Abstract
The final solution, the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, did not resolve the subcontinent’s minority question and instead made it hydra-headed. Moreover, it produced a South Asian state system of ethnic kin states where a majority in one state was a minority across the border, entangling the minority question in the power intricacies of inter-state relations. Given the endemic low level of cross-border tension in the India-dominated state system, the result has been to cast the constituent members of a minority group as ‘proxy citizens’ of the country where they are a majority, rather than full citizens. (p. 1)
Rita Manchanda, the editor of the volume under review, questions partition as a solution for countries that have to deal with minorities. The problem is not confined to South Asia. Looking at the rest of the continent, at the Middle East, at Africa and also at Europe, one finds many more examples. The dividing up of multi-ethnic states since 1990 has shown that new problems arise whenever new sates are created in order to solve inter-ethnic or inter-religious problems. The book under review, however, is dedicated to the subcontinent and leaves the reader to draw his own generalising conclusions. ‘South Asia is often referred to as a land of minorities. The challenge is truly formidable. More than 800 languages are spoken in the region and only 66 per cent of the population has access to education in the mother tongue’ (p. 8). Twelve authors from five countries look at their minorities.
Ashis Nandi’s contribution on ‘Violence, Cultural Diversities and the Fantasies of a Monolithic Nation-State’ is especially worth reading. As a clinical psychologist and ‘radical pluralist’ he emphasises that we
have to learn to live with the people we have, and we can do that only if we enter somehow the world of the people that we are dealing with, not only by learning their language—and language here actually means culture—but also by looking at the world through their eyes. (p. 32)
Instinctively one would agree, although there is plenty of historical evidence of atrocities of the worst kind among people who had no problems of understanding each other. This particularly applied to Partition: It was often neighbours who knew each other well and spoke the same language who turned into their worst enemies. Nandi’s explanation is that
diversity has become increasingly instrumental in our public life…there has grown a core of free-floating violence that finds expression in organized forms of violence, taking advantage of diversities…Religious and ethnic violence is neither religious nor ethnic; it is secular. Religion and ethnicity are being mobilized for purposes that have nothing to do with issues that are religious or ethnic. (p. 41)
Javed Alam’s contribution ‘A Long Term View of Contemporary Muslim Situation’ deals with competing minority elites, what he calls ‘politics for bourgeois equality…a battle being waged by all the oppressed communities’ (p. 43). ‘Oppressed communities among the Muslims who have joined this battle for bourgeois equality have moved away from the Muslim elite who traditionally have provided them leadership’ (p. 43). It has to be added that the Muslim elite moved away from their less fortunate co-religionists during and after Partition and took over the new state of Pakistan. In India and Pakistan this highly selective exchange of population has its lasting impact especially in North and Central India and in Karachi. A priveligensia emerged as an outcome of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission (p. 44). It
made the Muslims bewildered, more so by Advani’s rath yatra, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The killings, mayhem and anarchy following the demolition…was something India had never seen since the Partition killings. Moreover, from this moment on, riots in the conventional sense ceased to occur in India. What came in their place are pogrom like killings and cold-blood massacres…Muslims were left wondering whether anybody in India accepted them as belonging to the ‘nation’. (p. 45)
Alam does not agree with what he calls ‘naive application of anthropology’ that there is no such thing as a Muslim community and argues ‘that a pan-India Muslim community has begun to take shape’ (p. 47). The Sachar Report ‘has established that the socio-economic condition of the Muslim communities is abysmally low, that it is just above that of the Dalits’ (p. 53). ‘This has led many…assert that all deprivation and poverty among the Muslims is the making of the state’ (pp. 54–55). Alam argues that the state did not create poverty among the Muslims like it did among the tribal people by way of displacement, giving examples from various areas of India throughout the last centuries.
Sukumar Muralidharan writes on ‘Media, Modernity and Minority’. Besides the Hindus and Islamic elements,
there was a third aspect that Ambedkar struggled with. This involved the ritually ostracized communities outside the caste-Hindu fold, which enjoyed then right to vote and were assured of formal equality under the law, and yet for all that, remained oppressed in the real world. (p. 69)
‘Every linguistic area, he observed, was under the effective control of a particular caste’ (p. 71). A ‘communal majority’ dominates, because of its social power rather than their numerical strength. Quoting Alok Rai, the author gives the example how Persian and Urdu as the prominent languages of administration lost their importance to Hindi in the middle of the nineteenth century, ‘when the governor of the North-Western Province and Oudh…decreed that the official correspondence of the province would be conducted in “Hindustani” written in the Nagari script’ …and not in the Persian script. The decision had far-reaching consequences once books and newspapers started printing in local languages.
