Since we're talking in terms of broad, blue-sky visions now... and of course this is OT for this thread, but so is most of what's been said on this page... let me add to the speculation.
I think a real problem with our strategic thinking, as Indians, is that we persist in seeing the Ummah as some profound and eternal presence... one that will always be monolithic for all intents and purposes when confronting any and all non-Muslim entities.
We insist on seeing India, Israel and Thailand/Laos/Vietnam/Cambodia as the last non-Ummah holdouts against a threatening swath of Islam that already has the upper hand, and is poised to sweep our civilizations away the first chance it gets. This is a siege mentality, and in terms of strategic thinking, it ultimately leads to the same brick wall that we on BRF find ourselves hammered against every time one of these discussions crops up on one thread or the other.
I understand what Y I Patel ji is saying with his Ravan analogy. However, I do not agree with him that it can be effected by something as superficial as nominating (even if such a thing were practically possible) a Muslim to lead India.
But imagine this. I know there are a hundred million objections to be made in terms of practicality, in terms of how we get from point A to point B; but let's for a moment leave the road aside and look at point B. IMHO, Point B is the one and only circumstance in which I think a vision like Y I Patel ji's can be realized.
So here goes.
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What if, some day, ALL Indians got together and said: "we are Muslims."
What if they said: "We accept that Muhammad was a prophet of the almighty. We do not necessarily accept that he was the only prophet. To some of us he was an avatar of Vishnu/ a boddhisatva/a tirthankara. We do not place him in front of all our other deities or deny all other Gods. But we accept that Muhammad was a prophet of the almighty and we revere him as divine. We practice many of the principles he taught, of equality, justice, and charity. So we are Muslims."
Of course the instant, outraged response of the Establishment Mullahs and other Conventional Muslim states will be: "What nonsense! La-illaha-ill-Allah, Mohammed rasoolullah! No God but Allah and Mohammed was his only Prophet! You are speaking blasphemy!"
But what if, at this point, ALL Indians said: "Who are you to decide? You may have 1.6 billion Muslims in the world who will stand by your interpretation of Islam. But there are 1.2 billion of us. In fact (assuming a majority of Indian Muslims join a majority of Indian Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, and Jains in taking this stance)... there are only 1.4 billion of you now. You say what you like. By our
Indian understanding of Islam we are Muslims."
The Mullahs will say "Never! See, it is written in the Quran! It is written in Arabic! No God but Allah and Mohammed is his only Prophet! Haraam!"
But the reply comes: "What Arabic? We don't even speak Arabic. We speak Indian languages. We follow Indian customs. We are Indians. This is our Islam and by our definition we are Muslims. There are nearly as many of us as there are of you, so FO."
Since we are only looking at Point B let me continue with this fanciful and whimsical vision.
What if, next, the Indonesians also say the same thing? "Yes we are Muslims. Yes, we revere Mohammed. But we revere all the ways in which Allah manifested himself on the Earth. As Rama of Ayodhya, who destroyed evil in the form of Ravan. As Krishna who spoke wisdom to Arjun before the Great War. These stories may not be in your Arabic Quran but they are our stories, handed down by our ancestors who built our civilization. We revere our ancestors. We treasure these stories as the spiritual wealth of our people. We pray to Mohammed and Rama and Krishna. This is our Islam, now FO."
And then the Nigerians: "Truly Mohammed was an embodiment of spirit, an Orixa such as our ancestors have known. We revere him alongisde Yemanja, Shango, Olorun and many others who have always been the heart of our people's spirituality. We are Muslims. Don't dare tell us otherwise because some book written by some desert tribe forbids it."
The Iranians by this time are already chomping at the bit for an exploration and affirmation of Mithraic/Zoroastrian spirituality. They too will find some way to incorporate Mohammed, remain "Muslim" and tell the Quran-thumping Mullahs to FO.
In some nations it will be easier, in some far more difficult. But this is how the salvation of Islam will unfold. This is how the Reformation will visit Islam, when it does. It will also be the salvation of a world that finds itself (today) threatened by an Islamic Ummah which seems invincible and united in lock-step spiritual discipline.
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Ok, "Point B" Vision over.
