As far as a multi-ethnic country is concerned, how to deal with ethnic contradictions is a topic that cannot be bypassed in any way.
Different ethnic groups have different national cultures and religious beliefs, and sometimes the beliefs of these ethnic groups are difficult to tolerate each other, or even simply go against each other.
Therefore, only by properly solving this problem and allowing all nationalities to integrate and live in harmony can the country achieve long-term peace and stability and stand firm, on the contrary, the slightest carelessness will cause chaos in the country and even have the crisis of disintegration.
As we all know, we have a magical neighbor, India, which is a multi-ethnic country and has very serious problems of ethnic contradictions.
India's various ethnic groups are independent of each other, distrustful of each other, and even bloodshed is frequent.
With the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the performance of the Indian government in prevention and control has been staggering, which has led to a significant decline in the level of trust of the Indian people in the government, and the antagonism between various ethnic groups has intensified.
According to the analysis of some experts, if the Indian government cannot formulate a set of effective national systems, then India is likely to become the second Yugoslavia.
In the sixties and seventies of the last century, Yugoslavia was definitely one of the most powerful countries in Europe, and even the only two superpowers in the world at that time, the United States and the Soviet Union, were extremely jealous of Yugoslavia.
Regrettably, in the early nineties of the last century, due to the intensification of ethnic contradictions within the entire republic, coupled with the fact that some countries that did not look down on others were behind the scenes, Yugoslavia was divided into six.
As for the possibility that India may become a second Yugoslavia, this argument is absolutely not alarmist, and the two countries have similarities in both the formation of the state and the development and evolution of national contradictions.
Let's talk about Yugoslavia first, at the end of the First World War, the various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia were actually independent, but there was a problem here, that is, the strength of the surrounding countries was far stronger than theirs.
Yugoslavia's geographical location is also very important, it has always been called the "powder keg of Europe", but whenever a war breaks out in Europe, this region will bear the brunt of the war, so these peoples decided to unite and unite for the purpose of self-preservation, so Yugoslavia appeared on the stage of history for the first time.
It's just that the good times didn't last long, and the newly formed Yugoslavia broke out in World War II a few years after a few years of peace, and Yugoslavia fell into the hands of Germany.
During this period, the Germans used various means to exacerbate the contradictions between the various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, and the killing of Croats and Serbs was the handiwork of Germany.
It was not until the emergence of Tito that he led the Yugoslav people to drive out the invaders, and under his leadership, the various ethnic groups of Yugoslavia were basically at peace with each other.
However, after Tito, it was the turn of the Serbs to come to power, and the Croats were squeezed out, and the internal situation in Yugoslavia was already more complicated, with serious ethnic contradictions, coupled with the lack of ability of the newly appointed Milosevic, and the Yugoslav economy fell sharply, which further aggravated the internal contradictions of the country.
Until the 90s of the last century, Yugoslavia, which was extremely strong, was finally divided into six, and it turned out that the multi-ethnic state must be integrated for a long time to form a unified cultural and economic base, and it is possible to develop harmoniously, otherwise it will only be a flash in the pan and will not last long.
Looking at India next, similar to Yugoslavia, before the Second World War, India was not a country at all, and perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it an Indian region.
There are hundreds of tribes here, and most of the time they are working independently and attacking each other.
Although there have been several unified dynasties in history, they were also very short-lived, too short to form a unified culture and language.
It is precisely because of this situation that the Indian region has been constantly invaded by major European powers since ancient times, and is bullied by the Persians today, crushed by the Otsutsuki people tomorrow, and occasionally abused by the Macedonians.
Let's put it this way, the history of India is a living history of aggression, and it is not much better than the modern history of the mainland, and it was not until after 1757 that India had a fixed master, the British Empire.
The British, by sheer force, forcibly integrated the self-made so-called princely states of India into a unified state, and in this case, of course, relations between the various princely states would not be very harmonious.