Afsan Chowdhury writes on ‘Hindus in a Polarized Environment: Bangladesh’s Minority’. Hindus are not the only minority group in Bangladesh. They also lose importance, not only numerically. According to the census of 1941 Hindus constituted one-third of the population in Bangladesh vis-à-vis one-tenth today. Their exodus was not so abrupt as in the western ‘wing’ of Pakistan; it spread over the years of the late 1940s and early 1950s; often only a part of a family would go to West Bengal. Until 1965 the border was open. Chowdhury observes ‘in Pakistan, the Hindus were not even constructed as a minority group but identified as “enemy” group, because Pakistan’s principal enemy was India with a Hindu majority population’ (pp. 97–98). Despite India’s decisive role in Bangladesh gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, the fate of the Hindus did not improve. They fell into the ‘Hindu–India trap’ (p. 100). A new class of Bangladeshi entrepreneurs acquired business not only of ‘Hindus and Biharis but also of Muslims who were less powerful’ (p. 99)—not to forget the West Pakistani. Such appropriations were helped by the Enemy Property Act of 1965 (after 197: Vested Property Act). Among the political parties, the Awami League would be the obvious choice for the Hindus, would it not be for the fact that the Awami League is trying also to attract orthodox Muslim voters.
Amena Mohsin writes on ‘Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh: Justice Denied’. The Chittagong Hill Tracts famously were given to Pakistan in the last minute; on Independence Day the residents were surprised not to find themselves in India. As the only tribal area of East Pakistan with a Buddhist population, the Hill Tracts initially enjoyed the status of a ‘totally excluded area’ and later of an ‘excluded area’, the tribals protected as a sub-minority by the central power. The area lost its special status in 1964 when it became a ‘tribal area’ and was brought under the district administration. A dam was built across the Karnaphuli river at Kaptai, where the only major electrical power plant in East Pakistan was built. The waters stored behind the dam created a vast lake that allowed motor boats and ferries to reach parts of the Hill Tracts that had been virtually inaccessible before—40 per cent of the prime land was submerged, 100,000 people were made homeless. The tribal population did not take part in the uprising against the Pakistani army; their chief was defending the Pakistan cause before the United Nations (not mentioned by Chowdhury). They still practice jhum, the traditional slash-and-burn technique of shifting cultivation, whereas rice is grown in the rest of the country under irrigation. Not seeing why the tribals should have the thinly populated Hill Tracts all for themselves, the Bangladesh government and administration encroached on the tribal area more and more. The mass intrusion of the CHT by Bengalis from the plains was answered by a guerilla war that was only ended by an accord with the government in 1997. Chowdhury discusses how the tribal population has been neglected and sidelined by the government until now.
Shahla Zia writes on ‘Discrimination in Pakistan against Religious Minorities: Constitutional Aspects’. She gives a historic overview over the position in the various legal documents right from the Lahore (also: Pakistan) Resolution adopted by the All India Muslim League 1940 (‘safeguards…for minorities …for the protection of their religious…rights’) and Jinnah’s famous presidential address of 11 August 1947 (‘You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan’). By 1947 it was decided that not only India but also Punjab and Bengal would be divided. The minority population, thus, became much smaller than originally envisaged. There remained hardly any Hindus in West Pakistan, whereas in East Pakistan they made up one quarter of the population. The Objectives Resolution held up the ‘adequate provision…for the minorities freely to profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures’ (p. 147). The 1956 constitution declared Pakistan an ‘Islamic Republic’. Already in 1954 the Ahmedis had been decreed non-Muslims. Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988) introduced the Hudood Ordinances as a part of his ‘Islamisation’ process. During the last years, violence against minorities has increased, also among the various Muslim denominations. ‘Under the circumstances, the religious minorities in Pakistan are fully justified in feeling insecure, vulnerable, discriminated against and relegated to the status of second-class citizens’ (p. 170).
