Critically discuss the linkages between religion and politics in India.

Religion and Politics in India: Historical Overview: The use of religion in Indian politics can be linked to the country's pre-independence era. It is believed that the British, who ruled India for more than 100 years around the 19th century, pitched one community against the other to weaken the freedom struggle. They especially succeeded in infusing a feeling of anxiety among sections of the Muslim community concerning their wellbeing in a country that had a majority Hindu population and emerging Hindu nationalist voices. As a result, the Muslims demanded reserved seats in the legislature and a separate electorate. The British acceded to their demands through legislation, known as the Act of 1909.

In 1915, Hindu nationalists formed the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (All India Hindu Assembly) to counter the Indian Muslim League (a political party) and the secular Indian National Congress, a forum founded in 1885 that subsequently became a political party. In 1923, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (popularly known as Veer Savarkar), the Hindu Mahasabha founder, coined the word 'Hindutva' (Hindu-ness) to define who is a Hindu. (Numerous Hindu nationalist groups today promote the Hindutva ideology.) In 1925, KB. Hegdewar, the Hindu Mahasabha vice president, founded the RSS.

The tensions between sections of the Hindu and Muslim communities resulted in the Indian Muslim League demanding a separate nation for Muslims. When the British were to formally leave the country in 1947, the British India was divided into the 'Hindu-majority' India and the 'Muslim-majority' Pakistan. The Partition resulted in a mass migration of 14.5 million people from India to Pakistan and vice versa, and the killing of around 1 million people–Hindu, Sikh and Muslim-in the violent clashes that followed.

In 1951, the RSS started a political party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh or BJS, under its leadership and control. In 1980, the BJS was succeeded by the BJP.

The BJP, which was struggling to become a national party and an alternative to India's one and only major party at the time, the Congress, adopted a resolution in June, 1989 to build a temple of Rama in Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh state), which the party claimed as the Ram Janmabhoomi (the birthplace of God Rama). The BJP and Hindu nationalists allege that Muslim ruler Babar had demolished a temple of Rama to build the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in the 16th century. In September 1990, BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani undertook a Rath Yatra (procession on a chariot) to promise the construction of a temple of Rama.

The Ayodhya issue began reaping political dividends. In July 1992, Advani, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha (House of the People), reportedly told the House, "You must recognise the fact that from two seats in parliament in 1985, we have come to 117 seats in 1991. This has happened primarily because we took up this issue (Ayodhya)."

Religion and politics are so closely tied together that the very idea of India and its premise for pride revolve around religion-related issues.

Religion and Politics in Contemporary India

Perhaps the most contentious of all aspects of cultural diversity are issues relating to religious communities and religion-based identities. These issues may be broadly divided into two related groups–the secularism-communalism set and the minority-majority set. Questions of secularism and communalism are about the state's relationship to religion and to political groupings that invoke religion as their primary identity. Questions about minorities and majorities involve decisions on how the state is to treat different religious, ethnic or other communities that are unequal in terms of numbers and/or power (including social, economic and political power).

In everyday language, the word 'communalism' refers to aggressive chauvinism based on religious identity. Chauvinism itself is an attitude that sees one's own group as the only legitimate or worthy group, with other groups being seen–by definition–as inferior, illegitimate and opposed. Thus, to simplify further, communalism is an aggressive political ideology linked to religion. This is a peculiarly Indian, or perhaps South Asian, meaning that is different from the sense of the ordinary English word. In the English language, "communal" means something related to a community or collectivity as different from an individual. The English meaning is neutral, whereas the South Asian meaning is strongly charged. The charge may be seen as positive–if one is sympathetic to communalism–or negative, if one is opposed to it. It is important to emphasise that communalism is about politics, not about religion. Although communalists are intensely involved with religion, there is in fact no necessary relationship between personal faith and communalism. A communalist may or may not be a devout person, and devout believers may or may not be communalists. However, all communalists do believe in a political identity based on religion. The key factor is the attitude towards those who believe in other kinds of identities, including other religion-based identities. Communalists cultivate an aggressive political identity, and are prepared to condemn or attack everyone who does not share their identity.

One of the characteristic features of communalism is its claim that religious identity overrides everything else. Whether one is poor or rich, whatever one's occupation, caste or political beliefs, it is religion alone that counts. All Hindus are the same as are all Muslims, Sikhs and so on. This has the effect of constructing large and diverse groups as singular and homogeneous. It is noteworthy that this is done for one's own group as well as for others. This would obviously rule out the possibility that Hindus, Muslims and Christians who belong to Kerala, for example, may have as much or more in common with each other than with their co-religionists from Kashmir, Gujarat or Nagaland. It also denies the possibility that, for instance, landless agricultural labourers (or industrialists) may have a lot in common even if they belong to different religions and regions.

Communalism is an especially important issue in India because it has been a recurrent source of tension and violence. During communal riots, people become faceless members of their respective communities. They are willing to kill, rape, and loot members of other communities in order to redeem their pride, to protect their home turf. A commonly cited justification is to avenge the deaths or dishonour suffered by their co-religionists elsewhere or even in the distant past. No region has been wholly exempt from communal violence of one kind or another. Every religious community has faced this violence in greater or lesser degree, although the proportionate impact is far more traumatic for minority communities. To the extent that governments can be held responsible for communal riots, no government or ruling party can claim to be blameless in this regard. In fact, the two most traumatic contemporary instances of communal violence occurred under each of the major political parties. The anti-Sikh riots of Delhi in 1984 took place under a Congress regime. The unprecedented scale and spread of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 took place under a BJP government.

India has had a history of communal riots from pre-Independence times, often as a result of the divide-and-rule policy adopted by the colonial rulers. But colonialism did not invent inter-community conflicts–there is also a long history of pre-colonial conflicts–and it certainly cannot be blamed for post-Independence riots and killings. Indeed, if we wish to look for instances of religious, cultural, regional or ethnic conflict they can be found in almost every phase of our history. But we shouldn't forget that we also have a long tradition of religious pluralism, ranging from peaceful co-existence to actual intermixing or syncretism.

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