Ethnonational Identities

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Ethnonational Identities Edited by Steve Fenton and Stephen May

Ethnonational Identities

Other books by Steve Fenton ETHNICITY ETHNICITY: Racism, Class and Culture ETHNICITY AND ECONOMY (editor, with Harriet Bradley) ETHNICITY, GENDER AND SOCIAL CHANGE (editor, with Rohit Barot and Harriet Bradley)

Other books by Stephen May CRITICAL MULTICULTURALISM: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education (editor)

INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY-BASED EDUCATION (editor) LANGUAGE AND MINORITY RIGHTS: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language

Ethnonational Identities Edited by

Steve Fenton Professor of Sociology University of Bristol

and

Stephen May Foundation Professor and Chair of Language and Literacy Education University of Waikato New Zealand

Selection and editorial matter © Steve Fenton and Stephen May 2002. All other material © Palgrave Macmillan 2002 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the new global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–75012–8 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ethnonational identities / edited by Steve Fenton and Stephen May. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–75012–8 (cloth) 1. Nationalism. 2. Ethnicity. I. Fenton, Steve, 1942– II. May, Stephen, 1962– JC312 .E84 2002 320.54–dc21 2002072839 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Pauline and John; Alex and Jane

Contents List of Tables

viii

Notes on the Contributors

ix

1 Ethnicity, Nation and ‘Race’: Connections and Disjunctures Steve Fenton and Stephen May

1

2 Recognition and National Justice for Québec: a Canadian Conundrum Colin H. Williams

21

3 Late Arrivals at the Nationalist Games: Romani Mobilisation in the Czech Lands and Slovakia Will Guy

48

4 Indigenous Rights and the Politics of Self-Determination: the Case of Aotearoa/New Zealand Stephen May

84

5 Identity Politics and Nationalisms in Colonial India John Zavos

109

6 An Area of Darkness, Still? The Political Evolution of Ethnic Identities in Jammu and Kashmir, 1947–2001 Vernon Hewitt

129

7 Nationalism in South Asia and its Transnational Impact on the Indian Diaspora in Britain Rohit Barot

159

8 Identity in an Ethnically Bifurcated State: Trinidad and Tobago Ralph R. Premdas

176

9 Ethnicity, Malay Nationalism, and the Question of Bangsa Malaysia Kntayya Mariappan

198

10 Terms of Inclusion: Citizenship and the Shaping of Ethnonational Identities Judith Squires

227

Index

252

vii

List of Tables Table 1

Table 2

Population and ethnic groups in Trinidad and Tobago (Source: 1990 Census: Trinidad and Tobago Statistical Office) Ethnic allocations in the public service – 1990 (Source: 1990 Central Statistical Office, 1990)

viii

179 187

Notes on the Contributors Rohit Barot is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Bristol. His principal research interest is in the formation of caste and sectarian communities and their particular ideologies as such communities undergo migration and social change. Other research interests include racism, nationalism, caste, family and work, gender, intergenerational relations, religion and identity. His recent major publications include The Racism Problematic: Contemporary Sociological Debates on Race and Ethnicity (1996); and Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change (1999, edited with Harriet Bradley and Steve Fenton). Email: [email protected] Steve Fenton is Professor of Sociology in the Sociology Department, University of Bristol, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Citizenship, University of Bristol. He has mostly researched and published on the topics of ethnicity, ethnic groups and racism. His most recent books include Ethnicity: Racism, Class and Culture (1999) and Ethnicity (2002). He has also co-edited Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change (2000, with Rohit Barot and Harriet Bradley) and Ethnicity and Economy (2002, with Harriet Bradley). Email: [email protected] Will Guy is Lecturer in the Sociology Department, University of Bristol. His research interests are in two main areas: nationalism and Central and Eastern Europe, and Roma (Gypsy) minorities both in Europe and in the UK. His particular interest in Roma is linked to a wide concern with the problems facing national minorities, in the national question under socialism, and in current political, economic and social transition in Eastern and Central Europe. He has edited a substantial survey of the contemporary situation of Roma, Between Past and Future: the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe (2001). Email: [email protected] Vernon Hewitt is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, University of Bristol. His general research interests are in the politics of ethnicity and nationalism in South Asia, and in the politics of development. His interests are South Asian regional politics, Kashmir, Hindu revivalism in India and the early politics of the Jan Sangh. Major recent publications include The New International Politics of South Asia (1997) and Towards the Future: Jammu and Kashmir in the 21st Century (2001). Email: [email protected] Kntayya Mariappan is Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Distance Learning, Universiti Sains (University Science), Malaysia in Penang, Malaysia. His general research interests are in the areas of ‘race’, ix

x Notes on the Contributors

ethnicity, and ethnic nationalism. His research interests are in questions of national culture, mixed marriages, and ethnic preferences in Malaysia. Email: [email protected] Stephen May is Foundation Professor and Chair of Language and Literacy Education in the School of Education, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, University of Bristol. He has written widely on ethnicity, nationalism and multiculturalism, with a particular focus on their implications for language and education. His recent major publications include Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education (editor, 1999); Indigenous Community-Based Education (editor, 1999) and Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language (2001). He is a founding editor of the international and interdisciplinary journal, Ethnicities. Email: [email protected] Ralph R. Premdas is Professor of Public Policy at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. He holds PhDs in Political Science (Illinois 1970) and Comparative Religion (McGill 1991). He has taught formerly at the University of Toronto, University of Papua New Guinea, and the University of California at Berkeley. His research focuses upon comparative ethnic politics, multiculturalism and migration. His recent major publications include Identity, Ethnicity and Culture in the Caribbean (2000) and Ethnic Conflict and Development: the Case of Guyana (1997). Email: [email protected] Judith Squires is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, University of Bristol. She has written widely on democratic theory and citizenship, and has been a prominent contributor to gender theory, particularly with respect to women and politics and gender and international relations. Major recent publications include Feminism: a Reader (editor, 1997) and Gender in Political Theory (1999). From 1991 to 1997 she was editor of New Formations. She is currently an Associate Editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Email: [email protected] Colin H. Williams is Research Professor in the Department of Welsh, Cardiff University, and in 2002 was also a Visiting Fellow at Jesus College and Mansfield College, and the School of Geography, Oxford University. He has written widely in the fields of geolinguistics and nationalism, and has particular research interests in language policy in Europe and North America, ethnic and minority relations, bilingual education in Wales, and Celtic Studies. Major recent publications include Called Unto Liberty: On Language and Nationalism (1994) and Language Revitalization: Policy and Planning in Wales (editor, 2000). Email: [email protected]

Notes on the Contributors xi

John Zavos is Lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester. His research interests include religion and politics in South Asia, with a particular emphasis on Hindu nationalism in its variant forms. He is the author of Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (2000). Email: [email protected]

1 Ethnicity, Nation and ‘Race’: Connections and Disjunctures Steve Fenton and Stephen May

Ethnicity, nationalism and racism are of increasing interest, and concern, to sociologists and political theorists alike. While the study of racism has perhaps had the longest, or at least the most consistent, academic history, the study of ethnicity, with its origins in anthropology, and the study of nationalism, have also established themselves in recent years as important fields of academic enquiry. Certainly, the burgeoning literature on these topics within both sociology and politics would suggest as much. But, as with many other academic fields, this also creates its own tensions. One has to do with the usual hermetic nature of academic boundaries, which results in different disciplinary traditions often ‘talking past each other’ on topics of mutual interest rather than talking to each other about them. A second has to do with the establishment of normative, commonsense definitions of key concepts, which may well vary across disciplinary boundaries, along with an increasing proliferation and blurring of such concepts over time. The latter is certainly evident in any attempt to differentiate clearly between the three concepts of ethnic group (or ‘ethnie’, following Smith, 1986, 1991),1 nation, and ‘race’ which centrally concern us here. Take the criterion of size, or numbers, for example. It is often assumed at a commonsense level that nations are simply larger versions of ethnic groups, but this is clearly not the case, or at least not in all contexts. If we regard the Han Chinese in China as an ethnic group, albeit admittedly clearly the majority one in that national context, then we are speaking of a population of more than 1040 million people (see Banton, 1999). And yet, we can also find nations represented within (and by) nation-states – for example, Barbados (pop. 255 000) and Slovenia (pop. 1 940 000), or indeed Tuvalu (11 000) – which are much smaller groups in number, and even political power, than Han Chinese. And what of those groups that are commonly regarded as nations but are currently not represented by a sovereign state system? These would include Scotland and Catalonia, both of which have populations considerably larger than Barbados or Slovenia. Similarly, groups such as Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa 1

