What is it? News of the Indonesia quake and the Samoan tsunami. Last night, when these papers were being put to bed, we knew that hundreds (now probably thousands) of people had died.

Why is such major news in Asia relegated to back pages of Indian newspapers (there are some exceptions, of course) ?

The Indonesia quake especially was close to India – there was a brief tsunami alert for the Indian Ocean -- and how Indonesia copes will be of immense interest to people in India who wonder how authorities have learnt from the last 2004 Asian tsunami. And of course there is the simple humanitarian issue – the stories of suffering and hope that we all can identify with.

My pet theory is India is such a huge country, that rather like the United States, it has a tendency to look inwards.

There is a strong current in India and the U.S. that the rest of the world does not matter too much – India itself bases its economic growth on its 1.2 billion domestic consumers rather than selling stuff to the outside world. Much political and social attention in India is focused on the immense problems within its borders.

It comes down to details, too. Take for example, India's airports. New Delhi is one of the few capital cities I know in the world that has done a first class modernization of its domestic airport, but left its international airport trailing way behind.

Most other capitals I know, it's the other way round. In Chile, a small country that depends on exports and the outside world to survive, the first thing they did was modernize the international airport. In Venezuela, home to socialist President Hugo Chavez, their international airport dates from the 1970s -- symbolic of the oil-rich country's statist, nationalistic stance.

But one wonders if the relegation of foreign news (aside from Pakistan), is really healthy for a country that is increasingly playing diplomatically a global role, from climate change to trade and the Commonwealth Games?

Should the media be leading the way?

It did not get great publicity but a recent U.N. report on religious freedom in India offers a stinging image of a country suffering from communal divisions and mob-inspired religious persecution.

 It argues there is a very real risk of a repeat of a tragedy like the Gujarat riots of 2002, when more than 2,000 people, mainly Muslims,were killed by Hindu mobs.

The U.S. Special Rapporteur of religion or belief Asma Jahangir, a well-respected Pakistani human rights activist, travelled to India last March to prepare the report. It catalogues violence and discrimination faced by India's religious minorities, whether Muslim or Christian or Sikh.

"Organised groups claiming roots in religious ideologies have unleashed all pervasive fear of mob violence in many parts of the country." the report, released on Jan. 26, says.

 "There is at present a real risk that similar communal violence might happen again unless political exploitation of communal distinctions is effectively prevented,"

The report makes special mention of Gujarat,. It says the Hindu nationalist state government of Gujarat -- headed by Narendra Modi and a favourite of many Indian business leaders—has done little to help victims who still live in fear of persecution.

Indeed, it says there is "is increasing ghettoization andisolation of Muslims in certain areas of Gujarat."

The report comes after a series of incidents in India that have sparked widespread worries about the rise of religious mob violence.

Last month Hindu militants attacked a bar and assaulted women in the city of Mangalore in the Hindu nationalist-run Karnataka state. The militants – labelled the “Indian Taleban” by media – said they were trying to safeguard Indian culture.

Last year, dozens of mainly poor tribal Christians in the eastern state of Orissa were killed by Hindu mobs over the issues of religious conversion.  

 With general elections due by May, the political atmosphere is already charged with religious rhetoric. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party says it wants to rebuild a Hindu temple on Ayodhya, where a mosque was razed by Hindu mobs in 1992.

The report is a timely reminder that despite all the talk of a global India, religious tension may be as pervasive as ever -- especially when political parties are vying for political power.

It was another sign of how Muslim organisations in India appear to be taking the initiative as the country suffers from a string of bombings, often blamed on suspected Islamists, that has raised tensions between majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, one of India's leading Islamic groups which has been active in the country since the start of the 20th century, endorsed on Nov 8 a fatwa against terrorism.

More than 6,000 clerics signed the edict, which follows a similar one issued earlier in the year by India's top Islamic institution Darul Uloom Deoband. The fatwa follows a series of police crackdowns on Muslims after bomb blasts across Indian cities this year in which more than 200 people have died.

Muslim organisations are worried.

Previously Indian authorities had generally blamed Pakistan for most attacks, but evidence that these attacks were home grown has put India's Muslim community under the eye of the police. Muslim leaders say innocent Muslim youths are being targeted by police.

So, there was no doubt that Muslim groups were reaching out to the rest of the country.

The Times of India quoted the weekend motion as saying that that "jihad is a constructive phenomenon and a fundamental right of human beings whereas terrorism is based on destruction".

"It is required to define `jihad' and `terrorism' in the right perspective, which stand poles apart. Terrorism is the biggest crime as per Quran," the resolution said.

