📰 Nationalism and the crisis of federalism
Unless the attack on coalescent, democratic nationalism is curbed, cracks might appear in a distinctive Indian project
•Several Chief Ministers have recently complained about the growing crisis of Indian federalism. The central government backing out of its legal commitment to compensate for Goods and Services Tax (GST) shortfall is one ground for this complaint and just the tip of a dangerous iceberg. A deeper problem lies in a flawed understanding of nationalism and the government’s disregard for democratic principles. Federalism can function only in the hands of those with a grasp of India’s democratic nationalism. Both are indispensable and neither works properly without the other.
Three nationalisms
•Two broad conceptions of nationalism developed in the subcontinent before India achieved Independence. The first, the idea that a community with a strongly unified culture must have a single state of its own, bifurcated into two nationalisms. One defined culture in ethno-religious terms and was articulated by the curiously similar Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. Hindus and Muslims were separate nations and needed states of their own. For the Hindu Mahasabha, Indian nationalism simply had to be Hindu nationalism. This primacy of Hindu identity potentially had adverse consequences not only for religious but also linguistic minorities, including those Hindus who viewed their mother tongue as important as their religion. For Hindu nationalists, Hindu identity permanently outweighed being Tamil or Punjabi.
•The second manifestation of the same conception was articulated by sections of the Congress party which too saw the nation as defined by a common culture whose adherents must have a state of their own. But this common culture was not ethno-religious. It was defined instead by shared historical experience, the struggle against British colonial rule, and developed through an interpenetration of ideas emanating from different cultural sources. For want of a better term, call this second nationalism, civic . More inclusive than any ethno-religious nationalism, its secular, composite content is qualitatively different from Hindu or Muslim nationalisms.
•However, surprisingly, its basic form is not unlike Hindu nationalism. It too conceives common culture in terms of a strong idea of unity that marginalises or excludes other particular identities. A civic Indian identity, shaped at best by a thin composite culture, trumps other public identities, including linguistic ones.
•A third nationalism accepts that communities nourished by distinct, territorially concentrated regional cultures have the capacity to design states of their own as also educational, legal, economic, and other institutions. They possess self-governing rights. Yet, they eschew independent national aspirations, seeing themselves as constituents of a larger, equally significant common culture with another state that belongs to everyone. Indeed, they build on this shared culture and come together to consolidate the nation. Occasional conflicts between the common culture of the central state and distinct cultures of constituent states are admitted but mechanisms to prevent them are also created. This may be called a coalescent nationalism consistent with a fairly strong linguistic federalism; The central state associated with it is not multi-national. At best, it is a multi-national state without labels, one that does not call itself so; a self-effacing multi-national state.
Being linguistically federal
•In the 1930s, all three conceptions circulated among political elites in India. By the 1940s, however, coalescent nationalism was submerged by the other two. After Partition, India rejected ethno-religious nationalism but its ruling elites, obsessed about the dangers of further fragmentation, began to view with suspicion the political expression of even linguistic identities. No one was more uneasy with this than Jawaharlal Nehru himself who wondered if a federation structured along ethno-linguistic lines might tempt politicians to mobilise permanently on the basis of language and divert attention from issues of material well-being. Second, like religious identities, it might ‘freeze’ linguistic identities and increase the likelihood of inter-ethnic violence, encourage separatism and eventually lead to India’s break up.
•Thus, when the Constitution came into force in 1950, India adopted unitary, civic nationalism as its official ideology. Though a federal arrangement was accepted, the second tier of government was justified in functional terms not on ethical grounds of the recognition of group cultures. The security and unity of India were cited as the primary reason. A unitary mindset shaped by the experience of a centralised colonial state was resurrected and it seemed that the idea of a coalescent nationalism with multi-cultural federation was lost forever. A special commission to examine this issue concluded that language-based provinces were ‘not in the larger interests of the Indian nation’. Yet, another committee, that included Nehru considered the recommendations of the commission and felt that while ‘the present is not an opportune moment for the formation of new provinces, if public sentiment is insistent and overwhelming, we, as democrats must submit to it’.
•Before long the unitary arrangement and the conception that underpinned it proved inadequate. The third nationalism on the backburner came right back into the game as India shifted its allegiance slowly to a system of states that rejected the wholesale absorption of ethnic identities into a larger civic identity. This happened when the fledgling Indian democratic state was forced to encounter mass politics. Demands for autonomy, for sharing political power were immediately made by regional leaders. The issue of linguistic States became the focus of popular agitation forcing the creation, in 1953, of the State of Andhra for Telugu-speaking people. Soon after, a commission to reorganise States on a linguistic basis was set up.
