Imagine there’s no countries, nothing to kill or die for

Rohini Hensman …. An article composed at the end of the year 2003 for a conference in January 2004; and eventually published in 2012 (see below: fn 1) …. with the title being borrowed from ‘Imagine,’ by John Lennon …. and the highlighting emphasis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

I would like to look at the issue of community and nationalism and its continued relevance at the present, and in particular to analyse its association with authoritarianism, militarisation, nuclearisation, terrorism, and questions of war and peace in South Asia. Within this region, there is a very close parallel between the current situation in Sri Lanka [2003-04] and developments which have taken place much earlier in India, Pakistan, and later Bangladesh. In both cases, we see the development of strong authoritarian tendencies, linked up to either religion or ethnicity.

 

   I

I will not discuss the history of the partition of India, which is old ground, though I will briefly state my main argument. The partition on communal lines was proposed as the solution to communal differences. Half a century later we can see that this has hardly been a real solution. There has been a continuous hot-cold war between India and Pakistan, which is now also nuclearised. The Islamic nationalism that propelled the creation of Pakistan claimed to represent the Muslims of South Asia. This claim was vitiated by the fact that millions of Muslims opted to stay on in India after the creation of Pakistan, and then in 1971 East Pakistan split off and became Bangladesh. Within Pakistan there is continuing ethnic and sectarian violence and suppression of women’s and workers’ rights. Minorities are provided little protection in an extremely authoritarian, militarised, and nuclear state.

Initially India appeared to be a very different state from Pakistan: a secular state, which upheld democratic rights. But even at independence there were signs of Hindu communalism visible, and in the following years they started appearing more strongly. The communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 provided a glimpse of the kind of society and state Hindu fundamentalists would like to introduce for the whole of India, in which the minorities have no rights, not even the right to life; women’s rights are defined narrowly, in terms of a particular conception of Hinduism; and, other rights, such as the rights of workers and of oppressed sections of society, are subject to a hierarchical society. Extreme militarisation and huge expenditure on military preparedness compound the tendency towards authoritarianism, and the restriction of freedom is then justified in the name of society.

While discussing terrorism it is worthwhile to define it in objective terms. If it is defined as violence or the threat of violence against non-combatants, or civilians, in pursuit of a political objective, then there are three forms of terrorism. One is the form that everyone recognises, which is terrorism by anti-state groups; the second is state terrorism; and the third form is state-sponsored terrorism. If this categorisation is accepted, then some of the violence in Kashmir, apart from Indian state terrorism, is state-sponsored by Pakistan. The violence in Gujarat was also state-sponsored. So, India and Pakistan are similar insofar as there has been a growth of terrorism of various types, along with violence, authoritarianism, and nuclearisation.

Sri Lanka, at first sight, appears to be very different. It was initially a secular country like India, though its secularism was undermined because right from Independence there was discrimination against and persecution of minority communities. First, in 1948 and 1949, the plantation Tamils of more recent Indian origin were disenfranchised and made stateless. And then, in 1956, the Official Language Act, which excluded Tamil from the list of official languages of Sri Lanka, discriminated against Tamil-speaking people. From the 1970s onwards, Tamils were also discriminated against in university admissions.

Discrimination was accompanied by violence against them. Pogroms against them, starting in the 1950s, culminated in the enormous violence of 1983, which engulfed the whole island. From that point onwards, what had earlier been a lunatic fringe of the Tamil resistance now became the mainstream of resistance by Tamils, which argued that armed struggle was the only way they could get their rights. Various militant groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), started demanding a separate state.

Gradually, what began as an idealistic demand for a separate state by some Tamil separatists got corrupted. One of the first public manifestations of the brutality of the LTTE was in 1985, when it attacked Buddhist pilgrims in the town of Anuradhapura. Ordinary men, women, and children were massacred. That was perhaps the first mass terrorist attack, and from that time onwards the LTTE has continued this policy. They make it very clear that the Sinhala minority can live in the territory they claim for Tamil Eelam – which is northern and eastern Sri Lanka – only as second-class citizens. They have driven out the Sinhalese and the Muslims from the north through violence; in the east they have engaged in massacres of ordinary people among Sinhalese and Muslims.

What is also interesting in both Sinhala nationalism and Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka is the attitude the respective nationalists have towards their own people. The Sinhalese state, which supposedly acted in the interest of the Sinhalese people, actually suppressed those very people. One of the first things the Sinhala nationalists did after coming to power in 1977 was to suppress trade unions. Workers’ rights were completely crushed. The condition of women in Sri Lanka has generally been much better than their Indian counterparts, but under their rule women’s rights were badly eroded. Sri Lanka has a high female literacy rate, which also got eroded under Sinhalese rule.

