Religion_and_Politics_in_India_and_Pakistan

Religion and Politics in India and Pakistan – A Comparison The relationship between religion and politics has always been uptight and led to conflict. Religion is known as a central source of legitimacy and political mobilization in all societies, ranging from those that are openly secular, to those that are theocracies. It is important to note here, that doctrines not only have religious implications, but also economic and social repercussion. The British India divided into two in 1947. While both nations India and Pakistan, are democracies, they look at religion with different lenses. India is a secular nation, while Pakistan is an Islamic Republic. They had a similar history, but the genesis and the ideologies of leaders have shaped them very differently. One is an emerging super power, while the other is struggling to reach a decent economic standing. Why is that' How much has history shaped the futures of the nations' In political terms, secularism means separation of religion from government. Secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and the right to freedom from governmental imposition of religion upon the people within a state that is neutral on matters of belief. Countries follow different doctrines, sometimes driven by a vision but more often driven by history and its agenda. India and Pakistan are different not only functionally but also ideologically. Though Pakistan is not theocratic, it is predicted to become one soon. India follows secularism, but how is it incorporated in nation building, if it all. How have the different doctrines shaped the two nations historically and how they continue to do so today, is what the paper exams, to conclude that liberty and freedom of thought expression and faith are the basic and fundamental human rights, which are preserves under secularism. Economic progress is also a very important product of secularism and India owes its success to this ideology, amongst many others. India’s preamble declares India to be a secular state. “We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, republic and to secure to all its citizens” In Indian context, the state is neither supposed to compel its citizens to adopt a particular religion nor it can give preferential treatment to the followers of particular religion. It means that state will protect all religions equally and will not uphold any religion as the state religion. Secularism is supposed to add to democracy by protecting the rights of religious minorities and treat all citizens equally, irrespective of their religion. Secularism, though a western concept for India, did not emerge as a result of a struggle against a theocratic authority (the church in case of Europe). Hence secularism in Indian context does not take an atheistic embodiment; instead, it meant equal treatment to all religions involved, owing to the cultural, historical and the geographical diversity. Amongst this diversity, the most prominent and defining difference amongst people was that of religious faith. Religion has always played pivotal role in framing the framing the political arena of India. Hence, even during the formation of constitution of the free India, secularism did not mean an indifference to religion and its importance in lives of citizens, but it meant a philosophy that would give equal respect to all religious faiths. Presence of people from different religions in Indian National Congress was indicative of the effort to make a secular assembly and consecutively, a nation. Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the founding fathers of India’s intellectual base, had important and staunch views about secularism. Nehru believed in “equal protection by the state to all religions”. He wanted a secular state where the state does not interfere in matter of religion. Nehru did not believe in hostility to religion. It was for this reason that many people were attracted to the concept of secularism in the conception stages of the nation. However, the fact remains that there are too many religions existing in the same land, hence it is not difficult for the ideal idea of secularism to dissipate. Indian society being a mixture of religions is always prone to dominance and conflicts. In order to mitigate the harmful effects of caste-ism and other source of conflicts and human right violations arising out of religions, it is necessary that government be able to meddle with religious affairs. However, the country is far from having a common civil code and a respectful behavior towards all religions. Vices like communal violence, religious voting etc. continue to exist. In the beginning of nineties Babri Masjid was demolished which pushed Indian secularism to the brink. It was the greatest disaster and was followed by Bombay riots, which shocked whole world. Indian secularism has followed a tortuous course all through in the post-independence period. The BJP, which had come to power using its Hindutva card, is not likely to give it up in near future. With every election it intensifies its Hindutva agenda. The other members of the Sangh Parivar, specially the Vishva Hindu Parishad, tend to be more fanatic, as they do not have to acquire votes to govern. It assumes extremist postures and threatens