"Here more than six thousand clerics from across the country have signed it to involve more people in spreading the message that there is no place for terrorism in Islam," Jamiat's senior leader and Rajya Sabha member Moulana Mahmood Madani told reporters.

It was interesting to see the response of the conference to news of the arrests of some right-wing Hindu militants and a military officer in connection with two recent blasts, originally blamed on Muslims.

Rather than make any political capital out of it, Madani said he disapproved the use of term 'Hindu terrorist' saying his organisation was opposed to linking terrorism with any religion.

"We are against linking terrorism to Hindus or Hinduism just as we are opposed to linking it to Muslims or Islam," he said.

An act of political maturity, perhaps, that Indian politicians should learn from?

Will a Dalit, or "untouchable" become India's Obama? That is the question being posed by some commentators in the India press after the United States elected their first black president.

One Dalit woman, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh known as Mayawati, is the first person to come to mind. Her astonishing rise from Dalit teacher to head of India's most populous state has led to speculation she could be a prime ministerial candidate in 2009.

For an interesting article on the subject, read "Waiting for India's Obama” by T.K Arun.

Unlike the United States, which directly elects a president, Mayawati could win power in parliamentary system through negotiations between India's political parties after the general elections, due by May.

There is evidence her Dalit-based party could become the third biggest party in the election, becoming a

possible kingmaker.

In one sense Mayawati could represent an even greater revolution than Obama in a country where Dalits have been oppressed for centuries and who still suffer the kind of discrimination that reminds oneself of the United States' Deep South in the 1950s.

On the other hand, as some commentators point out, Mayawati parades her caste to win over Dalits. Obama reached out across the race spectrum and did not use his colour. He campaigned mostly on policy. Maywati has made headlines as much for allegations of corruption and excess -- such as erecting statues in her honour -- as original policy ideas.

I went to Mayawati's birthday party in Lucknow this year. There, she had the various top public figures, from police chiefs and civil servants and politicians, finger feed her with cake. Most of them were upper caste.

Will she be asking the same of Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi after the general elections?

    The slow peeling of the onion around the involvement of Hindu militants in the Malegaon and Modasa bomb blasts last month in the western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat in September has shown a murky network of religious radicals that may have both implications for India’s politics as well as its anti-terrorist policies.

For years, bombs in India have mostly been blamed on Islamist militants. Even attacks on mosques were often blamed on Islamists seeking to spark communal tensions between India’s majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

Both national and international press  have focused on the growing Indian-born Islamist militants who are trying to attack the Indian state.

A widespread crackdown on suspected Islamist militants following the bomb attacks this year that killed scores of people in several Indian cities led Muslim leaders to accuse authorities of conducting a witch hunt and reinforcing stereotypes about their community

But the recent revelations of possible involvement of Hindu militants in some bomb blasts show that the Indian state could be soon fighting a anti-terrorist war on two fronts. Five people were killed in the Malegaon and Modasa blasts that hit the two Muslim-dominated towns within minutes of each other on Sept. 29.

In a thoughtful article in the Mail Today, Manoj Joshi wrote that a series of mysterious and unresolved attacks in recent years that, with hindsight, may have been the work of Hindu militants.

What is also worrying for India are the links of former army officials in the Malegaon attacks. They have been arrested as part of what police say is a “larger conspiracy.” How deep does this Hindu militancy go?

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears to be uneasy with these revelations, with reports the suspected in the blasts are linked to the BJP youth wing.

BJP president Rajnath Singh has defended one of the accused in the Malegaon. blasts, breaking a party line that saw the party condemn terrorism and allow the law to take its course.

But outspoken comments by Singh are hardly likely to benefit a party that is fighting crucial state elections this year, seen as a dress rehearsal for general elections due by May, 2009.

Only a month ago the BJP appeared to be on the offensive, attacking the ruling Congress government over its failure to stop serial blasts around Indian cities that have killed scores of people.

Now it appears more on the defensive, uneasy about the possibility Hindus are involved in terrorism.

One thing appears certain. As elections approach, the question of how India deals with violence from its Hindu or Muslim militants will come to the forefront.

The criticism from outside the state hinted the critics believed authorities in the state had not done enough to halt the violence. No names are named, but anyone who knows Indian politics can connect the dots. The violence by Hindu mobs broke out after a Hindu leader in Orissa, Swami Laxmananda Saraswati, was killed. The state is run by a coalition which includes the main Hindu nationalist opposition party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), so suspicions immediately fall on a party that has also been already accused of turning a blind eye to the deaths of about 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. The BJP's Lal Krishna Advani, head of the opposition in the Indian parliament, has said Maoists were suspected of the killings.

