Religion: A Tool for Discrimination in South Asia?

The challenge of independence for South Asia was to weld diverse communities into composite nation states that recognised pluralism, respected human rights and guaranteed freedom and equality for all. Sixty years on citizens are confronted with asymmetries in accessing rights and opportunities, because they are discriminated by religion, caste, class, ethnicity and gender. Of these, religious differences have been the most pervasive, sparking communal violence in different parts of the region, subsequent to the brutal partition of colonial India into the two separate states of India and Pakistan. Religion became a mobilizing factor in the Pakistan army’s genocide in Bangladesh in 1971, and the seeds of the present conflict in Sri Lanka were sown by the hegemonising of Sinhala Buddhist cultural and political power.