India took more than a thousand years to arrive at the conclusion of living in peace in a multi-cultural environment. From being just a Hindu/Buddhist region, it slowly began to accept the followers of other creed as equal humans. Muslim invaders that followed European plunderers, starting with Alexander the Great in 326 BC, brought to India or Bharat a sense of culture and humanism.

This is not to suggest that Hinduism was devoid of humanism; its teachings of peaceful coexistence were altered into developing an attitude of militancy towards all those who were outside their own creed. The damning caste system that still ails Indian society has been a curse upon the downtrodden and remains the greatest obstacle in unifying India. The lower castes are abhorred still. The Muslim rulers taught India about the universal brotherhood of man, with no distinction of colour, religion, creed, caste or language.

Islam hence continues to be the growing religion in India and other parts of the world. The Mughals assimilated thoroughly into the socio-economic body of the locals to the extent by the time of Jehangir’s ascension to the throne the Mughals had almost lost their links with Central Asia in all aspects of everyday living.

If after centuries, the right mixture between essentially five dominant and powerful civilisations took place, it was Gandhi and Nehru in the modern history who brought out and kept alive the concept of Ahimsa (mon-violence) and peaceful coexistence, closest to the political thought and philosophy of India.

Following Independence, both stood resolutely against ethnic cleansing of Muslims who remained back in India. In fact they stood as a China Wall against the atrocities that the RSS (the ideological fountainhead of BJP) was unleashing upon the Muslims.

An RSS die-hard activist, Nathuram Godse, took Gandhi out with a few bullets that he lavishly pumped into his frail body only because he spoke in favour of minorities, and in........

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