The Great Indian Political Debate - 2

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<b>India has a sizable number of Muslims as its citizens. Due to historical reasons, there has been a division of the community in two major camps, that of Hindus and Muslims. In 1947, on the division of India a sizable number of Muslims went over the newly created country of Pakistan. There was major migration of population between the rest of India and Pakistan. Despite this migration, it was found that a vast majority of the Muslims who were resident of British India have chosen to continue in secular India rather than migrating to Pakistan. It was a major political blow to the proponents of the two nation theory.
Today the situation is that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world only after Indonesia. It is a matter of great national pride for Indians that members of all communities including Christians and Sikhs leave and work peacefully. In the past five and held decades of its existence communal peace has prevailed for at least 99 percent of the period.
There are religious fanatics in all the communities, and the Indian society is no exception. Another problem in India has been the exploitation of the minority community by the political parties and the politicians for their own narrow political games and interests. The present social and economic decline of the Muslim community in India is a direct result of this exploitation by the politicians. Another factor which has played a major part in contributing to the problems of the Muslim community in India has been the continued hostility and tension between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue. Pakistan and to some extent Bangladesh in the past have made use of the misguided elements from within the Muslim community in India to carry on subversive activities within the country. This has given the opportunity to the communal forces within the society to undermine the loyalty and image of an average Muslim citizen of India before the general public.
To free the Muslims and other minorities from the exploitive clutches of the politicians, it is necessary that the spread of education and other measures for their social and intellectual development needs to be accelerated. The reservation of seats in educational institutions or for jobs in the public sector is not a remedy to the problem. It is a fact of life that 22 percent of the Indians irrespective of their religion today remains below the poverty line. So the condition of the Muslims is nothing extraordinary .The measures that need to be taken to rectify the situation need not be on the basis of religion.</b>