Jodhpur and early Genealogical Signposts (Article) - 12/20/2003 12:45:59 AM
Salil Mathur has done a brilliant job of making his family's long and tangled history coherent and understandable to those of us who are unfamiliar with Hindu culture. In the process, he illustrated some unintended points for me about the pervasiveness of Hindu culture among all the groups of India. Because the author said his family was from Bengal, I assumed he and his family were Muslim. I nearly finished the article before I learned they were not Muslim, but Hindu. This means that Muslims of India and the British-created parts of Bengal and Pakistan, are still Hindu in many of their cultural ways; so much so, that they were indistinguishable in this story.
And if you observe the peoples of the Indian Subcontinent when they are in America or Britain, the Indian Muslim would chat with the Hindu or Sikh before chatting with an Arab Muslim. The reason is that the culture is more similar between the Indian groups than it is between the Muslim groups. In light of these strong cultural bonds, it is amazing that the British could do their divide and rule to subsequently partition India into her weakened state today accompanied by two newborn weaklings on each side.