August 15th is a widely celebrated day in India, it is the day the Republic of India declared its independence from Britain. Many people celebrate the freedom fighters, the nation-builders and politicians who steered the Young Republic to what it is today. India, as a state, marks its 78th Year. In the previous sentence, I deliberately used the word "state" rather than "nation" or "nation-state". That is because, There is no Indian Nation.
What is a Nation and Why isn't India one?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a nation as "a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory". There is no one Indian people, there isn't a common descent every agrees to, there isn't a single language every speaks, there isn't a single religion everyone follows. India is a country of many people, It is a country of many nations. Culturally, almost all states are inhabited by different nations, some states have multiple nations. The largest nation within India, is the Hindu Nation, the natives of the land and torch-bearers of one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Almost all Indian nations bear some descent from Hindu cultural hegemony. The Hindu Nation has many "sub-nations", based on regionality, denomination/school, and language. Within India itself, a diaspora nation of Muslims exist as a sizeable minority (14% of the population), I say diaspora nation, because a nation-state for Indian Muslims exists already in Pakistan.
Can Hindus and Muslims share a country?
Yes, as long as one of the above groups is politically stronger, or both abandon their piousness for sæcular compromise. Since the first arrival of Islam, living in cohesion as a society only happened under religious kings (ex. The Mughals who were the muslim kings, and the Maratha rulers who were Hindus). Never had these groups had to share power. The Sæcular Republic of India is the only country implementing this large-scale social experiment. Pakistan has basically given up on it, Jinnah's dream of replicating the Turkish model died with him. Pakistan is the essentially the only islamic superpower. Hindus in Pakistan are subject to discrimination for practicing the faith of their ancestors. (SEPTEMBER UPDATE: Students Revolution in Bangladesh resulted in a Hindu Pogrom in the country, further supporting the theory that Hindus and Muslims cannot live as equals in a nation). India is surrounded by enemies, Islamic, Sæcular, Communist, and Western-backed. The Status of Hindus remains shaky.
Hindus and Muslims cannot share a country of which they are in sizable numbers without inevitably reaching confrontation. Hindu values differ greatly from Islamic values. This begins in small daily differences like diet. Hindus of today are a largely lacto-vegetarian people. A lot of contemporary hindus believe in the principle of ahiṃsā, a mandate of nonviolence that restricts one from consuming meat as procurement of meat requires violence. These pacifistic sentiments are emboldened by late classical hindu texts like the Upaniṣads and the epics of Vyasa. Muslims do not hold such principles. They consume meat, only abstaining from swine. One particular matter of contention is the consumption of beef. The cow is a sacred animal in Hinduism, it is the best friend of our ancestors, the most valuable source of food for our Vedic forefathers, and are said to be sacred and protected by the Gods themselves. Muslims hold no such reverence for the cow, they freely consume it. In a country like India where Hindus make up a majority and Muslims occupy a sizable minority, this is a matter of intense conflict. Muslim cattle smugglers leech on the border, while a shady underground market exists across the country (not underground in Kerala, most of the hindus there are only hindus in name, and are in reality leftists) and vigilante lynchings occur when beef-eaters are caught.
As differences like these start piling up, and hate starts becoming routine in the mind of the young Hindu and Muslim alike, their souls burning with religious fervour, the aftermath will be a war of epic proportions, bursting out of the borders of India. With the powderkeg that is the social experiment of the Republic of India marching on its unsteady journey, we wait for the explosion.