2 Ethnonational Identities

who may once have been described as tribes within Nigeria, and subsequently as ethnic groups, could equally be referred to as nations in a multinational Nigeria, the postcolonial boundaries of which state reflect the exigencies of colonial rule. Despite the commonsense association of nation with larger and ethnic with smaller, size and scale are clearly not very reliable guides to the distinction between a nation and an ethnic group. The concepts of ancestry and culture equally do not help us to distinguish nation and ethnic group. The assertions of ethnic identity and of national identity are both intimately linked to beliefs in shared ancestry and ideas of common culture. And the claims about ancestry and culture may in both cases be as much a matter of fiction and myth as a matter of fact. Just as a group referred to as a nation may make a claim to shared ancestry which is more or less fictitious – how much are ‘British people’ or ‘English people’ really a descent group? – so may the same question be asked of groups commonly described as ‘ethnic’ (cf. Roosens, 1989; Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983). The supposition of a historically shared ‘common culture’ in an ethnic group is open to question just as it is in the case of a nation. If we include the idea of ‘race’ here as well, we can see that all three terms are popularly, and sometimes in academic discourse, understood as ‘descent and culture communities’. By this we mean groups and populations which are, at least in part, distinctive because they see themselves, or are seen by others, as sharing ancestry and cultural heritage in ways that distinguish them from other groups (cf. Barth, 1969). The emphasis on ‘seeing themselves’ or ‘being seen by others’ is not because the claim or portrayal is always misleading. Peoples actually can and do share ancestry, belief and custom, and the claim to ethnic identity may broadly reflect this. At the same time the claim to this sense of ‘sharedness’ is at least as important as the foundations for the claim. The inclusion of ‘race’ in this triad is especially true in the United States. There the popular and academic discourses of ‘race’ have persisted more powerfully than almost anywhere else. ‘Race’, despite its widely acknowledged scientific falsity (there are no such things as ‘races’), continues to be regarded as an ontological category in the US, primarily because of the ongoing salience of the historical relationship between white and African Americans (cf. Gilroy, 2000). Consequently, ‘races’, like ethnic groups and nations, are also seen as culture and descent communities in the US context.2 We should keep in mind in discussing these various discourses of ‘race’, ethnicity and nation that we are looking at just that – discourses. These discourses are made up of classificatory systems, representations and symbolic elements. All three hinge upon difference: we know we are black and not white, we know we are British and not French, we know we are Hutu and not Tutsi. They are relational classificatory systems (Eriksen, 1993; Jenkins, 1997). But the sociology of all this rests not just in tracing out the

Steve Fenton and Stephen May 3

discourse, but in understanding the contexts of social action, social movement and social change within which these classificatory systems are worked out. This is the special contribution of writers like Etienne Balibar (1991), John Rex (1991), Michel Wieviorka (1995), among others, who constantly seek to situate ‘race, nation, ethnicity’ in a broader sociological and material context. They are, in effect, asking the question ‘what is going on here?’ And ‘what is going on’ is clearly not just a series of discourses. It is also a Durkheimian ‘social fact’ (cf. Fenton, 1984), and one with very real consequences. It is thus perhaps not surprising that sociologists and others struggle hard to make and sustain distinctions between all these three ideas, and there are undoubtedly points of departure at the margins. But the most striking thing is not the departures but the shared terrain around ancestry, claims of family-like membership or belonging, and a sense of identity which may be expressed through custom and culture, language and religion. Remarkably, a recent volume on racism declared that ‘Ethnicity is a somewhat different though related concept to that of race and racism and we are not concerned with ethnicity as such’ (Bulmer and Solomos, 1999: 4; our emphasis). On the contrary, we suggest that the time has arrived when work on any of these three discursive areas cannot fail to deal with all three. Just two illustrations may be given to demonstrate this point. First it is clear that one of the biggest strides in the sociology of racism has come with the recognition that racialisation is closely bound up with the creation and sustaining of national identities rather than with narrower ideas about ‘race’ per se. This has been most clearly articulated in recent discussions of ‘new racisms’ (see, for example, Wetherell and Potter, 1992; Rattansi and Westwood, 1994; Small, 1994). Second, in the US and in Britain, the most evident movement in recent years is not the distinction between ‘race’ and ethnicity but the convergence of both discourses. In Britain this has involved politicising the concept of ethnicity (see Hall, 1992a and b; Cohen, 1999; Rattansi, 1999) and detaching it from an earlier association with anthropology. In the US it has come via an acknowledgement of the need for a greater diversity and flexibility in ideas of ethnic and racial difference (Hollinger, 1995; Song, 2001).

Ethnie, nation and state So far we have indicated the shared meaning rather than any clear markers between the triad of ethnie-nation-race. In a social constructionist methodology they are all discourses within which people lay claim to commonality or ‘identity’. There is one way to turn if we wish to make some differentiation between these terms and it is not in the direction of how peoples lay claim to ‘groupness’.3 Rather, it is in the uses, especially the political uses, to which those claims are put.


Returning, for simplicity, to the nation-ethnie pair, the clearest demarcation is that the term ‘nation’ becomes distinctive when it is related to the modern state. For it is the word ‘nation’ which has such a common appearance in the coupling ‘nation-state’; frequently the words are used interchangeably. The international body designed to strive for agreement and common action among states is known as the United Nations when it is clearly a ‘union’ of states. All modernist theories of nationalism situate the emergence, creation or maturity of modern nations within the formation of modern states (see, for example, Gellner, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1990; Anderson, 1991; Breuilly, 1993). One of the central debates within this literature has been about the extent to which nations are the ideological constructions of modern states, as against states being the modern political form assumed by ancient nations; in short, states before nations or nations before states (cf. Hroch, 1985; Smith, 1998)? This apparent closeness of meaning of nation and ethnie (or ethnic group) means that ‘relationship to the state’ becomes a primary mode of distinguishing the two. Theoretically, this is demonstrated by the commonly invoked distinction between ethnicity and nationalism in the academic literature. Anthias and Yuval-Davis provide us with a representative example of this distinction: there is no inherent difference (although sometimes there is a difference in scale) between ethnic and national collectivities. What is specific to the nationalist project and discourse is the claim for a separate political representation for the collectivity. This often – but not always – takes the form of a claim for a separate state. (1992: 25) However, in reality, the distinction drawn here between ethnicity and nationalism is not always so straightforward. As Craig Calhoun observes: The relationship between nationalism and ethnicity is complex… Nationalism, in particular, remains the pre-eminent rhetoric for attempts to demarcate political communities, claim rights of self-determination and legitimate rule by reference to ‘the people’ of the country. Ethnic solidarities and identities are claimed most often when groups do not seek ‘national’ autonomy but rather a recognition internal to or crosscutting national or state boundaries. The possibility of a closer link to nationalism is seldom altogether absent from such ethnic claims, however, and the two sorts of categorical identities are often invoked in similar ways. (1993: 235) Be that as it may, the political imperative of attaining statehood – or at the very least, a greater degree of formal civic recognition – still tends to be the primary objective of putative nations (cf. Kymlicka, 1995). Certainly, in


