Divyanth Jayaraj, Software Engineer
Updated Jul 7
India has been in a civil war since independence.
Kashmiris, Punjabis, North-east states, Maoists and Naxalites were basically separatists at different times. They don’t agree with India’s constitution. Some of them don’t want to be secular. Some of them don’t want free markets. Some of them don’t want reservations. Some don’t want gender-equality. Some of them are simply sick of corruption. Others just want to be treated with equality and respect.
So, they try to split away from India using their own militias (since army is under the control of central government).
The thing about secessionist movements in India is that they fail to succeed because of India’s deep rooted culture of divide-and-conquer. It started out as the
caste-system thousands of years ago.
By dividing people, organizing them in hierarchies and then concentrating power in smaller groups, it’s easy to take control of the entire nation. Whenever a small group becomes large enough to be a threat, the group is broken up even further through propaganda and BS. For example today, Kashmiris are portrayed as monsters. From the way media covers unrest in Kashmir, the rest of India don’t perceive Kashmiris as Indians. They just see them as terrorists. This makes atrocities against them permissible. Tomorrow if say, Tamil Nadu grows secessionist sentiments, they too will be demonized by the rest of India. The process is already begun, through Hindi imposition gaining popularity. Some Indians portray opposition to Hindi imposition as an assault on national integrity. The Jalikattu ban was another example.
By breaking down the perception of your enemy as smaller groups, it’s easier to dismiss them as insurgents than perceive them as a rebellion. This is where divide-and-conquer strategies get their strength from.
Point is, different cultures are good at different things.
India’s culture is extremely advanced in politics and statecraft.
Its culture will keep India from descending into a civil war. Even technological advancements will help it adapt. You can already see BJP preventing the general public from being informed, through its vast nexus of fake news.
In conclusion, no, India won’t descend into a civil war; at least not in the way US did (which had the confederates and the union, clearly united against each other).
However, India might indeed descend into chaos if Indian culture’s statecraft and political skills fail to keep up with technological growth. In the worst case scenario, a dictator might arise, supported by the elite classes who would eventually sell the nation to some other foreign interest.
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