Now UK must wrestle with India’s Hindu-Muslim divides

In India, Hindu- Muslim clashes that threaten houses of worship, force shops to close, and inflame passions on social media are not news. It's noteworthy when they break out in the English heartland.

Dozens of people have been arrested in the last few days in the city ofLeicester. A game of cricket between India and Pakistan in the U.A. raised tensions. The Hindu revivalists marched through the Muslim part of the city. The two groups got into a fight.

Almost 40% of the residents of the city are of South Asian origin, and the city has been seen as a model of integration. The official statements and media reports about the violence have taken pains not to damage the reputation. Some have blamed outsiders from the area for the problem. The police said that the mobs were fired up by the spread of misinformation. Observers stress the influence of community leaders.

Some of those statements are true. They don't realize that the sectarian politics of the Indian subcontinent can no longer be contained within the country. The divides are being globalised, spread, and violent.

Social media is a good place to take it. Online content and made-to-order misinformation are the main drivers of political movement in South Asia. It's true for Hindus, Muslims, and even Buddhists. New and innovative advances in hate speech are being made in the region. Bigots are no longer content with relabeling and retweeting videos, they are creating their own fake content and labeling it as entertainment.

A spokesman for the rulingBharatiya Janata Party appeared in a video that appeared to show a Muslim abusing a young woman. The purpose of the video was to educate. The reality is too bitter to be told or shown, so the scenes were fictional.

Locals and outsiders are no longer separated by social media. Technology makes it easy for angry co-religionists to work together. Riots in India used to be mostly an urban phenomenon. The advent of social media allowed mobs from different villages to launch an attack on Muslims in rural UP.

The uneasy peace that has been negotiated by local faith leaders and maintained by dividing the different communities can't last in this new age. There will be a provocative march if there is more Hindus than Muslims. If the Midlands as a whole have more Muslims than Hindus, they will combine to intimidateLeicester's Hindus. It goes all the way to the level of the nation itself.

The problem won't be solved by politics as usual. Too many British politicians and administrators still rely on community leaders to speak to minority voters, rather than directly speaking to them. Why wouldn't a young British Asian man listen to his local mosque when he listens to the media from the subcontinent?

It's too easy for politicians in the UK and India to exploit the sectarian divide. Priti Patel, the Cabinet minister in charge of law and order, used to describe her party's rivals as sisters. A Hindu Labour MP has accused his party of using adivide and rule policy in which Hindus were at the bottom of the pile

Hindus and Muslims in the UK could be voting for different parties based on their religion. Adoption of the divisive politics would be complete.

The comment "divide and rule" gets to the heart of the problem because it talks about how the British controlled a diverse and divided subcontinent for two centuries. Some in the UK have tried to understand how the echoes of empire still affect national identity. The Raj once kept the peace half a world away, yet they have failed to see how actual policies in today's Britain, in what the state does and does not do, in its acceptance of ghettoised communities and reliance on faith leaders, eerily reflect how the Raj once kept the peace

The British State can't afford to allow Hindus and Muslims in the UK to live separate lives and build up resentment against each other. In South Asia, those policies don't work anymore.

Mihir is an opinion writer. Views don't represent the stand of the publication.