English language usage, no group which had or claimed to have some descent-language-culture commonality, and sought to gain or to preserve ‘its’ state, would ever describe itself as ‘merely’ an ethnic group. Any elevated political ambition towards statehood would have to be undertaken by people describing themselves as a nation. This in fact is precisely the reason why groups which, inside a larger state, do not have full control of their own territory or public affairs – but who may be suspected of wanting it – are often prevented from describing themselves unequivocally as nations. In decentralised Spain the autonomous areas are described as ‘nationalities’ and ‘regions’, falling short of the plain ‘nations’ (i.e. nacionalidad e regione rather than naciones). Similarly, the United Nations (UN) has dealt with the claims of indigenous peoples – principally, via the (1993) Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – by recognising some right to revive, retain and preserve their cultural distinctiveness. This includes, controversially, legal distinctions and protections for indigenous peoples within the nation-states in which they have been colonised. However, the UN remains wary of bestowing the word ‘nation’ – or its equivalent in legal terms, ‘peoples’ – on indigenous groups. This caution has been amply demonstrated by the subsequent protracted and contested process of ratifying the Draft Declaration through the workings of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) Working Group (see Barsh, 1996; May, 2001, this volume).4 The reason for such concerns, from both established nation-states and supranational bodies, is simple enough. The status of nation carries with it the corollary, or at least possibility of claims to self-determination, claims that would be potentially disruptive to the larger states within which national minorities and indigenous peoples are encapsulated (Clark and Williamson, 1996; Scott, 1996; Thornberry, 1991). With the important exception of explicitly multinational states – the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were such, India, Britain and Spain could be said still to be so – states remain suspicious of constituent populations calling themselves ‘nations’ since it is perceived as a rebuke or threat to the undivided citizenry claiming that title. Conversely, the reasons why ethnies who lack a state of their own will seek to describe themselves as nations are clear enough; these are the accepted grounds for establishing a claim to self-governance, whether this takes the form of a substantial degree of autonomy within a state, or leads down a road to secession and separate statehood. In the wake of Franco’s death and subsequent democratisation in Spain, a highly centralised Spain was replaced by a state which conferred autonomy on its regions, partly as a mark of the end of a Francoist centralised state (Conversi, 1997; Guibernau, 1999). In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the path taken by many constituent republics of the former state was to create new states grouped around historical identities in regions whose populations were almost all multiethnic. They nonetheless either


created the idea of new nations or ‘recovered’ the idea of old nations regaining their proper place – the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania being prime examples (see Brubaker, 1996; Laitin, 1998).

Ethnonations and ethnonationalism Another way of exploring this shared terrain of ethnicity and nation is to examine the compound term which combines them both – ethnonational, or ethnonationalism. Two writers who have made use of this term, albeit in quite different ways, are Walker Connor (1978, 1993) and Thomas Eriksen (1992, 1993, 1998). In Connor’s account of the ‘ethnonational bond’, any distinction between ethnie and nation is very difficult to ascertain. This is because, for Connor, nation becomes the leading term in a way which is true of few other writers; it is a definition which would certainly embrace or, more accurately perhaps, subsume ethnies or ethnic groups: A likely…response to the title of this book [Connor’s Ethnonationalism] is ‘What is it, and how does it differ from just plain nationalism?’ The answer is that there is no difference if nationalism is used in its pristine sense…nation connotes a group of people who believe they are ancestrally related. Nationalism connotes identification with and loyalty to one’s nation as just defined. It does not refer to loyalty to one’s country. (1994: xi) This last reference – to ‘one’s country’ – might seem to allow an exception, that is, where country (read state) and nation exactly coincide, as if one and the other were the same. And yet Connor is also quick to point out that this is very seldom, if ever, the case since all nation-states in the world today comprise more than simply one people group. For example, in 40 per cent of all states there are at least five or more statistically and/or politically significant ethnic groups, while in nearly one-third of all states (31 per cent) the largest national group is not even the majority (Connor, 1993; see also Nielsson, 1985). These groups comprise both national and indigenous minorities (see below) and a wide variety of immigrant groups. The result is that most states are multinational (comprising a number of national minorities) and/or polyethnic (comprising a range of immigrant groups). Indeed, most countries in the world have been historically, and remain today, a combination of the two (Kymlicka, 1995). But setting this empirical reality aside for a moment, even in a perfectly congruent nation-state, ‘nationalism proper’, in Connor’s terms, would still be that component of national affection and allegiance which comprises ‘love of nation’ rather than a broader set of civic/citizenship allegiances within and to the state; the latter of which he distinguishes as ‘patriotism’. In this formulation, ethnonationalism elevates the ‘Kulturnation’ over the


‘Staatsnation’ – what we have is ethnic nationalism at the expense of civic nationalism (cf. Smith, 1998). Connor’s argument here is obviously aimed directly at modernist conceptions of nationalism – such as those of Gellner, Anderson and Hobsbawm – which argue, often vehemently, that Western nations were constructed retrospectively out of the conditions of statehood rather than the other way around. On this basis, the civic nationalisms which are their product are lauded for their inclusiveness and modernity, while the so-called ethnic nationalisms of Eastern Europe, along with contemporary ethnonational movements, are constructed as regressive and reactionary. To some extent, Connor is right to criticise these teleological and rather one-sided accounts of nationalism (see also Hroch, 1985; Greenfeld, 1992; Smith, 1998) but then simply makes the same mistake in the opposite direction. A more fruitful approach, congruent with our own, is to recognise that the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalisms will continue to be important for a conceptual and political understanding of the framing of nationalist ideas. But at the same time we also need to recognise that ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ elements will invariably be combined in most nationalisms (see Jenkins, 1997; Smith, 1998: Brown, 2000; May, 2001). That said, we should also bear in mind that the salience of, and balance between, ethnic and civic dimensions within any given nationalism will inevitably vary. This is true in relation to the historical development of particular nationalist movements over time – as, for example, in the development of Québécois nationalism from its origins as a primarily religious/ethnic movement to its current predominantly civic orientation (see Williams, this volume). It is also true of the factions within nationalist movements themselves, with more moderate elements tending to highlight the civic and more militant elements the ethnocultural – the differences between moderate Basque nationalist politicians and the militant Basque ETA organisation being a case in point. While it is sometimes hard to draw the distinction between ethnies and nations, it is clear that Connor’s own position – highlighting the primacy of ‘people who believe they are ancestrally related’ as the basis of both ‘groupness’ and political action – is a step too far. It does not simply suggest that there is a widely shared terrain of ethnie, nation and ‘race’, it virtually obliterates all distinctions altogether. That this is exactly what Connor is doing becomes evident from his subsequent discussion where he treats almost any claim to group ancestral identity, and the emotional charge which he believes accompanies these identities, as nationalisms. The more enlightening way to proceed is to identify the shared terrain – the marking of difference, the claims of descent, the formation of boundaries of language, culture and religion – and then to contextualise these within the arenas of specific states and specific forms of social and political action. Thomas Eriksen tries to do precisely this.


Much of Eriksen’s work (see 1992, 1993, 1998) has been marked by his insistence on the quite different contexts in which ethnic sentiments and classificatory systems may be found. On this basis, he has developed a typology of ethnicities in which he distinguishes between ‘urban migrants’, ‘plural societies’, ‘indigenous peoples’ and ‘ethnonationalisms’. By this he aims to highlight specific social and historical contexts that create the social space in which particular ethnic identities and a concomitant political discourse may flourish. In practice these identities are intimately linked with historically and regionally specific cases in the modern period (Fenton, 1999). Thus, for example, the United States is the case par-excellence of the society of in-migration and ‘urban migrants’. Those Africans who supplied the labour of the plantations from the seventeenth through to the nineteenth centuries were non-voluntary migrants whose presence in an America dominated by white Europeans was, and still is, understood almost exclusively via a discourse of ‘race’. It was to be the predominantly white European migrants who became the voluntary urban migrants of industrialising America to whom the discourse of ethnicity was subsequently applied (Waters, 1990; Cornell and Hartmann, 1998; Song, 2001). If (voluntary) migrants form ethnic groups, ‘natives’ form nations – as the common etymology of the two words might suggest. Indigenousness (nativity) is a constant theme of nation in most places, an exception being Mauritius where neither of the pre-eminent ethnie can lay claim to indigenousness, since prior to their arrival it had been an uninhabited island (see Eriksen, 1992, 1998). The historical memory linking people with place is a central theme of ethnie and nation. In some states it is particularly contested in the political sphere, Malaysia and Fiji being clear cases of this (Kahn, 1995; Carens, 2000; Mariappan, this volume). But in both popular and sociological imagination it is the ‘natives’ of postcolonial settler societies who represent the classic instances of indigenous peoples. In North and South America and the Pacific, indigenous peoples were all but swept aside by invading colonisers (Stannard, 1989). In the postcolonial regimes, their descendants have mobilised politically around attempts to regain the benefits of their lost lands and to restore the dignity of their broken cultures. The (1993) Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, discussed earlier, is a clear example of this at the supranational level, although significant advances have also been made in recent times at a national level in countries such as Canada, Australia, Norway and Aotearoa/New Zealand (see Kymlicka, 1999; Carens, 2000; Ivison, et al., 2000; Levy, 2000; May, 2001, this volume). By contrast with urban migrants and indigenous peoples, the terrain of the ethnonation is quite different, both in the way Eriksen defines it and via the examples that colour-in the picture. They appear to be of two broad types: 1) postcolonial ethnies, and 2) peoples within European states who


