When one faith is attacked, the instinctive human reaction is often tribal: to identify the attacker with a broader religious group and to retaliate symbolically, rhetorically or politically.
History shows how easily grievance becomes generalisation and how quickly moral outrage collapses into collective blame.
Britain’s long and often painful experience of religious conflict has produced a set of values designed precisely to resist this reflex. India too has had the same painful experience, not of course Christian against Christian as in Britain (Protestent/Catholic wars) or indeed Hindu v Hindu wars (no such civil wars am I aware of) but Islam/Hindu conflict.
1. Individual Responsibility Over Collective Guilt
At the heart of British political morality lies a rejection of collective blame.
This principle emerged from centuries of religious conflict, from the Reformation to the English Civil War, where entire communities were punished for the actions of a few.
British justice is founded on individual responsibility. Crimes are committed by persons, not by religions.
This distinction is central to common law and underpins the rejection of guilt by association.
To attack a faith because one of its adherents commits a crime is to abandon the moral core of British legal reasoning.
This principle is not merely legal but ethical. It reflects the Enlightenment belief, articulated by John Locke, that individuals are moral agents accountable for their own actions. India too through it’s secular Constitution does not provide for the primacy of one faith, those that wished primacy, left in 1947 to form their own Constitution.
2. The Rule of Law as a Moral Restraint
British values insist that justice be administered by law, not emotion. And so in India. Indeed, Indian roots of jurisprudence predate even Emperor Ashoka and find their political culture in the wisdom of the Vedas.
The rule of law is not simply a procedural mechanism; it is a civilising force that prevents society from responding to violence with vengeance.
In moments of religiously charged attack, public emotion often demands immediate moral clarity.
British tradition responds differently: it channels outrage into due process. Courts, not crowds, determine guilt. Evidence, not identity, determines responsibility.
This legal restraint prevents moral contagion. It ensures that punishment does not spill beyond the perpetrator to innocent members of a religious community.
In this sense, the rule of law functions as a barrier against the ancient instinct of retaliatory blame. It’s why Indians didn’t respond as the terrorists wanted after Pahalgam. It’s why India waited for a Supreme Court ruling over Ayodhya. The rule of law is ingrained in the political culture of the nation.
3. Restraint as a Moral Virtue
Perhaps the most underappreciated British value is restraint. British political culture has long prized understatement, proceduralism and emotional moderation.
This is often caricatured as aloofness, but in moments of religious tension it serves a vital function.
Restraint prevents escalation. It slows reaction, allowing reflection to replace impulse.
Edmund Burke argued that civilisation depends not on the absence of passion but on its discipline. The Bhagavad Gita makes the same point centuries earlier.
British values encourage precisely this discipline: the refusal to let outrage dictate collective punishment.
This does not mean suppressing condemnation of violence. It means resisting the temptation to turn condemnation into cultural hostility.
It is with such restraint, under principles of international law of self-defence (Article 51, UN Charter) the Indian Government attacked terror bases in Pakistan under Operation Sindoor. The US invoked the Article in Syria.
Turkey invokes it in Iraq. Iran invokes it in Pakistan. Pakistan’s response to India was outside the law, it was retaliatory, indiscriminate, disproportionate and to be expected.
The advantage of the conflict revealed Chinese strategy and capability. It revealed nothing about the West beyond what was already known.
