Integrity Score 240
No Records Found
No Records Found
Preface Continues...
With the dismantling of the USSR into sixteen sovereign countries in 1991, and the balkanization of Yugoslavia into four in
1995, it is now clear that political ideology of strong personality rulers of the state cannot by itself create social cohesion and preserve
national integrity. Nor, as we have seen, religion can itself be the glue to keep a people together as a nation, as demonstrated in Pakistan in 1971 and Indonesia recently. Ethnicity also cannot be a sufficient adhesive as shown by the prolonged conflicts in Nigeria. Common culture as in Sri Lanka has also proved to be inadequate to keep a people from separatist conflict.
Hence we need to ponder what has so far, and what will in the future keep India together as a nation. Paradoxically, despite India’s impressive record of keeping its integrity intact, it has been long predicted in the West, from Winston Churchill to Richard Nixon,
that since India is an “artificial union,” a British colonial construct, it will disintegrate sooner or later, because the glue of imperial power
had gone. Churchill had predicted that it would take three years from 1947, while Nixon felt that dismemberment could be induced from outside to disintegrate India into twenty countries. But India has survived all the Cassandras, and ever since the imposed Partition of 1947, Indian territory has not shrunk, even if every inch of it is not yet within its control. If at all, the geographical span of India has marginally increased with the merger of Sikkim in 1974.
It is the thesis of this study that to deter terror, India as a nation must foster a concept of identity. This identity must have reorganized human rights foundation. A strategy to deter terror with human rights secured then can be formulated. From a study of nations that have remain united, and contrasted with those which have disintegrated, it seems that the crucial element for national integrity is the concept of “who we are” our identity, that the people within a geo-
political boundary accept.
to be continued....
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