Research On Religious Role In India-pakistan Conflict

After the end of the Second World War, with the rising of the movement of Indian nationalism, the United Kingdom was reluctant to end its colonial rule in India. In 1947, based on the different religions, British raj was divided into two states according to “the Mountbatten plan”. Pakistan was established on August 14 and India was establisher on August 15.From then, the two countries had fallen into conflict and confrontation, there were three wars between India and Pakistan broke out in 1948, 1965 and 1971 separately. The particular religious background of the two countries makes the Indi-Pakistan war showing a religious color inevitably. For the function of the religious element in the Indi-Pakistan war, there are three kinds of viewpoint. The first opinion believes that the religious element play a chief role in the conflict, religion is the origin of conflict. They also believe that it’s the discrepancy between Hinduism and Islam led to the religious divergence and the divergence triggers the conflict. The second opinion thinks that International conflict is rooted in the social, economic and political inequality, politician often use religion as a tool to realize their political purposes. The third opinion believes that the social conflict is rooted in cognitive structure, such as ideology, nationalism ethnicity or religion.According to my study about the relevant historical materials, my dissertation is based on the second opinion; arguing that religion plays an instrumental role but not a chief role in India-Pakistan conflict. Both of the two countries use religion to realize their political interests. India-Pakistan conflict is rooted in the reality of political and economic interests, rather than religious differences and contradictions. In order to further clarify the instrumental role of religion in India-Pakistan conflict, my paper analyzes this issue from the Individual level, National level and international system level respectively, based on the analytic hierarchy process of waltz. On the individual level, the political leaders with both the religious identity and political identity always use the religion as a way to achieve their own political goals, and bring the conflict of interests between different religious leaders to the Religion level, makes the India-Pakistan conflict with a strong religious color. On the national level, my paper mainly analyzes the instrumental role of religion in the two countries’ principles, political activities and foreign policy. Religion becomes not only the effective medium to transfer the domestic contradictions, stable social order, but also becomes the basis to obtain the political legitimacy. In this case, religion intensifies the conflict between India and Pakistan. On the international system level, the conflicts and differences between the two countries mainly affected by the International Pattern and the Pattern of South Asia, Religion does not play a decisive role, which reflects that Religion is not a source of conflict, but a role of instrumental.According to the analyses above, the instrumental role of religion in the conflict is mainly manifested in three aspects. First, religion is used by the politician or political bloc as a tool to realize the political domination. Second, religion helps to hiding the political purposes in mystery, and obtaining legitimacy for war and conflict. Third, the excludability characteristic of religion intensifies the war or conflict.