Religion had been at all stages of mankind’s development and played an important role in binding the people in oneness of purpose and community of interests.
If religion and kinship welded the ancients, it is a potential joining and separating force even today.
There were several reasons for Belgium to break away in 1830 from the imposed union with Holland, but not the least was the diversity of religion. The partition of India in 1947 into two separate States, India and Pakistan was essentially the result of Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s two-nation theory based upon religious differences between the Hindus and the Muslims. But common religion did not deter the Bengali Muslims to secede from Pakistan and form a State of their own.
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Religion, no doubt, was and is a great cementing force, but now writers are little inclined to lay stress on religion as a contemporary factor. “Sameness of religion” says Burgess, “was once a most potent factor in national development, but the modern principle of religious freedom has greatly modified its influence.”
If Burgess should have combined with the modem principle of religious freedom the modem decline in the religious faith, his explanation would have been more apt.
In developed countries religion has since long been separated from politics and the cases are at least as numerous in which deep-rooted religious differences have formed no obstacle to national unification. Apart from religion, there are other factors which are a strong incentive to cohesion. The rise of fundamentalism during recent years is, however, alarming.
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Garner appropriately sums up the importance of religion as a factor in the development of nationality.
He says, “While community of religion has in some cases been a powerful factor in the development of nationality and in the strengthening of the bonds of national unity, and while in other cases the absence of it has contributed to the disruption of the State, it is no longer, thanks to the modem spirit of toleration, an essential or important element of determining nationality.”
Freedom of religious belief and the spirit of toleration at least take away the sting of fanaticism and create a sense of amity and neighborly relations in societies containing diverse religious groups.