see themselves as nations but who have not been accorded state recognition. Sri Lankan Tamils would be an example of the first, Basque and Québec nationalists (see Williams, this volume) of the second. Both these instances of ethnonations – or, at least, important political factions within them (see below) – do not accept the legitimacy of the larger state within which they have become encapsulated. As Eriksen observes: Proto-nations (ethnonational movements) include Kurds, Sikhs, Palestinians, and Sri Lankan Tamils…. By definition, these groups have political leaders who claim that they are entitled to their own nationstate and should not be ‘ruled by others’. These groups, short of having a nation-state, may be said to have more substantial characteristics in common with nations than with either urban minorities or indigenous peoples. They are always territorially based; they are differentiated according to class (and) may be described as nations without a state. (1993: 14) Ethnonations, in this sense, have also been described as ‘nations without a state’, or variants of the same (‘stateless nations’ ‘smaller nations’), by such writers as Hroch (1985, 1998), Keating (1996, 1997), Conversi (1997), McCrone (1998), and Guibernau (1999). It is clear that few, if any, of these groups would describe themselves as ethnic groups or its equivalent in their languages. This is partly because ethnic groups have come to be associated with ‘minority status’ and ‘outsider [migrant] status’ (see also below), both of which are utterly inconsistent with the primarily political claims that the ethnonations wish to make (cf. Kymlicka, 1995). Their claim, rather, is that of an ethnie, a people with a historical claim to be a descent and culture community lodged in a territory which is ‘home’, but it is of an ethnie which does not accept the legitimacy of the state within which it is enmeshed. Of course we should remember that within such ethnies the cultural and political claims which are being made are highly contested. What we have said above about ethnonational groups is strictly only true of the ‘nationalists’ within them; others may wish to secure and affirm their identity via the state (or other means) and so may not fundamentally challenge the legitimacy of the encapsulating state. Indeed, even within the broad nationalist groupings who favour a realignment of state relations, there are significant differences between the degree to which this should be pursued – ranging from an overtly separatist political approach to one that favours more culturalist (and non-secessionist) emphases – and the means – ranging from democratic reforms to violent terrorist actions. Not all Basque nationalists support the separatist terrorist ETA organisation, and not all Northern Irish Catholics support Sinn Fein, let alone the IRA.


Delineating ethnies and nations What has preceded has cleared some of the ground for exploration of the substantive questions in the field of ethnie and nation. We have not departed greatly from some established framings of our subject. But we have accentuated what appears to us to be a growing tendency – that is, a tendency either to struggle unsuccessfully to make sustainable distinctions, or to admit that frequently the distinctions cannot be sustained. Our strategy has been to ‘stretch out’ the latter choice. Having reduced the risk of falling prey to ‘mere’ difficulties of language (i.e. ‘What is a nation? What is an ethnic group?’), we should now turn to the rather more demanding task of framing an understanding of ethnie and nation in the contemporary world. We will do this by examining a series of problematics. The first of these is the problematic of majority ethnicities. Majority ethnicities The association of ethnic group with minority status is not a necessary one. That is to say, it is not bound into the original meaning of the term, deriving as it does from a Greek term for ‘people’ or ‘tribe’. But in its earliest recorded uses in English it quickly came to acquire a meaning of foreign, alien and non-Christian as applied within a Christian culture. Indeed, the equivalent term for ethnos in English – ‘ethnic’ – was increasingly used from the mid-fourteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century as a means for describing someone as heathen or pagan (Williams, 1976).5 This etymological association was an obvious precursor to the pejorative construction of ethnic groups that we often still see today in relation to modern nationstates, where the identification of ethnicity as a salient feature of identity tends to remain collocated with both ‘minority’ and ‘outsider’ status (Chapman, et al., 1989; May, 2001). Thus, in Britain, peoples of Chinese or Indian descent and family origin are still regularly termed ‘ethnic minorities’, despite originating from the two overwhelmingly largest nations on earth (see Barot, this volume). But if we bring to mind the relational dimension of ethnicity, then minority status must necessarily be situated in relation to majority status. Ironically, the latter is often not so recognised by majority group members who, because of the strong association of ethnicity with minority, assume that ethnicity is a feature of identity that has little or no salience for them. All the more reason, it would seem, to explicate more precisely the notion of ‘majority ethnic group’. We can begin by acknowledging that all groups – both minority and majority ones – incorporate an ethnic dimension and the failure of the latter to recognise or acknowledge this has more to do with differential power relations between groups than with anything else. Ethnic majority status is an unaccustomed thought simply because the majority tends to assume, without much reflection, the normalised and


normative status of their identity, and its (unquestioned) place of preeminence. In other words, majority group members, being neither ‘ethnic’ nor a ‘minority’, simply represent modernity, or the modern (civilised) way of life. By extension, this tacit ethnic status almost certainly includes the equating of an ethnic majority with a (or even, the) nation. An ‘ethnicity’ in this context incorporates a loose sense of shared ancestry, and some leading features of language and culture. So in the case of England, a region in the multinational state of Britain, two habits of thought have been observed. One is to assume that English and British are the same thing. This assumption of identity is so powerful that it has certainly been exported: Americans commonly say England when they ‘mean’ Britain, and in many continental languages – Portuguese would be a clear example – the word for English supplants the word for British. This process of elision has also characterised much academic discourse. So-called ‘British’ histories were, until relatively recently, largely the histories of England and the English; the so called ‘Celtic’ nations of Scotland, Wales and Ireland were largely ignored, or where they were directly addressed, were largely problematised (Kearney, 1989; Colley, 1992). Likewise, as David McCrone observes of the early development of British sociology: British sociology simply accepted that ‘society’ was coterminous with the British state, unitary and highly centralised, driven by social change in the political and cultural heartland of southern Britain [i.e., England]. If there was a particular sociology of the ‘periphery’ – in Wales, Ireland and Scotland – it had to do with analysing a ‘traditional’, pre-capitalist way of life. It was judged to be the task of the sociologist of these parts merely to chart its decline and ultimate incorporation into ‘modern’ society, or so it seemed. (1992: 5) This, of course, simply reminds the Welsh, Scots and other non-English peoples living in Britain that they continue to live in a multinational state dominated by the English (Connor, 1993; Crick, 1989, 1995; Miles, 1996). But it is further problematised by a second set of assumptions, about what it is to be English. The less contested, the more tacit, this identificatory category has been – or, more accurately, has been seen to be – the more it was an assumption that ‘the English’ were delimited as white, broadly Christian, and whatever was and is meant by ‘Anglo Saxon’ (perhaps it simply meant ‘not Celtic’). Thus, as in many other modern nation-state contexts, the English-British continue to have difficulty in according to members of so-called ‘new’ or ‘visible minorities’ – migrants or ethnic minority groups in common parlance – the mantle of ‘co-national’, irrespective of whether such migrants may have already gained full citizenship and/or whether, as second- or third-generation migrants perhaps, they were actually also born in Britain (cf. Gilroy, 1987; Goulbourne, 1991; Cohen, 1999).