When we look at the Ummah today we mix it up with all kinds of other things. We mix it up with our own experiences of idol-breaking Khiljis and Direct Action Days. We mix it up with our own myths about how Muslims will always side together against non-Muslims no matter how viciously they might fight each other when there aren't any non-Muslims around. And we come to the conclusion that the Islamic Ummah is this cancerous, indefatigable, unconquerable entity.
As Y I Patel ji says, we think of the Ummah as a Ravan that grows more heads the more you fight it... a monster that is strengthened by the very force of the attack against it.
In this one matter, I think Y I Patel ji is absolutely right.
The monstrous trans-national Islamic Ummah as we know it today is a creation of many things. Many of those things are accidents of fate which have favoured the rise of power brokers playing on pan-Islamist sentiment.
For example, it is a creation of colonialism: Muslims of many newly-independent countries in the mid-20th century did not see any reason to take pride in their national identities, with their nations having been so humiliated and enslaved by foreign masters for centuries; so they sought solace in a pan-Islamic Ummah identity instead.
It is a side-effect of a world economy based on oil, and the discovery of oil in Arab lands, which skewed geopolitical equations towards Arabia as a center of gravity. This created, at a mass level, some sort of consciousness that there was something special about Arabia... which again favoured the centralization impulse of the Pan-Islamists by casting a light of exceptionalism on the Quran.
It is the result of divisive politics practiced within countries that had both Muslim and Non-Muslim populations. Lebanon was one such. India is another; the Indian Muslims of today have been *deliberately incentivised* by the players of electoral politics, to renounce an Indian identity in favour of a Muslim one. This is exacerbated, again, by the Mullah power brokers of pan-Islamist identity... who thus become brokers of electoral contests in India as well.
And of course, it is a child of the geopolitical contests of the 20th century, from WWI through the Cold War, when powerful non-Muslim countries sought to consolidate various transnational Ummah formations as proxy effectors of power projection.
All this has left huge, immense power in the hands of Mullahs all over the world today. The Bin Ladenist/ Hizb-ut-Tahrir movements further aggravated this essentially
centripetal tendency as a means to amass further power. With all these events, the deep underlying layers of pre-Islamic national cultures were completely swamped by the Pan-Islamic identity, at least at a political level. This happened over the last several decades, in a diverse array of countries with Muslim majority populations.
Today, with the "War on Terror" raging, the impetus towards still further pan-Islamist consolidation of a transnational Ummah continues to be strong. "Islam Khatrey mein hain" is the rallying cry of Mullahs everywhere... but what is the *subtext* of that cry? It is... "Islam khatrey mein hain, THEREFORE, renounce your nations, your cultures, your ancestors, your narratives, your ethnicity, your traditions, your individual beliefs... throw those things in the garbage and unite under our banner of Pan-Islamic Ummah."
But somewhere buried beneath all this are the seeds of counterpoise. A
centrifugal reaction of peoples and nations and cultures, to the monochromatic Ummah-ization of Islam. The kind of reaction which, after the Reformation and the Thirty Years War, transformed Europe from a mass of warring fiefdoms owing primary political allegiance to some Church, into modern Westphalian nation states.
What will happen when this reaction materializes? The Mullahs will fight for their Conventional/Establishment vision of Islam, the Arabic Quran vision which gives them transnational Ummah-mandated social and political power. They will have to be confronted and killed en masse. It will be bloody. But if enough of the Muslim polity (as opposed to the Muslim religious hierarchy) are involved in this reaction, it will succeed.
Some day that reaction will take shape. But who will first germinate that seed? Who will crystallize it? Who has the Dharmic fortitude to first defy Conventional/Establishment Islam en masse and say: "we are Muslims, but we will pick and choose what to follow in Islam in consonance with the civilized principles of our ancestors; we will not take dictation from you Mullahs and your Arabic book?"
Could it be India?
Ok, running for cover now
) members of this forum are recommending a "green PM". Maybe these are the properties of a "centrist" forum. I guess the ideas of democracy and equality are only important when the caste system is discussed. As the discussion moves beyond Hinduism, the defenders of "social democracy" are always ready to "walk an extra mile". 
