The Muslim League in South India since Independence: A Study in Minority Group Political Strategies

Theodore P. Wright

American Political Science Review, 1966, vol. 60, issue 3, 579-599

Abstract: How can a religious minority organize most effectively to protect its interests without weakening the distinction between religion and politics by which advocates of a secular state justify equal treatment for the minority? As in Europe earlier in the century, this problem is again acute in some of the so-called “New Nations” of Asia and Africa where national integration is far from complete and religion is still the primary mode of self-identification among many of its communicants. If a minority faith is geographically concentrated so as to constitute a majority in certain extensive areas, it is likely to seek independence, merger with an adjacent state of the same religion, or at least provincial autonomy if its members believe that their religious identity is threatened by assimilation.Of the great world religions, Islam provides the most difficult case of adjustment to minority status by separation of religion from the state. The leaders of the Muslim minority of British India finally set the objective of separate national independence in 1940 after they had concluded that they could not rely upon constitutional guarantees to safeguard their rights against the Hindu majority. But the creation of Pakistan in 1947 left a substantial though scattered Muslim population of some forty million in the Indian Republic, ten percent of the latter's people. Suspected by many Hindus of further divisive intentions, how was this group to act within the framework of parliamentary and at least ostensibly secular democracy?

Date: 1966
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:60:y:1966:i:03:p:579-599_13

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().