Originally posted by: Clochette
Punny, I've no difficulties to understand anybody's anger or even something stronger against every person that does what you tell... it's extremely saddening to read through some threads and reading what people do to other people and/or have to go through... when I talked about that with my Mumbai friends they told me that they have started to look at a fellow citizen first if it is a Muslim or a Hindu... and they also told me that it had not been always this way... they also brought me into their chawls to get to know their neighbours and they were mixed religions and still went well along... and I was with streat kids (mixed Hindu, Muslims) in their slums and they told me that people in the street would not give money or food to Muslim kids and the parents told me that the Muslim kids even got beaten up... and this did also happen vice versa with Hindu kids... I never felt hate towards me and I never had to feal fear for myself because being a white woman and foreigner but I felt the angst and anger and frustration and especially, I felt other people's fear... and I thought from where this fear may come...
You are certainly right that it makes a big difference if one never had encountered terrorism personally or violence (thanks, dear good forces), yet, I think that it doesn't hinder to understand other people's emotions, plights and personal hardships. But I've also learned - through all my experiences and studies - that stamps and labels should never get put on people and one shouldn't put people in boxes either... it makes it easier to me to concentrate on each single person I encounter... even when a bunch of kids surround me, I can focus on each of it... each is unique... each stranger is unique, each member here... Nathu may have the same impression about me like his forum friends have, but still I sense the difference in our interactions in comparison to the interaction with another one and another one...
So, yes I wholeheartedly can understand why and how the gap between Hindus and Muslims gets wider and wider... no hug can bridge that, no handshake...maybe not even a wave of the hand... and this also can happen between friends, between siblings, between neighbours, between countries etc.
Personally, it's almost always that those fail in who we would like to put our trust into - the people with more power than we have... but I already wrote an essay again... so I stop here 
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