Communalism is a term used to denote attempts to construct religious or ethnic identity, incite strife between people identified as different communities, and to stimulate
communal violence between those groups. It derives from history, differences in beliefs, and tensions between the communities.
Communalism is a significant social issue in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
,
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
and
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
.
[ Communal conflicts between religious communities in India, especially ]Hindus
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
and Muslims
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...
have occurred since the period of British colonial rule
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts est ...
, occasionally leading to serious inter-communal violence.
The term communalism was coined by the British colonial government as it wrestled to manage Hindu-Muslim riots and other violence between religious, ethnic and disparate groups in its colonies, particularly in British West Africa
British West Africa was the collective name for British colonies in West Africa during the colonial period, either in the general geographical sense or the formal colonial administrative entity. British West Africa as a colonial entity was orig ...
and the Cape Colony
The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when i ...
, in early 20th century.
Communalism is not unique to South Asia. It is found in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Australia.
History
The term came into use in early 20th century during the British colonial rule. The 4th Earl of Minto was called the father of communal electorates for legalising communalism by the Morley-Minto Act in 1909. The All-India Muslim League
The All-India Muslim League (AIML) was a political party established in Dhaka in 1906 when a group of prominent Muslim politicians met the Viceroy of British India, Lord Minto, with the goal of securing Muslim interests on the Indian subcontin ...
and the Hindu Mahasabha represented such communal interests, and the Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...
represented an overarching "nationalist" vision. In the runup to independence in 1947, communalism and nationalism came to be competing ideologies and led to the division of British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
into Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
and the Republic of India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. British historians have attributed the cause of the partition to the communalism of Jinnah
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (, ; born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai; 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948) was a barrister, politician, and the founder of Pakistan. Jinnah served as the leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until the ...
and the political ambitions of the Indian National Congress.
See also
* Secularism in India
With the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular nation. However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case ''S. R. Bommai v. Union of India'' est ...
* Ethnic relations in India
Ethnic relations in India have historically been complex. (It refers to attitudes and behaviours toward people of other ethnicities or races.) India is ethnically diverse, with more than 2,000 different ethnic groups. There is also significant ...
* Language conflicts in India
* Indian nationalism
* Pakistani nationalism
Pakistani nationalism refers to the political, cultural, linguistic, historical, ommonlyreligious and geographical expression of patriotism by the people of Pakistan, of pride in the history, heritage and identity of Pakistan, and visions for ...
* Anti-Hindu sentiment
Anti-Hindu sentiment, also known as Hinduphobia, is a negative perception, sentiment or actions against the practitioners of Hinduism.
Examples of anti-Hindu sentiments
According to the religious dialogue activist P. N. Benjamin, som ...
* Persecution of Hindus
Hindus have experienced both historical and ongoing religious persecution and systematic violence, in the form of forced conversions, documented massacres, genocides, demolition and desecration of temples, as well as the destruction of e ...
* Persecution of Muslims
The persecution of Muslims has been recorded throughout the history of Islam, beginning with its founding by Muhammad in the 7th century.
In the early days of Islam in Mecca, pre-Islamic Arabia, the new Muslims were often subjected to abuse ...
* Religion in India
Religion in India is characterised by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. The Indian subcontinent is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions; namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The preamble of Indian co ...
* Religious harmony in India
Religious harmony in India is a concept that indicates that there is love, affection between different religions in India. The Indian constitution supports and encourages religious harmony. In India, every citizen has a right to choose and practi ...
* Saffronisation
''Saffronisation'' or ''saffronization'' is the right-wing policy approach that seeks to implement a Hindu nationalist agenda, for example onto school textbooks. Critics have used this political neologism to refer to the policies of Hindu natio ...
* Terrorism in India
Terrorism in India, according to the Home Ministry, poses a significant threat to the people of India. Compared to other countries, India faces a wide range of terror groups. Terrorism found in India includes Islamic terrorism, separatist ...
* Islamic terrorism
Islamic terrorism (also known as Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism) refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Incidents and fatalities f ...
* Ayodhya dispute
The Ayodhya dispute is a political, historical, and socio-religious debate in India, centred on a plot of land in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The issues revolve around the control of a site traditionally regarded among Hindus to be the ...
(India)
* Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed by the Parliament of India on 11 December 2019. It amended the Citizenship Act, 1955 by providing a pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Banglades ...
(India)
* NCERT textbook controversies (India)
* Ethnic cleansing in Bhutan
Ethnic cleansing in Bhutan refers to a series of violences to remove the Lhotshampa, or ethnic Nepalis, from Bhutan. Inter-ethnic tensions in Bhutan have resulted in the flight of many Lhotshampa to Nepal, many of whom have been expelled by th ...
* Rohingya conflict
The Rohingya conflict is an ongoing conflict in the northern part of Myanmar's Rakhine State (formerly known as Arakan), characterised by sectarian violence between the Rohingya Muslim and Rakhine Buddhist communities, a military crackdown ...
(Myanmar)
* Hate group
A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race (human classification), race, Ethnic group, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any o ...
* Sectarianism
Sectarianism is a political or cultural conflict between two groups which are often related to the form of government which they live under. Prejudice, discrimination, or hatred can arise in these conflicts, depending on the political status quo ...
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
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** Jhingran, Saral. "Religion and communalism"
* Asgharali Engineer. ''Lifting the veil: communal violence and communal harmony in contemporary India''. Sangam Books, 1995. .
* Ludden, David, editor. ''Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India'', Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
, 1996.
* Manuel, Peter. "Music, the Media, and Communal Relations in North India, Past and Present," pp. 119–39.
* Martin E. Marty
Martin Emil Marty (born on February 5, 1928) is an American Lutheran religious scholar who has written extensively on religion in the United States.
Early life and education
Marty was born on February 5, 1928, in West Point, Nebraska, and raised ...
, R. S. Appleby (eds.), ''Fundamentalisms Observed'' The Fundamentalism Project vol. 4, eds., University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
(1994),
* Mumtaz Ahmad, an 'Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat', pp. 457–530.
** Gold, Daniel, 'Organized Hinduisms: From Vedic Truths to Hindu Nation', pp. 531–593.
* T. N. Madan, 'The Double-Edged Sword: Fundamentalism and the Sikh Religious Tradition', pp. 594–627.
* ''A History of the Hindu-Muslim Problem in India from the Earliest Contacts Up to its Present Phase With Suggestions for Its Solution''. Allahabad, 1933. Congress report on the 1931 Cawnpur Riots.
* Nandini Gooptu, ''The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism in Early Twentieth-Century Uttar Pradesh'', Modern Asian Studies, Cambridge University Press (1997).
External links
* B. R. Ambedkar
"The riot-torn history of Hindu-Muslim relations, 1920–1940"
Pakistan or Partition of India.
* Tony Cross
Gujarat after the riots + Mumbai, during 2004 general election
{{Social issues in India
Communal violence
Political terminology in India
Social issues in India
Religion and violence
Sectarian violence