As our correspondent Jatindra Dash in the Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar wrote: Most of India's billion-plus citizens are Hindu and about 2.5 percent are Christians. In the Kandhamal area, more than 20 percent of the 650,000 people are mainly tribal inhabitants who converted to Christianity. Religious violence has troubled the tribal regions of Orissa for years, with Hindus and Christians fighting over conversions. While Hindu groups accuse Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to change their faith, the Christians say lower-caste Hindus convert willingly to escape a complex Hindu caste system.

See also our factbox on religious violence in eastern India.

A group called "India Mujahideen" claimed responsibility for the attacks, the same group that said it carried out the bombings in Jaipur in May that killed 63 people.

For years, India had been seen as country that had largely rejected the attractions of global militancy spurred on by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. President George W. Bush notably said there were no Indians in al Qaeda.

But mainly Hindu India is home to one of the world's biggest Muslim populations, around 13 percent of its 1.1 billion people.

It only takes 0.0001 percent of India's roughly 150 million Muslims to form a nucleus of 15,000 militants, as Uday Bhaskar, former director of New Delhi's Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, told me.    

And the attacks on Ahmedabad may have involved dozens of people.    

"We have crossed the tipping point," he said.

Has India being ignoring a simmering revolt from disaffected Muslim youth? Over the last two years there have been a wave of bombings, nearly all blamed by the government on some local Islamist groups funded or backed by Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Reading the Indian newspapers, they are quick to blame Pakistan and Bangladesh. The home-grown front -- perhaps the banned Students Islamic Movement of India -- is seen as having its roots abroad.   

But there has been signs of growing dissatisfaction within the Muslim community, especially since the 2002 riots in Gujarat when around 2,500 people, mainly Muslims, were massacred by Hindu mobs.

Take the Gujarat riots. Hardly anyone has been brought to justice. The Hindu-nationalist chief minister at the time, Narenda Modi, was accused of turning a blind eye during the riots, is now a rising political star in India.

Data also shows that Muslims are one of the poorest segments of Indian society, and some of the most neglected people.   

The years since Gujarat has also coincided with a rise in global Islamist consciousness, with television and the Internet providing people in remote Indian villages with news of what is going on in Iraq and Guantanamo.

Some commentators point to the fact that ultra-conservative versions of Islam like Wahabism have been making inroads into India in recent years.

There has been a "well-funded effort to bring these ideas and these ideologies to Muslim communities across India," said Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management.

In May, the Indian Mujahideen threatened senior Muslim clerics including Khalid Rasheed, head of the oldest madrasa, or Islamic religious school, in Lucknow, over their pacifist stance.

Rasheed said his peace movement had received support from the influential ultra conservative Darool-Uloom Deoband madrasa in northern India, whose strict interpretation of Islamic law is said to have inspired the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But how many young Muslim youths are now ignoring these clerics? How will these bombings in India's most entrenched Hindu-nationalist state be received among alientated and poor Muslim youth in other parts of the country?

Or will the Indian Mujahideen tactics of bombing hospitals as well as many in their own Muslim community backfire?

 On Wednesday, it was the turn of Khalid Rasheed, head of the oldest madrasa in the northern city of Lucknow -- a traditional centre for Muslims and religious scholarship. He rejected terrorism as anti-Islamic after he and his colleagues had been accused of apostasy over their pacifist stance by at group that calls itself the Indian Mujahideen.

Indian Mujahideen made threats against the madrasa in which they also claimed responsibility for last week's bomb blasts in Jaipur, western India, which killed 63 people.

"The reaction of terrorists to our stand against terror has shown that we were moving in the right direction," Rasheed said.

   Apparently a "Movement Against Terrorism" has been created by clerics to exhort imams to use Friday prayers at mosques across India to speak out against terrorism.

This was no flash in the pan. Earlier this year, tens of thousands of clerics and students from around India attended a meeting near Delhi at the 150-year-old Darool-Uloom Deoband -- whose strict interpretation of Islamic law is said to have inspired the Taliban in Afghanistan -- and denounced terrorism as against Islam.

It is not surprising that Rasheed said they had received support from Darool-Uloom Deoband, Indian clerics appear to be increasingly outspoken, perhaps not surprising in a country where there is a centuries-old tradition of preaching religious tolerance.

How much is this outspoken criticism happening in other Muslim countries? And how much is being reported in the Western press? I would be eager to know more.

