When the modern nation of India was born on August 15, 1947, the atmosphere was far away from jubilation.
One of the world’s most ancient and peaceful civilization gained its independence from the British colonial occupation but at the cost of a bloody partition. India’s large Muslim population rejected the leadership of Gandhi since the beginning of the 1940s.
Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah emerged as the guardian of the proposed Muslim nation of Pakistan. Finally, West and East Pakistan were carved out of India in order to end a civil war and large-scale bloodshed that vastly expanded since Jinnah’s call of Direct Action.
A blood-soaked history
Today, Hindu-majority India remains the only major secular force in the region.
Three Islamic states exist on the east and west of India — Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Only Muslims are allowed to hold citizenship in the nearby Maldives and are barred from practicing any faith other than Islam. There is a Muslim Majority Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in the north. Not a single Hindu family survives in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Other neighboring states of Sri Lanka and Myanmar have Buddhism as the state religion. The sole secular exception in South Asia is Nepal, another Hindu majority state.
Simple speaking, the aim of Islamic separatism in India is to establish more Islamic states within the territory of India modeled on the lines of Pakistan.
But why Pakistan matter?
Simply stating, the state of Pakistan as an anti-thesis of India embodies the idea of Islamic separatism. An Islamic state where the weight of citizens’ rights is measured based on their allegiance to the Mohammedan faith. Prior to the British colonialism, large parts of India had remained under the Islamic occupation for more than three centuries. This was a period India witnessed large scale massacres and crimes against humanity against the native Hindu and Buddhist population. It had no foundation in the wellbeing of the citizens. Almost every native temple was destroyed and mosques built atop. The greatest Hindu and Buddhist temples in Kashmir, Varanasi, Delhi, Mathura, and others were erased.
The words of noted American historian and Pulitzer Prize awardee Will Durant sums it all:
“We can never know, from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty she once possessed.”
The plurality of India
Today, the modern nation of India is classified as a secular republic. Interestingly, this largest democracy in the world was not declared as a secular state in its original constitution. As a deeply religious society, the western approach of separation between church and state was never a possibility in India. Dr. Amebdkar is widely recognized as the father of the Indian constitution. A former untouchable who emerged as one of India’s tallest political leaders, Ambedkar advocated the transfer of population as a solution to ward off any future problem of Islamic separatism. He even turned down proposals to include ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ in Constitution’s preamble. The term ‘secularism’ was only added in 1975 when India was reeling under emergency whereby elections were suspended and civil liberties curbed.
So, has India confused its plurality with the western notion of secularism?
In fact, the plurality of India is purely a Hindu achievement. Why so? Simply because Hinduism is not an organized faith system, unlike its Abrahamic counterparts. The ‘Hindu Rashtra’ (Hindu nation) recognizes India as a nation of those native to the land and those who accept its civilizational ethos of pluralism and mutual coexistence. The Hindu society with its complex divisions into caste, linguistic, regional and ethnic considerations never had an issue in including Jews, Parsi, Muslims, or Christians within its civilization fold.
Yet the Islamic separatism of 1947 targeted this ‘Hindu Rashtra’ coloring it with an Islamic interpretation. The demand for a separate “Pak” (pure) homeland free from impure Hindu elements was to be achieved. And achieved it was. Hindus made over 47 percent of Karachi (the first capital of Pakistan) in 1941. Today, just around 0.5 percent.
But India suffering from the weak leadership of first Prime Minister Nehru failed to take any steps to legally secure its hard-earned plurality. After 70 years of its independence, India is now once again facing the threat of carving many separate homelands out of the motherland.
The citizenship conundrum
Since independence, India has faced various forms of religious, linguistic and ethnic separatism but all collapsed except for Islamic separatism in the Muslim majority Kashmir valley sharing a border with Pakistan. For two reasons, the current wave of Islamic separatism in India is widely distinct and far dangerous than ones before. First, the pan-India character of the separatism that is fuelled using misinformation against the recently amendment citizenship act. Secondly, the political support that separatists’ commands from India’s main opposition Congress party and powerful western media agencies.
To begin with, India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is not applicable to Indian citizens. It only aims to protect and support religious minorities already in India owing to state-backed persecution in neighboring Muslim majority Islamic states of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. Bangladesh has already faced a major genocide in 1971 that was orchestrated by the Pakistan Army. Hindus and other religious minorities in Pakistan are treated as second class citizens barred from entering high offices or enjoy basic human rights. Being a Hindu Rashtra, India holds the responsibility to protect their lives.
But why will Indian Muslims carry violent protests against CAA that are not applicable to them?
The answer is explained by the psyche of Islamic separatism in India. The violent protest accompanied by riots in many parts of India is a show of pan-South Asian Islamic solidarity. It is led with the help of fundamentalist outfits like Tablighi Jamat and Popular Front of India working with hatemonger Islamist publications like Milli Gazette and others. The anti-CAA protests are the first formal expression of outreach by Indian Muslims to their counterparts in Pakistan.
The itch of Narendra Modi’s re-election united the Muslim community of South Asia. They are joined by Khalistani Sikh separatists. Modi is seen as being “anti-Muslim” since he rejects the Islamic appeasement practiced by his predecessors. Modi government’s decision to end the discriminatory Article 370 provision in the Jammu and Kashmir and criminalizing the archaic practice of “Triple Talaq” (Oral divorce) among Indian Muslims didn’t go well with Sharia abiding Muslim community. The Islamic separatism is further fuelled by anger over the Supreme Court verdict that allowed the reconstruction of an ancient Hindu temple in Ayodhya.
The CAA merely became the last stepping stone for Islamic separatism to justify one of the worst expressions of violence in recent times. Local Islamist lawmakers are regularly seen threatening Hindus by declaring the numerical supremacy of Muslims in many regions of India.
Looming Civil War?
The Balkanisation of India was once an issue of great concern and wide discussions. The wounds of India’s religiously motivated partition were never heeled. India is again engulfed with the threat of civil war . The rapidly changing religious demography in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Western Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand is a cause of concern. The Islamic separatists are deliberately creating rumors on the National Population Register (NPR) to sabotage the upcoming census that could for the first time measure the true extent of altered religious demography.
As a land of hero worshippers, India completely depends on the leadership of Modi. No doubt that Modi is one of the strongest and resolute Indian leaders yet, but even the likes of Gandhi and Patel failed to counter the Islamic separatism of 1947.
India must wake up to the threat posed by political Islam and Sikh separatism. This includes a secular-liberal façade with a divisive agenda. A comprehensive approach and conversation are required to reinstate the constitutional supremacy of the republic. While economic exclusion is surely a factor in breeding a separatist environment, Indian Muslims cannot be left to the brainwashing of foreign-funded clerics and mosque networks.
It needs to invest in reforming and revising its internal security and weak policing. Lessons have to be learnt and implemented gaining from the experiences of fellow secular democracies in Europe and elsewhere. Recently Emmanuel Macron of France vowed to fight against Islamic extremism. Islamic fundamentalism is the source of Islamic separatism in India. Be it Islamic seminaries (Madrasa) or religion-based institutions of higher learning like AMU, none of these can have any place in a modern democracy. India can no more delay the introduction of a uniform civil code ending the legal backing for Sharia law in personal matters.
India’s leadership must declare war on Islamic separatism. No secular hesitation can be justified anymore.