In addition, after the British ruled India, they adopted a policy of trying their best to intensify the local ethnic contradictions, and took advantage of this to make it impossible for India to form a unified resistance force, which added fuel to the fire.
The outbreak of the First World War gave Indians an opportunity for independence, when Britain's national strength was damaged, and another bull appeared in India's Congress party, Gandhi, under his leadership, India began to gradually get rid of British control.
In order to avoid being attacked on the back, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill recognized the Indian National Congress Party and agreed to India's independence after the war, which is also an important reason why India will spare no effort to help Britain during the Second World War.
After the end of World War II, Britain kept its promise and agreed to India's independence, but at this time it ran into a problem: two of the most powerful sects in India, Hinduism and Islam.
These two sects have always been hostile to each other, and there are constant conflicts, and in the past, they could be at peace with each other under British jurisdiction, but now that India is about to become independent, it has become a big question as to who of the two sects will lead India.
The two sects have been reluctant to give in to each other in this matter, and after many rounds of negotiations, they still could not reach a consensus, so the "-stirring stick" Britain came up with a "good idea" and simply divided the Indian region into two parts, Islam went to Pakistan, and the rest of the sects remained in India.
In this way, the Indian region was divided into two and became independent, and Gandhi got the desired result at the lowest cost, but at this time, India was at best a British dominion, not an independent country.
Autonomy based on religious beliefs may seem like a perfect solution, but in practice, it's not so simple.
As we mentioned earlier, there are many autonomous princely states in India, which were forcibly tied together by force during the British colonial period, and now that India and Pakistan have become independent, the ownership of these princely states has become a problem.
If the British government had spoken at this time, it would have been possible for these princely states to obey orders even if they were dissatisfied, but since the independence of India had already been a compromise of the British government, how could they contribute to this matter? Therefore, the British government's reply to these princely states was: You vote for yourselves.
This approach by the British caused a lot of trouble for the newly formed India, and although most of the princely states chose to join India, the situation in a few of them was very complicated.
It is not possible for all of them to have one religion in these princely states, and it is fine to say that most of them have the same faith, but what if there is a certain princely state where the power of Hinduism and Islam is almost the same?
Faced with this situation, the Indian government chose to use force and directly send troops to attack, and Pakistan naturally did not sit idly by, but simply sent troops to fight India.
As a result of the conflict between India and Pakistan, Hindus and Muslims in India are also hostile to each other, and bloody clashes often occur, which made Gandhi feel very troubled, and he sincerely hoped that all ethnic groups in India could unite to keep warm, and he was indeed always committed to how to solve India's national problems.
If Gandhi could be given enough time, maybe this old man with great love could really realize the wish of all ethnic groups to live in peace, but unfortunately, God did not fulfill people's wishes, and on January 30, 1948, the father of the Indian nation, who was deeply loved by the people, was assassinated, and since then, the national contradictions within India have become more intense.
When the Congress Party was in power, it also formulated various policies to find ways to ease the contradictions between ethnicities and religions, and these systems did play a certain role, and during that period of time, the ethnic contradictions within India, whether it was religious contradictions, were greatly eased, and although there were occasional conflicts, they were harmless.
But when the BJP came to power, the situation in India was very different.
You must know that standing behind the BJP is the ultra-nationalist organization "National Volunteer Service Corps", the core purpose of which is to promote Greater Indianism, so after the BJP came to power, other religions other than Hinduism have been greatly excluded and suppressed, among which Islam is the most.
In particular, the "Citizenship Law" introduced by the Modi government has brought the relationship between the two religions to a freezing point.
As soon as the bill was introduced, it was met with strong resistance from Islamists, which grew from demonstrations to riots.
The hatred between Hinduism and Islam alone is already difficult to resolve, not to mention that there are more than 100 ethnic groups in India, religious beliefs are also diverse, and cultural backgrounds are different, and the Indian government cannot solve the conflicts between religions well, how can the society be harmonious and stable?
