Absolute Borders: Partition, Pluralism, and Nationalism

Via Desipundit, I caught a link to a post by Qalandar on a recent article in the Calcutta Telegraph by Mukul Kesavan.

For those who don’t know, Mukul Kesavan is a pretty accomplished writer — the author of Looking Through Glass, and an interesting little monograph that came out a few years ago, called Secular Common-Sense.

His latest column is about the lingering consequences of the experience of Partition on the thinking of the Indian government regarding its borders. Kesavan is pointing to a kind of paradox in the constitution of the Indian state — it was founded on a principle of pluralism across religious, linguistic, ethnic, and caste differences. But once it was defined as such and those borders were consecrated, if you will, in blood during the Partition, the possibility of allowing one or another territory to secede on the basis of ethnic or religious difference became an impossibility. If you do that, the whole justification for holding the rest of the country together could potentially collapse.

Qalandar raises some questions about the rhetorical stance taken by Kesavan in his piece, and Mukul Kesavan himself actually shows up in the comments to clarify some things. In fact, it’s in the comments to the post that he gives what might be the clearest account of his position:

Pakistan claims Kashmir because as a Muslim state carved out of British India it thinks it has a right to Kashmir as a Muslim majority province. Israel, as a Jewish state, wants to annex large settler blocs of Jews on the West Bank to Israel and in return would be happy to give away bits of Israel that have concentrations of Arabs. Other nations dispute or defend territory on the ground of language. Indian nationalism refused the temptation of a single collective identity; as a result, the republic it created had no way of discriminating between borders that were negotiable and those that were written in stone. Not only were its borders were colonial and therefore arbitrary, being an ideologically pluralist state it couldn’t claim or trade away disputed borderlands going by the nature of the populations settled there. So it decided that every inch of its border was sacred and what it had, it held. (link)

It’s an interesting thesis — one could argue that it might not hold in the case of India’s claims to the Kashmir valley (too much strategic and symbolic value to ever think of letting go). But the northeastern provinces, where secessionism abounds, seem more marginal. And just to reiterate in case anyone misses it: Kesavan isn’t saying that India should just let go of any territory (indeed, he comes out pretty clearly as saying it shouldn’t). Rather, Kesavan is trying to explain why India has held on — and will continue to hold on — so tenaciously.

There’s more to it, but I think I’ll leave it to readers to explore some of the other interesting points made in this discussion, by Qalandar, Mukul Kesavan, and Nitin Pai.

134 thoughts on “Absolute Borders: Partition, Pluralism, and Nationalism

  1. It’s just an accident of history that India even exists in the form it does today. The BRITISH created it and ‘bequeathed’ it to us (minus Pakistan/Bangladesh). These borders are artificial.

    Not only were its borders were colonial and therefore arbitrary, being an ideologically pluralist state it couldnÂ’t claim or trade away disputed borderlands going by the nature of the populations settled there.

    What if the ‘population settled there’ no longer wants in? The ‘population settled’ in a particular region IS the region. They define it. Does Gujarat (for example) belong primarily to the Gujarati people or to the Union of India? Why sacrifice the aspirations of the people of Gujarat (for example) in terms of their dreams for their homeland and their culture, just because that may happen to conflict with the notion of India held by the Indian Government? India may be an ideologically pluralist state…but many of the groups within it found themselves part of India almost by default (this applies especially to the northeastern states). They should be given a choice. NO STATE will ever leave India if it remains advantageous (economically, politically, culturally) to stay within it. The Indian Gov’t. should work to make that a reality. India should be made up of willing states, not captives. But whatever decisions are to be made, have to be made democratically and peacefully. And of course Pakistan should not be a party to that process in anyway. And of course I am talking purely in political terms here…culturally there is no disputing the strong links and historical connections that bind the different regions. I have no problem with the borders of the nation-state of India, and I’d hate to see Kashmir or Punjab or the Northeast secede…BUT I want them to stay willingly.