minorities. It is this irresponsible extremism, which resulted in the Gujarat carnage that again shook the world. Theocracy is a form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the state's supreme civil ruler, or in a higher sense, a form of government in which a state is governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. It is important to distinguish theocracy from other secular forms of government that have a state religion, or are merely influenced by theological or moral concepts. Pakistan, for instance, has declared Islam to be its state religion and it is an Islamic republic. Pakistan, as a nation, with physical borders, was formed in 1947. This was accomplished on the basis of the Two-Nation Theory. This theory held that there were two nations, Hindus and Muslims living in the territory of the Sub-continent. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was the first exponent of the Two-Nation Theory in the modern era. He believed that India was a continent and not a country, and that among the vast population of different races and different creeds, Hindus and Muslims were the two major nations on the basis of nationality, religion, way-of-life, customs, traditions, culture and historical conditions. The proposal for a Muslim state in India was first enunciated in 1930 by the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, who suggested that the four northwestern provinces (Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, and the North-West Frontier Province) should be joined in such a state. In a 1933 pamphlet Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a Cambridge student, coined the name Pakistan on behalf of those Muslims living in Punjab, Afghan (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir, Sind, and Baluchistan. The name was said to mean ‘Land of the Pure’. Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah translated it into the political reality of a nation state. The most disputative issue in Pakistan since its very inception in 1947 is the nature of the state. Should Pakistan be a Shariat based Islamic state or should she be a modern democratic secular state' The very word secular was and still is corrupted by a majority of religious class in Pakistan who has loosely translated the word to mean 'irreligiously', a concept entirely divorced from secularism. Mr. Jinnah's presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 announced his secular ideas of Pakistan. “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” This speech gave out a secularist impression of Jinnah. However, many have, over the period of time, questioned his secularism and accused him of supporting an Islamic state throughout. Presently, Pakistan is a democracy with Islam as its state religion. The first Constitution of Pakistan was adopted in 1956, but was suspended in 1958 by General Ayub Khan. The Constitution of 1973 was suspended in 1977, by Zia-ul-Haq, but re-instated in 1985. However, due to the governing patterns and the military dominance in the nation, for Pakistan, there is a very thin line between being Islamic Republic and becoming a theocracy. The Constitution of Pakistan, part IX, article 227 says, "All existing laws shall be brought in conformity with the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah, in this Part referred to as the Injunctions of Islam, and no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such Injunctions” With 96% of its population following Islam, and the state religion being declared and reinforced as Islam, there is hardly any scope left for Jinnah and his secularist idea to prevail. Pakistan has been under military influence since its conception and the military bureaucracy has shaped the institution, constitution and the economy of the nation. In October 1958, Ayub Khan led a military coup and revoked the 1956 constitution. He not only wanted to consolidate power in the central government, but also to modernize Pakistani. Hence, Ayub Khan initially tried to extract Islam from politics." Pakistan's first constitutional crisis thus ended in a military coup, and for a time an autocrat who was determined to centralize political power was able to subdue the Islamists. However, the inability of Pakistanis to reconcile the differences between Islamists and modernists during the early stages of the nation-building process damaged subsequent political administrations.  During the reign of Zia-ul-Haq's military regime (1977-1988), Pakistan experienced a revival of Islamist activity and a concerted effort on the part of the military administration to give Islamists positions in the government, including in key military posts.  