Fluffy... The scale and nature of problems in India are very unique and it is almost impossible to stereotype Hindus to be a peaceful lot or Muslims to be an aggressive lot. It is like the parable about blind men describing an elephant. I find it amazing that a country with so many different religions, languages, castes and subcastes is able to exist in the first place. Perhaps, it was not the best idea to create a unified country with such diversity (the problems are inbuilt in India), but now that we are here, the most straightforward way to deal with the situation is secularism (simply meaning separation of religion and state), which is what our constitution makers attempted. I feel that the real problem is that the meaning of secularism in government has been twisted by politicians, who simply play on the minds of the common folk, to mean anti-hindu, anti-brahmin (although brahmin community is numerically a minority) and pro-religious minority (muslims, christians etc.). What is amazing is that it is not just the illiterate and sparsely educated folk that get caught up in this mesmerism, but also well read people, who should be able to look at the larger picture. The vote bank politics and reservation policies, without a mathematical logic, have proved extremely harmful and have hampered the ability of educated people to think rationally and reasonably.