  2. It’s just an accident of history that India even exists in the form it does today. The BRITISH created it and ‘bequeathed’ it to us (minus Pakistan/Bangladesh). These borders are artificial.

    Yet in defense of these artificial british-bequeathed borders India has fought a number of wars and remains at odds with China and Pakistan on territorial issues. Do the mongoloid north-eastern states or the Andaman Islands really belong to India? Similarly, do Baluchistan and the NWFP really belong to punjabi-dominated Pakistan?

  3. Guys, can we stop using the word “mongoloid”? It’s hard for me not to see it as an insult.

    How about “Burmese” for Assam/Meghalaya/Nagaland?

  4. Interesting read.

    I would argue that Self determination isn’t necessarily a basic right of the people. If Kashmir was allowed to secede solely on the basis of a local plebiscite, then it would be disenfranchising every other person in the country because such an act would have reverberations that extend beyond the boundaries of Kashmir. In fighting for Kashmir, the Indian Government is not only protecting the unity of the country, but also the right of the people. I would bet that popular opinion in the rest of India is tilted towards protecting every last bit of territory at whatever the cost.

    The American Example:

    The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. it began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form, and character, and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these the Union was solemnly declared to “be perpetual.” And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained “to form a more perfect Union.” It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not? Texas v. White http://www.sagehistory.net/reconstruction/docs/TexasvWhite.htm
  5. This is not a new view. Some Pakistani writers, such as Shireen Maraji(?) from The News, claim that if and when India lets Kashmir secede then the rest of India will disintegrate based on this principle. Such writers think that if India is reduced to smaller states Pakistan can play much bigger strategic role in the affairs of South Asia than its current role. Using this reasoning they justify the cost of maintaining and supporting the terrorism in Kashmir (and possibly Punjab).

  6. Not only were its borders were colonial and therefore arbitrary
    The BRITISH created it and ‘bequeathed’ it to us (minus Pakistan/Bangladesh). These borders are artificial.

    All borders are arbitrary. Kesavan is asking an old question: what makes these borders–and indeed the regimes within these borders–legitimate. But it seems identity politics has led us full circle, back to a state of nature where loyalties are defined by accidents of birth.

    But classic liberalism, the ideology to which modern India is most indebted, taught us these boundries were purely manmade and that society had to be reconstructed on a common humanity based on man’s free consent. States that did not recognize these natural right were themselves illegitimate. It is upon this basis that the US defends it’s own arbitrary borders, and should be the basis upon which india defends hers.

  7. India should be made up of willing states, not captives. But whatever decisions are to be made, have to be made democratically and peacefully.

    Similar argument was made by the Southern states before and during the American civil war. Alas the Unionists and Lincoln thought otherwise.

  8. India should be made up of willing states, not captives.
    Similar argument was made by the Southern states before and during the American civil war. Alas the Unionists and Lincoln thought otherwise.

    I agree with Circus. Just replace “states” with “individuals” and you get a sense of what I mean, in both examples.

  9. About willing states not captives: as a desi liberal who thinks pluralism is a cardinal democratic virtue (I’d like to say pluralist but that sounds vaguely polygamous) I’m ambivalent about the idea of self determination. Amitabh puts the self-determinist case clearly:

    The ‘population settled’ in a particular region IS the region. They define it. Does Gujarat (for example) belong primarily to the Gujarati people or to the Union of India? Why sacrifice the aspirations of the people of Gujarat (for example) in terms of their dreams for their homeland and their culture, just because that may happen to conflict with the notion of India held by the Indian Government?

    It’s useful that Amitabh chooses Gujarat as an example because poses the problem in an extreme way. What do you do with a movement for self-determination that’s systematically majoritarian as nearly all such movements are? How does a pluralist state or, for that matter, an individual, deal with a People that wants to secede to create yet another ‘etnic’ nation state? I can see that this line of argument can be used by, say, the Indian state as an alibi for brutalizing any secessionist dissent, but there is, nevertheless, a problem here. Would Amitabh want to see a Tamil Eelam run by Prabhakaran or a Naga state committed to purging its territory of Kukis? Or an independent Gujarat (since he used it to illustrate his point) run by Narendra Modi as a fervently Hindutva-vadi state, or a Khalistan where Sikhs can be truly themselves? Pakistan is the outstanding example of ethno-religious self-determination in the sub-continent. I think it’s a cautionary tale.

