The death of the supreme Iranian Shia religious leader Ayatollah Khamnie in a devastating air strike by the US-Israel joint attack drew different reactions from different quarters. While Iranians themselves exhibited their divided opinion in this regard, the Arab world reacted differently. Muslim community in India also reacted in a unique way unmindful of the national interests. Their reaction is based upon a behavior-pattern which has grown out of a deep crisis called the dilemma of identity crises which is also widespread in the whole of South Asia.

In general, every social, religious and ethnic group of people in the world is conscious of its identity. Identity usually is derived from the history, geography and cultural background of a particular region in addition to its continued civilizational flow. India, like many other civilizations on the globe has a distinct character, persona and disposition. It stands tall in size because it has a relentless, continuous and strong connect with time irrespective of socio-political vicissitudes so integral to its history. Iqbal, in his famous poem in Urdu, Sarey jahan se achha Hindustan hamara….., described this civilization as eternal and evergreen. He said, “Kutch baat hai ki hasti mit-ti nahi hamari, Sadiyon raha hai dushman daurey zaman hamara…”.

The regions that India’s history, culture and civilization represented from time to time included all the current nation-states that make up South Asia and which Europeans purposely called Indian sub-continent. They are Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Maldives. Hindus in general call it ‘Akhand Bharat’. In an earlier effort by the SAARC countries (excepting Myanmar and Afghanistan), this uniqueness of an integral identity was exhibited in a subtle manner when SAARC was created. Later on, when Afghanistan was included in the SAARC in 2007, the earlier loopholes were plugged in, but keeping Myanmar out of it was surely an error committed by the then member states of the SAARC. However, currently, it is a non-functional forum due to the obvious political reasons, primarily Pakistan’s indulgence in cross-border terrorism. South Asia has a distinct identity and the people therein have a common bondage of cultural, historical, civilizational and traditional relationship dating back to not less than five to ten thousand years.

From Afghanistan to Myanmar, in all the countries of South Asia, with the passage of time, Islam penetrated and conversions took place around one thousand years back. These conversions initially took place at a very negligible speed but later on they assumed greater dimensions........

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