The Religious Conflict in South Asia

The Religious Conflict in South Asia

It is a misconception to believe that there has always been conflict

between Muslims and Hindu's. At one time, Muslims and Hindus would

live together in peace even worshiping in the same building, a purely

harmonious relationship. However the peace was not to last. In modern

times the conflict it could be said is inevitable. In this essay I

hope to look at the issues of conflict in South Asia focusing on India

and in particular the continuing Hindu-Muslim tensions, and look at

possible reasons for the continuing conflict which appears to have

escalated since the withdrawal of British Rule from India.

Multiple events had shaped the Indian subcontinent with regards to

Hindu and Muslim relations. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

the Mughal rule over the Indian subcontinent witnessed Hindus and

Muslims living in relative harmony. The Hindu and Islam culture could

not have been more different, with their contrasting notions, of God,

of life after death, of food, of marriage, of morality, of almost

everything. Yet they lived and survived together for many years, often

in genuine harmony. This occurred for each community was aware of the

others differences, aware of the boundaries that existed between them,

but acknowledged that they needed each other to survive.

At the time of the sixteenth century although the Muslims may have

been the

'politically dominant force of the South Asia… The Hindu sense of

hierarchy placed Muslims at the bottom of the caste system, as

mlechcha, as ritually dirty and alien outsiders'

(Ahmed:1993:86)

The Indian subcontinent world had become a define...

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..., with the holocaust, the carnage, the rapes, and the mindless

acts of violence that people who had lived together in relative

harmony for centuries, committed against each other all in the name of

religion. Still this causes conflict. Since 1947 Pakistan and India

are sworn enemies, not only have they fought three major wars against

each other, but also both countries more recently talk carelessly

about their nuclear capabilities and continue their militant

aggression against each other across the still disputed Kashmir

border.

..

I believe like the film 'Earth' by Seepa Mehta (1998) based upon the

book 'Cracking India', along with the continuing inevitable conflict

between Hinduism and Islamic believers demonstrate to all irrespective

of religion, why unnecessary war is waged and why friends turn

enemies.