  10. It is perhaps conceptually easy for India to define itself as secular and pluralistic, and bound by sacrosanct borders. For Pakistan the task was trickier. On the one hand it was defined in ethnic/religious terms (the Muslims of India deemed to constitute a nation); on the other hand it ended with very clear (if disjointed, or ‘moth-eaten’) borders, and a need to defend and maintain said borders, while at the same time disenfranchise those members of the Indian Muslim ‘nation’ who found themselves on the other side of the border. Jinnah seems to have had a hard time; immediately after partition, he emphasized that ‘those of our brethren who are minorities in Hindustan may rest assured that we shall never neglect or forget them’, while less than a month later, as the enormity and reality of Partition sunk in, he was advising his ‘Muslim brethren in India’ to ‘give unflinching loyalty to the State in which they happen to be’. (Quotes from JINNAH, MA. Speeches as Governor-General of Pakistan, 1947-48)

    But if Partition was a horror — and a much under-emphasized one, perhaps owing to culpability on both sides — clear and unchageable borders today are crucial. Neither India nor Pakistan are today defined with ideological purity. Most Indian Muslims are outside of Pakistan, and India is not a state for all (pre-Partition) Indians. Thanggod. As one BJP politician put it, with precise, chilling logic, ‘for those who think that Pakistan is not complete without Kashmir, let them remember that India is not complete without Pakistan’. The current borders may not make sense, but far better to work with them than put everything up for grabs.

  11. The current borders may not make sense, but far better to work with them than put everything up for grabs.

    Tru dat. The law of unintended consequences will unleash untold misery if the borders were redrawn. Let the sleeping dogs lie.

  12. sirs,

    please keep in mind that though the particular borders may be an artifact of the machinations of the british gentlemen who ruled over the raj of yore, the gestalt concept of india, from the himalaya down through aryavarta and to the south toward the salty seas of ceylon, have existed since time immemorial. outside the bounds of mother india dwelt the mleccha, that is known. the folk of the brown lands we were, are, and shall always be, marked by our skins as the sons of the black and red soils of mother india. as for those on the margins of the cultural hearth of india, whether it be the pashtuns or the nagas, these are academic matters. one might argue that the mughals, whose histories are so inextricably tied with the ways and generations of brown folk have rendered to us the dominion over the lands of the pashtun, for through sword and cannon did they rule as lords over khandahar and the cities of afghanistan. just as the men of the plains of the pashtuns were players along the rivers of aryavarta, from the indus to the brahmaputra, so the pillars of the great cakravartin ashoka extends deep into the lands of what were once the kalash pagans who submitted only reluctantly to the power of the great alexander and swear fealty to the god of the arabs.

    i wish you gentlemen a good day!

  13. India’s right to Kashmir was helped maintained by the machinations of the Punjab Boundary Commission led by that wily Cyril Radcliff who awarded India enough Tehsils in Gurdaspur to keep a then contiguous land link to Kashmir. Historical claims notwithstanding, one has to wonder about the sanity of the Pakistani leaders who would rather bankrupt their nation than to give up on a pipe dream. Over the years, I have been amazed by the ignorance of some Pakistanis about ground realities in pre-terrorism Kashmir. For example most Pakistanis have no idea that before terrorism started in the valley, Kashmir was not the West Bank and non-Kashmiri Indians couldnt even purchase property in the Valley and that there was no population displacement (expelling) or replacement (settlements)

  14. Excellent points by Amitabh in post #2.

    I would argue that Self determination isn’t necessarily a basic right of the people.

    That’s basically the definition of an empire, not a democractic nation.

    If the majority of people residing in a certain territory wish to secede then that is their right — even if it’s to their own detriment, ie. the new autonomous territory turns out to be not viable for some reason (politically/economically/militarily/culturally) and collapses.