What is most interesting for our purposes here is that the question of ‘majority ethnicity’ and its equation with nation has come to the surface in Britain-England just as national identity has been publicly contested or debated in new ways (see, for example, Parekh Report, 2000). The reasons for this are several: the loss of empire as a primary association of Britishness, the conflict over British affiliation in Northern Ireland, the growth in numbers of ‘visible minorities’, the decline of the monarchy, the membership of the European Union, and the reassertion of Wales and Scotland in a devolved assembly and parliament. England, of course, is not Britain, and never has been. But in current conditions it looks more and more like one of several ‘regions’, and Englishness is asserted by nationalists in an increasingly aggressive and exclusivist way. In this way the question of making the distinction between ‘majority ethnicity’ and ‘nation’ comes on to the agenda with new vigour and with a clarity not hitherto seen. It would be simple to say that majority ethnicity is disclosed (or exposed) when its equation with nation is contested by minorities. These few comments about Britain-England suggest that a wider context of contestation of national identity contributes to this disclosure and it is certainly the case that states which have, in the past, prided themselves on their supposed ethnic homogeneity – most often, it must be said, so-called developed Western states like Britain – are increasingly having to address the multiethnicity within their borders that they have traditionally denied. The situation is perhaps somewhat different in those states where the presence of multiethnicity is inescapably self-evident; a feature most apparent, but not limited to so-called ‘non-Western’ and/or postcolonial states. India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria and Brazil would be good examples of multiethnic, multireligious and multilingual states. They are all now, or have been until recently, among the world’s poorer countries, and together they form a sizeable proportion of the world’s population. Brazil achieved independence from Portugal in the early nineteenth century; the others are relatively recently independent of British or Dutch colonial rule. Brazil’s multiethnicity derives from its native peoples who have shrunk to a tiny proportion of the whole; from the descendants of Africans brought as slaves; from Portuguese and other European white settlers; and from an inestimable number of people who are the children of interethnic unions. Malaysia, Indonesia and Nigeria are all states the existence of which in their present boundaries owes much to the colonial presence and the politics of the immediate independence period. India of course is also multiethnic and multilingual, but its principal divide at independence was along the lines of faith – Muslim and Hindu – with Pakistan becoming almost wholly Muslim, and India predominantly Hindu with significant Muslim, Sikh and other minorities (see Hewitt, this volume; Zavos, this volume). We cannot speak in a generalising way about all these multiethnic examples for they all have their peculiarities of history and context. Indonesia


and India, as respectively Muslim and Hindu, are both states where a single religious faith predominates, but both with important – and sometimes illtreated – religious minorities. Brazil is probably the country where the highest percentage speak the majority language, Portuguese, which is also of course the ex-colonial language. This process of adopting the colonial language as lingua franca has been followed by many other postcolonial states, not only in relation to Portuguese (as in Mozambique, for example; see Stroud, 1999), but, of course, English and French as well. However, this is not always the case. Tanzania has deliberately adopted Swahili, a regional majority African language, as the common language of public communication (Blommaert, 1999; Madumulla et al., 1999), while in Malaysia a Malayoriented government has set out to establish Malay as the common language of Malaysia. In Malaysia the Malays are approximately 55 per cent of the population and in politics and cultural affairs have a place of preeminence. But such is the size of the Chinese and other minorities that it is not really possible to equate Malays as a majority ethnicity with Malaysians as constituting the nation. Malays undoubtedly have a place as primi inter pares but Malaysia also asserts its identity, in official statements about itself, as a nation which incorporates and respects multiethnicity and multiculturalism, albeit not unproblematically (Pennycook, 1994; Kahn, 1995; Fenton, 1999; Mariappan, this volume). Suffice it to say that context plays a significant part in the historical patterns and current and future trajectories of such states, in relation to questions of ethnic and national identities, and the ways in which these come to be expressed. As such, any academic analysis of these issues must recognise the importance of context, and balance the particular features of a local context against the benefits of applying wider comparative concepts. On relating to the state Ethnie and ‘race’ differ in the ways in which they are discursively constructed; in many, if not all other respects, ethnic groups and racialised groups are similar if not indeed the same – as we saw from the fact that the discourses of ethnicity and race have been changing and interchangeable modes of classifying the same kinds of communities. The difference between both of these and nation lies not in some inherent or essential quality but in the kind of relationship they have, or claim to have to the state. 6 A nation lays claim to a state just as a state seeks to render its citizens as a nation. Prior to the global sweep of the nationstate, itself the recent product of the nationalism of the last few centuries, imperial systems were far more overtly multinational and/or multiethnic. Indeed, as modernist theorists of nationalism such as Gellner (1983) have argued, prior to the age of nationalism, political forms of organisation required neither the demarcation of clear territorial boundaries nor the fostering of internal integration and homogeneity.


Feudal elites, for example, controlled wide territories but exercised little centralised control. Empires, larger in scale again, demanded political loyalty (and taxes) from their diverse people groups but made little, if any demands for cultural and linguistic homogeneity, the principal feature of modern nation-state organisation. The boundaries of successor states, which although still subject to change are what we have largely come to be familiar with in the modern world, were established by war, compromise, and by secret political deals, rather than by due regard for any coincidence of place and ethnie. They were (and remain) principally distinguished by their quest for homogeneity, a product in turn, as we have already suggested, of the imperative of political nationalism. Even the two most prominent modern multinational states, the USSR and Yugoslavia, have now dissolved into over twenty successor states. In each of these, people face the question of whether they are to construct ‘nations’ out of multiethnicity by emphasising that citizenship is neither ancestrally defined nor requires exclusive adherence to a particular faith or language, or whether they are to build nationhood out of an ideology of an ancestral or culture community. Weak states are prey to ethnic and national ideologies, hence the apparent fiery adherence to ethnic identities in the former Soviet Union and even more so in the break-up of Yugoslavia, as a consequence of and in the wake of Serbian nationalism. This is a reminder that both the idea and the substance of place is never far removed from the idea and substance of ethnie, ‘race’ and nation. Nations commonly define themselves not only by ancestry and culture but also by homeland; the place, its sacred territories, the blood shed into its soil in defence of the land, and the monuments which commemorate these historic or mythic events frequently feature highly in the idea of nation. If nations are people who see themselves as those already ‘in place’, ethnic minorities are people who may be seen, however begrudgingly, as being in situ, but who still remain, by the exclusivist definitions of nation so often applied, invariably ‘out of place’. At the same time that there is an ideal construction of nation around imagined landscapes, there is a real construction of states inside physical boundaries which are almost literally lines drawn on the earth. One of the first tasks of the newly proclaimed Slovenian state, for example, when it was established in 1991, was to erect new border posts, change the flags and some of the personnel, and put border posts where none had been before – between Slovenia and Croatia as against between Slovenia/ Yugoslavia and Austria. This changing of boundaries cannot be regular and frequent, at least not without the almost permanent threat of war. The only way, therefore, to establish new nations and regulate old ones is to foster an acceptance of both multinationality (where this is applicable) and multiethnicity (where it is now almost always applicable) within the allembracing nation-state.


Outline It is the various challenges that the triad of ethnie, ‘race’ and nation pose to the modern organisation of nation-states, and their social, cultural and political implications, with which this volume is centrally concerned. The importance of context in mediating the genesis, articulation and ongoing development of ethnie, ‘race’ and nation, and their associated rights’ claims, is also a prominent feature in what follows. Chapters 2 to 4 explore the contexts and claims of particular ethnonational groups which claim greater social, political and economic recognition from the states in which they live. Colin Williams examines the particularities of French Canadian and Québécois nationalist claims, and the central role of, first, religion, and subsequently language as the expression and focus of such claims. In so doing, he also directly addresses the ethnonational and civic nationalism dialectic as it has come to be expressed in the Québec and wider Canadian contexts. Will Guy discusses the Roma (Gypsies) throughout Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the state of Czechoslovakia which preceded them. He highlights how Roma claims to nationhood, or even simply for greater civic recognition, have been consistently denied them. The result has been their social, political and economic marginalisation, allied with an almost uniformly pejorative construction of their identity by majority ethnicities, and extensive discrimination towards them. Romani political mobilisation as an ongoing response to this historical and contemporary pattern of discrimination and disadvantage is highlighted by Guy, both within the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and also more recently at the supranational level, via the Romani Congress. Stephen May pursues similar themes in relation to the historical and contemporary circumstances of indigenous peoples. He highlights their consistent marginalisation, derogation, and at times evisceration, as a result of the processes of European colonialism, as well as the recent attempts by a range of indigenous groups, at both national and supranational levels, to address and redress the historical, and ongoing injustices associated with colonialism. His discussion encompasses a wide variety of national contexts, as well as supranational developments at the level of the UN, and related developments in international law. However, by way of example, he also discusses at some length the particular context of indigenous rights’ claims by M¯aori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Chapters 5 to 7 focus in particular on South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. John Zavos provides us with a historical account of the development of Hindu nationalism as a political movement, and its complex relationship with Hindu communalism. His discussion is located primarily in the period of the British Rule of India, since, as he argues, Hindu nationalism’s genesis and development in the early twentieth century is


