The Hindu-Muslim Conflicts after the 16th Century - Case Study Example

The Hindu-Muslim conflicts after 16th Century Yutong Cai—7660325 ASIA 1430 Paper Robert A. Menzies Introduction India is a country thathas various religions. Hinduism and Muslim are two of the most important religions, and also are the two of the largest population group in India. Between 1500 and 1947, People who lived in India come from various places, and they may even speak different languages and have different style of daily life due to the different religions. Different religions also have different beliefs. People also have different sense of economics knowledge. These situations make the religion conflicts in India more complex. Hence, Muslims and Hindus are two of the main religions in India; these two religions have been living in conflict for centuries. There are three main causes of conflicts will be argued in this paper. First would be the different beliefs of Hinduism and Muslim. Second would be the different style of people’s daily life in Hinduism and Muslim. Third would be the different economics’ systems of Hinduism and Muslim. Language has an impact on the religious and sociopolitical processes of any society. In, India, the Indian-Muslim insists on speaking the Indian dialects. They also speak Persian and Arabic if people are educated at high level. Language spoken by Muslims had an effect on the spoken language among people who are living near Delhi, the capital city. Scholars of philology have done researches on its specific development trace, but they are not certain about the result. All they can tell is probable that the Muslims and the Hindus have some relationships with this language, helping refine and standardize its conjugations and syntax, enriching its expressions, and also from the fourteenth century, the two religions had made the language a first choice for people, and it has been used and emerged into the dialects and language until nowadays among the northern areas. Indian language first absorbed some words of Arabic and Persian, so it showed as Urdu. After a long time, it mixed words of Sanskrit then it showed itself as the leading Hindi dialect. The Urdu and Hindi have something in common. Their words and grammar are highly similar, for they mainly originated from Sanskrit and Prakrit and partly from Arabic and Persian. Generally speaking, the two are difficult to distinguish. From the seventeenth century, people wrote a literature book describing Hindu and Muslim names in Urdu. People often use the Hindi dialects, especially the BrajaBjasha and the Avadhi in the writing of poems, so was the situation of other India languages. (Muhammad Yusuf Abbasi, 2003). Economics also affect he sociopolitical developments in a nation. In India the western culture had influenced the destiny of industrial, trade and finance development as they gradually developed to be similar to those in the western word. Britain colonized India and this had a great impact. This issue has had a negative influence on the way Muslims and Indiana interact with each other. Some people like the springing up factories for they thought they could create wealth, and also the development could not be stopped. However, it is not everyone who agreed with these new developments. There are those who believe that the western ways must be left and the traditional Indian culture embraced. It will be strange to follow this kind of development style. On the other way, people think that they are the patriots if they come back to the life of spinning wheel, the self-sufficing village or the cottage industry. The Hindu-Muslim tension can be seen as a result of the desire by traditional enthusiast to preserve Indian culture and this can be seen in the way they also try to resist Western influence on their culture because they think the India traditional life style shows their respect of their country and can protect them from the intrusion of the western materialism and domination. (Tariq Rahman, 2014). As discussed above, the tension between the Indian Muslims and the Indians is the desire to preserve culture. However, Hindu nationalists who are willing to unify Indians and Muslim Fundamentalists have a different perspective. India is now in the charge of Hindu nationalists. Muslims are pushed out in society and they have complaints on the discrimination in education and economy. As Embree (990) says, despite the fact that Muslims occupy 14% of the India nation their children make up less than 2% of all the students in school. What is more, they usually cannot get a good enough job in areas of armed and police forces. The rich continue to be richer while the poor ones are getting poorer. Meanwhile, the people crowd into big cities which are overcrowded, but the countryside having few people and this can be attributed to the social inequality and community marginalization. This economic marginalization and social inequality has also been a major contributor to the tension between Indians and Muslims in India. The fact that Muslims and Hindus live together and have different cultures and religions makes it easy for them to disagree with each other and start a fighting (Lyon, 2008). At last, there are many Muslims in Pakistan and many Hindus in India and are both equipped with nuclear weapons and they can reach each other in a few minutes. If they begin a war, that will be a disaster for the world. However, the tension between Muslims and Hindus is feared to continue escalating, possibly leading to an eventual war. They hatred and disagreement could lead to a nuclear war without, especially due to the religious nature of the conflict as well as the fact that they (especially Muslims) are willing to die for their faith (Pelinka, 2003). It is certain that social reform to solve this problem may lead to greater force of religion. The reason why the Hindu-Muslim conflict is hard to solve is because it involves something hat both sides consider sacred (the Babri Masjid for Muslims and the Ram Janmabhoomi ground for Indians) and so the issue of sacrilege is more comes up (Varshney, 2008). India indeed is rich in divine wisdom and deep philosophy system, which are even appreciated by the westerners. Indians in India are more than the Muslims and so are likely to have more capability to drive the cultural and religious agenda. Hindus and Muslims are conflicting with each other, hoping to get the other one out of India. The former one make up 84% of the population in India, and the latter one occupies only 14%, and that