 Despite a history of religious clashes, India's tolerance often seems to win through. It was the Mughal Emperor Akbar, who was famed in the 16th century by many for his religious tolerance and who initiated scholarly debates with Muslim, Sikhs, Christians and Hindus.

Many of India's bombings are blamed on Islamic militants, although few groups every claim responsibility and few people are ever arrested. The attacks have mostly failed to incite Muslim-Hindu tensions.

Here in New Delhi, I always enjoy taking foreign visitors to India to the Sufi shrine in Nizamuddin. My latest guest was a U.S. diplomat based in Pakistan. Hardly allowed out in Islamabad - let alone able to visit a mosque -- the diplomat wallowed in the warmth of the visit and the relaxed atmosphere of the Qawwali singers.

In the case of Noida, one of India's up-coming hi-tech cities, a teenager girl was found dead, her throat slit, in her room.  Police name a "prime suspect", the Nepali house helper. But a family friend later finds the home help -- his throat slit apparently like the victim's -- in the terrace of the same house as the victim.

The police had somehow missed the second corpse on their visits to the murder scene.

According to some newspapers on Wednesday, police are now clueless. There are unconfirmed reports of reporters contaminating the murder scene, forensic evidence left unsealed on the spot.

Firstly, why are domestic helps so often immediately named as suspects? I've lost count of the number of newspaper stories about suspect maids. I wonder how many are proved wrong.

And secondly, are police with the resources and expertise to deal with new and growing crimes in India's burgeoning urban cities?

The murder case has resonated in the media, perhaps helped by the fact that this was the kind of rising middle class family in India that millions identify with -- a dentist couple in the new city of Noida where thousands of white collar professionals now live in newly-built tower blocks.

But for all it's gleaming malls and its location a few miles away from Delhi, Noida is part of Uttar Pradesh, what is often called India's most populous and lawless state.  It's hardly new to controversy when it comes to the police.

Remember the Nithari serial murders in Noida last year? Then also the police were widely criticised for ignoring the initial pleas of poor Indians in a slum nearby to probe the case of missing children. Later more than a dozen bodies were found at the back of a nearby upscale house.

From this evidence, this new tech city of Noida is living with a police force that is struggling to modernise.

People I have spoken to in Noida -- including a foreign executive with a software company -- are very worried about rising crime and the lack of police responses.

As India grows, crime may also rise. For many foreigners, crime in India often seems very low given widespread poverty that contrasts with huge shows of wealth. Try living in Sao Paulo and Mexico City, where thousands of people are kidnapped every year, to see what real insecurity is.

India is in danger of heading that way as wealth disparities rise and cities grow. Will India's police be able to nip this trend in the bud?

So far, looking at this latest Noida case, the omens are not good.

Which is why the United States and India may have more in common than they like to think.

I have been one of those thousands that have spent three hours in Delhi International Airport making it from check-in though to the boarding gate. Which is why I read with interest the recent spat between deputy planning chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and civil aviation minister Praful Patel over who is responsible for the chaos.

But this kind of controversy is not just confined to India. I read this piece in May from Thomas L. Friedman, the author who coined "The World is Flat". The full article is here. But have a look at this paragraph.

"A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York's Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.'s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore's ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children's play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin's luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II."

Having lived in Washington DC before moving to India, I can sympathise with Mr. Friedman. Some of the worst queues outside India, I have seen at airports was at Dulles and JFK airports.

Are India and the United States two sides of the same coin?

I think one can draw up correlations between the state of a country's main airports and its attitude to the globalised world. Travel to Chile and it capital has Latin America's best airport, as befits a country that also leads Latin America in embracing globalisation.

Then look at Singapore, a country that depends on international trade for its survival. Or Beijing's new airport, not surprising for a country dependent on export-led growth.

Which is why India's airports, despite some improvements, show its ambivalent attitude towards globalisation. Whether its retail or financial services, India still feels it can shun the world. As my colleague Simon Denyer recently posted, look at how little media coverage was given to Myanmar's tragedy. Perhaps U.S. airports, and the controversial immigration treatment that scares many travellers, also underscores how this country feels it does not need the rest of the world.

While there are improvements in India -- Hyderabad, and perhaps Bangalore, it's been late in coming. Some may be half-hearted. Bangalore's new airport has no new access road, angering business leaders.

Rather like the United States, India still is a huge federal country that still looks into itself. Indeed, India has so many challenges for itself, from caste violence to separatist insurgencies, it may be understandable. For both countries, the outside world still isn't top of the agenda.

Which is why global travellers here, like global business, may be in for a long haul.