After talking about religion, let's look at the aforementioned princely states.
At the beginning of India's independence, most of the princely states joined India voluntarily and did not experience war, except for a few princely states that were conquered by force.
The advantages of adopting this peaceful approach are obvious, and there is basically no loss of power in the Indian government after independence, but there is also a problem, that is, all the princely states that joined India, including their armies, their property, their entire political system, and their education system, have been completely preserved.
In such a situation, how should the Indian government deal with the princes of these princely states?
In the beginning, in order to appease them, the Indian government gave the princely states a very high degree of autonomy, and it can be said that during this period, the princely states were states within states, and all matters were decided by the governor (that is, the former princes of the states).
Later, in order to regain the power of the governors of these princely states, the central government of India carried out another administrative division reform in 1956, allowing the princes of the princely states to surrender their power through redemption, and then redividing all the states according to language.
After that, although these princely states still had a certain degree of autonomy, the power of the governors was much less than before, and India was largely centralized.
But these governors lost most of their power and naturally became dissatisfied with the central government, so what they were most keen to do after was to try their best to compete with the central government for power.
On the other hand, since the education system in the princely states is still in place, the next generation, or even the third generation, in most of the princely states still receive the same education from an early age.
They do not learn the culture of the Hindu people, and rarely use the common script of India, so that they do not have a strong sense of belonging to India at all, but are loyal to their own princely states, which is why it is very difficult for the Indian government to implement a certain system throughout the country.
Without the same education, without the same writing, it is difficult for the princely states to communicate with each other, so where can such a country come from?
In the case of India's relatively good economic situation, the people of the states may not have any complaints, and the state governor and the central government can still live in peace, but in recent years, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, India's overall economic growth has slowed down significantly, and the people's living standards have declined significantly.
In such a situation, the contradictions between the princely states and the central government will be infinitely magnified.
If, at this time, the central government of India is unable to come up with effective means to allow this bad state of affairs to continue to develop, then it is only a matter of time before India moves towards division.
Even the United Nations predicts that India will be divided into three in 2023, which shows that India's situation is really not optimistic.
What are the three parts that the United Nations is talking about? In fact, they are the six states in northeastern India, the Sikhs in western India, and the Kashmir region.
Naturally, the reason why the United Nations said this is not unfounded.
As far as the current situation in India is concerned, stimulated by the Citizenship Act, ethnic and religious conflicts are intensifying, and people are injured or even lost in religious conflicts almost every moment.
The domestic economy has been declining, the gap between rich and poor has further widened, the total debt has also reached a record high of nearly 28.7 trillion US dollars, and India, the world's worst hit by the epidemic, has been one of the worst performing Asian currencies for three consecutive years.
The country is already in dire straits, but what is the Indian government doing at this time?
It has spent $1.3 trillion on military construction in border areas, constantly purchased arms from developed countries to increase its military strength, and is even in the mood to make its presence felt in the US-led military operations.
In their words, it is to strengthen the cohesion of the country in this way, which can be regarded as an unusual path. It is true that a strong military can improve the cohesion of a country, but the question is whether the problems that India is facing now are caused by a lack of cohesion?
Clearly, the Indian government is moving in the wrong direction, and this approach will not only do nothing to help India's current predicament, but will also make the situation worse at home because of the huge costs.
It can be seen that India's top priority is to control the new crown epidemic in the shortest possible time, so that it can free up its hands to improve the economy and let the people regain confidence in the central government, rather than focusing on competing with China.
Is it because India has a lot of confidence in their American boss, thinking that when they are in crisis, the boss will definitely come to the rescue?
However, what has happened in the past few years has proven countless times that in the eyes of the United States, only its own interests are the most important, and in diplomacy, it has always acted unilaterally under the guise of multilateralism.
Allies are just objects that they can use, and if they want to beg for their help when they are in trouble, it is already merciful to stab them in the back if they don't run over and fall into the well.