inextricably linked to its use as a political alternative to the Britishdominated Indian state. Vernon Hewitt charts the complex context of, and contest over the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir. His wide-ranging discussion encompasses the contrasting and competing political (state) claims to Kashmir of India and Pakistan, the central roles of ethnicity and religion in relation to these claims, and the distinctive nationalist movements that have emerged over time as a result. Rohit Barot’s chapter also explores questions and controversies around competing nationalisms within India, but relocates these to the Indian diaspora currently living in Britain. Directly addressing issues of diaspora and transnationalism, he explores the effects of political conflict in the Indian subcontinent, particularly in relation to the Hindu/Sikh conflict in the Punjab, on British-based Indian communities. Chapters 8 and 9 examine two different multiethnic, postcolonial political contexts – or so-called ‘plural societies’. Ralph Premdas focuses on the historical and ongoing interethnic/intercommunal competition between Indians and Africans in Trinidad and Tobago, at all levels of public life. Kntayya Mariappan, likewise, examines the competing interethnic claims within Malaysia where the social, religious and political (but not the economic) domains are dominated by Malays and by Malay nationalism. Both chapters highlight the complex and at times contradictory articulation of interethnic competition at different levels – from the ethnolocal to the trans-Caribbean in Premdas’s analysis, and in relation to micro, meso and macro levels of ethnic identification in the discussion by Mariappan. In Chapter 10, Judith Squires discusses the consequences of ethnic and ethnonational claims for notions of citizenship as these have come to be developed within political theory itself. She explores how political theory has sought to accommodate (and, at times, reject) the notion of groupdifferentiated rights underpinning most, if not all ethnic and ethnonational claims. She places particular emphasis on the universalism/ particularism dualism and the ongoing tension between the institutional recognition of group-based identities, which inevitably requires some degree of fixity, and the usually far more fluid, heterogeneous and contested identities ‘on the ground’. In so doing, she also provides us with both a useful counterpoint to, and potential dialectic with the more sociological arguments presented in this current chapter.

Notes 1. For Smith, ethnies are said to comprise: • a collective proper name • a myth of common ancestry • shared historical memories • one or more differentiating elements of common culture


2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

• an association with a specific homeland • a sense of solidarity. There is a sense in which ‘race’ is commensurate with neither ethnic group nor nation. This is if one is to take seriously the idea of race as a physical type in an anthropology of the human species. Then of course ‘race’ has a biological or physical anthropological referent. But whilst in the scientific and ideological imagination of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, this ‘race’ abstraction (Negroes, Caucasians, Asiatics and so on) was frequently advanced, sociologically it was relevant to actual people in actual places in specific social circumstances – e.g. Africans, in the American South, and as slaves. Thus African Americans were a historically and socially specific racialised group even if in the ideological imagination they were an instance of the abstraction, the ‘Negro race’. The claim to groupness – or the imposing of designations of groupness – are now frequently expressed in an academic discourse of ethnicity. The discourse of ‘race and racism’ persists, but, as a discourse disconnected from ethnicity it has either a) a purely historical sense or b) reflects the persistence of a ‘race’ discourse in the United States. This is notable in Bulmer and Solomos’ (1999) volume, where the majority of selected readings are either historical, North American, or by authors who have now combined a discourse of ‘race’ with a discourse of ‘ethnicity, culture’ (e.g. Cornell, Castles, Rex, Goldberg). The brief of the UNCHR Working Group is to agree a final (and, by definition, politically acceptable) version of the (1993) Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The first session of the UNCHR Working Group was convened in November 1995 to review the Draft Declaration. Unlike that document, which had been the result of a decade-long dialogue between indigenous peoples and the UN, the UNCHR Working Group is dominated by the interests of states. As a result, many indigenous groups involved in the formulation of the Draft Declaration were excluded while, at least theoretically, any state could veto an objectionable element of the draft under review. In this latter respect, state representatives on the UNCHR did endorse the Draft Declaration as a ‘sound basis’ for future drafting. However, subsequent proceedings saw many substantive objections raised by states about specific principles outlined in the Draft Declaration. Indeed, some states, notably Japan and the US, contended that the text as a whole was ‘not a reasonable evolution of human rights law’ (Barsh, 1996: 788). Suffice it to say that these objections mean that the ratification process remains ongoing at the time of writing, some seven years on from its inception. As Fishman (1997) observes, this largely negative semantic association derives from the Biblical Hebrew distinction between goy and ‘am, the former denoting an ungodly people and the latter a godly people. In the third-century Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint) the Greek word ‘ethnos’ was used for ‘goy’, hence its subsequent association with heathenism. This is not to imply that the state is the only arbiter of ethnic/national relations – supranational organisations also play a part. Thus, indigenous peoples have in recent years pressed their claims for greater self-determination and for reparation directly to supranational bodies such as the UN, precisely because the states in which they are subsumed have historically ignored and/or denied their claims (see Feldman, 2001; May, this volume). Having said that, it is also clear that, despite the twin pressures of globalisation and localisation, and related assertions that the demise of the nation-state is imminent (cf. Soysal, 1994; Held, 1995), (nation)-states still remain, incontrovertibly, the principal institutional actors in the world today, and look likely to for some time to come.


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20 Ethnonational Identities Madumulla, J., Bertoncini, E. and Blommaert, J. (1999). Politics, ideology and poetic form: the literary debate in Tanzania, in J. Blommaert (ed.) Language Ideological Debates (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), pp. 307–42. May, S. (2001) Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language (London: Longman). McCrone, D. (1992) Understanding Scotland: the Sociology of a Stateless Nation (London: Routledge). —— (1998) The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow’s Ancestors (London: Routledge). Miles, R. (1996) Racism and nationalism in the United Kingdom: a view from the periphery, in R. Barot (ed.) The Racism Problematic: Contemporary Sociological Debates on Race and Ethnicity (Lampeter, Wales: Edward Mellen Press), pp. 231–55. Nielsson, G. (1985) States and ‘nation-groups’: a global taxonomy, in E. Tiryakian and R. Rugowski (eds) New Nationalisms of the Developed West: Towards Explanations (Boston, MA: Allen and Unwin), pp. 27–56. Parekh Report (2000) The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (London: Profile). Pennycook, A. (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman). Rattansi, A. (1999) Racism, ‘postmodernism’ and reflexive multiculturalism, in S. May (ed.) Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education (London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer), pp. 77–112. —— and Westwood, S. (eds) (1994) Racism, Modernity and Identity: On the Western Front (Cambridge: Polity Press). Rex, J. (1991) Ethnic Identity and Ethnic Mobilisation in Britain (Coventry, England: Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick). Roosens, E. (1989) Creating Ethnicity: the Process of Ethnogenesis (London: Sage). Scott, C. (1996) Indigenous self-determination and decolonization of the international imagination: a plea, Human Rights Quarterly 18, 814–20. Small, S. (1994) Racialised Barriers: the Black Experience in the United States and England in the 1980s (London: Routledge). Smith, A. (1986) The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). —— (1991) National Identity (London: Penguin). —— (1998) Nationalism and Modernism (London: Routledge). Song, M. (2001) Comparing minority ethnic options: do Asian Americans possess ‘more’ ethnic options than African Americans?, Ethnicities 1, 57–82. Soysal, Y. (1994) Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Post-National Membership in Europe (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Stannard, D. (1989) Before the Horror (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). Stroud, C. (1999) Portuguese as ideology and politics in Mozambique: semiotic (re)constructions of a postcolony, in J. Blommaert (ed.) Language Ideological Debates (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), pp. 343–80. Thornberry, P. (1991) International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Waters, M. (1990) Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Wetherell, M. and Potter, J. (1992) Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf). Wieviorka, M. (1995) The Arena of Racism (London: Sage). Williams, R. (1976) Keywords (London: Flamingo).

