The Hindu-Muslim divide and the clashes that result from this divide in India is generally termed as ‘communalism’ or sampradayikata by the mass media. However, this divide and the religious clashes are not a simple matter of communalism; a term introduced by 18th century British historians with poor understanding of the Indian society, religiousness, culture, and politics.

The foreign invading Muslims and the converted Indian Muslims

Hindus have been resisting the foreign Islamic invasions since 8th century CE, and the basic ideology behind these constant resistances was to stop the foreign forces that were invading lands and destroying lives of people, as they had a completely different sense of ethics and values in life. The Islamic invaders had a different set of religious beliefs that were exclusive and rigid in nature, with strong expansionist ideologies that believed in completely dominating the conquered, and eradicating the ones that refused to be subjugated. While initially the Muslims from Arabia and Afghanistan came to invade, later it were mainly the Turkish Muslims that entered India.

Standing separate from these foreign Islamic invaders are the Indian Muslims, who are a break away from their original Indic religions (ex-Hindus/Buddhists/Jains, etc.), who constitute almost 98 percent of the Muslim population in India. The foreign Muslim population that entered India as invaders and later as job seekers from Turkey, Iran, Arab, etc., constitute the remaining 2 percent. The Muslims that had ruled India in the medieval era came from this 2 percent, and they treated the rest 98 percent that constituted of converted Muslims with disdain. While Hindus were brutally persecuted and lost their wealth, the ones that converted to Islam over centuries lost much more; wherein in one stroke they lost their innate moral and ethical values, cultural heritage, and a way of living that had been preserved for thousands of years. Conversion doesn’t just mean a shift in religion, it goes much deeper than that, and constitutes a complete change in social living, and a forcible uprooting of age-old cultural and traditional values that had sustained them over centuries.

The Hindus and Buddhists that converted at various points in the timeline of Indian history found themselves suddenly cut off from their old way of living, cultural values, ethics, and social customs. They entered a new world, which did not recognize their land and former religion as good. Instead, the faith, systems, and beliefs of the foreign land from where the religion had originated were strictly imposed, and these were declared as superior than the Indic ones. The converted........

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