DIVIDED COMMUNITY IN PEEL DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD

The region is home to the country’s fastest-growing Muslim population, according to the 2011 National Household Survey – 12 per cent of those who practice Islam in Canada live there. Now that minorities have reached a critical mass – 57 per cent of the population of Peel – they’re beginning to divide and engage in identity politics, said Pradip Rodrigues, a former Times of India reporter who has covered the rifts within the Indo-Canadian community for Canindia News for the past five years.

The debate at the school board has awakened old tensions in the South Asian community. British India’s partition, in 1947, which created two countries, predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan, exacerbated tensions between the two religious groups. In 2002, about 1,000 people were killed in riots in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the majority of whom were Muslims. Mr. Rodrigues notes that many Indian immigrants of the last generation have arrived in Canada with that lived experience and religious baggage. “If this was a mostly white town, things would be different,” Mr. Rodrigues said.