•The committee argued that justice requires the creation of partially self-governing States that recognise all major linguistic groups. Besides, their creation improves administrative efficiency, deepens democracy, and alleviates anxieties of regional minorities induced by fear of linguistic domination. Since domination eventually invites resistance and conflict which undermines the nation-state, only federalism can block language-based majoritarianism, contain conflicts and strengthen Indian nationalism. Only coalescent nationalism creatively combines claims of unity with claims of recognition of diverse cultures. A robust democratic arena allows the play of complementary multiple identities, and through dialogue, discussion and negotiation, helps to resolve disputes.
•Following the Committee’s recommendations, States were reorganised in 1956. Soon mass agitation forced the division of the province of Bombay into Maharashtra and Gujarat. In 1966, Haryana was separated from Punjab to become an independent state. Much later, States such as Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand were carved out. India slowly became a coalescent nation-state, moving from the ‘holding together’ variety to what is called the ‘coming together’ form of (linguistic) federalism. This meant that regional parties were stronger than earlier in their own regions and at the centre. This sowed seeds of a more durable centre because it was grounded more on the consent and participation of regional groups that, at another level, were also self-governing. Indian federalism also attempted to remove its rigidities by incorporating asymmetries in the relation between the Centre and different States; treating all States as equals required the acknowledgement of their specific needs and according them differential treatment.
States as equals
•This coalescent nationalism has served India well, benefiting several groups in India. True, it has not worked as well in India’s border areas such as the North-east and Kashmir. But their problems can only be resolved by deepening not abandoning coalescent nationalism. Indeed, the Indian experience shows that whenever the Centre has been non-manipulative, treated politicians and people of regional States with respect, the entire polity works smoothly. On the other hand, whenever regions are treated disrespectfully, and norms of democratic functioning abandoned, then powerful, even violent, forces have been unleashed leading to grave instability.
•The contemporary crisis of federalism is due to the attack on coalescent, democratic Indian nationalism by a conceptually limited and morally weak idea of Hindu nationalism. Unless this offensive is curbed, and these trends reversed, I fear we might begin to see major cracks in our distinctive nationalist project. That would be nothing short of disastrous for the Indian republic.
📰 To the brink and back in Ladakh
At the heart of China’s actions lies a historical strategy that India needs to address with great tact
•Realists within India have always argued that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) only deals in the currency of power and brushes aside liberal and moralistic underpinnings to negotiations in every realm. Whether the recent talks between India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar, and China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, will yield any major dividends, or whether it will be another elaborate smokescreen laid by China, is anybody’s guess.
•A recent editorial in the pro-government Global Times in Beijing has put out a clarion call for the people of China to be prepared for ‘war with neighbours’, without specifically mentioning India. Presciently, this was put out after the Jaishankar-Wang Yi talks and included a reference to the moral conduct of war.
•Not often have the Indians realised that at the heart of the PRC’s strategy to manage its periphery was another fault line in history. Often referred to as Mao’s ‘Five Finger Strategy,’ the strategy has continuously sought to reassert control over Arunachal Pradesh, or what the PRC calls ‘Southern Tibet’, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal and Ladakh, as part of an effort to secure China’s periphery. This has turned into a Chinese obsession that has destabilised South Asia. It can now be argued that despite being surprised and having had to reckon with a successful PLA operation to change the status quo in several pockets across the LAC in Ladakh, India’s refusal to buckle under pressure has given the PLA and Xi Jinping much to think of.
•The spontaneous and violent response of the Indian Army during the Galwan clash of June 15, and the well-planned and executed operation to tactically occupy important heights on both the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso have demonstrated a wide spectrum of capabilities and intent on India's part. While these have not resulted in any gains on the ground, the PLA remains entrenched in ‘grey areas’ and has been forced to pause and mull over its future actions on the ground, giving India time to build up for the winter and prepare for the long haul.