This was then followed by the (Sinhalese) JVP insurrection between 1987 and 1990, after Sinhalese youth felt that the promise of a Sinhala nation which was supposed to look after their interests was not delivering the goods. During the insurrection, tens of thousands of Sinhalese, some of them completely innocent, were massacred by the state and state-sponsored paramilitaries as well as by the JVP. The political opponents and critics of the government were killed. An extremely authoritarian state, accompanied by a complete negation of democratic rights, was introduced in the name of Sinhalese nationalism.

The irony is that a very similar state has emerged in the Tamil-majority areas. Here the LTTE has emerged as the foremost military group by adopting ruthless methods. Originally there were many militant groups competing for legitimacy, but now the LTTE has military – though not ideological – supremacy. It has wiped out rivals; it is killing dissidents; it trains its guns on fellow Tamils and anyone who disagrees, including human rights activists, politicians, and women’s rights activists.

One of the big issues in the Tamil movement was the discrimination against Tamil youth in education. But now the LTTE is conscripting children for military service, and there is no question of education for these children. This is not only a violation of their most fundamental rights but also demonstrates how the supposed goals of the struggle have been negated. In other words, authoritarianism and militarisation of society occurred on both sides of the ethnic divide in Sri Lanka. Of course, there is no nuclearisation, and I do not think that this is a possibility, and since 1994 there have been democratically elected governments in the South. But all the other elements of the religious nationalism so evident in India and Pakistan, including terrorism, have been practiced by Sinhala and Tamil nationalists in Sri Lanka.

       II

Looking at the reasons for why this situation has developed in this part of the world, one obvious thing is that if there is religious or ethnic nationalism, it is bound to be exclusive, with a high propensity to be authoritarian and undemocratic. Such a nationalist state denies equal rights to other groups. It is visible not only among Islamic nations but in countries like Israel as well, which is officially a Jewish country and therefore cannot give equal rights to non-Jewish citizens.

This exclusivity is a feature of nationalist movements in South Asia. But there is more to it. For example, look at the issue of Kashmir. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, who was undoubtedly a secular nationalist, backed away from the idea of a plebiscite for the people of Kashmir when it appeared possible that they might decide against being part of India. What appeared to be a democratic solution to the problem, involving the idea that people decide where they want to be, also involved the possibility that India might lose Kashmir, and at that point Nehru opposed it.

This situation leads to the question of whether nationalism itself can be a problem. Consider that even under the rule of a secular Congress Party, India has not just had continuous hostility with Pakistan, there has also been a war with China for territory. Now, it is possible that nationalism itself can be blamed. Someone as eminent as Rabindranath Tagore talked about nationalism as being exclusivist and supremacist in essence. He wrote in his book, Nationalism, published in London in 1917, that the nation had ‘thriven long upon mutilated humanity’. These are strong words.

Why, when he was talking mainly about imperialist countries, did he talk about the nation as such in this manner? The argument, I think, is that communalism sets up one’s community as comprising the whole identity of an individual, and every other communal group as ‘the Other’; and nationalism is similar. And once some people have been defined as ‘the Other,’ there is some basic divide posited between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This leads people to show indifference towards the sufferings of other communities at best, or to condone or perpetrate violence against them at worst.

The terms ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ need to be defined clearly. I do not think they mean something as simple as loving one’s country. All of us are entitled to love our countries. But nationalism implies something more. It implies a commitment to the nation, and crucially, this nation is defined by the state. ‘The nation’ thus becomes equated and identified with ‘the nation-state’, and it is difficult for ordinary people to see them apart.  And, once a citizen has made this commitment, which we are asked to place above all other commitments, it becomes a problem. Because when a state, acting in the name of the nation (and incidentally it is only the state that proponents of the state say can act in the name of the nation) goes to war, for instance, then citizens who support their nation and have ‘nationalist’ sentiments, are compelled to support the war too. And a war is always a possibility, because nationalism by definition pits one nation against another.

Just as nationalism is different from the love of one’s country, there is also a difference between ‘nationalism’ and a ‘national liberation movement’. Many distinct elements go into the making of a national liberation struggle, which is a struggle for freedom from foreign rule and oppression. Though for the majority of participants it expresses a desire for freedom and democracy, these struggles also usually include an elite struggling to gain control of political power and thus trying to subvert democracy. Nationalism embodies this struggle for power and subversion of democracy. I think this is why we saw something tragically anomalous taking place in India at the time of Independence: freedom from colonial rule as a result of a popular national liberation struggle, but at the same time the enormous violence of partition, which was a direct result of a clash between intense nationalisms of this other type.

    III

It is true that, as Achin has said, the nation-state cannot just be written off. It will be there in the world for a long time to come. But I do think, and I suggest, that we can also start thinking differently about it – and that doing so will open up new directions, new possibilities. Nations are a historical creation, and there is a possibility that at some point of time they will be superseded. There are new nations coming into being and some older ones disintegrating. Boundaries can also change. The nation-state should therefore be seen as a historical product and not something that endures for all time.

