THE MAKING OF THE INDIAN NATION — Foster Patriotism

a nation-in-the-making. For the desired national reconstruction to take place, our leaders proposed a recipe based on the concept of a common heritage with three main parts: religious unity, historical unity and cultural unity. Religious unity implied that all religions were essentially one. It was believed that if this concept could take root in people’s minds, it would produce a sense of unity all over the country. Historically, of course, this assumption was wrong; there is a long, sorry record of co-religionists fighting fiercely among themselves. For instance, in the war of Mahabharata, warriors on both sides were of the Hindu religion. In the first and second world wars, combatants on both sides were of the Christian faith. Babar had armed confrontations with his own co-religionists, finally inflicting decisive defeats on them. And so on. The attempt to bring about religious unity in India has had active support right from the time of Akbar, who bolstered it politically, to recent times, when intellectuals such as Dr. Bhagwan Das (a contemporary of Jawaharlal Nehru) attempted to solve the problem with their encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject. But this goal could never be achieved for the simple reason the assumption that all religions are one and the same is incorrect; and no durable structure can be erected on false premises. It is an undeniable fact that there are differences between the various religions. Whenever there is a clash between individual and national interests, individual concerns must be subordinated to the greater good of the nation. Given these differences, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the adherents of one religion to reach the point of agreeing that the tenets and practices of another religion have an equal value. However, if the adherents of different religions see each other first and foremost, as human beings, as members of the same human race, they can certainly accord each other equal respect. Through mutual respect, many social benefits can accrue which would be rendered impossible in the wake of futile attempts at mutual recognition of religious beliefs.