides, India has a bunch of laws that make it hard to remove laws pertaining to minorities without involvement from minority leaders. Or something like that). There probably have been internal policy changes. I don't know. One would expect them to focus on fixing "Hindu rights" issues over Muslim rights, sadly. I'm not sure what they have done so far in that direction (and there's a lot of debate over this right now; whether or not the atmosphere in the country has changed due to them). I'd rather not get into that debate here.

iofj 11y ago
The thing I don't get about Indian politics is this : given what has happened to the Hindu majority in Pakistan and the Hindu minority in Bangladesh [1] [2] [3]. Given that, how can you possibly defend that muslims in India are anything but a clear and present danger to both national security itself (ie. the democracy, but generally all state institutions and Indian territory), but more importantly, to the very lives of a majority of Indians ? (judging by what happened in Pakistan and Bangladesh, even to a very significant fraction of their own lives) Note that you might say that those were rebels, specific leaders, but accounts of the various massacres say differently, and all say roughly the same thing: it was ordinary muslims, neighbors, friends, villagers, who suddenly started massacring everyone. It wasn't armies, it was certainly not an organised military force, it was ordinary muslims (this is the same thing being reported from the isis/daesh areas in Iraq and Syria however). And whilst I don't mean to say Hindus never commit violence upon muslims, far from it (even increased recently), the scale of it just doesn't compare. No massacres (plenty of events that were fights between mobs being reported as massacres on muslims, especially in Western press, but nothing that anyone can reasonably consider a massacre : people going to houses and executing whoever they find inside). If you say 100 million Hindus were killed or forcibly oppressed in the last century in India, that's a conservative figure. You'd never get anywhere near 10 million muslims being affected. The general population certainly doesn't see things this way, when I find it extremely hard to argue anything else, given recent Indian history. I don't understand why. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Bangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Banglade... [3] article, as illustration: http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-blasphemy-142524012.html http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-bl...