A Democracy Trembles, Fearing Expansionist Islam : India: Religion has become an issue that threatens the evenhanded secularism of the world’s largest democracy.

The defeat and resignation of V.P. Singh’s government in India is only one consequence of a wave of sectarian and religious violence that is sweeping through the world’s largest democracy and threatening its very existence.

India is a strange land, an extraordinary mixture of fanaticism and tolerance. When it gained its independence in 1947, few people who knew it well would have predicted that, more than 40 years later, it would still be a constitutional democracy. But so it is. The vast majority of the former colonies that won their independence in the years after the war have lapsed into hopeless disarray or dictatorship. But India, huge, unwieldy, poor, divided by faith, caste, race and income differences, has somehow kept its democratic virtue. The press is free. Honest elections are held. The rule of law, a little battered at times, somehow survives. That is the first great fact about the India of the 1990s.

Close behind it in importance, however, is the second great fact: India is a schizophrenic country in all kinds of ways. It is a continent in itself and has never been held together except under a conqueror. That indeed is the reason why British rule, for a time at least, was so successful. There were only 5,000 British civil servants and 60,000 troops to rule a country of 600 million people, so it is clear that India’s submission to Britain was a voluntary one. And the reason for this was that the inhabitants of India were so divided among themselves--and so bitter in their mutual hostilities--that they welcomed an outsider who could arbitrate their disputes in a disinterested manner. Once India withdrew its confidence from Britain, as it did during 1935-45, then the British had to go. But immediately a process of disintegration set in, beginning with the partition into two states, one Muslim, one predominantly Hindu. And in due course the Moslem state split into two halves, forming what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh.

If three countries emerged from unitary British India, why not half a dozen--or a score? Some people thought this might happen. At partition-time, India hung onto Kashmir, where there was a Hindu ruler but the population was mainly Muslim. That remains a flashpoint today, and could well cause another war between India and Pakistan. The Muslims, indeed, constitute a huge minority within India--there are about 90 million of them, out of a total population of 800 million. There are 15 million Sikhs--who consider themselves a cut above both Muslims and Hindus and are a proud fighting race--and more than 20 million Christians, as well as other religious groups reckoned in the millions. Then again, the 650 million Hindus are divided by caste. Independent India was really the creation of high-caste Brahmins, who still constitute to some extent the ruling elite. At the bottom of the heap are about 100 million untouchables, who have the least property and perform the most menial tasks.

For all these reasons, the creators of modern India insisted that it must be a secular state, dealing with all religious groups impartially, as the British tried to do. Thus Sikhs, Muslims and Christians often get high office in central and state governments. All religious practices are permitted, provided they do not break the law. Efforts have been made to get “untouchables” and other low-caste politicians into high office, too, though the caste system is still remarkably resilient. Indeed one of the reasons why Singh’s government gave under pressure was its courage--some would say foolhardiness--in insisting more government jobs go to the lower castes. This brought out violent mobs of higher-caste young men, whose caste distinction is their only passport to a tolerable life.

However, the caste problem is containable. What might get out of hand is Hindu-Muslim conflict. Because of the nature of their religion, with vast numbers of gods and countless ways of worshipping them, Hinduism is normally ultratolerant. It does not go in for persecution or jihads (holy wars). However, some Hindus are beginning to feel threatened by the spread of Muslim fundamentalism. Geographically, the Hindu community, vast though it is, forms an enclave in a huge swath of Islam, which stretches from West Africa through North Africa, the Middle East, South and Central Asia, into the islands of Indonesia and the Pacific. Increasingly, Islam is assuming--or appears to be assuming--militant forms. More and more countries where the Muslims constitute the majority are abandoning secularism and creating Islamic states under the law of the Koran. Islam is an expansionistic religion, and Hindus do not forget that for centuries they were victims of a Muslim imperialism that forcibly converted them and destroyed hundreds of their ancient temples.

Could India again fall a victim to Islamic rule? To outsiders it seems inconceivable but many Hindus are genuinely worried. They want their government to be more aggressive of their behalf and to abandon its even-handed secularism.

Inevitably, then, Hindu fundamentalism is growing, and it finds political expression in the Bharatiya Janata Party, now whipping up sectarian fears. It finds violent expression too in the determination to build a Hindu temple on the site of the mosque in Ayodhya, near the Nepalese border, which Hindus say is the birthplace of their most popular god, Ram. Seventy people have died already over this one local issue. That is one reason the Indian president is not anxious to hold elections to solve the government crisis.

For the first time in its existence, religion has become a major issue in Indian politics, and the consequences could be catastrophic and bloody. The likelihood is that the secular state, and with it democracy, will survive, but these are fearful times for the world’s greatest constitutional state.