Triumph over diversity will help shape India

In 1931, Winston Churchill predicted that the British withdrawal from India will lead to the armed ascendancy of a Hindu majority resulting in the country falling into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages.
Today almost 80 years later, as India celebrates its 61st Republic Day, that statement rings hollow as the nation emerges from a triumph despite its diversity.
Born out of the violence of Partition, which claimed over a million lives, India’s gamble with democracy has been a resounding success as financial pundits predict growth rates of upwards to seven percent.
“Despite the country being partitioned, and so much bloodshed, India became a secular, democratic country,” said historian Bipin Chandra in a published interview.
“I think that is one of the greatest achievements of modern times.”
Ramachandra Guha in his best-selling history “India After Gandhi”, attributes India’s emergence as a global powerhouse to politics rather than economics.
But despite the politics of compromise India’s secular fabric is always being stretched by the needs and wants of its thousand castes and subcastes, in a Hindu-majority country that contains the world’s third largest Muslim population.
For India to continue to succeed, its very diversity has to remain its source of strength.
Since attaining independence, India’s secular democracy has been challenged.
Many nations have fallen to tyranny and despots with these challenges but India’s determination to stay as single nation has kept the fires of its democracy burning brightly.
For this nation of 1.1 billion to stay on the road of success, India needs to ensure the caliber and integrity of its politicians, police and policy makers.
India’s success over the last decade and its anticipated growth has also come with a price.
Not all Indians will agree that this prosperity is for the better, said the Hindu Business Line.
“Regionalism in Telangana, Maoist-led violence in the eastern mineral rich states, the perverse longing of the Gujjars in Rajasthan for recognition as Scheduled Tribes and, of course, farmers’ suicides are as much a legacy of the last decade as the organised economy’s rapid climb to stardom,” the news agency said.
“Empowering those left behind by the last decades fevered and skewed expansion of wealth may then become the defining motif of the new decade,”
As India enters the second decade of the 21st century full of promise, the nation will be served well to recognize the pains of its past to help shape its future.