is a great problem for India. Being a minority, Muslims feels being dominated by Hindus. What makes things worse is the controversy about Ayodhya. The two parties both claim that it is their territory. Hindu extremists in 1992 destroyed Babri Masjid, a Muslim mosque in Ayodhya to the ground, leading to a wave of violence and loss of over two thousand lives. Hindu extremists thought that the temple was located in on a ground they consider scared because it is believed to be the birth place of Ram, one of Hinduism’s most revered deities. They wanted to replace it with a temple commemorating Ram’s birth. In turn, Muslims wanted to rebuild Babri Masjid here. The two sides don’t give up and now they are in fighting. The province of Kashmir, which has the highest number of Muslims in India, has the most serious conflict between Hindus and Muslims, which is located in the border between India and Pakistan. In 1940’s, India became independent, and Kashmir chose India instead of Pakistan. However, Pakistan soon invaded the province and occupied part of it. And now there is still fierce conflict on this area. Muslims want it back. Some Muslims came back to Pakistan and Hindus back to India. While situation of the left Muslim in India do not get better after being partially separated. The two sides still resort to weapons like the past to solve this problem. This has led to increased suffering by residents. Some social-psychological theories are available to explain the bad relationship between Hindus and Muslims. First of all, Aronson’s book refers to the Fundamental Attribution Error, and Peace, Conflict, and Violence. According to Aronson (2011), the differences between religious ideologies can be seen as the man source of conflict. People are likely to blame the others while own their own behaviors to the environment. For example, as Waardenburg (1999) points out, if Muslims kill a cow to eat, the Hindus may think that the Muslims are provoking then because cows are considered scared in Hinduism faith. On the other hand, if the Hindus paint naked gods and goddesses on the wall of their temple, this may offend the Islam faith. However, in the eyes of Muslims, the Hindus behavior is immoral. As a result, the two groups are always in conflict with the idea that they are fighting for their faith (Varshney, 2008). Meanwhile, based on Folger’s referent cognitions model, it is believed that individuals often compare behaviors between groups according to maybe money or power with other possible choices. However, the case of Hindus and Muslims illustrate that this comparison makes people think more positive about them and may lead to hatred and conflict with others. For example, if the Muslim and a Hindu apply for the same position. The Muslim is likely to think that the Hindu gets this job because of his economy edge rather than hold the idea that the Hindu is more suitable and qualified for this job. Therefore, when the Hindu occupies most population in India, Muslims may regard Hindu as a group and think that they are dominating them. The Muslims think they are threatened and underrepresented. Therefore, it led to animosity and conflict. (Muhammad Yusuf Abbasi, 2003). Moral exclusion also has great effect on the conflicts between Hindu and Muslim, leading to direct violence. Morals refer to things that people think right, just, and respectable. They guide our behaviors and affect our daily cautions. They are in our deep heart, and we are brought up with morals. Peace, Conflict, and Violence holds the idea that beyond the borders of our morals, we meet people like enemies, strangers, and they do not follow the morals in our heart. Those people are outside our morals, and we do not care about them. However, if the morals are identified by the religion or ethnicity, there will be conflict just like the one between Muslims and Hindus. The religious background of the two groups and totally different, so they do not like each other. From the deep heart, they hate each other for their values are different and they cannot reach agreement with each other. Moral exclusion has some relationship with Aronson’s favoritism within group, which helps with the explanation of the bad relationship between Hindu and Muslim. It is believed that we often regard people who we think in our moral community to be good, and we tend to think those people beyond our moral community to be bad and have unjust treatment on them, just for the reason that they are not within our group. This definition shows itself clearly and can explain the bad relationship between the two groups. Muslims treats the fellow Muslim in a good way because they share the same thoughts and ideas, just like what the Hindus do to their fellow Hindus. However, the Muslim and Hindus treat each other in a bad way because they do not think the other within group. Conclusion The conflict between Muslims and Indians in India is one that threatens the security of the south Asian region. The religious nature of this conflict makes it harder to solve. There is a need for this conflict to be solved in the most amiable way possible. In the near past, the government has tried to divide the land in conflict between the two groups. Whether this will solve the issue of good is debatable. However, there needs to be better way to handle the situation in order to not only bring the conflict to a conclusion, but to also terminate the suffering by many people, especially children who have unfortunately been caught up in the conflict. References Aronson, E. (2011). The Social Animal. New York, NY: Worth Publishers. Embree, T. (1990). Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in Modern India. Los Angeles, LA: University of California Press. Lyon. (2008). Conflict Between India and Pakistan: An Encyclopedia: Roots of modern conflict. New York, NY: ABC-CLIO. Muhammad Yusuf Abbasi, (2003). The Genesis of Muslim Fundamentalism in India, Eastern Book Corporation, New Delhi Pelinka, A. (2003). Democracy Indian Style: Subhas Chandra Bose and the Creation of Indias Political Culture. New York, NY: Transaction Publishers. Tariq Rahman, (2014) Urdu as an Islamic Language’, in The Annual of Urdu Studies, Vol 21, Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison Varshney, A. (2008). Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. New York, NY: Yale University Press. Waardenburg, J. (1999). Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions : A Historical Survey: A Historical Survey. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Read More