Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

>> A single state spanning most of the Indian subcontinent wasn't a political reality prior to colonial times. There were many individual kingdoms and territories prior to that time.

> Never said it was.

Had Europe been colonized and been organized into a single state, then, when the colonists relinquished power, areas with different ethniticies and/or religions would probably have voted to have more autonomy or be separate states altogether. The fact that there are many languages in India that are mutually unintelligible would indicate that gathering all of them in a single country is a relatively recent construct, and that the default arrangement was that control was much more local.

>> It came closest to the current boundaries under the Mauryan empire and Peshwai rule, however.

Just because political arrangements from centuries/millenia past existed doesn't mean that they're a good idea in modern times. Hence the reason we have many countries in Europe rather than a modern single political entity spanning an area similar to the Roman or Byzantine empire.

> Yes, the political structure that forced the majority of Muslims to vote for a separate Muslim state to be carved out of India.

Had the British Raj not split Myanmar off from India, it's likely they may have voted for a partition along similar lines based on religion (Budddhism vs Hinduism). Another example of strife caused by political structures set up by the British resulted in the civil war in Sri Lanka. In fact, the Tamils in Sri Lanka wanted to create their own independent state because of discrimination they faced from the Sinhalese majority.

> Without the British, there would be no enmity between the Hindus and Muslims.

Enmity really comes from trying to group people from different cultures, ethnicities, religions, etc under a single political entity where one group is a minority. Tyranny of the majority becomes a problem in those cases.

This topic came up in the Sam Harris and Sw Sarvapriyananda podcast recently. Sam mentioned: while the Hindus and Buddhists kept debating, the Muslims won.

> Partition [between would never have been so hotly contested if this was indeed the case.

> Buddhism and Hinduism have coexisted in relative peace (with a few exceptions) for millennia. No such thing would have happened.

They weren't forced exist under a single political entity where one group was a substantial majority of the total. The civil war in Sri Lanka[1] is the result of trying to do so. The actions[2][3] of the Myanmar government towards people originally from India residing in Burma suggest that your assertion isn't really true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Indians#Anti-Indian_se...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Indians#The_Second_Wor...

> By this point it is abundantly clearly that you are not educated on the history of the Hindu-Muslim conflict. Before you further embarrass yourself

First off, your assertion about my knowledge of the subject is false. Second, you're resorting to ad hominems.

I know there’s a lot of political discussion going on under my post (it’s impressively restrained for how strongly felt the emotions involved are!), but I assure you I’m coming from an uninvolved/uninformed perspective - I’m lower-class white Australian (very Australian - my ancestry traces back to both the convicts and the officers on the prison ships) and I have no idea what the common Indian or Muslim views on this topic are, nor am I trying to pass much judgment on them. I’m also not equipped to debate the subtleties - what was going through my head when I made the comment was “I remember prominent caveats that Edison stole from Tesla when we learned about electricity, that Bell stole from Gray when we learned about telephones, that Watson and Crick stole from their secretary when we learned about DNA, that Grace Hopper was robbed when we learned about computers, etc., but those caveats were missing when we learned about Islam’s contributions to math and science.”

> They weren't forced exist under a single political entity where one group was a substantial majority of the total.

See: The Mauryan Empire, various Khmer kings. The Kings were previously Hindu, converted to Buddhism with no conflicts arising from this change. There was no iconoclasm, no discrimination against Hindus, no mass genocide.

> [1]

See the main article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Sri_Lankan_civi...

In the entire article the word "Buddhism" is mentioned but once.

"Moreover, the British pushed for the dominance of Christianity and the removal of privileging Buddhism in the state government, the main religion followed by the Sinhalese"

> [2] "Indians played a prominent role in the British administration and became the target of Burmese nationalists. Racial animosity toward Indians because of their skin-colour and appearance also played a role. Meanwhile, the price of rice plummeted during the economic depression of the 1930s and the Chettiar from South India, who were prominent moneylenders in the rice belt, began to foreclose on land held by native Burmese."

Literally nothing to do with their religion

> [3] "After he seized power through a military coup in 1962, General Ne Win ordered a large-scale expulsion of Indians. Although many Indians had been living in Burma for generations and had integrated into Burmese society, they became a target for discrimination and oppression by the junta. This, along with a wholesale nationalisation of private ventures in 1964, led to the emigration of over 300,000 ethnic Indians from Burma. Indian-owned businesses as well as Burmese businesses were nationalised due to the so-called "Burmese way to Socialism". Many Indians returned and were given 175 kyat for their trip to India."

The common thread between your assertions are that one side is predominantly Buddhist and the other side is predominantly Hindu, however this does not mean the religion is the source of the conflict. Deeper investigation reveals in fact that the conflict was anything but religious. Nationalistic, linguistic, cultural, yes. But not religious. There isn't any bad blood between Hinduism and Buddhism the way there is between Hinduism and Islam.

Stop trying to manufacture a conflict between Buddhism and Hinduism where none exists. These two religions have coexisted for millenia in relative peace, unlike Islam and literally any other religion.