Thread by @shrikanth_krish

Worth pausing over these numbers, regardless of your politics

Also as a % of Greater India / "South Asia", H % now is way lower than in 1880

1880CE - 79%
2018CE - 63%

1880 number sourced from census data (through Bajaj's talk)

2018: Wiki considering India, Pak, SL, BD, Nepal

https://twitter.com/TrueIndologyliv/status/1139835039040991232

Many "cosmopolitans" may just brush away these numbers...

Hey ...how does it matter if the H% in the subcontinent is 80% of 50%...We are all getting richer by 2-3% in per-capita terms every year. That's all that matters'

That's a valid point of view, but it ignores how critical "religion" is to the formation of nations in our part of the world

Why is India India? Why is Pakistan not India? Or for that matter, why is India not 20 different nations?

These questions are answered by the math of religious demography. And little else

Another thing worth pondering on

As H % in "India proper" keeps dropping - let's say it drops further from 79% to 70% over the next 20 years -

The politics of the land will no longer be about Left vs Right. Progressive vs Conservative

But will increasingly be about H vs rest

I don't see how that is a good thing

It will eat the country from within

At least in 1947, the issue was settled through a territorial demarcation

In today's India, it is more problematic as the decline is not focused only in certain regions

As politics ceases to be about "principles", and is primarily about "religious identity", public policy suffers

The intellectual life of the land suffers
The nation suffers

All of this is inevitable as the H decline continues unabated

All the more reason to arrest this decline

As long as the "religious issue" persists, genuine party government based on principle as opposed to mere identity can never arise

This view is not mine. It is supported by the great Edmund Burke - the intellectual founder of modern party government

This view comes up in Mansfield's commentary on Burke's views on what caused the English nation to rise as a mature polity in early 18th century

It was the settling of the "religious issue" in 1688 - with the Glorious revolution, and the Act of Settlement of 1689

The 1689 act of settlement barred Catholics from succeeding to the British throne, and by ensuring Protestant hold on the throne, the religious issue was settled

Once and for all

Following the settlement of the "religious issue", the Tory vs Whig divide now was no longer about royal succession, or Catholic vs Protestant divide

Politics in its mature form, took birth in England, after the settlement of the religious war in favor of Protestants

Burke's view is -

If that religious settlement had not happened, politics in 18th and 19th century would still have revolved mostly around succession politics, and Catholic vs Protestant squabbles....

The whole Liberal vs Conservative divide would never have taken birth

Mansfield in his wonderful 1965 work -
"Statesmanship and Party Government - A study of Burke and Bolingbroke" puts it provocatively

(Contd..)

He says the Glorious Revolution put an end to the old "great parties" - debating religion and succession

And gave birth in the long run to "little parties" debating secular matters

Ofcourse 2019 is not quite 1689

I get that.

It is harder to settle the "religious issue" once and for all in India through fiat or some kind of a peaceful revolution akin to 1688

But the Modi wave, and H-nationalism of the mild sort we see is an attempt. An honorable attempt to "settle" the religious issue

In the long run, this settlement can trigger the maturation of India as a nation, a maturation that has happened only in fits and starts in the past 70 years

Post-script : A slight correction.
The 1689 act was not quite the "act of settlement" but the Bill of Rights.

The Act of settlement followed in 1701 - strengthening the 1689 Bill of Rights.