  15. If the majority of people residing in a certain territory wish to secede then that is their right

    Addendum:

    If one genuinely believes that their reasons for wishing to secede are misguided then one should of course engage in extensive efforts to convince them why they would be better off remaining a part of the existing union/state, in terms of positive incentives (ie. not just the threat of force if they attempt to secede). But if all of that ultimately fails then it’s not right to force them to remain a part of the existing political/territorial state — they have to sink or swim with the results of their decisions, for better or for worse, and take responsibility for the outcome of their actions.

    Otherwise you could also use the analogy that the British Empire itself was a single, inviolable unit and that no group of people within it had the basic human right to self-determination, especially considering the potential political and economic ramifications to the rest of the Empire (which did indeed happen, as we all know).

  16. From India’s point of view, you look at its neighbors . . . and its a mess. Anarchy on the North-South axis (Nepal and Sri Lanka). East and West you have an Islamic Regime and a sorta Islamic Regime, both of which are encroaching Indian territory. Then look at Myanmar, another brutal regime. Afghanistan, technically, I believe borders India, we all know how well that is going. Red China.

    Aside from going for the record of having the most failed states as neighbors, what benefit could India as a state possibly derive giving up on maintaining the status quo?

    I fear . . . the marginal economic, political impact of keeping, for example, the Northeast, is very little, but the impact of adding what would be ANOTHER failed, irritating neighboring state does not interest me at all. This would not be a “happily ever after everyone gets along” situation. Same with J and K. Better to draw the line early than have to make continual concessions

  17. Aside from going for the record of having the most failed states as neighbors

    India itself is a failed state. The biggest one of all. A nation that cant feed half its children cannot be considered a successful state.

  18. they have to sink or swim with the results of their decisions, for better or for worse, and take responsibility for the outcome of their actions.

    The trouble I have with this is that it ignores and downplays the effect a secession would have elsewhere. It would not just be a question of those who ‘choose’ to secede either sinking or swimming. The re-drawing of boundaries in the sub-continent would involve raging nationalisms, violence and all the other ailments of partition. I think it’s disingenuous to ignore that.

  19. The re-drawing of boundaries in the sub-continent would involve raging nationalisms, violence and all the other ailments of partition.

    By that logic, should the British government have used force to prevent the secession of the Indian subcontinent from the British Empire, considering that it played a significant part in precipitating the collapse of their rule over the rest of their global territories ?

    Taking it further back, what about the American War of Independence ? Were the British justified in trying to hold onto their American dominions via the force of arms, thereby disregarding the wishes of Americans to secede from British rule ? Who had the moral high ground in this situation — the Brits or the Americans ?

  20. By that logic

    I understand that by that logic, anyone who expresses the view that any such secession would be bloody, violent and involve the sundering of lives and people, and contextualises the discussion within this reality is directly analogous to a colonial oppressor. It is a neat rhetorical trick to pull but it overruns itself, and is not applicable to me, or many other people (for example see Mukul’s post above). Seccession within the sub-continent would be violent and involve all of the issues that partition in 1947 engendered. To ignore this is, I believe, disingenuous.

  21. India itself is a failed state. The biggest one of all. A nation that cant feed half its children cannot be considered a successful state.

    By your logic (cannot feed half the population), 90% of the nations in the world are failed states – China and Russia included. What do you suggest we do with all these failed states?

  22. I read Nitin and Mukul Kesavan’s comments on Qalandar’s blog and they put the finger on what is important IMO. The problem is with the way the Indian establishment has tried to foster a national identity. One, the idea that India was a new kind of nation not based on a single dominant identity has not been sold well enough by the leadership over the years, who have focused on the sovereignty angle instead. Secondly, Nitin’s point that federalism should be strengthened. The idea of India is too important not to be preserved, but it is unfortunate that it has to be done through the barrel of a gun.

