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No doubt to many people these events will serve as further proof of the failure of Britain to integrate South Asians, yet if anything the reactions I've seen to them have bolstered rather than eroded my faith in multiculturalism. It's quite clear that many Leicester residents, both Hindu and Muslim, have strongly condemned the disorder and violence. Many are self-evidently proud of their city, and proud to be British Asians. They appear to deeply resent the fact that due to the actions of a proportionally small number of miscreants, very many of whom seem to be neither Leicestrian nor British, a negative light is being cast on their communities—for they understand that when it comes to brown people, many white Britons are not inclined to draw distinction between local and foreigner.
For those proud Britons, born and bred here, who have always struggled for acceptance because of their ethnicity, their religion, and the colour of their skin—I feel profound sympathy. When an Old Firm derby descends into carnage it is viewed with nothing more than muted disapproval, but when sectarianism involves South Asians it is framed as tribal warfare†. Let me be perfectly clear: I wish that the offenders be dealt with—yet I hope also that all those here who consider themselves to have a more clear-eyed understanding of masculinity than the progressive orthodoxy can recognise that the anger of listless young men who seek a flag to rally around is a trait shared by every swathe of humanity that lives under modernity.
† A proposal for reconcilliation in Leicester: a flag with three coloured stripes, one orange representing Hindus, one green representing Muslims, and one white in the middle representing lasting peace. Stop me if you've heard this one before...
For a while now, I have been irked by the 'bothsidesism' around South Asian communities, or honestly what is hindu vs muslim discourse in English media (Indian or Western).
The division of India eventually saw the formation of 3 nations : India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh were continuously persecuted, as the Hindu communities in either country sought refuge in India. On the other hand, Indian law protects muslims with rights that exceed those of the resident majority hindus. The percentage of muslims in India keeps rising and even the idea of equal-laws-for-all (uniform civil code, equal regulation of all religious institutions) are abandoned by both the Congress and the so-called-fascist BJP.
Somehow, lobbying for issues of muslim concern is not considered Islamist, but lobbying for hindu concerns is actively considered far-right-hindu-extremist.
Hindus, when they've immigrated to foreign nations, have quickly integrated, become major contributors to the economy and haven't had a single instance of religious terrorism while there. On the other hand, irrespective of the peacefulness of the median muslim, marginal muslims have certainly contributed to terrorism, violence and ghettoization within foreign nations. Even in India, Muslims (and communists) constitute nearly 100% of terrorist attacks within the borders. (2 directional sectarian riots have occured, but they become incredibly hard to decipher chicken-n-egg questions)
Hindus do not proselytize, do not go around calling other religions blasphemers or heathen and reject tests of religious purity.
There are 3 majority Hindu majority nations and all 3 are true secular democracies. Each country at its worst, is still more liberal and religiously open-minded than any large muslim country in the world. (RIP Kemal Ataturk's Turkey)
India has a 'no first use' nuclear policy while Pakistan has a 'first use' nuclear policy.
I could go on and on.............
Hindus has time and again shown to have different sociological group traits than muslim immigrants from the subcontinent. Bodesideism here is visibly incorrect, and the greater emphasis on hindu violence is even more so. This is a big part of why Indians dislike the term South Asian. The differences between Hindu and Muslim communities in the subcontinent are salient. The differences between Indians (likely coded hindu) and Pakistani/Bangladeshi (surely coded muslim) are therefore salient too.
Spend long enough down that train of through, and you'd realize that Nehru truly was the first woke-liberal leader the world had ever seen. (and the resulting fallout is a very clear indication of why ideologically blinded woke leaders are terrible in roles that require pragmatism)
This paper points out that most of the Indian elite have been educated in Anglosphere (American and British) universities. And these ideas that you mention sound suspiciously familiar to the social justice ideas, common in those universities, that the majority (White in the West) is the oppressor and it is good to advocate for the minority or encourage them to operate as a cohesive group, but fascism to do the same for the majority. It sounds like the same principle is just being applied to Hindus and Muslims.
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The resemblance of Leicester to Leinster is fitting.
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LMAO. I actually chuckled on this one.
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The Irish were playing 4D chess this whole time, cheeky bastards
Huh. It had previously never occurred to me that the reason for the Irish and Indian flags looking kind of similar was anything but coincidence.
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Sure, I broadly agree. I hope my post didn't give the impression that this was somehow the entire Muslim and Hindu male population fighting it out- the vast majority have been completely reasonable if not actively helpful in trying to calm it down.
I think you're right about the masculine flag stuff as well, but worth noting that for the Muslim sections it is still very much a flag of faith. In fact I'll be very interested to see the census 2021 results and whether the Muslim population in Leicester is majority Pakistani or more mixed as it was in 2011 (Arabs/Afghan etc etc).
On the other hand, the old firm comparisons are slightly unhelpful - we're talking about the people of 2 nuclear armed states who've commited de facto genocide against each other, plus their allies who belong to a faith of billions, not interdoctrinal differences between a few million. Slightly exaggerated but I do genuinely think the dividing lines are much deeper than the Catholic/Prot gap (not to say the latter wasn't deeply felt).
And while you are correct that there is always the possibility of orientalist hypocrisy in these matters, one can't help but point out that these are non-indigenous, if not non-British (1st gen, unassimilated etc) people squabbling rather than those with roots of thousands of years.
Besides the partition riots, there was also the 1971 genocide which came back to spotlight among Hindu Nationalists following the Russian invasion. They turned Russophilic all of a sudden.
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