Posted on 08/12/2007 6:22:02 AM PDT by Clive
As the midnight hour approached for India 60 years ago on Aug. 15, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister designate, took to the podium to address India's Constituent Assembly in session in New Delhi.
Nehru said: "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom."
Freedom came with a cost as British India was partitioned to create Pakistan on the basis of an exclusive religious demand of a segment of the Indian Muslim population for a separate state.
Six decades later, in a much altered post-Cold War context of globalization and Islamist terrorism, India's emergence as a major player in global politics is viewed with anticipation, and not indifference or apprehension in the world's major capitals.
The March 2006 visit to India by U.S. President George W. Bush was planned to put in place a strategic partnership between the two democratic giants.
The agreement reached between Washington and New Delhi on nuclear co-operation is an acknowledgement by the world's only superpower that a stable democracy needs to be treated on a basis entirely different from rogue and failed states such as Iran and Pakistan.
India is an ancient land of immense contrasts and contradictions. Here, all faith traditions have found a home and received respect, while India as a civilization grew rich on borrowings from other cultures.
More languages in greater numbers are spoken in India than in Europe, and next to China with over a billion people India is multicultural without requiring of Indians to put multiculturalism on parade.
But India remains poor, and its poverty is a huge drag on its progress.
Since the midnight hour of freedom the immense challenge for India's political class has been one of meeting the basic needs of the poor hile remaining committed to ensure Indians can benefit fully from the modern world of science and industry.
The proudest achievement of Indians -- despite the terrible toll of communal riots, secessionist movements, communist insurgencies, political assassinations, regional grievances, wars and natural disasters -- remains their firm commitment to maintaining democracy and constitutional rule.
Indeed, modern India has held together and grown stronger over the years only because democracy has been the uniting factor for a people historically divided by caste, ethnicity and religion.
In the hour of India's severest test -- its independence stained by the wounds of religious nationalism precipitating the partition of the land -- its leaders did not falter in their commitment to make of India a democratic and secular republic.
As the world's largest democracy, India's lesson for the developing countries of Africa and Asia is that neither freedom can be effectively protected nor needs of the poor met with some measure of success and dignity in the absence of democracy.
India's troubled relationship with the West, especially during the peak of the Cold War years, is now history.
The future holds the promise of the West and India joined together to provide for a likely coalition of democracies protecting freedom and human rights against countries and ideologies that fear or resent the modern world of deepening globalization.
It is certain that as this future unfolds increasingly prominent will be India's role.
“Gengis Khan”
You had your chance at controlling India but your Mongol horde was repelled by the Delhi sultanate.
“Care to provide some explanation?”
NO.
Why don’t they have Halloween in India?
They got rid of the Ghandi!
This is the correct spelling of the word in British/Australian/Indian/NZ etc., usage. Of course, some may find this spelling inappropriate here. From the internet:
benefited
Spelling: note the single t, which is because the syllable is unstressed.
© From the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia(UK). Helicon Publishing LTD 2007. All rights reserved
Thanks. Obviously, I was not aware.
Asia pinglist ping.
There is still discrimination against Christians and Muslims, at least, and adherents of the religion of the majority still discriminate against fellow followers of their religion because they are from a 'lower caste.'
India still has a sort of 'non-aligned' stance to foreign relations--which isn't necessarily a bad thing for India.
The United States should take notice and not get entangled in the many mutual defense treaties the nation is currently member to.
Europe gained plenty of knowledge from other parts of the world without being made colonies by those more advanced nations (one of which resided in the land of modern day India and Pakistan). And as you've stated in this post, India took its legal system from other countries without those countries ruling over it.
The Partition of India was very violent, and as the Europeans did elsewhere in the world, their formation of new countries was made hastily, and didn't take much into consideration ethnicities and tribes in the countries (i.e. putting tribal enemies into one country or splitting an ethnicity among several states). Europe had many poor 'spin-offs' which are still causing conflicts today.
Or India could be subject to even more islamofascist attacks, and have a Muslim minority trying to impose Sharia law in at least some states if not the entire country. (only around 3-5% of India is Muslim today; with Pakistan and Bangladesh’s populations added in, the percentage would be even higher (still less than 10%—the estimate for France—but still larger).
Around 1/7 of the Indian population is supposed to be Muslim. So if Pakistan and Bangladesh were added, the population of Muslims would be huge—not close to a majority, but still very large, and over 10%.
Calling Mr. Gandhi.
I confess that I have absolutely no idea what the correct percentages are. But this leaves me confused.
One-seventh is about 14.3 percent. If over 14 percent of the current Indian population is Muslim, how will that percentage be reduced to "over 10%" if the largely Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh were added to the mix?
Also, in a previous post, you noted that "only around 3-5% of India is Muslim today"--far less than the 14-plus percent that would equal one-seventh.
And you state that even "with Pakistan and Bangladesh’s populations added in" the total percentage of Muslims would be "still less than 10%"--not "over 10%," as stated in the next post.
Again, I admit my own ignorance as to the correct numbers. But these numbers seem to contradict themselves.
Am I just reading this incorrectly, or is there a misprint somewhere?
This seems to be a fundamental difference between British and American spellings--sort of like the "-our" versus "-or" difference in so many words (neighbor, savior, flavor, etc.).
Compare, for instance, the British spelling of traveled, canceled, counseled, worshiped, labeled, leveled, and many other words. The typical American spelling is with a doubled consonant prior to the "-ed" (or "-ing") ending--although I have seen these words spelled the British way also, even in the US.
Two words: Indian students.
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