The date of India’s Independence is etched upon the soul of every Indian. As India marks the 60th anniversary of its Independence, it commemorates a landmark which will resonate from the villages that Nehru described as the “real India”, to the refined salons of India’s urban elite, and beyond, to cities across the world which are home to an influential Indian Diaspora that spans from New York and London to Singapore and Dubai.
August 15 1947 is a day of jubilation: the day India celebrated freedom from its colonial bonds. Yet it is also a day for reflection on the country’s Partition. For decades, the joy of Independence was overshadowed by the horror of Partition that lived on in the psyche of the Indian people who were unable to shake off the grief associated with violence that killed more than a million and displaced millions more.
It was an act which until now was the defining moment in India’s post Independence history, setting the scene for relations between not just India and Pakistan but also between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs within India.
As India arrives at this momentous anniversary, it is an opportune time to assess religious relations within India and examine the success of Nehru’s secular ideal. As the world’s largest secular democracy, a country which is multi-faith and yet has grappled with religious extremism for decades, if not centuries, India’s experience is one which should be of interest to the world beyond.
While the post 9/11 western world has remained fixated by the threat of Islamic extremism, India has battled with fanatics of every creed: Islamic, Hindu, Sikh and Christian. Despite internal religious tensions which threatened at times to pull the country apart, the country has defied the doomsayers and survived as the world’s biggest secular democracy.
When one looks at its difficult post Indendence history, one begins to appreciate just what an achievement it is that India lived up to Nehru’s secular ideal.. During these sixty years, India has seen almost every one of its major religions hijacked by the politics of the fanatic and India’s lessons from its battles with holy warriors of every religious stripe are lessons that go beyond its own boundaries.
It has suffered its own brand of Islamic extremism, from the hooded militants of the jihad in Kashmir that has raged from 1989 until recently, to the terrorist bomb attacks that swept in from the zones of militancy on India’s border into the heartland cities of Delhi and Mumbai.
India has witnessed the ascendancy of a Hindu fundamentalism which began as part of the RSS movement which was born in 1925. Its chilling potency was seen in the Gujarat riots in 2002 in which at least two thousand people – mostly Muslims — were killed by Hindu extremists in an orchestrated and apparently pre-planned attack which appeared to have the complicity of the BJP state government.
In the eighties and nineties, India suffered the rise of the Khalistan movement which sought a separate Sikh homeland, a Land of the Pure. That battle for secession brought Sikh fundamentalists on collision course with the Indian government as it sought to protect the integrity of its nation at almost any cost.
And to this day, in Nagaland India suffers a Christian insurgency movement which is seeking a separate motherland.
Despite India enshrining its secular ideal in its constitution, the country has periodically been plagued by religious tensions and suffered holy wars with extremists of all kinds. Some of these conflicts are rooted in historical grievances, others come from a fear of modernity eroding the purity of faith. It is anger over the past and fear for the future.
The cost has been high: hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, communities destroyed and innocent believers brutalized as they were caught in the crossfire between the state and the terrorist. Yet, miraculously, India has endured and now it is poised on the threshold of economic greatness.
India’s first prime minister Jawarhalal Nehru understood that for India to hold together and forge a common identity, religious tolerance had to form the heart of its political credo. He saw its secular ideal as a kind of insurance for the country’s future unity, protecting it from the dangerous religious cross-currents that came from its turbulent history.
It would appear that despite the many threats faced during these past six decades, his instinct has been borne out. It is true that during sixty years, both of India’s major parties – Congress and BJP – have in their time been accused of playing politics with religion. But India’s secular ideal has safeguarded the nation through troubled times
The current Congress-led government under Dr Manmohan Singh has adopted a policy of seeking to rehabilitate aggrieved religious minorities into the Indian mainstream through economic engagement and dialogue to help quell religious unrest. A policy of bread not just bullets. It has continued the last BJP government’s policy of pursuing peace with Pakistan, although the process is plagued by periodic setbacks.
The 2004 election result in which the BJP lost the election was seen as a verdict on its failure to deliver economic renewal to all parts of India as well as a victory for India’s secularists, signaling communal-based politics may have reached its high tide of support. The election result opened up a debate within the Hindutva movement as the hardliners battled against moderates on which way to go now.
But the countrywide debate seems to have moved on to economic resurgence rather than settling the communal scores of the past. The challenge now is to keep the Indian economy moving forward, to address the economic apartheid that means one third of Indians still live beneath the poverty line and engage all sections of communities and religious minorities in that economic renewal.
After six decades of turbulent freedom, India is poised to break free from the divisive past and transform itself into a power for the new century. The Indian economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, manufacturing output is rising, the brain drain has been reversed and Indian companies are leading the way in overseas mergers and acquisitions. One such example was the venerable corporate dynasty Tata taking over Corus, which includes the remnants of British Steel. India’s economy which will soon overtake Britain’s. What a difference sixty years makes, with the story evolving from “End of Empire” to “Empire Strikes Back”.
In recent years, the world has woken up to India’s potential as a real economic force, its political clout as the world’s largest democracy and its amazing ability to endure despite its diversities. The communal spectres of 1947 have a real chance of being put to rest by the opportunity for economic stability and growth which could harness the potential of all Indians.
This is India’s moment, one it must seize if it is to conquer its communal demons and move forward.
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