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Is there a problem
with Sada Punjab?
Kalam Nishan
Singh
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Ethnonationalism has played a more profound and lasting role in
modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes
that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the
separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to reoccur
elsewhere. |
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 In
Maharashtra, young upcoming and aspiring to replace his uncle Bal
Thackrey, Raj Thackrey of a splinter group of Shiv Sena issued a
series of statements targeting Biharis and Uttar Pradesh wallahs,
sending the national polity, the Parliament, the Samajwadi Party,
super stars like Amitabh Bachhan and his family, and the entire
national media into a tizzy. Soon, Bal Thackrey himself and his son
and heir apparent Udhav was also issuing similar statements, while
the country’s top columnists spent impossible amount of exertions
and ink to proclaim what a naïve class V student tells the morning
assembly prayer meetings in every ramshackle school: That India is
one nation, that we are Indians first, that ethnic or regional or
linguistic identities come later. The nation’s integrity was said to
be threatened by the likes of Raj, the top court of the country
backed a gag order against the man, and there was a general
agreement that Mumbai is so modern and cosmopolitan that what Raj is
saying is foolishness.
 Thankfully, no Sikh organization is so far taken a clearly spelled
out public stance on the issue, though as the World Sikh News had
pointed out earlier also, the issue requires a thorough
understanding of the many aspects. Briefly stated, these are twin
pronged. There are a large number of migrants from exactly these two
states, UP and
Bihar, in Punjab. These migrants have been earning their livelihood
through sheer hardwork and dint of enterprise. The economic
conditions in their own home states are bad and they have been
pushed out of their homes to seek better opportunities in Punjab
(and of course elsewhere). Ditto for migrants from other states.
There is a clear thesis in the world that no migration is voluntary.
People migrate because of better opportunities, desperation,
political reasons, and thousand other reasons.
These migrants in
Punjab have been affecting the culture, language, demography and
political influence map in the state, besides straining out the
meager civic resources. Another truth is that Punjab agriculture has
for long remained guilty of exploitation of these migrants (minimum
wages laws are unheard of in the unorganized sector) while of course
providing the migrants the opportunity to better their lot as
compared to their home states. So, the Sikhs have a dilemma. Should
they not protest against a large mass of people streaming in and
affecting the delicate demography? Do many Punjabis not feel that
the language is also being “polluted” under the influence of the
migrants? As the second or third generation of migrants turns from
labourers to contractors to businessmen or land owners, the affect
on jobs, resource division and general psyche leaves one with many
questions. And will the Sikhs be now seen as protesting against one
class whose big core value is ‘kirt’ (labour)?
 It is easy to
condemn ethnic nationalism, something that
Maharashtra
witnessed three decades ago and is again going through now. In
Punjab,
the Dal Khalsa, the Simranjeet Singh Mann led Akali faction and
writers like Jaswant Kanwal have also been meddling in these waters.
There is no hesitation in saying that the sentiments correspond to
some enduring propensities of the human spirit and several times in
history, these sentiments have driven and directed the politics in
many countries and region. Ethnic nationalism as a construct easily
captures the imagination of interest groups in a multiethnic society
and, dare we say that, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often
the least bad answer.
To many
Americans, the role of ethnic nationalism in politics would seem to
be ridiculous but then that would be result of projecting an
American model on to the entire world. It is true that in the United
States people of varying ethnic origins live cheek by jowl in
relative peace, and a couple of generations later, the ethnic
identities get significantly dissolved in cultural assimilation. But
are things the same everywhere?
Just as many elite sections of the Indian media are projecting,
Americans also find ethnonationalism discomfiting both
intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to
demonstrate that it is a product not of nature but of culture, often
deliberately constructed. And ethicists scorn value systems based on
narrow group identities rather than cosmopolitanism.
But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away. Immigrants to
the
United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their
new country and reshape their identities accordingly. But for those
who remain behind in lands where their ancestors have lived for
generations, if not centuries, political identities often take
ethnic form, producing competing communal claims to political power.
The creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has
usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic separation.
In areas where that separation has not yet occurred, politics is apt
to remain ugly.
 A
familiar and influential narrative of twentieth-century European
history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then
again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded that
nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar
decades, western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of
transnational institutions, culminating in the European Union (EU).
After the fall of the Soviet empire, that transnational framework
spread eastward to encompass most of the continent. Europeans
entered a postnational era, which was not only a good thing in
itself but also a model for other regions. Nationalism, in this
view, had been a tragic detour on the road to a peaceful liberal
democratic order.
This story is widely believed by educated Europeans and even more
so, perhaps, by educated Americans. Yet the experience of the
hundreds of Africans and Asians who perish each year trying to get
into Europe by landing on the coast of
Spain
or Italy reveals that Europe's frontiers are not so open. And a
survey would show that whereas in 1900 there were many states in
Europe without a single overwhelmingly dominant nationality, by 2007
there were only two, and one of those,
Belgium,
was close to breaking up. Aside from
Switzerland,
in other words -- where the domestic ethnic balance of power is
protected by strict citizenship laws -- in
Europe
the "separatist project" has not so much vanished as triumphed.
Far from having been superannuated in 1945, in many respects
ethnonationalism was at its apogee in the years immediately after
World War II. European stability during the Cold War era was in fact
due partly to the widespread fulfillment of the ethnonationalist
project. And since the end of the Cold War, ethnonationalism has
continued to reshape European borders.
Ethnonationalism has played a more profound and lasting role in
modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that
led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation
of ethnic groups in
Europe are likely to reoccur elsewhere. Increased urbanization,
literacy, and political mobilization; differences in the fertility
rates and economic performance of various ethnic groups; and
immigration will challenge the internal structure of states as well
as their borders. Whether politically correct or not,
ethnonationalism will continue to shape the world in the
twenty-first century.
(The WSN will revert to this theme in the coming days with a
thoroughly argued position and shall welcome a debate on its
pages—Ed.)
5
March 2008
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