    I agree there are genuine grievances among people who are involved in secessionist movements, but it is naive to think they would all be better off or enjoy more freedoms than they do within the somewhat oppressive state that India still is. Personally, I find the leaderships of secessionst movements (as they stand currently) to be morally bankrupt and driven by identity politics or ideology, not welfare of the people they claim to represent.

  23. Increase in prosperity levels across the board and more individual economic and political freedoms is likely to take the wind out of the sails of most secessionist movements.

  24. By your logic (cannot feed half the population), 90% of the nations in the world are failed states – China and Russia included. What do you suggest we do with all these failed states?

    Who told you that China and Russia cant feed half their children?

    That dubious distinction unfortunately belongs only to India and a couple other nations in Africa.

    http://www.worldfoodprize.org/assets/YouthInstitute/05proceedings/NiagaraDistrictHighSchool.pdf

    India is home to the greatest population of severely malnourished children in the world. Four hundred million children suffer daily, which is a greater problem than in Sub-Saharan Africa……..more than half of all children under the age of four are malnourished, 30 percent of newborns are significantly underweight, and 60 percent of women are anemic…….The population of India has increased from a billion people by 16 million annually escalating the severity of malnourishment and poverty……The enfant mortality rate is 90 per 1000 and malnourishment is a factor that attributes to almost half of all childhood deaths. Underweight children is the greatest problem found with 54% of the population under four years old followed by stunted growth in 52% of the population and 17% who are wasted. Anemia affects 74% of children under the age of three and more than 90 % of adolescent girls and 50% of women.

  25. Red Snapper,

    anyone who expresses the view that any such secession would be bloody, violent and involve the sundering of lives and people, and contextualises the discussion within this reality is directly analogous to a colonial oppressor. It is a neat rhetorical trick to pull

    False extrapolation and conjecture. No “rhetorical tricks” are being pulled here.

    is not applicable to me, or many other people

    No such allegations have been made, either implictly or explicitly.

    Seccession within the sub-continent would be violent and involve all of the issues that partition in 1947 engendered.

    Correct.

    To ignore this is, I believe, disingenuous.

    It is not being “ignored”; however, to assert that it is better to forcibly impose unity on various groups in order to prevent violence-ridden consequences ignores the fact that a) using force to exert territorial control over people who do not want to be under the paramount control of a central authority or to be a part of a wider geo-political entity, and b) using force to impose “unity” on groups which (rightly or wrongly) do not want to co-exist, are both immoral courses of action to take, and are both inherently imperialistic in nature rather than democratic in the true sense of the term. To ignore that is disingenuous.

    Perhaps you should just openly state that you believe the imposition of imperial rule over disparate peoples against the latter’s will to be unjustifiable even if the removal of this rule and the dissolution of the united political entity would result in bloodshed, but you believe that the imposition of centralised rule over disparate peoples in India against the will of certain groups therein is indeed justifiable, and that you are prepared to use the theoretical outcome of bloodshed to be an acceptable rationale to justify opposing any seccessionist movements.

  26. jaisingh: India is an empire? I thought flawed democracy. Like all democracies…..shouldn’t the focus be on better governing within the democratic process, first, before throwing the whole thing over? Weird.

  27. So anyone, anywhere, should always have the right to secede? I hereby secede from the US and create the Republic of MD-stan! Do I still have to pay my federal taxes? What’s that? Black helicopters hovering?

  28. MD,

    jaisingh: India is an empire?

    No, but theoretically it becomes one if one or more of its various regions are forced to remain a part of the union against the wishes of the majority of the particular region’s inhabitants.

    The same applies to any nation-state in the world; I’m not just talking specifically about India here. (Ditto for my previous posts on this thread).

  29. Doordarshan, You really need to check your sources before posting these doom and gloom predictions. That number of 400 million malnourished children stood out to me. Here’s something from a World Bank study:

    Approximately 60 million children are underweight in India. Given its impact on health, education and productivity, persistent undernutrition is a major obstacle to human development and economic growth in the country, especially among the poor and the vulnerable, where the prevalence of malnutrition is highest.

    Where is the remaining 340 million people?

