Globalization that includes the interaction, cohabitation and mixing of people from different ethnicities, cultures, religious backgrounds, values and world views has changed the world consisting of nation states considerably. The growing presence of the “other” in one’s neighbourhood has opened up tensions, questioned identities and resulted in a struggle to hold on to one’s inherited positions in society, cultural rites and religious world views. Despite our expectation that the 21st century would overcome the terrible wars of the 20th century. and be a century of peace, what we see today globally and in South Asia is far from peaceful. Among the many reasons is the presence of various religions and the respective world views and values that they promote. The seeming “otherness” of other religions than my own is at the root of many misunderstandings, rejections and prejudices. As a matter of fact, educational systems all over the world including the West have so far refrained from informing the young generation about the ideas and values, culture and history of the different religions that all of us are confronted with to a certain extend nowadays. Not knowing the other prevents our understanding quite a bit.
Understanding if not accepting the “other” religion is only possible if and when we have a basic understanding at least what it is all about. In addition, the power of our modern world the media in all their forms more often than not contribute rather to the confusion than to promote reliable information. That is especially true for the situation in the subcontinent at large. South Asia is not only the home of an amazing variety of different religions and cults, it is also the birth place of religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism to name just the largest. Arriving from abroad, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Christianity have contributed an independent South Asian variety to the original belief system.
Different religions having coexisted more or less peacefully over centuries it was during the colonial period, especially the 19th century that many of the reservations between different religious communities were created. One main reason was the dualistic British and/or European way of looking at things, either good or bad, right or wrong with no grey areas in between. That applied to all spheres of life like social norms, economy, culture and religion. Western culture recognises only one way to do a thing right, that is their own way. This strange dualistic way eradicated even the possibility of another way to be right, it threw all options into the garbage. One starting point was the introduction of census in British-India. One of the questions that had to be answered in the questionnaire was to which religion the proponent belonged. In the census of 1911 for Gujarat two hundred thousand people stated themselves to be ‘Mohammedan Hindus’, a clear sign that they either had never before thought about that question or they didn’t understand the difference. In any case in their daily lives, it seems, there was no need for such a distinction.
But those distinctions became important rather sooner than later. That was when the idea of minority and majority was introduced into political life by the British. After the mutiny of 1857 the British though reluctantly introduced representation and later election into their rule of British-India. Of course it certainly was not a democracy including all of the population. The voting rights were confined to certain eligibility criteria like property ownership, land ownership, payment of income and municipal tax. Including the wealthy class of India across the board it securely excluded the urban poor and most of the rural population. Educated Indians for the first time learned that in order to win a seat you need a majority of votes in your constituency. Given the fact that the Indian population had only a 20 to 25% part of India’s population a Muslim would have a slight chance only to win a seat because he could not expect votes from other communities. Sir S.A. Khan in his speech at Lucknow in 1887 expressed that in this way: “And let us suppose first of all that we have universal suffrage, as in America, and that everybody, chamars and all, have votes. And first suppose that all the Mahomedan electors vote for a Mahomedan member, and all Hindu electors for a Hindu member; and now count how many votes the Mahomedan members have and how many the Hindu. It is certain the Hindu members will have four times as many, because their population is four times as numerous. Therefore, we can prove by mathematics that there will be four votes for the Hindu to every one vote for the Mahomedan. And now how can the Mahomedan guard his interests? It would be like a game of dice in which one man had four dice, and the other only one, unquote ” Even when this counting would not have come true, it matches the reality quite well. Muslim families like Sir Syed’s who were the former rulers of their states could not accept not to be part of the political elite of modern India. Thus, the rivalry between different communities, especially religious ones were mainly political created by the majority system. Today religious prejudices originating from that period have reached a stage when differences in belief and/ or ritual take violent forms and the state far from neutral has problems to deal with the situation. The idea of tolerance seems to have been pushed away and the attitude “my way or the highway” is ruling in South Asia. This situation brought to us the idea to review the religions of South Asia separately and in a closer way. This new series of articles thus will deal with Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism and Christianity in South Asia. This sequence roughly follows the timeline of its appearance in the subcontinent. South Asia, with a population of 1.9 billion, had the world’s largest population of Hindus (1.0 billion), Jains (4.25 million) and 21 million Sikhs, there were about 600 million Muslims, as well as over 25 million Buddhists and 35 million Christians. Hindus make up about 68% of Indians population and Muslims 31% or about 600 million of the overall South Asia population, while Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Sikhs constitute most of the rest. However India’s Hindu population include 200 million Dalits (untouchable) and about 100 million mountain tribes. About one-third of the world’s Muslims are from South Asia. Even within the broad denominations of each religion there are hundreds of sects, creeds or movements within each of them, nowadays some with political connotation. The hope is that by giving a closer look to the details of each of them, we can not only learn something about our neighbours, but may be even detect some common ideas within the wider variety of ideas.
Contributed by:
Dr. Bettina Robotka, former Professor of South Asian Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, Editor of the Defence Journal and a Consultant to the Pathfinder Group).
