Minorities and their nationalism(s): the terms of a discourse in South Asia

Abstract

South Asia is the theatre of myriad experimentations with the doctrine of nationalism: religious, linguistic, religio-linguistic, composite, plural or exclusive – the region stands witness to all. However, officially promulgated nationalism, presented as the finality of one's affiliations and loyalties, comes to be fiercely contested by minority groups resolute on preserving what they see as the pristine purity of their cultural inheritance. A minority's claim to selfhood is consistently called into question through a politics of nomenclature. The nationalism of the minority groups is frequently relegated to either sub-nationalism, proto-nationalism or a pre-modern appellation, ethnicity. This article examines the perspective of minority identities as they negotiate their terms of co-existence, accommodation and adaptation with several other competing identities within the framework of ‘nation state’.

Keywords:

• South Asia
• nation state
• minorities
• minority nationalism

Notes

1. Tilly, ‘States and Nationalism in Europe’.

2. South Asia here comprises India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Maldives and Nepal. Of these, with the exception of India and Nepal, all other states have adopted the religion of the majority as the state religion. Yet, the constitutions of almost all these states guarantee freedom of religion to all their citizens.

3. See, for instance, Mitra and Lewis, Subnational Movements in South Asia. Sub-national movements are those, according to the authors, which ‘claim control over parts of existing national states’. The terms ethnicity and sub-nationalism are used interchangeably by the contributors in this volume. Also see, Phadnis, Ethinicity and Nation-Building in South Asia.

4. Cited in Malkani, Sindh Story, 134.

5. Bastiapillai, ‘Minority, Nation and Identity Question’.

6. Jinnah, Presidential Address at the Lucknow Session of the AIML, 29–30.

7. Singh and Gyani, Idea of the Sikh State, 16–20.

8. Oommen, ‘New Nationalisms and Collective Rights’, 125.

9. Phizo, Plebiscite Speech.

10. Samaddar, ‘South Asia’.

11. Cited in Abul Fazl Huq, ‘Problem of National Identity in Bangladesh’, 51.

12. Salient Features of 15th Amendment to Constitution, The Daily Star.

13. Hewitt, ‘Ethnic Construction, Provincial Identity and Nationalism in Pakistan’. Hewitt argues that the Pakistani state's strategy of dealing with Baloch separatism remained short of success owing to its failure in patronizing the emergence of a reformist Baloch ethnic identity that could be contained within the provincial framework.

14. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7.

15. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 1.

16. Tilly, ‘States and Nationalism’.

17. Oommen, ‘New Nationalisms and Collective Rights’, 126.

18. Cited in Hardgrave, ‘DMK and the Politics of Tamil Nationalism’, 397.

19. Hardgrave, op. cit., 401.

20. GOI, Memorandum of Settlement, 1986.

21. Keating, ‘Asymmetrical Government’, 74.

22. Sachar Committee is the popular name of the Prime Minister's High Level Committee instituted in India to look into the economic, educational and social status of Muslims of India. The Committee submitted its report in 2006.

23. In Pakistan, for example, the Parsee representative in the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan vociferously supported the Islamic elements in the proposed Constitution of Pakistan. See Ghufran, ‘Parsis’. Similarly, the Parsee representative in the Indian Constituent Assembly declined the offer to have one permanent representative in the parliament on the plea that the community would rather like to be part of the national mainstream.

24. Peacock, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka’, 170–6.

25. Sundar, Subalterns and Sovereigns.

26. Shakir, ‘On National Integration’.

27. Committee of Management, Anjuman Madarsa Noorul Islam vs the State of Uttar Pradesh.