    400 million children suffer daily?? What kind of suffering are we talking about here?? These blanket statements lead me to believe that the website is posting a very biased one-sided article. I’m sure you can find a lot of these doom and gloom stats online where they take numbers and spin them to make a point.

    Besides why is India a failed state? What was that percentage before independence – much worse I suspect. So if we improved that number post-independence, it should be termed a success, minor success but still a success.

  30. It is not being “ignored”; however, to assert that it is better to forcibly impose unity on various groups in order to prevent violence-ridden consequences ignores the fact that a) using force to exert territorial control over people who do not want to be under the paramount control of a central authority or to be a part of a wider geo-political entity, and b) using force to impose “unity” on groups which (rightly or wrongly) do not want to co-exist, are both immoral courses of action to take, and are both inherently imperialistic in nature rather than democratic in the true sense of the term. To ignore that is disingenuous.

    What constitutes a Group

    Ethincity, Language, Geography, Religion, Caste, sub caste, Hobbies, food habits ..

    What if Coorgis from Karnataka do not want to be part of India?

    This is an earnest question. Not having a back ground in social sciences, I have always wondered about groups are defined and the rights they should have

  31. MD,

    Majority rule is the be all and end all, eh, jai? Thank God this is a Republic.

    Read my comments again. I think you’ll find that I’m actually stating the opposite to “majority rule is the be all and end all”. Otherwise I’d be arguing that a region in a particular country should not be allowed to secede if the inhabitants of the rest of the country (and/or the central government) oppose such an action.

  32. I don’t think you can make a good argument for holding unwilling provinces together on liberal, moral grounds. The only way it works is if you’re willing to look at it on realist grounds.

    Britain let go of India because it was becoming too costly to hold on to it. The money they were earning from the colony was declining, India was not essential to the quality of life of most Britons after WWII, and the independence movement was cutting into its economic and military importance even more (by design). INC forced Britain to make the following choice: become involved in a costly, long-term colonial war against an awakened population (and remember, the British had experienced hundreds of years of this situation in Ireland and had to know it would not be a quick struggle), or just let the place go. The British chose the latter.

    Conversely, the US had compelling economic, military, and internal political interests to hold on to the South. So they fought the Civil War and violated Dixie’s “right to self-determination”. And its “right” to keep people enslaved (part of satisfying those internal political interests).

    You can put a moral gloss on either of these situations, but what really happened was the state with the most economic and military power (Britain in the first example, the Union in the second) asked itself if unity was worth the cost to maintain it.

    So — does India have a compelling state interest to hold on to J/K and the NE provinces? Would the cost of their seceding (in lives, in rupees, in international relations, in economic strength, in internal politics) be greater than the cost of keeping them? It seems clear that it would.

    To me that’s the only question that ultimately matters. You can come up with moral arguments for either side, but unless and until that cost-benefit equation changes, India is not going to give up its hold on these states.

  33. Whoops, just to be clear, I’m using “INC” as a shorthand for the whole Subcontinental Independence Movement. Just a slip, sorry.

  34. Neal
    So — does India have a compelling state interest to hold on to J/K and the NE provinces? Would the cost of their seceding (in lives, in rupees, in international relations, in economic strength, in internal politics) be greater than the cost of keeping them? It seems clear that it would. To me that’s the only question that ultimately matters. You can come up with moral arguments for either side, but unless and until that cost-benefit equation changes, India is not going to give up its hold on these states.

    That is a very good assessment. You can also include strategic placements of these provinces in terms of military strengths. India needs J&K as a cushion from Pakistan, Afghanistan and even China to an extent and the NE provinces as a cushion from China and Burma.

