Islam

Islam has had a long association with the subcontinent of India from the seventh century travels of traders from the Middle East who chose to settle in the country and were allowed freely to practice their faith. Eventually, Muslim conquerors took over India and governed the vast Hindu majority for centuries. Most prominent among the various Islamic dynasties were the Moghul emperors, who ruled between 1526 and 1858, although in the eighteenth century their power was eroded by the British East India Company.

The emphasis of Islam on social equality drew many adherents from lower caste Hindus, who were anxious to escape the discrimination of Hinduism. However, Islam, as one of the world's fastest-growing religions of revelation, preached one right way to God and thus clashed with the pluralistic diversity common to Hindu traditional concepts. Islam was exclusivist, while Hinduism was inclusive in nature. Clashes and confrontation were almost inevitable, but for centuries the adherents of both faiths managed to live quite amicably as neighbors.

During the many centuries of their interaction in India, Hinduism and Islam have profoundly influenced each other. Except when politics fired religious conflict, Islam became more tolerant of other beliefs over the centuries while Hinduism became more critical of its own outmoded social practices, such as caste. Under the Moghul emperors, Muslims and Hindus produced a culture that was as much a fusion of both religions as it was a synthesis of Indian and foreign ideas.

The late sixteenth century ruler Akbar, perhaps the greatest of the Moghul emperors, realized that the secret to ruling India was religious tolerance. Both Hinduism and Islam flourished. When a late seventeenth century Moghul emperor, Aurangzeb reversed this policy in favor of Islam, revolt broke out in many parts of India. These conflicts contributed to the eventual destruction of Moghul power.

During the movement for independence from British imperial control, Islamic self-determination became a political issue that ultimately destroyed the territorial unity of the subcontinent. The Muslim League, founded in 1906 and led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, agitated for a separate Islamic state, which was fulfilled when the British divided India in 1947 before departing.

Pakistan was primarily a state meant for Muslims, while India remained a secular state with no formal religious affiliation but with a Hindu majority. The partition of India resulted in territorial differences and political and economic confrontations that have led to war between India and Pakistan in 1948, 1965, and 1971. The 1971 conflict resulted in the creation of the nation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan).

Tension between Muslim Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India has been accompanied by religious conflict within India. In spite of the fact that India is a secular state, Hindu militants have advocated a Hindu political identity for their nation. The party of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is a Hindu nationalist party.

Violent religious conflict between Muslims and Hindus erupted in 2002. On February 27 of that year, a Muslim mob attacked a train containing activists from the World Hindu Council who were returning from the city of Ayodhya, where they were demanding that a Hindu temple be built on the site where Hindu zealots had destroyed a Muslim mosque ten years earlier. At a station in the town of Gohra, some of the World Hindu Council members had beaten a Muslim vendor who refused to repeat a Hindu prayer. In retaliation, local Muslims stoned and burned a coach of the train, killing fifty-eight people, most of whom were women and children. Outraged Hindus struck back throughout the state of Gujarat, torturing, burning, raping, and slaughtering Muslims. Some observers maintained that local police and officials had encouraged the violence against Muslims.