Indian Pluralism & its Discontents

I have long argued that many of the most overt political problems facing India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh today are the result of the partition of 1947, a result, that is to say, of the metaphysical bases and assumptions underlying that partition. Paradoxically, however, most "peace-oriented" political discourse in the region tends to focus on forgetting the past, almost as if we were afraid that we know of no other mode of historical examination and re-examination other than recrimination.

Mukul Kesavan's recent piece in The Telegraph is a refreshing exception (even if I suspect I would fall into the category of the sorts of paranoid domino-theorists that Kesavan talks about). Kesavan does cite a prescriptive purpose, stating that one way to tackle the problem of the Indian state's failure to confront secessionist demands except within the framework of violent confrontation, is to be aware of and ponder the basis of Indian nationalism as set forth in that article, but it's unclear how that would end any violence. Who, for instance, would draw the lesson? That is, if one were a Kashmiri who is (like most Kashmiris I suspect) disaffected and none too thrilled about the state remaining part of India, is the realistic lesson to be drawn that India simply won't "let go" of Kashmir? That's certainly the lesson I submit one ought to draw, and that making the best of it in a pluralistic state isn't such a bad deal, but I doubt that's what Kesavan means.

The above notwithstanding, and as I've previously argued, the sort of analysis Kesavan undertakes remains an indispensable starting point for any understanding of the nature of Indian nationalism and of the state birthed by that nationalism. Of particular interest is Kesavan's insight that the Indian state's pluralism is (inextricably?) linked to the repressive means it has resorted to in the face of violent secessionist movements in Kashmir and in the North-East. In other words, given the partition of 1947 -- which irreducibly raises the specter of a "Hindu country" as a counterpoint to and mirror image of the "Muslim country" created by the partition -- India cannot be pluralist unless it is (to use Kesavan's term) "dogmatic" about its borders. In short, Kesavan to his credit squarely appreciates the logic of 1947, raising the discomfiting possibility that India's commitment to pluralism in a post-partition context might pre-dispose it to confronting secessionist demands with violence (and I'd add that the partition of 1947 might pre-dispose it to being presented with secessionist demands in the first place; if as Sunil Khilnani put it the "pornography of borders" characterizes post-colonial identity politics, the results of 1947 are surely the ultimate titillation):

The history of republican India is the history of a state which, when pushed, will recognize every sort of identity — linguistic, tribal even religious — for the sake of pluralist equilibrium and political peace. You can see this happen in the formation of linguistic states, in the creation of a Muslim majority district in Kerala, in the segmentation of the North-east into tiny states. But when it comes to its borders, India is dogmatically, even violently status quoist. It will deface every map that shows Kashmir with its ears missing, it will defend a glacier down to the last soldier, it will go to war with China (and endure humiliating defeat) in defence of a colonial border and it will inflict sickening violence upon insurgent nationalists in the north-eastern states. Every secessionist movement and every disputed border is, for this insecure heir to the Raj, a domino. Committed to the principle that the diversity of the subcontinent can be housed within a democratic state, it will let no one leave home.

Not to mention that the intellectual failure of Indian politics -- even (especially?) "progressive" politics -- to invoke the spirit of pluralism, heck to consciously think the thought that is pluralism, so wedded are its practitioners to the chimera of "secularism", is dismaying (and it raises the question whether the problem might not be that Indian pluralism is merely reflexive and not the content of a deliberate political ideology for any except a handful, remaining primarily a cultural instinct as opposed to an idea):

A subcontinental nation with inherited borders that refused to invoke a homogenizing essence to justify its nationhood was always going to feel insecure about threats to its territorial integrity. This would have been true even if the Congress had achieved an unpartitioned India. The Raj had made its nationalism cohere by giving it a target: its departure in any circumstance would have left a vacuum behind. But in an India that had suffered the violence of Partition, and in a Congress whose reason for being had been challenged by the creation of Pakistan, a normal statist concern about secure borders flared into an existential anxiety about unity.

All in all, one is not sure what lesson the "Nehruvian nationalist" may draw from Kesavan's insight. It might be true that "[e]very secessionist movement and every disputed border is, for this insecure heir to the Raj, a domino," but -- unlike for instance the Cold War American domino theory necessitating the defense of Vietnam, or the theory that made such a fetish of the supposed Arab regard for naked force that it posited regime after regime falling in the wake of the American-led invasion of Iraq -- the theory has hardly been disproved in the case of India, and there is no reason to believe that it would not come true. Put another way, an India less committed to pluralism might find it easier to "give up" on Kashmir, but conversely, given its current political ideology (increasingly under strain by virtue of the rise of Hindutva over the last two decades, but not exhausted by any means), any India that found it "easy" to give up on Kashmir or parts of the North-East could not long maintain even the semblance of pluralism.

It isn't too hard to imagine an alternative history where the border mattered less: if partition had not happened, would India be so willing to spend blood and treasure to keep this or that North-Eastern sliver of territory within the Union? Maybe, but maybe not; certainly the departure of sliver x or y would not raise existensial concerns, would not have such fraught implications for the nature of the Indian polity. Paradoxically, the 1947 break-up of the country and subsequent Nehruvian "settlement" in favor of, what is often passed off as "secularism" but is really anything but, and is really in many ways one of the twentieth century's great experiments in, pluralism, seems to have put subsequent negotiations that go to the borders of the post-1947 state "off limits" (which in turn negatively impacts Indian pluralism). I don't see how it could be otherwise, but I firmly believe that any analysis that does not ponder the implications of India's 1947 settlement for its future course as a polity, cannot be called realistic.