Heads I win, Tails you lose!
By: Nabeel Bhattacharya
Tags: Geography, India, Hinduism, Pakistan, Islam

The Indian subcontinent (also inappropriately called South Asian subcontinent) has a bunch of countries — starting from the west, we have Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar with the island countries of Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the south.

Indian (South-Asian) Sub-continent

The Indian subcontinent has always had a cultural unity despite being politically fragmented with small periods of political unity under indigenous empires, such as the Mauryan Empire, the Gupta dynasty and the Maratha empire. Among foreigners, only the Mughals and the British were able to build an empire that spanned the entire Indian or South Asian sub-continent.

Among the many civilisations that have existed since the beginning of recorded history, the Indian civilisation stands out as the only continuous surviving civilisation while all others perished (perhaps only China can make a similar case). No wonder India holds the distinction of being the only country with its own ocean — The Indian Ocean — and home to the world’s oldest city — Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

Every civilisation has a certain value system and a way of life, the Indian way of life is referred to as being Hindu. The Supreme Court of India says that Hinduism is a way of life and not a religion. Religion, by default, means a monotheistic practice (only 1 God) and should ideally be just used to refer to the Abrahamic religions — Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

We practice Hindu Dharma and have been wrongly classifying it as a religion. Dharma and Religion cannot be used interchangeably as Dharma is a Sanskrit non-translatable, i.e., a word without an equivalent word in the English language. There are many such Sanskrit words but that’s a topic for another day.

Dharma is a complex term that can be partially described as a combination of law, morality, principles and much more.

Everyone was a Hindu in the Indian sub-continent (which according to some experts ran as far away as modern-day Iraq and Indonesia) for a long time even before the word ‘religion’ came into existence. Although, its influence can still be seen in the East Asian countries such as Thailand and Indonesia (which duly acknowledges it as well) but has been wiped off countries such as Iraq.

Nevertheless, let’s have a look at the demographics of the Indian subcontinent.

Source: Wikipedia

Hinduism by default has a pluralistic and polytheistic philosophy unlike Islam and Christianity and has its minorities are flourishing.

All Islamic theocratic states in the Indian subcontinent have a minuscule or no minority. The miniscule minorities are treated as second-class citizens without any religious freedom with consistently declining numbers. However, Bangladesh is an exception and defies this trend primarily due to its strong Bengali identity that it places above its religious identity.

Islam in the sub-continent demands equal rights as a minority and when in majority, denies religious freedom to the minorities. This trend becomes crystal clear on adding countries like Iran, Iraq, North-African countries such as Nigeria and Egypt to this list.

It is a classic case of Heads I win and Tails you lose!