2 Recognition and National Justice for Québec: a Canadian Conundrum Colin H. Williams

This chapter examines the tension between the exclusive claims of Canadian statehood and national consciousness and the competing, not to say, resounding Québécois claim to national status as a distinct society. How the Canadian federal and provincial systems deal with Québec’s struggle for national survival and recognition exemplifies the modern state’s difficulties in handling the existence of separate ‘peoples’ within the boundaries of a single political construct. Even in federations, nation-state congruence runs deep. Thus the fundamental question to consider is whether Canada is one nation or two? A second is whether Canada should be governed as a multinational as well as a multicultural polity? Colonial rivalry between Britain and France from the seventeenth century onwards has shaped the question of nationality and statehood in Canada. Following the defeat of the French colonists in 1760 and the cessation of New France in 1763, Great Britain sought to govern the territory as an integral element of its North American realm. The principal instrument of British control during this time was the Québec Act of 1774 which extended British control via Québec west to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. British settlement was augmented by the northward flow of displaced Loyalists following the American War of Independence in 1776. As a result, in 1791 the territory was divided into English-speaking Upper Canada, and predominantly French-speaking Lower Canada. Persistent pressures for French self-government culminated in the 1837–38 Rebellion. In his famous report of 1839, Lord Durham recommended the political fusion of the two Canadas, which was initiated under the Union Act in 1841. As the provinces of Ontario and Québec respectively, they formed the federal Dominion of Canada in 1867, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. After Confederation, rapid expansion westward across the continent resulted in British Columbia joining the Dominion in 1871. By 1905 four more provinces were added and in 1949 Newfoundland voted to become the tenth province. There are also two established territories, the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories administered by the federal 21


government (Williams, 1990), and a third, Nunavut, which is beginning its existence as a self-governing territory for Inuit. This chapter focuses on how ethnic mobilisation and language-related issues have shaped the construction of Québec’s identity. In keeping with the general thrust of this volume, objectivist conceptions of ethnicity need to be tempered by critical analyses of more subjectivist and politically construed bases of identity. As the editors make clear, the cultural markers of ethnicity are constantly being created, neglected, shaped and reshaped as the exigencies of ethnic mobilisation demand. It is relatively rare for the contours of ethnicity and group identity to be either congruent or firmly demarcated within the political landscape (Williams, 1989). The struggle for hegemonic control and autarchy is a permanent feature of the relationship not only between Canada and Québec but also between proponents and opponents of increased autonomy within Québec itself. Consequently Québec may be viewed as a supreme example where government policy has influenced the power relationship between constituent groups at a variety of levels and contexts. The axiomatic consideration is whether Canada and Québec should be conjoined indefinitely within one liberal democratic structure? What distinguishes a separate but non-independent Québec within a plural Canadian state? Is it the legal organisation of civil society, the Québec Civil Code, which is the successor to the old seigneurial laws, as it draws upon the Code Napoleon? Is it a set of distinctive secular and provincial institutions built up largely over the last two generations to displace all those nurtured by the soil of pre-conquest New France? Is it a language and a culture associated with a particular territorial realm? Is it a new invention of an inclusive, modernised Québec giving a logic to all non-francophones who wish to be regarded as Québécois? How widespread is a genuine commitment to social inclusion, given that a powerful strand of Québécois thought insists on the primacy of ethnolinguistic distinctiveness as the defining characteristics of its distinct society? Recent evidence suggests that leaders are conscious of the dangers of overplaying the nationalist card as this suggests that non-francophone or non-Québécois-born residents are inherently less central to the well-being of civic society. Successive British governments since the Durham Report of 1839 have sought to anglicise Canada. Political agreement and guarantees given for the preservation of Québec’s language, its religion and civil code, were brought in during the 1850s, under an anglo Attorney General, Drummond. (By contrast the criminal code is British in origin and applies to all of Canada). Nevertheless, generation after generation of francophone Canadians have protested that the post-Confederation ‘two nations’ theory of state building has been grievously neglected by the dominant political elite. Evidence of neglect can be found in the erosion of the salience of dual-nation guarantees which were established as policy by a Royal

Colin H. Williams 23

Proclamation in 1763 and legislated as early as the Québec Act of 1774 (in respect of religious, judicial and seigneurial structures). Despite early institutionalisation, such as the recognition of French in 1792 as an official language of the assembly, the autonomous French character of the territory has been under threat, and frequently characterised as precipitating a national (Canadian) crisis. Since Confederation, Québec has consistently maintained its provincial autonomy within which the ethnically segmented character of society has been preserved. Nationalism has long been a dominant feature of Québécois life, expressing itself in a diversity of issues and agencies for the protection of institutional distinctiveness within the Canadian state. What disturbed this arrangement and mobilised separatist support in the postwar period was provincial modernisation, its chief characteristic being an attack on the domination of the Catholic Church in education, health and welfare services and in Québec society more generally. The new nationalism of the 1960–1970s was rooted in a radically different conception of politics which favoured rapid social and economic development as the key to Québécois prosperity and influence. Whereas the old nationalism had accepted Québec’s role within the Canadian Confederation (by and large), the new nationalism questioned the very basis of Confederation and pushed for a recognition of French Canada’s uniqueness as a co-founding nation and heartland of a distinctive francophone cultural system. It argued that Québec should not be considered as merely one of ten co-equal Canadian provinces, but rather as a nation which affirmed its identity through development and participation and was recognised by others as a ‘distinct society’.

Standing fast on the rampart of liberty A central preoccupation of post-Conquest French Canada has been the defence of the right to reproduce its own norms and traditions in an overwhelmingly Anglo-American continent. As one of the cultural hearths of francophone North America (the others are the Maritimes and Cajun Louisiana), Québec has a significant role over and above that of being the home province of Québécois inhabitants. Four factors have threatened the reproduction of French identity and culture. First, Québec’s industrial and economic structure has been dominated by an anglicised elite of British and American-Loyalist origin, a division which harkens back to the Conquest. By the mid-nineteenth century this elite established a cultural division of labour in the industrial centres of Montreal, Trois Rivieres and Sherbrooke. Today the distribution of anglophones within Québec is overwhelmingly urban and concentrated within greater Montreal. Historically, the anglophone elite dominated activities such as the construction of transcontinental railways, state-wide


companies, resource development, media control and capital accumulation. This led to key sectors of the Québécois economy being integrated into the world system through the financial centres of London and New York. Economic success was unduly identified as the preserve of the anglophone community, and, despite internal social class polarities, English became the language of upward social mobility in all spheres, save religion, law, medicine and provincial politics. Anglicisation and the heavy penetration of capitalism and industrialisation in the nineteenth century secured the primacy of English as the working language for many sectors of the Québécois economy. Diglossia in the workplace, with many of the dominant commercial elites using English, ensured the perpetuation of a cultural division of labour which had obvious ramifications for the power relationship between the two language groups. It also had linguistic repercussions with heavy borrowing from English, particularly of newer technical, fiscal and organisational terms. The struggle to recapture salient centres of economic activity, such as the private sector in Montreal, and the impact of successive legislative enactments to reinforce claims of being a distinct society in relation to education, employment, public administration and urban governance, has been a major feature of postwar political life (Levine, 1990). Second, differences between the elite and masses could be accommodated so long as Québec’s birth rate remained high. However, the sharp decline in the provincial birth rate during the 1960s and 1970s exposed the underlying trends which had characterised Québécois society. The dilution of the influence of the Catholic Church and the related dropping of the messianic French-Canadian worldview, ‘la revanche des berceaux’, as the solution to the conquest, had reinforced awareness of the high rates of outmigration of francophones to other parts of Canada and neighbouring New England, coupled with high rates of postwar immigration to Canada. After reaching its zenith in 1941, the proportion of Canadian citizens with French as their mother tongue fell steadily from 29.2 per cent to 26.9 per cent by 1971, and 24.3 per cent by 1991. For Québec, this has represented an inexorable trend of population and political decline because demographers in the early 1970s were predicting a fall in the proportion of francophones in the Province itself. Their forecasts were sharpened by a realisation that the non-French population was disproportionately represented in the Montreal metropolitan area. Within this area (containing 45.5 per cent of the Province’s population), the French versus others proportion was five to three. Demographers argued that the metropolis would lose its French majority within two decades and the commercial heart of the Québec nation would be lost, whilst rural small-town Québec would provide only a partial defence for francophone interests in an increasingly technological and urban age (Hamilton and Pinard, 1982: 206).


