One of the few generalizations that can safely he made about India is that nothing can be taken for granted here. That anomaly is easily explained, for what is today Pakistan was part of India until it was partitioned in 1947. Yet each explanation breeds another anomaly. Pakistan was created as a homeland for India's Muslims, but from 1971 till very recently there were more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. With diversity emerging from its geography and inscribed in its history, India was made for pluralism.
W E ARE ALL minorities in India.
But be does not. Or take language. Each of the native speakers of these languages is in a linguistic minority, for none enjoys majority status in India. Thanks in part to the popularity of Bombay's Hindi cinema, Hindi is understood, if not always well spoken, by nearly half the population of India, but it is in no sense the language of the majority. Ethnicity further complicates the notion of a majority community.