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∙INDIA AND PAKISTAN are rent by the ancient hatred between Hindus and Moslems. In 1947, after the British withdrew, 750,000 members of both faiths slaughtered one another. India's Moslem minority and Pakistan's remaining Hindus still lead fear-filled lives, saved only by the knowledge that each side holds hostages from the other; each regards the other as a more immediate menace than Red China. In riots last year 4,000 from both groups were killed after a holy hair from the prophet Mohammed's head was stolen from a Kashmir mosque. The two nations' conflicting claims to Kashmir have created a diplomatic impasse that may outlast the East-West stalemate on Berlin.
∙MALAYSIA AND INDONESIA are locked in an equally ominous enmity. Even without open war, both may come apart at the seams. Indonesia's Sukarno, whose own regime has been plagued by revolts among distant islanders, wages guerrilla war against British-backed little Malaysia (one-tenth Indonesia's size). Malaysia itself, a precarious geographical creation, is sapped by hatred between its Malay and Chinese population (each 40% of the total). Easygoing Moslem Malays claim that the Chinese, who dominate Malaysia's economy, reek of money, while Singapore's Chinese Premier says, "The Malay does not respond to the profit motive." In last year's Singapore riots, Chinese and Malays murdered one another with daggers and rice-wine bottles.
∙JAPAN, though Asia's most modern nation, has two despised minorities. Members of the pariah Eta caste are scorned because their impoverished ancestors were forced to perform the most degrading tasks—including the clearing of corpses from samurai battlefields. Etas perennially try to "pass" into respectable society, often commit suicide if caught. The 600,000 Koreans in Japan are called "senjin," the Nipponese equivalent of nigger. Japanese look down on them because Japan ruled Korea as a slave state for 35 years. In Author Kobo Abe's celebrated novel, Woman in the Dunes, one character, a socialist, notes "that he liked a Korean's soul but couldn't stand his smell."
∙CHINA has imposed more central control than most Asian nations on its peoples. Yet southern Cantonese still sneer at "barbarians" from North China who speak a different tongue. Friction arises when Chinese from different regions are forced to work together. All Chinese consider themselves vastly superior to minority groups within their borders, such as the newly enslaved Tibetans and the Moslem Uighurs in the west. Formosans, themselves ethnic Chinese, dislike the Nationalist mainland refugees who have made them prosperous, and some hire thugs to prevent mésalliances between mainlanders and Formosan girls.
Taken country by country, Asia's manifold enmities seem hopelessly complex, but certain patterns repeat themselves. Essentially, the hatreds flow from a few major causes: religion, language, race, and the accumulated grudges of history—an underscored by the failings of today's Asian leaders.
Religious Feuds