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TULSI-PRAJNA
tic or the non-believen I believe that we do not sufficiently take pride and trouble to nurture the deirocracy which gives us such freedom. India and the United States of America are the only two countries who had pledged themselves to democracy even before their aspira. tions for independence was realised. In December 1946 when our Constituent Assembly met, it affirmed that India shall be a democratic republic and that was before the transfer of power and partition. Our struggle to Independence became a path-setter and an inspiration to mony other countries and indeed started the whole process of decolanisation of Empires. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885. The Chinese revolution came in 1911, but even Sun Yat Sen had no thought of imperialist exploitation of other countries. No doubt it imbibed ideas from the liberal political thinkers of Britain and Europe, the tradition of toleration and of pluralism is indigenous to the Indian civilization. It is only in the Hindu and Jain traditions that there is such a basic respect for multiplicity of faiths and a kind of in-built revulsion against proselytizing and religious militancy. Incidentally I found acknowledgment of this feature of our civilization in an article by Prof. Samuel Huntington in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, possibly the world's most influential jourpal. This article itself is a sequal to his essay two years ago where he had argued that the future conflicts wil be in the nature of clash of civilizations. In the latest essay he says, Only in Hindu civilization, are religion and politics kept separate. In Islam God is Caesar: in China and Japan Caesar is God" tington claims that in the western history the Church and later man churches existed separate from the State, but this assertion has a selective reference to the post-reformation phenomenon of Protestantism. It dates back only to the 16th century. For the previous millennia the Catholic Church, the official religion, alone provided temporal authority. A ruler derived legitimacy only from the consecratson by the Pope. Huntington overlooks the militancy of the Crusades. The point I wish to make is that our civilization had the ingredients for tolerance and plurality of faith which are now considered essential attributes of modern governance. Jainism in its focus on the sanctity of life has always displayed a revulsion against wars. This provides the moral basis of what is now called individualism.
Revolutions for political transformation be, it against foreign domination or for internal social change, have been violent and bloody. America had to fight a war of independence, the October Revolution in Russia was bloody and vengeful. It is only in India tbat a political revolution was wrought through moral persuasion,
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