Prince_James said:
samcdkey:
This does not seem to be the case, specifically when following the British raj's fall, there was intense religious riotting and, again, the partition of India. There are also massive controversies regularly reported with the religious differences.
After 200 plus years of occupation and the British poicy of "Divide and Rule"?
It was a shameful time, yes, which is all the more reason we try to prevent it now.
That said, in an overpopulated country with all the worlds races and religions, there is bound to be an occasional outburst. Especially when politicians become involved. We still have the best record for democracy and secularism.
An Indian can be defined as a person from the Indian-continent, whose genetic roots are in India, whose religion is Hinduism (or perhaps the offshoot religion of Jainism or Indian Buddhism), who is either of Aryan or Dravidian descent, who speaks at least one Indian language (in a regional dialect or not) and who participates in traditional Indian culture to at least a modest extent (taking into consideration that India is also a modern country).
Haha!
What is India and Who is an Indian ?
India is the biggest and most ancient experiment where almost all racial and ethnic groups of the world have met and mixed.
We do have pure Mongolian races in North East, Australoids and Munda aborigines in Center and East, Mediterranean and Arabian in the North and West, Central Asian Turk-Mongols in North, Aryans in North.
These last form same stock with Aryans of Iran [Ayran], Aryavan [Azairbaijan] and other areas of Amu Dariya.
We also have Burmese, Cambodian, Viet, Thai, Malay and Javanese racial groups in India.
We also have Greek, Armenian, Turk, Slavic Russian, Georgian and even Mediterraneans, Semitic, Phoenicians, Berbers and Misri elements in India.
Guess someone should tell all these people, huh?
Hinduism, like any other religion, has various sects and schools of thought within it. But Hinduism can be defined as those who accept the authorities of the Vedas, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Upanishads, the Puranas, et cetera, et cetera. In essence, the Hindu canon. With the allowing for certain distinctions.
Actually if you ever go to India, you'll find people identify themselves with a place rather than with a religion. i.e. are you from Mumbai or Pune? Not, are you a Hindu or Muslim. Makes no sense to us. Every one knows people from the same place have similar values.
At most, the differences in Hinduism boil down to something along the lines of Christianity's Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism. However, this seems far less extreme, and is probably more along the Jewish splits.
Shows that you do not know any Hindus. Try getting a Hindu from Punjab together with one from the South and the
only thing they have in common is India and Bollywood (and the latter is not always true).
There is enough differences to warrant them being considered distinct. However, they are all Abrahamic religions, and ontop of that, are part of Semitic religions as a whole.
Yes, but would a Christian consider a prayer mat for worship? Or a Muslim go for communion?
Bolstered by historic ties and connections.
Bolstered by complete ignorance. But we are tolerant people, so we overlook the tendency of the West to see us as a different species. After all we have 5000 years of tradition. Something they cannot even begin to comprehend.
According to the census data, 900 million Indians are Hindus, about 100 million are Moslems, with the rest being Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and others. I do not know precisely where each falls in, though.
If you allow for the fact that there are 800 dialects and each dialect represents a difference in culture (which may include more than one religion), you get some idea of how incredibly complex it really is.
Jews from Mumbai speak Marathi, Persians from Gujarat speak Gujarati, Syrian Christians speak Malayalam. What would they say to an Israeli, an Iranian or an European Christian?
Another example: Urdu is a Muslim language which originated in India and has an Arabic script. However only people from Pakistan (Muslims Hindus or Christians), and some Muslims and Hindus from some parts of Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and one city in Andhra Pradesh know how to read it. The one city in AP, Hyderabad, has a dialect of Urdu (called Deccani Urdu) incomprehensible to the other Urdu speaking population and so unique that Hyderabadis can be instantly recognised by the dialect. And all the people in Hyderabad, including non-Muslims can understand it.
Not only the language, but also the culture and cuisine of the Hyderabadi Muslims is different from Muslims in the rest of the country. The Hindus from Hyderabad speak the language but have very little else in common with the Muslims except history. But Deccani Urdu is not understood by many people outside the city, in the same state of AP. Vernacular Urdu however has a lot of words in common with Hindi and Bollywood is a mixture of the two languages. Pure Urdu is so complex even I cannot read it (I'm self taught). Urdu is the language of Ghazals which is a very popular form of poetry set to music and is written and sung mostly by Hindus in India.
There is a substantial group of Hindus belonging to the state of Sind who can also understand Urdu, because their language Sindhi, understood and used only by them, is also written using a modified Arabic script. And Sindhi is the language of the State of Sind, which is now in Pakistan. But Hindu Sindhis are spread out all over India, though mostly in the North. And they still call themselves Sindhis, since this identifies them as a particular ethnic group with a particular unique language, cuisine, customs and dress. And Urdu speaking people cannot understand Sindhi, except those who are from the state of Sind in Pakistan.
And that is just two groups of people, Hindus and Muslims from two different states and countries, with one language that is not even common. I have not told you about the Lucknowi and Ajmeri and Delhi Urdu speakers yet.
You think so? I am generally pretty good in perceiving the subtle differences. Although you are rather secular compared to many Moslems, yes. For one, you drink wine. Naughty-naughty anti-Shariah girl, you.
We do not have Shariah in India. We have the Indian Penal Code, which applies to all Indians. And boy o boy, I'd love to see you perceive these "subtle differences".
You'd probably have to visit them at home to be able to tell what religion they follow. We can of course, tell by the name, but not otherwise.
But yes, I would say that you differ from Arabic Moslems. But so do Irish Catholics differ from German, Spanish, French, or Italian Catholics. Regionalism.
Sure, but if you go to the US, immigrants from these countries would have more than religion in common right? But would an Indian Muslim have anything in common with an Arab? or a Serbian Muslim? or a Chinese one? Indians who go abroad consider only other Indians as desis (natives), regardless of religion.
I have much more in common with an Indian of any religion than with a Muslim from anywhere else in the world (except Pakistan and Bangladesh, which used to be a part of India).
You ought to make a thread about your travels. I would find them interesting.
Other people's lives always look more interesting than our own.
Though I've enjoyed my life very much, with very few, very minor regrets.
