· Religion Based Violence:
The religion based violence is one of the worse forms of violence and
also a violence of identity and politics. Historically, the culture components
are designed and structured in such a manner that the religious values are
attached with every component. In fact, religion based violence has been
prevalent in almost every part of the world. The interesting point to
understand that, this is not merely based on that one religious group is
fighting against other. Even in the homogenous religious society, such as
Pakistan, England, certain part of Middle Eastern countries, the different
sects within the same religion fight to each other. In Pakistan, the dominant
Sunni community fights against the minority Shiites community. In the same
manner, the majority Hindu community fights against the Christian and Muslim in
India.
The ethnic conflict in Africa and ongoing clash between the Tibetan and
China is also a part of cultural aspect of religious violence. Huntington’s
theory of Clash of Civilization significantly addressed the clash and conflict
in the format of economic and cultural interest. According to Huntington that,
‘the global manifestation of the fundamental change in local and regional
identities is the division of world into civilization’. However, he defines
the religion based violence in the political context.
This is not fair to deny the political dimension in understanding the
religion based violence in the society. There are many countries, where state
is directly in confrontation on the basis of religious identities. For
instance, ‘Lebanon (Christianity versus Islam), Israel (Judaism versus Islam),
Sudan (Islam versus Christianity and African traditional religions), Sri Lanka
(Buddhism versus Hinduism), Iran/Iraq (Shia Islam versus Sunni Islam), Afganistan
(Islamic civil war), Yugoslavia (Christianity versus Islam), Cyprus
(Christianity versus Islam), Ulster (Roman Catholic versus Protestant
Christianity) and south-eastern Russia (Christianity versus Islam). This list
could be extended further by including conflicts in which Christianity fights
Communism, as well as in Kashmir, India and Pakistan (secular Hinduism versus
Islam) where there have been three wars and continuing tensions’.
In the recent much talked about ‘war against terror’ is also being
debated in the media and academic world, weather the involvement of the
religion is the prime motivator or the terrorism is not at all religiously
inspired? The religion based violence is one of the challenges for the world
and also for the advocate of human rights.
· Identity based Violence:
The violence against the tribal population and their exploitation also
highlights the cultural pattern in violence mechanism. The Indigenous
people in almost everywhere are not actively involved in decision making
process. Resultantly, a group of legitimate citizens in the country have been
systematically away from the development process. Again, the culture of
industrialization and urbanization started with a promise to share the economic
development with everyone. But, in many cases, the tribal and indigenous people
of the country not only lost their land and identity but were forced to
integrate with the new culture, which belong to the people of economically and
socially dominant in the country.
Here, I would like to mention that there are many reports and documents,
which shared shared and published by government and non-government
organizations provide enough evidences, which show that the violation of
indigenous and tribal people in India is widespread. In many states, the tribal
people are either taking up arms or provides logistic and moral support for the
arm struggle. The report mentions that ‘the increased armed conflicts as
the Naxalites - the ultra left wing armed opposition groups - spread their
activities.
As it considers that 21 out of 28 states of India are afflicted by armed
conflicts. The seven North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur,
Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura have been afflicted by armed conflicts
over demands for self-determination and autonomy. At least 13 other states -
Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and West
Bengal in mainland India were afflicted by the Naxalite conflict. With the
exception of Jammu and Kashmir, conflicts in all other states involve
indigenous peoples irrespective of whether the armed groups are led by
indigenous peoples or non indigenous peoples like the Maoists’ leaders. There
have been reports of serious human rights violations by the security forces and
the armed opposition groups.
The conspicuous absence of women, tribal groups, marginalized section of
society and other subordinated sections in the decision making process in many
countries, this is not because these groups or sections are not interested but,
the dominant groups are not either creating or providing space to them. The
culture of fear and silence in the prevailing situation becomes the part of
socialization process in such society.
Despite of these cultural barriers and stumbling blocks, there are many
efforts and endeavors are going on to address the issues of violence and steps
being taken in many countries to make the culture of preserving human rights to
shun the violence against women, tribal communities and marginalized section of
society. In last, the situation can be improved and transformed when a culture
sensitive approach to development can itself become deterministic if
policymakers do not integrate culture with other factors that influence
identities, such as class, occupation, gender, location and politics (Sen
2004).