Ishtiaq Hussain writes on ‘Religious Minorities in Pakistan: Mapping Sind and Baluchistan’. Contrary to official figures of about 4 per cent religious minorities in Pakistan, Hussain thinks that their share is more than 8 per cent. ‘Within these communities there are caste, class and denomination-based divisions as well as ethnic, gender, rural and urban distinctions’ (p. 176). Hussain also quotes Jinnah and has an interview of 1947 reprinted: ‘Q: Will Pakistan be a secular or a theocratic state? A: You are asking me a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means’ (p. 185). Discriminating minorities benefits the others politically and economically: Separate electorates for non-Muslims were introduced in 1984. Otherwise, Christian and Hindu votes could have impacted 50 National Assembly seats (p. 193). Land abandoned by non-Muslims had been administered and allocated by the policies of the Evacuee Property Trust since the early 1950s. ‘Various landowning groups seek out prime properties housing temples and churches, and use religion as a ploy to dislodge the owners. The recent anti-Christian disturbances…were linked with such “land mafia” groups’ (p. 200).
Rubina Saigol in her contribution ‘Strangers in the House: Minorities in Pakistani Textbooks’ discusses official perceptions. Minorities are often described as threats, especially if members of the same group are in the majority in another, powerful (neighbouring) country. Textbooks are full of stereotypes of the worst kind. In Pakistan the others are the ‘inherent evil’ Hindu, the ‘trickster and cheat’ Christian, the ‘greedy usurer’ Jewish, the ‘knife-wielding butcher’ Sikh, or the ‘back-stabber’ Bengali, for which Saigol gives plenty of examples. Nevertheless,
lying deep somewhere in the conscious and unconscious memories of ordinary people, are tales not told in textbooks. These are poignant tales of love across the nation’s divide, stories of friendship and bonds beyond the borders, narratives of common hopes and dreams shared with the ‘Other’. (pp. 222–223)
Jayadeva Uyangoda wrote her contribution, ‘Sri Lanka: Recent Shifts in the Minority Rights Debate’, before the 26-year-long civil war ended with a crushing defeat of the LTTE and the annihilation of their supreme leadership. It has increased the assertiveness of the government; they do not seem ready to start a meaningful devolution of central power that has been asked for and promised for decades (p. 228). That should not surprise, given the perception of a ‘privileged’ minority and an ‘underprivileged majority’ (p. 225 and note 1, p. 255). It might be added that on top of the question of rights and privileges the ‘Sinhala only’ movement had been used as a populist tool to gain power. When the Freedom Party returned to power, they removed the ‘collective rights’.
However, the socialist-nationalist constitutionalism that came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s radically disagreed with the liberal constitutionalist perspective of minority rights as collective rights. Thus, the 1972 Constitution removed the collective rights clause of the Soulbury Constitution [of 1947] and subjected minority rights entirely to the will of the legislature, the majority were under all circumstances, members of the majority. (p. 231)
The article discusses the claims of the Tamils to ‘nationhood’, the rights claims in Muslim politics, and the claims of the plantation or up-country Tamils to power sharing.
Farzana Haniffa in her contribution, ‘Muslims in Sri Lanka: Political Choices of a Minority’, deals with a community that became crucial in the latter days of the civil war, because they constitute the largest community in the Ampara district of the Eastern Province. In the article Muslims are treated as ethnicity, rather than a religious community (similar to: Serbs, Croats and Muslims): ‘Sri Lankan Muslims are largely Tamil speaking, and Tamil nationalists generally see Muslims as fellow ethnics…[and] traitors to the Tamil cause…The LTTE’s act of ethnic cleansing—the group systematically expelled all Muslims from the northern province in October 1990—forever sealed enmity’ (pp. 271–272).
Mahendra Lawoti writes on ‘Inclusion and Accountability in a “New” Democratic Nepal’. An ‘excessive centralisation’ led to inequality (probably the worst in South Asia) and exclusion of the marginalised groups, and finally to the growth of the Maoist insurgency. As he explains, ‘The irony of Nepali centralization was that the state had a very weak reach beyond the district and sub-district centres. This allowed the Maoists to establish themselves easily in the rural areas’ (p. 286). Establishing a federal order obviously is difficult. Lawoti recommends democracy, although he sees the difficulties: ‘Any type of democracy will not function in multicultural societies…power should be distributed among different agencies, institutions, groups, actors and sectors to promote equality, inclusion and accountability’ (p. 302).
The five major South Asian states that the volume deals with obviously have very different conflicts with their minorities, because they also have different (ethnic, religious, linguistic, social) minorities and different perceptions of what a minority is. All conflicts have to be seen in their historical context. Accordingly, the authors dealt with ‘their’ conflicts very differently, but always competently and in a balanced manner. The volume is highly recommended for the study of conflict and to country specialists. Readers with some knowledge of history and society of South Asian states will especially benefit. For libraries dealing with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal or South Asia as a whole, the volume would be an indispensable acquisition.