Zia implemented a wide range of Islamization policies, including the creation of an Islamic law court, and strengthened his alliance with Islamist groups. Zia's policies were designed to "Islamicize" Pakistani society, and his support for Islamist protestors in Afghanistan was a logical extension of his domestic political goals. Does Islam really stand for a progressive egalitarian and secular political order or does it favor a theocratic form of government' Secularism with or without the justification of Islam is the need of the hour if Pakistan wants to walk the path of success, in order to get over its internal conflicts and divert the resources of the country for its progress. A democracy cannot survive for long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is just this freedom, which is sorely lacking in the Islamic state of Pakistan. Without the freedom of expression and the liberty to think beyond a scripture, Pakistan will remain in its dogmatic, fanatical, feudal stronghold; solidified, totalitarian and intolerant. A democracy proceeds by tentative steps after deliberations, debate, and compromise, and is able to adapt to changing circumstances. This is precisely how an Islamic theocracy does not proceed, and it is to such a theocracy that Pakistan might turn in the coming one or two decades. Thus, the only avenue of political redemption left for Pakistan is to de-construct the last fifty-two years of its existence and admit the harsh truth that as a nation, in a religious, cultural, political, and a philosophical sense, it has been a dismal failure. Pakistani government and its leadership must openly acknowledge the reality that Pakistan cannot exist as theocracy given its own internal contradictions. They must also accept the irony that secularism, as a political idea, in Pakistan would be untenable, because it would be a manifestation of the truth that Pakistan’s ideal, as a theocratic homeland for the Muslims of India, was flawed and ill conceived as a political reality. The only option left open to the Pakistani politicians, its government and its political leadership is admit to this reality and to stop using discredited and dysfunctional policies of the past to remedy a future, which cannot reconciled with its present situational realities. Today, in Pakistan, Islam has become a vehicle for spreading venom and hatred against India. This has led to a growing revulsion against Islam and unfortunate stereotyping of all Muslim nations and people in some sections of Indian society. Progressive forces in India have been caught in a curious bind. It is ironic that today, it is the forces of Islamic Jihad that prevent even bilateral trade from taking place between India and Pakistan. Rather than unite disparate social systems, Islam is being used to divide a people with a long and common culture and history. Pakistan has always self-imagined itself to be a "homeland for Muslims". The question really is: what kind of a homeland' What is Pakistan to Pakistanis now' Who is a Pakistani, in effect' A person who follows the religion of the state and forms his national identity based only on religion' There is a clear absence of any kind of economic or social identity marker for the citizens, unless of course they are the elite of this Islamic state. There has to be a fundamental re-articulation of Pakistan as an entity, as a nation-state, within its constitutive parts. The urgency of this task is evident - there are other claimants with answers; claimants who carry guns and can brutalize a population in the blink of an eye. There is also the United States agenda, which continues to treat Pakistan as nothing more than a client state. Somewhere in this claw, somewhere between the Taliban and the danger, the Pakistanis have to begin forming a sense of their whole. Idea of a religion constructing the nation seems incomplete for its clear the lack of progress and national-identity. In contrast, the Indian sub-continent has its own bucket of problems, but it manages to radiate a sense of national identity, I not unity. Indian democracy is in itself a guaranty for future of secularism. A pluralist country like India needs secularism like life-blood. India has been pluralist not since post-modernism but for centuries and no one can wish away its bewildering pluralism and this pluralism can be sustained only with religiously neutral polity. However, it has its own set of hindrances to overcome. In the given political circumstances the future of secularism does not seem to be bright. There is an emergence of extremist voices that claim to speak for Hindus and they are laying down demands that threaten the very idea of a secular India. The biggest area of concern is that the state has emerged to be complicit, as an actor and player in mounting this challenge to Indian pluralism, which goes under the name of Hindutva. Though religion will never cease to be a force in human life secularism will not lose its relevance either. The modern democratic polity cannot be sustained without the state being neutral to all religions or equally protective for all religions as Nehru put it. And it is in this sense that secularism in India will become more and more relevant. If Pakistan is on-the-verge theocracy is juxtaposed with Indian secularism in the context of development, we see the roots of judicial use of resources and leadership, in the tact and effectiveness of ideologies implemented. Religion gives a uniform identity, yes, but it also gives rise to other conflicts that hinder the same identity and development included. India, though in midst of poverty and occasional rifts, manages to flaunt the biggest working democracy and liberty to its citizens. Bibliography * Emerging Power: India, by Stephen Cohen * Conflict Unending: India Pakistan Tensions since 1947, by Sumit Ganguly * Contemporary Pakistan, by Veena Kukreja * The Idea of Pakistan, by Stephen Cohen