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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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