On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 11:27 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: >> > Muslims do not vote en >> > masse. Like Hindus they are also divided into castes. >> It would be far better to refer to Muslims by caste. I > You may well be right, but I advise extreme caution. In >the case of contemporary Pakistanis, it is certainly not >true that they are undifferentiated, or that they consider >themselves undifferentiated. There are sections that keep >insisting, like stuck records, that they are one Qaum, >there are other sections that protest hotly that this is a >distortion of reality. > > This that I have written is about Pakistan and Pakistanis. It may or >may not apply to Indian Muslims. I am hesitant to say anything without >having made a serious effort to go through available information. One >of the difficulties in coming to a reasonable evaluation of the situation >is that a knowledge of Urdu and access to the Urdu press and media >of both nations is vital, and I lack both. >
Perhaps the bigger differentiator for muslims in Pakistan is language ( I don't think language is such a big divisive factor among muslims in india...but i may be wrong) If you recall one of the main factors for the east pakistan / bangladesh split was the imposition of urdu. They have a history of language riots, and a lot of the resentment in the provinces against the central government is because of the imposition of "urdu culture". At the time of partition about 5% of the population (mostly immigrants) spoke urdu... and it had little in common with sindhi / baluchi / punjabi spoken in the provinces of pakistan -- yet it was settled upon as the national language. This put everyone who wasnt a native speaker of urdu at a major disadvantage. On the other hand it can be suggested that the widespread imposition of urdu has made pakistan more absorbent to indian pop culture (hindi satellite channels / indian cinema...).
