The first meeting of the CA of India was held on Dec 9, 1946 and exactly after two years, eleven months and seven days, it had officially churned out the first ever constitution of free India. The constitution came into effect from Jan 26, 1950 and became the supreme law to govern 360 million people living in 3,287,263 square kilometers divided into hundreds of ethno-nationalities, religions and castes. It was not without prominent fault lines, deep dissensions and evident heart breaks for many. The main factions of dissent were from the communists, socialists and from the people wanting greater autonomy for the states. Many representatives of the non-Hindi speaking communities wanted a liberal center and more powerful local governance structure, with a provision of self-determination. This notion was negated with the justification that India was not a union of independent nations voluntarily coming together who could claim the right to secede at their will.
The events thereafter in the history of the complex political community called India, which Ambedkar was reluctant to call a nation, is clear for all to witness and evaluate in hindsight now.
TAMIL NATIONALIST MOVEMENT
The Tamil nationalist movement started within a few years of the official formation of the Indian Republic. An agitation began against the attempt of many prominent ‘North-Indian’ leaders to make Hindi the national language of India. It developed under an ideological aim of secession from the Indian Union to establish a ‘Tamil Nation’ but also with a practical and compromising insight of greater autonomy for the state. This movement was an offshoot of the ‘Dravidian Movement’ based on a notion of historical injustice. The theory that ‘the ‘Aryans’ from middle-east had conquered the aborigines of mainland India, the Dravidian race and forced them to migrate and limit themselves to the South of the Indian peninsula became a powerful theme. This central idea along with the arrangement of Brahminical supremacy and forceful Sanskritization of culture was the base for propounding a common cause for the ‘Dravidian Movement’. This development further narrowed down to take the form of the Tamil Movement. The Dravida Munneta Kazhagan (DMK) became the champion of this cause within no time.
However, once the center made important concessions, Hindi was made just another constitutional language with 15 other languages and the DMK achieved its major goal of securing power and the fervor of the movement started receding. The national leaders compromised for the sake of unity, though within firm limits. And the champions of the rebel cause lost their ideological guidance and the concerns of real-politick won over it.
Nepali leaders are in a similar situation that the founding fathers of the Indian union were in 1946. The Maoist movement, if perceived through a different angle, can be related to a multi-polar ethnic movement.
PUNJAB, KASHMIR & NORTH-EAST
The history of independent India offers other interesting case studies in this field. The Punjab Khalistan movement which took the shape of a highly-violent limited civil war, the ongoing violence in Kashmir which has endured the tactical and strategic maneuvers of the state for more than two decades now, the multiple fractions of secessionist movements of the northeast and the recent Gorkhaland movement are telling experiences in the study of ethno-national movements.
In case of the Khalistan movement, neither a negotiated settlement nor a complete military victory was a reason for its end. The ethnic militants fractionalized and lost a viable political front which enabled the unified state elites to pursue coordinated and strong policies prompting traditional ethnic elites to unite, moderate and re-enter the normal political process.
The Kashmir issue is a clear example of how an external interest and influence can capitalize on a constitutional failure to propel turbulent nature quite unnatural to the ethnic culture. The Kashmiris, a tolerant people deeply rooted in the Sufi culture very different from the radical Islamists, took four decades to hit the roof. The constitutional decay in Kashmir started with the beginning of free India; however, the extremist political mobilization happened only in late eighties.
The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in Assam, the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling hills along with other similar movements of the north-east are outcomes of the quest of the national political minorities for national recognition, respectable identity and regional leadership. The ULFA in Assam had retained a significant popular support by dividing their organization into distinct political and military wings. They had formed a unified People’s Creative Group comprising of journalists, writers, human rights activists, lawyers and academics from ethnic Assamese society.
DECIPHERING A PATTERN & WINNING FORMULA
According to author Atul Kohli, the ethno national movements in India have followed an inverse ‘U’ curve. Soon after initiation, a heightened mobilization of group identities followed by violent or otherwise illegal realization of power further allures the mass to the movement. This gives the leaders an increased power to negotiate and eventually some leaders are co-opted. This long process with no immediate benefit causes an exhaustion to set in and the movement declines; and a mutual accommodation and compromise between the movement and the state is reached.
Notwithstanding the ricochet effects of these ethno-national movements in the form of deep resentments, grudges, occasional violent outbursts, suppression and human rights issues, overall the Indian state has handled the movements successfully in the sense that the country is still united. The policy of mix of strong state violence and political compromises with the militant groups applied mutatis-mutandis to different situations has worked quite well. The complex socio-political community called India is more like one nation today than it ever was.
NEPAL: AT CROSSROADS
The leaders of the republic of Nepal are in a similar situation that the founding fathers of the Indian union were in 1946. The Maoist movement, if perceived through a different angle, can be related to a multi-polar ethnic movement. For a large scale political mobilization, the notion of historical injustice to various races by the ruling elites of the ‘Khas’ or the ‘Bahun-Chhetri’ conglomerate has been propounded and well-exploited. However, after the negotiation and accommodation of the movement into the state power structure, the leadership (themselves from the Khas community) is no longer able to represent the ethnicities it provoked. This has resulted in creating many offshoots in the form of ‘Madhesi’ movement, ‘Tharu’ movement and the ‘Limbuwan’ movement.
The challenge today for our leaders is of accommodating these communities in a structure which can heal their resentments and grudges. For the people, it is to realize that the movements have only helped replace the old elites with new ones. And, for the nation as a whole, to forge a political community defined not by a shared past but by a shared future. To be united by a promise.
dinkar.nepal@yahoo.com
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