  35. This is a tough one…I find myself agreeing with many of the pro AND con positions regarding secession-related issues. I agree that the leaders of most secession movements have been crackpots and tyrants. I agree that any new partition would result in unimaginable violence. I also believe that no region should be FORCED to remain in India, but it can be a slippery slope…using my Gujarat example, what if Gujarat attained independence, but 10 years later Surat district wanted to declare independence from Gujarat? But in the future, as certain states in India do better and better, and other states (with huge populations) do worse and worse (or at least fail to keep up), and draconian central government policies transfer vast amounts of wealth from productive regions to net-minus regions (which is a form of colonialism masquerading as democracy), issues of secession may arise from quarters that are hard to imagine right now. Back in 1970 or so, the Akali Dal (I think) released the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. Although considered scandalous in its day, I think it deserves another look…it was way ahead of its time, was NOT a secessionist document, and proposed a federal structure for India in which most economic, educational, and cultural decision-making powers would devolve to the states, and the central gov’t would remain responsible for the ‘biggies’ like currency, defense, foreign policy, communications, etc. NO empire has lasted forever (this will apply to the USA one day too) and in the future, more and more, people will need to be sold on the idea of India in order to want to remain in India. For that, India needs to work well and be beneficial to the vast majority of its inhabitants.

  36. You really need to check your sources before posting these doom and gloom predictions.

    Yeah right Santosh, I should check with someone clueless and callous like you who claims that 90% of the world is as hungry as India! Get real pal. I’d rather check with someone with a heart and knowledge like Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. Read Sen’s devastating critique and then tell us with a straight face that India hasnt failed its children:

    http://www.littlemag.com/hunger/aks.html

    “India has not, we must recognise unambiguously, done well in tackling the pervasive presence of persistent hunger. Not only are there persistent recurrences of severe hunger in particular regions (the fact that they don’t grow into full-fledged famines does not arrest their local brutality), but there is also a gigantic prevalence of endemic hunger across much of India. Indeed, India does much worse in this respect than even Sub-Saharan Africa.[2] Calculations of general undernourishment — what is sometimes called “protein-energy malnutrition” — is nearly twice as high in India as in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is astonishing that despite the intermittent occurrence of famine in Africa, it too manages to ensure a much higher level of regular nourishment than does India. About half of all Indian children are, it appears, chronically undernourished, and more than half of all adult women suffer from anaemia. In maternal undernourishment as well as the incidence of underweight babies, and also in the frequency of cardiovascular diseases in later life (to which adults are particularly prone if nutritionally deprived in the womb), India’s record is among the very worst in the world.”

    “The health and nutritional adversity related to maternal undernutrition and low birth weight children is almost certainly a significant factor in explaining the terrible nutritional state of India.”

    the proportion of pregnant women who suffer from anaemia — three quarters of all — is astoundingly higher in India than in the rest of the world.”

    it is amazing to hear persistent repetition of the false belief that India has managed the challenge of hunger very well since independence. This is based on a profound confusion between famine prevention, which is a simple achievement, and the avoidance of endemic undernourishment and hunger, which is a much more complex task. India has done worse than nearly every country in the world in the latter respect.”

    “The counterintuitiveness — not to mention the inequity — of the history of this development is so gross that it is hard to explain it by the presumption of mere insensitivity — it looks more and more like insanity. […] What could explain the simultaneous presence of the worst undernourishment and the largest unused food stocks in the world (with the stocks being constantly augmented at extremely heavy cost)?”

  37. Jai Singh

    I said:

    I understand that by that logic, anyone who expresses the view that any such secession would be bloody, violent and involve the sundering of lives and people, and contextualises the discussion within this reality is directly analogous to a colonial oppressor

    Then you said:

    Perhaps you should just openly state that you believe the imposition of imperial rule over disparate peoples against the latter’s will to be unjustifiable even if the removal of this rule and the dissolution of the united political entity would result in bloodshed, but you believe that the imposition of centralised rule over disparate peoples in India against the will of certain groups therein is indeed justifiable, and that you are prepared to use the theoretical outcome of bloodshed to be an acceptable rationale to justify opposing any seccessionist movements.

    Like I said, blunt rhetorical trick, but it does not apply to me, or my point, which is really quite a simple one.