•Some analysts believe that an escalation of some kind seems inevitable, and that it is imperative that the series of meetings at various levels do not infuse a sense of hope that rapprochement is around the corner, unless it is accompanied by a visible change on the ground. Others who have served in the area and observed the trajectory of the PLA build-up argue that there is no way that the deployments, dense as they may be, are enough to support even a localised skirmish. Adding to the difficulties of the PLA in any further operations is the widely accepted military proposition that uphill attacks to dislodge entrenched defenders from the kind of heights now occupied by the Indian Army would require overwhelming force ratios of upwards of 9:1. If one looks back at the heavy losses suffered by the Indian Army during their initial assaults in the Kargil conflict, one may wonder whether the PLA has the appetite to deal with such losses.
Measured approach
•A ‘hot’ LAC will favour the PLA with its greater reserves and will test India to its limits. It is the worst option that India must prepare for, even more than a localised and limited conflict. The latter is a situation that the PLA wants to avoid as it has already achieved several operational outcomes by adopting elaborate coercive methods short of conflict. Hence, the only body language that must go out from the Indian armed forces at present is that it is more than prepared for a limited conflict.
•Of greater significance will be a realisation within the PLA leadership that India’s emerging combined arms firepower has the potential to inflict significant attrition on the PLA’s combat potential in and around the tactical battle area and in medium depth on the Tibetan plateau. This may be coupled with a realisation that in its obsession with learning from the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War, the PLA may have missed out on thinking more about high altitude warfare, something that the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force have gained much experience in over the decades.
•There is also a realisation that the Indian Navy’s assertive maritime posturing, its willingness to join collaborative groupings to contain an aggressive PLA Navy, and increasing articulation on the need to ensure freedom of navigation reflects a growing willingness on India’s part to ‘go out and meet an adversary’ on the high seas rather than stay in the backwaters.
•The biggest stumbling block to rapprochement between the two countries lies within the PLA, which has seriously intellectualised its role as the sword-arm of Chinese national power. It has assiduously developed plans to take down adversaries and rolled out its playbook with a multi-front strategy that will run its course. History looms large again, as the PLA was Mao’s principal instrument against Chiang Kai Shek in the late 1940s as he sought to forge a new identity for the Chinese people. This time around, after shaping the global environment with economic muscle, Xi Jinping is now using the PLA as a vanguard in his bid to narrow the gap further with China’s principal global competitor, the U.S. India would do well not to become collateral damage in this great power competition.
•While diplomatic initiatives and further coercive explorations in the economic domain must continue, pragmatism and realism suggest that in the short-term, it is India’s military resolve that offers the most potential for precipitating any kind of conflict mitigation. Several practitioners feel that the current face-off will only be resolved if the PLA is offered a face-saving proposition, and that would need some deft politico-military-diplomatic manoeuvring from India.
•What of a fresh boundary agreement with China following this face-off? Two trajectories seem possible. The first will involve a path of least resistance that brings into play a new paradigm and fresh protocol for managing a stressed but not a ‘hot’ LAC – much like ‘old wine in a new bottle.’ The second would entail a stroke of ‘enlightened statesmanship’ that sees both President Xi Jinping and PM Modi cut through much of the clutter to reach a ‘swap deal,’ the kinds of which are said to have been proposed by Zhou-Enlai in 1959 and Deng Xiaoping in the early 1990s. For Xi, it would mean having to get around an increasingly assertive PLA, while PM Modi would need to get around fractured and jingoistic constituencies across the political spectrum that still hold on to impossible historical probabilities.
📰 Beyond the barriers of disability
The differently-abled community offers a vast potential that can be tapped with the right steps
•Nearly 75 years ago, the United Nations (UN) was created in the face of intolerance and discrimination to reaffirm faith in the dignity and worth of humans, and in the equal rights of women and men. Its fundamental values postulated that in order to live sustainably, we must practise tolerance and endorse the values of equality. However, if we are to stay true to the values of the UN, we must bring marginalised communities from the fringes back into the development mainstream.
•Well-known for his advocacy of disability rights, singer Stevie Wonder, who was blind, once declared that ‘love’s in need of love today’. In a plea to elicit support for the community of persons with disabilities, he stressed the importance of counteracting the cycle of oppression. It was a call for greater equality made many years ago, but the promises still remain unfulfilled.
•Based on recent estimates, over a billion people worldwide are impacted by disability and the stigma surrounding it. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 15% of the world's population has some or the other form of disability, making disabled people the largest global minority. Continuous discrimination denies them equal access to education, employment, healthcare and other opportunities. Essentially, what we are looking at is an enormous reservoir of untapped resources excluded from the workforce.
