The bloody road to today's borders in South Asia - and how to move in the direction of peace

From the partition of British India to the civil war in Sri Lanka, attempts  to impose national borders in accordance with ethnic, linguistic, or religious identities in South Asia have spawned wars and crimes against humanity. They have also resulted in  almost unimaginable suffering and bloodshed from the mid-20th century until today: Hindu nationalists in India launch physical attacks against Christians and especially Muslims, falsely accusing them of carrying out fraudulent conversions, duping Hindu women into marriage, and cow slaughter; in Pakistan, religious minorities, including minority Muslim sects, are accused of blasphemy and often killed; rationalists in Bangladesh have been lynched; and minorities in Sri Lanka are being persecuted by Sinhala nationalists, who have forcibly cremated Muslim victims of Covid-19. Such attempts are all the more preposterous in a region where migration and the mixing of peoples and cultures have been occurring from time immemorial. As an activist who comes from Sri Lanka and lives in India, I have been involved in campaigns in both countries against the toxic ideologies and restrictive ethno-religious  identities – Hindu, Muslim, Sinhalese, Tamil – that cultivate much of this violence.

Steering Between Islamophobia and Muslim Fundamentalism: The Position of the Left in the Debate on the Veil

Introduction

Islamophobia is in many ways similar to racism. Just as racism justifies the oppression of and discrimination against certain peoples on the grounds that they are inferior to the oppressors, Islamophobia, as defined by the Runnymede Trust in 1997, justifies the oppression of Muslims on the grounds that they adhere to a religion – Islam – that is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unchanging, irrational, sexist, violent and aggressive. While use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ has been criticised by Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and others who argue that it is ‘often used to silence the critics of Islam, including Muslims fighting for reform in their own communities,’ Meera Nanda defends its use to describe ‘prejudice against Islam itself as somehow singularly evil and backward as compared to other religions’ (Nanda 2011:63). She also notes the convergence between European Islamophobia and the Hindutva Right in India with the formation of the organisation ‘The Voice of India’, set up in Delhi in 1981 and cited repeatedly in the manifesto of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, whose mantra – ‘the problem is not Muslims but Islam itself’ – encapsulates this view.

Racism and Islamophobia are characteristics of the political Right, and even in their milder forms are conducive to the growth of the far Right. It goes without saying, therefore, that revolutionary socialists must oppose them.

The term ‘fundamentalism’ is actually a misnomer, since there are, in the case of every religion, basic disagreements about what fundamentalists claiming allegiance to it regard as ‘fundamental,’ and what progressives claiming allegiance to the same religion regard as fundamental. Nonetheless, the term has now passed into common usage, and will therefore be used here in its accepted sense. The object of faith, for fundamentalists, is clearly defined, absolute, and cannot be questioned. It therefore provides a stable point of reference in a world that is otherwise changing rapidly, creating all manner of insecurities. This characteristic of fundamentalism has led to its being explained as a response to capitalism and modernity: a clinging to certainty in a world where, in the words of the Communist Manifesto, ‘All that is solid melts into air’. In Karen Armstrong’s words, ‘Fundamentalists will often express their discontent with a modern development by overstressing those elements in their tradition that militate against it. They are all – even in the United States – highly critical of democracy and secularism. Because the emancipation of women has been one of the hallmarks of modern culture, fundamentalists tend to emphasise conventional, agrarian gender roles, putting women back into veils and into the home’ (Armstrong 2001: 141).

Thus fundamentalism is a very specific type of response to capitalism and modernity: a reactionary response. Its purpose is to provide justification and reinforcement for the domination of those who have traditionally exercised power within a community: men, religious leaders, community elders, and so on. It speaks for the oppressors whose power to oppress is being challenged by modernity and especially by democracy. It is therefore politically right-wing. It is important to distinguish between religious fundamentalism (which is not necessarily violent) and the political use of fundamentalism (which almost always is); but the abdication of the right and responsibility to think and make moral judgments for oneself makes fundamentalists easily manipulable by right-wing political leaders.

Identities and Borders in South Asia: A View from the Left

Introduction

From the partition of British India to the civil war in Sri Lanka, the attempt to impose national borders in accordance with ethnic, linguistic or religious identities in South Asia has spawned civil wars and crimes against humanity, resulting in almost unimaginable suffering and bloodshed. This is all the more preposterous in a region where migration and the mixing of peoples and cultures have been occurring from time immemorial. The Left potentially has a conceptual and theoretical framework which would allow it to propose solutions to these conflicts, yet flawed interpretations of ‘the right to self-determination’ have led many on the Left to compound the problems instead. A different interpretation suggests that the key goals should be less violence and more democracy, and taking down barriers between peoples rather than erecting more and more of them.

Kashmir, Socialists, and the Right to Self-Determination

The bloodshed in Kashmir beginning in June 2010 gave rise to a heated debate in India concerning the causes of and possible solutions to the conflict. A meeting in Delhi organized by the left-wing Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners on 21 October was entitled ‘Azadi (Freedom) – the Only Way’. Interpreting ‘azadi’ as shorthand for ‘the right to self-determination’, the keynote speakers – writer-activist Arundhati Roy and Syed Ali Shah Geelani of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Hurriyat – argued that the only solution to the dispute in Kashmir was freedom for Jammu and Kashmir from India. The audience and other speakers, including Varavara Rao speaking for the Communist Party of India (Maoist), concurred, although the conference was invaded by Kashmiri members of the Hindu Right, who staged a protest and later brought charges of sedition against the speakers.[1] At around the same time, a parliamentary delegation was sent to Kashmir, followed by the appointment of three civil-society ‘interlocutors’ by the Indian government to speak to and obtain the opinions of all sections of the population in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Dilemmas of the 'Right of Nations to Self-Determination'

The hectic discussion over the Kashmir meeting in Delhi in October [2010] entitled ‘Azadi – The Only Way’ has made it urgent to revisit the debate between Lenin and Luxemburg on the right of nations to self-determination. Lenin, starting from his experience in imperialist Russia, insisted on the right of nations like the Ukraine to self-determination (in the sense of their right to form separate states), contending that denial of this right would merely strengthen Great Russian nationalism. In a colonial situation, Lenin was surely right. When a country is under foreign occupation, all sections other than a very small number of collaborators want to be free of the occupiers, even if there are sharp differences between these sections. A striking example is RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) which, despite speaking for a section of the population which is sorely oppressed by the Taliban, and continuing to fight against it, nonetheless shares with the latter the goal of ending the occupation by US and NATO forces. In such situations, the right of an occupied nation to self-determination makes sense.

So why did Rosa Luxemburg reject the whole notion so passionately? Her question was: Who embodies or represents the ‘nation’, given that it consists of groups that are often at loggerheads with one another? ‘The “nation” should have the “right” to self-determination. But who is that “nation” and who has the authority and the “right” to speak for the “nation” and express its will? How can we find out what the “nation” actually wants?’ she asks (Luxemburg 1909). This is surely a valid question where the territory claimed by those who speak for the nation-to-be is shared by others (who may be a minority or even the majority) who do not want to be part of that vision. In such situations, more complex than the clearcut opposition between an imperial power and a colony, Luxemburg’s question needs to be taken seriously.

Imagine There's No Countries, Nothing to Kill or Die For (from 'Imagine,' by John Lennon)

 

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 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.