Kurma,

Often, Buddhists in India do not openly identify unless they are monks. Again, if you went to the Himalayas, you would see a lot of Buddhists in their robes.

Also, quite a few people in India have some mixed version of faith practised – Hinduism and Buddhism together. Very similar to what is happening in America today – Christianity, Jewish, and Buddhism often mix – New York Times had an article recently.

If you visited in northern Indian areas around Delhi and up – you would interacted with Muslims at every walk of life – school mates to sabji wala or tailor

I would agree. I have been to Hyderababd twice recently.

Just go to Charminar (perhaps one of the largest bazaars in the world), has one of the largest mosque in Asia is surrounded by temples. In fact, one of the Charminar pillar has a makeshift Hindu temple.

Another example is Chandini Chowk, Delhi – Jama Masjid, Gurduwara Sisganj, and multiple temples next to each other.

When I am in India, I wake up to Bollywood songs, hymns from Gurudwara, temple, mosque on loud speaker before sun rise. All this said, I am not sugar-coating underlying tension and violence that does shows up time to time between religions.

I strongly think mixing in India, like any country in the world is dictated by economic stratification.

It depends, if you went to a Kendriya Vidhyalas in northern India (UP, etc), perhaps close to 15% will be Muslims. Not strictly, as AMD said, economics plays a big role, and also self-segregation.

It is not any different from African Americans here. Say, if you went to Doon School (high end prep school), I am sure the percentage will be lot lower. Getting admitted to IIT, IIM has mostly economics in play to be competitive.

However, I went to pretty preppie schools and University in India, I would say that close to 10% were Muslims where I attended but then Roorkee is within Muslim dominated area – Saharanpur, Meerut, etc.

Over the years, my father has been main advisor to around 35 PhD students – it included Men, Women, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Muslims. One of his last formal (before retirement) student was a Muslim – the student was a son of a medical doctors – he is in States, his brother is a LSE graduate, and is in UK. Again, economic status is the key.

Muslims in Indian are pretty poor (especially up in the north in states like UP). People who come from India to the US for high tech jobs/grad schools etc. probably went to very good schools in India and its no surprise that they did not see any Muslims there in the schools they attended in India. For example, in cities across UP, Muslims usually range from 20-30% and very few of them are able to go to the elite schools of those cities. I suspect the percentage of Muslims students would be much higher in public schools.

Also with periodic state sponsored mini-massacres of Muslims in Meerut, Bhagalpur, Surat, Bombay and now Gujarat, it would make sense for Muslims to keep their heads down and maintain a low profile.