•The stigma attached to persons with disabilities, compounded by a lack of understanding of their rights, makes it difficult for them to attain their valued “functionings”, which Amartya Sen defined as capabilities deemed essential for human development. Furthermore, women and girls with disabilities are at a higher risk of experiencing sexual and other forms of gender-based violence. About 80% of the estimated one billion persons with disabilities worldwide live in developing countries. The International Labour Organization , using data from the latest national Census (2011), reports that 73.6% of persons living with disabilities in India are outside the labour force. Those with mental disabilities, women with disabilities and those in rural areas are the most neglected.
Worst-hit group
•As is the case with most crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has had its worst impact on marginalised communities. For instance, students with disabilities have found it extremely difficult to access remote learning through digital platforms. The UNESCO's 2019 State of the Education Report of India acknowledges that inclusive education is complex to implement and requires a fine understanding of the diverse needs of children and their families across different contexts. India has made considerable progress in terms of putting in place a robust legal framework and a range of programmes that have improved enrolment rates of children with disabilities in schools. However, further measures are needed to ensure quality education for every child to achieve the targets of Agenda 2030, and more specifically, the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goal 4.
•Globally, UNESCO joined its partners in the Global Action on Disability (GLAD) Network to raise awareness about the need to put in place strategies to mitigate the impact of school closures on learners with disabilities. The implementation of the groundbreaking National Education Policy 2020 provides a historic opportunity to utilise the immense potential.
•Two of the most celebrated icons of music, Stevie Wonder and Andrea Bocelli, and star Indian para-athlete Deepa Malik have already set the tone for making inclusion the norm. With the right investments, youth with disabilities in India can also be the country’s largest asset. The pandemic has shown us that we are only as healthy as our neighbour. It has exposed the large cracks of inequality, urging us to ponder over our responsibilities towards each other. Let us use this time as a catalyst for change and work together to ensure that all persons with disabilities enjoy the full range of human rights.
📰 New order in West Asia
Accords between Arab States and Israel can’t bring peace without solving the Palestine issue
•The so-called Abraham Accords, signed in the White House on Tuesday by the UAE, Bahrain and Israel, under U.S. President Donald Trump’s mediation, clearly mark a new beginning in the relations between the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdoms and the Jewish state. Under the agreement, the UAE and Bahrain would normalise ties with Israel, heralding better economic, political and security engagement. More Arab countries are expected to follow suit, say U.S. and Israeli officials. The agreements have the backing of Saudi Arabia, arguably the most influential Arab power and a close ally of the UAE and Bahrain. The ailing, octogenarian ruler of the Kingdom, Salman bin Abdulaziz, is treading cautiously for now, but Riyadh has opened its airspace for commercial flights between the UAE and Israel. The accords, the first between Israel and Arab countries since the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty, also offer a rare diplomatic win to Mr. Trump, whose other foreign policy bets, be it Iran or North Korea, were either disastrous or stagnant. With less than 50 days to go before his re-election bid, he has called the agreements “the new dawn of a new Middle East”.
•Though of historical and geopolitical significance, it is too early to say whether the accords will have any meaningful impact on West Asia’s myriad conflicts. Unlike Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace treaties with Israel in 1979 and 1994, respectively, the Gulf countries are not frontline states in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They had established backroom contacts with Israel years ago; what is happening now is their normalisation. Second, the agreements leave the Palestinian question largely unaddressed. With Arab countries signing diplomatic agreements with Israel bilaterally, the Arab collective support for the Palestinian movement for nationhood, which has been the basis of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, is crumbling. But it does not mean that the Palestinian question would fade away. The vacuum left by the retreat of the Arab powers from the Israel-Palestine conflict is being filled by the non-Arab Muslim powers — Iran, Turkey and their allies. The geopolitical sands may be shifting but the core issue concerning Israel is unresolved. Three, the UAE-Bahrain agreements are in fact endorsing the region’s emerging order. With the U.S. in retreat and Turkey and Iran pursuing more aggressive foreign policies, there is a three-way contest taking shape, in which Sunni-ruled Arab kingdoms, all American allies, are realigning their geopolitical interests with Israel. The Abraham Accords are likely to sharpen this contest. If Mr. Trump and the signatories to the accords want to bring peace here as they have claimed, they should address the more structural issues, which include the unresolved question of Palestine.