  38. The nationalist position is that the lands which constitute the Indian civilization have been progressively diminishing. As Chet Snicker points out Kandahar~Gandhara, indeed much of Afghanistan, was within the cultural and political ambit of the civilization at one time. Partition, of course, thrashed hopes of “akand bharat,” which again, as Chet Snicker points out, is based on an ancient ideal, expressed, among other places, in the Vishnu Purana: “The country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharata; there dwell the descendants of Bharata.” Bharat is of course the alternative name used for India in the Indian constitution. This ideal has been kept alive by, among others, Tamil kings who ventured north; the Mughals, and the secular state of India.

    This is the anxiety at the heart of Indian opposition to any sort of secession; expressed implicitly in the actions of the Congress party and explicity by the oppostion BJP.

    The Northeast in too fragmented into myriad ethnic and tribal groups. Secession there, imo, cannot pose an existential threat to India. Kashmir, otoh…

  39. Jai Singh and Red Snapper, tussin na ladho, mundeyo! Aaram naal beh jao. Om Shanti shanti shanti. This is an important discussion here and I want to see it keep going. I want to learn as much as I can from various viewpoints so I can better formulate my own opinion on this.

  40. Back in 1970 or so, the Akali Dal (I think) released the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. Although considered scandalous in its day, I think it deserves another look…it was way ahead of its time, was NOT a secessionist document, and proposed a federal structure for India in which most economic, educational, and cultural decision-making powers would devolve to the states,

    You know it’s funny that you say that, because it’s exactly what an uncle of mine who worked as a journalist in Delhi throught the 1980’s said in a discussion about these issues a while back. How Indira Gandhi managed to turn that into the mess of 1980’s Punjab is a casebook study of what can go wrong with the Indian Union. And a cautionary tale that should be studied at every echelon of Indian politcal life.

  41. How about “Burmese” for Assam/Meghalaya/Nagaland?

    I think the Khasis in Meghalaya are more closely related to the Khmer people of Cambodia/Vietnam, at least by language. The Khasis, Mizos, and Nagas are different ethnic groups, so finding a generic word to describe them all might not be accurate. Maybe “indigenous peoples of Northeast India”?

  42. Don’t worry Amitabh, there’s no bad blood. This is shaping up to be a good thread, I’ve already enjoyed reading the contributions greatly. No need for polarisation.

  43. I apologize to other for the hijack but I had to respond to the “failed state” comment.

    Doordarshan, Ok my 90% was a gross exaggeration like your 400 million.

  44. I dunno, Amitabh, it doesn’t seem like the secessionist movements in India are taking place in the most productive, wealthy regions. In fact, it looks like the exact opposite is occurring.

    And actually, in the US the Old Confederacy, with its glorification of secession and fairly recent status as a sorta-autonomous state when it came to civil rights (from the 1870s to the 1960s), is the recipient of the kind of distribution you talk about. This is an interesting table that shows this difference. It’s a ratio to dollars paid in tax vs. dollars received. The Northeast and Midwest (eg: the old Union) get about 90 cents back in services on every dollar they pay in tax. The South gets an average of $1.19 back for every dollar it pays the government. And it’s even bigger in the Deep South (where secession and the Confederacy are still VERY MUCH celebrated). Alabama, Mississippi, W. Virginia, and Virginia get over $1.50 back for every dollar they send the government.

    Now that’s not the same level of disparity as in India, and of course the last REAL secession happened over a hundred years ago (although it continues to be celebrated there), but it’s an interesting measure.

    I tried to find a similar table for India but I couldn’t. But it seems pretty obvious — the poorer, more marginalized states need more services and send less money to the Federal coffers. Yet these are the states most likely to want to split off. Even in the case of India itself — from a purely economic perspective it had to be drawing more from the UK than it was contributing. Yet it chose to split off.

  45. India needs a much more decentralised and federal structure. Delhi has way too much power. Forget about Kashmir and NE, even Bombay and Bangalore do not like Delhi and BIMARU raj. We have got to move towards a system like the US, where states have more powers and the Centre has only defence, foregin affairs etc. The South and West needs breathing space to develop and not be constrained by the regressive cow belt and crazy leftists in Bengal.