So, what could be the alternative? There is a well-known John Lennon song, in which he says, “Imagine there’s no countries…, nothing to kill or die for”. I am not asking you to aim for something as radical as this, because we still have countries; but I am suggesting that we do not define ourselves primarily as citizens of these countries, and, rather, that our primary commitment as human beings should be to universal human rights and democracy. Such an approach can solve the problem of militarisation and war.

For example, if there were a truly democratic India and Pakistan, both of which want to bring about a democratic solution to the problem of Kashmir, it does not matter what the solution might be. Whatever it is, the solution would be better than prolonging conflict in order to wrest complete control of the disputed territory, as is presently the case. There is a potential solution if Pakistan and India were to agree to give the people of the disputed territory a choice to decide either to convert the Line of Control into a permanent open border between the two countries or to create a separate democratic country.

In the European Union people cross national borders without visas. I see no reason why, once the problem of war has been solved, it cannot happen in South Asia. Once this happens, there will be no contradiction between fighting for democratic rights and human rights in the two countries. There are people in Pakistan who are fighting for women’s and workers’ rights, just as there are young people in India, including college students, who work for women’s organisations and for workers’ rights. There is absolutely no reason why we, who are fighting for the same thing in India, should have any clash of interest with our Pakistani counterparts. On the contrary, victory in one place actually helps the fight in the other place.

A very similar thing can happen in Sri Lanka. If both parties to the conflict are committed to supporting democracy and human rights throughout the island, then there is no reason for them to have a border at all. In the case of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, borders already exist. In Sri Lanka there is no need to go through the whole process of partitioning and then coming together. I have interviewed many Tamil refugees, and most of them told me that they do not want a separate state. They are happy to live with the Sinhalese if the fear of persecution is taken away and their rights restored.

In Israel and Palestine the problem is the stress on exclusivist nationalisms, which do not recognise the human and democratic rights of the other side. A solution is possible in this case as well, if there is a commitment to human and democratic rights on both sides and no discrimination against and persecution of people of the other community. But Israel is a Zionist state. And the liberation struggle in Palestine, which in the beginning was completely secular, has begun to identify itself as being first an Islamic struggle. The division has become stark, and there is little room for compromise between a Zionist Israel and an Islamic Palestine. These two types of nationalisms cannot come to any peace agreement. For a solution the Israeli side will have to relent more, because the Palestinian side has been responding to violence with violence until now. In the process, the democratic and human rights of the Palestinian people have been undermined. For example, women’s rights have been deeply eroded in Palestine.

But, with commitment on both the sides, the problem can be solved. Even if there are two nations there can be an open border between them, and there can be people going back and forth, instead of the situation that now exists, where there is only war and constant fighting.

       IV

In conclusion, I believe and suggest that there is an alternative to nationalism: to accept the commitment to human rights and democracy as a universal principle. There is no contradiction between fighting for these at both the national and the global levels. We are now seeing the emergence of institutions which are trying to support these rights at an international level. What is very interesting is that the USA, while continuing to speak in the name of the global community, has opposed every one of these institutions, tooth and nail. The very limited attempts to control weapons of mass destruction at the global level have been thwarted by the USA, though it started a whole war against Iraq ostensibly to control them. And now it is planning to make new nuclear weapons. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is no more an issue for it; but it wants to control the nuclear programmes of other nations.

Consider the conventions against chemical and biological weapons. They require international regulation, but the USA is not prepared to accept it and therefore has attempted to stall it. Similarly, terrorism or oppressive violence against civilians can be dealt with through international law and institutions like the International Criminal Court, but the USA does not want to be confined by such mechanisms.

And then there is the issue of environment, which is a global issue by definition. It is only if countries work together that major problems like global warming can be tackled. But, here again, the USA dumped the Kyoto Protocol.

So it is clear that it is only if we can think beyond national, and nationalistic, interests, and can think universally, that we can begin to address these kinds of questions and move towards the resolution of the problem of war and militarisation and towards conditions of democracy, cooperation, and peace. Providing what we do falls within these values and commitments to uphold democracy and human rights, there is no conflict at all between what we do in one country or another, or at national and at international levels. There are already institutions in place like CEDAW, the UN Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Instead of nationalism, we should work for these values at all levels, starting from the family up to the global, but passing through the regional, the state, the national, and so on.

END NOTE

[i] Presentation made in the Open Space Seminar Series at the University of Delhi in 2003, as part of the preparation for the World Social Forum, Bombay, January 2004. Subsequently published in Interrogating Empires, Book 2 in the Are Other Worlds Possible? series, ed. Jai Sen (New Delhi: OpenWord and New Delhi: Daanish Books, 2011), pp. 94–103.

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