02-14-2008, 04:59 AM
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/88aug/obrien.htm
A U G U S T 1 9 8 8
Holy War Against India
It is one of the grimmer and more ironic developments of the late twentieth century: religion, which is on the whole a benign force in Western societies, often combines combustibly with nationalism to fuel political murder in the Third World. In India, for example, the teachings of a militant guru are used to justify the atrocities committed by Sikh terrorists in their campaign to dismember the nation and establish "Khalistan"
by Conor Cruise O'Brien
INDIA, with 800 million people, is by far the largest democracy in the world in terms of population, and the second-largest secular state in the world, after China. When India became independent, just over forty years ago, and undertook to be a secular and democratic state, many people doubted whether it would live up to that commitment. Its experience of democracy, under the British Raj, was quite limited, and mostly confined to the generation immediately preceding independence. Secularism seemed to be even more improbable than democracy in the Indian context. Most Indians were, and are, firmly attached to a particular religion; relatively few Indians forty years ago could have grasped the nature of a secular state, or understood the need for such a thing. Extreme religious groups of one kind and another denounced the secular state as godless and therefore illegitimate.
The Indian state came into being amid the scenes of communal-religious carnage that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent between mainly Hindu India and entirely Muslim Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had resolutely rejected the idea of a secular state that could encompass both Hindus and Muslims. In his presidential address to the Muslim League at Lahore in 1940, Jinnah declared: "Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but in fact different and distinct social orders, and it is only a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality.... To yoke together two such nations under a single state ... must lead to a growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state."
Return to Flashback: Indian Passages
Yet in the event, the fabric of India's secular state proved tougher than that of confessional Pakistan. Pakistan originally consisted of eastern and western sections, connected by a common religion but different in language and culture. The religious bond proved insufficient, and East Pakistan in 1971 seceded and became the independent state of Bangladesh. Secular India, however, has held together. There are now almost as many Muslims in India as there are in Pakistan. Muslims and Hindus in India may perhaps not have "evolved a common nationality," but they -- and Sikhs also, so far -- have managed to live together, within one state, for more than forty years now, whereas the "common nationality" of the Muslims of Pakistan burst asunder after twenty-four years.
A U G U S T 1 9 8 8
Holy War Against India
It is one of the grimmer and more ironic developments of the late twentieth century: religion, which is on the whole a benign force in Western societies, often combines combustibly with nationalism to fuel political murder in the Third World. In India, for example, the teachings of a militant guru are used to justify the atrocities committed by Sikh terrorists in their campaign to dismember the nation and establish "Khalistan"
by Conor Cruise O'Brien
INDIA, with 800 million people, is by far the largest democracy in the world in terms of population, and the second-largest secular state in the world, after China. When India became independent, just over forty years ago, and undertook to be a secular and democratic state, many people doubted whether it would live up to that commitment. Its experience of democracy, under the British Raj, was quite limited, and mostly confined to the generation immediately preceding independence. Secularism seemed to be even more improbable than democracy in the Indian context. Most Indians were, and are, firmly attached to a particular religion; relatively few Indians forty years ago could have grasped the nature of a secular state, or understood the need for such a thing. Extreme religious groups of one kind and another denounced the secular state as godless and therefore illegitimate.
The Indian state came into being amid the scenes of communal-religious carnage that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent between mainly Hindu India and entirely Muslim Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had resolutely rejected the idea of a secular state that could encompass both Hindus and Muslims. In his presidential address to the Muslim League at Lahore in 1940, Jinnah declared: "Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but in fact different and distinct social orders, and it is only a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality.... To yoke together two such nations under a single state ... must lead to a growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state."
Return to Flashback: Indian Passages
Yet in the event, the fabric of India's secular state proved tougher than that of confessional Pakistan. Pakistan originally consisted of eastern and western sections, connected by a common religion but different in language and culture. The religious bond proved insufficient, and East Pakistan in 1971 seceded and became the independent state of Bangladesh. Secular India, however, has held together. There are now almost as many Muslims in India as there are in Pakistan. Muslims and Hindus in India may perhaps not have "evolved a common nationality," but they -- and Sikhs also, so far -- have managed to live together, within one state, for more than forty years now, whereas the "common nationality" of the Muslims of Pakistan burst asunder after twenty-four years.