A third factor was the penetration of English, Canadian and US media interests in all their complex forms. Sociolinguists declared that though French continued to be the primary language of the community, many younger people were switching languages and/or adopting English idioms and style in their spoken French. This caused the Office de la Langue Française to emphasise corpus language planning and to introduce a wider technical vocabulary in speech domains previously dominated by the English language and now opened to francophones in business, commerce and public administration (Bourhis, 1984). A fourth factor which underpinned the survivance complex was the conviction that the Canadian federal government was not carrying out its responsibility to honour the rights of francophones wherever they lived in Canada, especially the sizeable minorities in Acadia (New Brunswick) (Daigle, 1982), Ontario (Cartwright and Williams, 1982), and on the prairies. Despite the increased attention paid to the linguistic rights of minorities as a consequence of the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Report (RCBB, 1967), many in Québec still feared the inexorable trend of assimilation into a unilingual English-Canadian appendage of the United States. Indeed, some opposed the whole thrust of the bilingual policy endorsed by the federal government. They argued that it was a Trojan Horse conspiracy, first to isolate Québec still more, and, second, to guarantee federally backed language rights to the large anglophone community within Québec, thereby institutionalising their position as the representatives of the majority culture within Canada. Geographically they occupied a key position, straddling the culture divide of the ‘bilingual belt’ between English and French Canada (Joy, 1972, 1992). Politically, Québec had kept faith with the Federal Liberal Party and had sought, through federal legislation, to further its ‘distinct society’ position. In each of the general elections during the 1970s the province had returned a greater number of Liberal members of parliament than in previous elections, contributing on average about half of all Liberal MPs throughout Canada – for example 56 out of 109 in 1972, rising to 67 out of 114 federal Liberal MPs by 1979. However, during this time, the Québécois electorate was also characterised by increasing francophone support for the nationalist Parti Québécois at the provincial level, whilst simultaneously supporting Trudeau’s Liberals at the federal level.

The basis of Québécois identity: ethnic or territorial? When the Parti Québécois (PQ) won the provincial election of November 1976, the rest of Canada was faced with a progressive government avowing separatism and promising the creation of a new state in North America, where French culture would be secured, and where state planning and social democratic principles would be influential in bringing about a more


equitable distribution of resources within society. The active supporters of the PQ included the young, well-educated, urban and upwardly mobile francophones (Hamilton and Pinard 1982; McRoberts and Postgate 1980). The PQ provincial government sought to extend its conception of national identity beyond the traditional core identity of the province’s majority francophone population, aiming to create an extensive constituency in support of the independence ideal. The first PQ period in office offers a fascinating illustration of how a nationalist intelligentsia sought to construct a social space within which its vision of political community could be legitimised. The government was committed to the establishment of a new language regime, and heralded its policy by the introduction of the French Language Charter in 1977, which superseded former language legislation (QCLF, 1978). Five months after the election, the Minister of State for Cultural Affairs in Québec, Camille Laurin (1977), dismissed the federal commitment to bilingualism, arguing that retroactive institutional bilingualism did not mitigate the fact that Canada was to all intents and purposes an English-speaking state. In contrast, the new provincial programme which he sponsored was designed to give Québec a thoroughgoing French character in as many linguistic domains as the provincial government could influence. Despite a clear victory in the 1976 election, the PQ opted for a referendum to endorse their mandate for Sovereignty-Association. Opponents of separatism argued that, given the importance of the issue to Québec and to Canada as a whole, a 55 per cent vote to separate was an inadequate endorsement. From the PQ perspective a 55 per cent positive vote would suggest acceptance of the principle by a ‘huge majority’ of francophones, somewhere around 65 per cent of the French-speaking citizenry. The implication was that a genuine victory of the majority of francophones would then be assured, for it is not the absolute majority which ought to rule but the majority of the dominant culture. The PQ was especially sensitive to this sort of assertion and has repeatedly stated that only if a majority of all Québec citizens, regardless of linguistic affiliation, endorse a Sovereignty-Association referendum would they be authorised to seek a revision of their relationship with Canada. In the event the results of the first referendum in May 1980 were clear-cut and decisive – 59.5 per cent voted no and 40.5 per cent voted yes; 80 per cent of Québec’s 4.4 million voters had participated. This tension between the ‘authentic’ Québécois and the ‘others’ was revived during the 1994–95 referendum debate when the then PQ leader, Jacques Parizeau, claimed that Québec would be declared independent in 1995, if necessary, without the support of the province’s (minority) ethnic groups. He asserted ‘that “old-stock” French-speaking Québécois can bring about Québec independence without support from the province’s nonfrancophone minority’ (The Gazette, 4 February, 1993). Such controversy


over citizenship and authenticity was intensified after the failed 1995 independence bid when Parizeau accused the non-francophone citizens of Québec of duplicity. This tension demonstrates the double bind of majority–minority relations at different levels in the scale hierarchy from federal, through provincial to local issues. Clearly majority–minority rights are determined by specific political contexts. Analytically they are quite distinct from the collective claims to independence as a right per se. Many within the PQ leadership have pressed the claim of the francophone ‘nation’ to independence because it is the dominant nation in Québec, arguing that other ethnic groups have a responsibility to participate and to cooperate to develop the national culture of Québec (Knopff, 1980). However, Camille Laurin and others have used the term nation in a way which is synonymous with the state, and not the (francophone) ethnie. Separatist rhetoric refers to Québec as a nation (read state) struggling for independence. In order to do so this argument must maintain that the Québec state represents not only the embodiment of the French nation in North America (as used to be argued) but of all the people within it. The ‘national culture’ of Québec, though decidedly French, is the common inheritance of all its citizens. Consequently, the Québec government has the responsibility to ensure that every citizen learns the single official language, French. The original version of the Language Charter declared that ‘the French language has always been the language of the Québec people, that it is, indeed, the very instrument by which they have articulated their identity’. The French language was to be used as the instrument for cultural reproduction. Québec’s non-francophone population saw in this formulation the establishment of an official state culture, with the implication that they would become disadvantaged citizens within their own province. Recognising this fear, the preamble to the new bill (Bill 101) was modified, referring to French as ‘the distinctive language of a people that is in the majority French-speaking…the instrument by which that people has articulated its identity’. This awkward reformulation does not remove the inherent ambiguity which gave rise to the legal enforcement of ‘French culture’ in Québec. The philosophy underpinning the quest for national self-determination is not without its difficulties, and is a common predicament for many nationalist movements who find themselves in power. The separatist cause is based upon the premise that ethnic majorities within a multiethnic polity have the right to constitute national governments in their own sovereign states. Within our Western ideological framework such claims appear to be couched in majoritarian language and hence in reasonable terms, because they are inherently democratic. Knopff recognises a national conundrum in that the minority and majority are not defined in terms of collections of individuals, but by cultural (ethnolinguistic) groupings: ‘What this implies is not that the numerical


majority ought to rule, but that the majority of the majority culture, should rule; which is as much to claim a right to rule on behalf of a certain group within society, not simply by virtue of its being a majority, but, rather, by virtue of its cultural characteristics, or its substantive way of life. Thus, the important thing in an election is not to count votes, but to count French votes’ (1980: 639). This acid test of who really counts in a ‘national society’ is an ever-present conundrum when issues of tradition, representative values, religion or language are in the balance. It is more pressing when the voice of the people is heard through national referenda on critical issues such as separation from an overarching sovereign state and the formation of an independent polity. Knopff (1980) avers that this forces the nationalist to embrace a majoritarianism which negates a fundamental premise of nationalism, namely that nations and states should be coextensive. He draws attention to the difficulty facing any Parti Québécois government. Their rise to power had been based in part on appeals to ethnic nationalism but rather than redefine Québec’s boundaries so that they now coincided with the francophone nation, they refer to the Québécois nation’s right to self-determination, thereby converting an ethnic nationalism into a broader territorial nationalism. The party hoped to persuade non-francophones that its conception of nationalism was territorial and state-based, one in which they could partake if they would choose to exercise their newly acquired right to integrate into the ‘national culture’ and become Québécois citizens rather than hyphenated Canadians. Whebell (1998) has cautioned that according to the differentials of voting in the 1995 referendum, the majority ‘yes’ areas coincide with neither the state territory (Québec province) nor with the majority francophone population. Thus he asks rhetorically ‘Is the “political nation” not necessarily a majority of the “cultural nation” it proposes to speak for?’.

Federal and provincial language strategy The Canadian government’s Official Languages Act (OLA, 1969) declared that federal agencies were to accommodate the linguistic preferences of individuals whose mother tongue was either French or English (the two official languages), thereby introducing the ‘personality’ principle into language planning. According to the Act, a mother tongue official minority of over 10 per cent could be recommended by the Bilingual Districts Advisory Board for federal services within a specified area, provided that the provincial and municipal authorities would likewise cooperate (Mackey, 1992; Nelde et al., 1992). Despite extensive efforts, the challenge of changing linguistic preferences and habits from coast to coast has proved too difficult for the policy instruments created by the Official Languages Act (Cartwright and Williams, 1982; Cartwright, 1991). The


whole notion of bilingual districts had been discredited by the failure to adopt systematic and consistent guidelines (Reid, 1993). Territorial unilingualism, not individual choice, has won popular assent, even though this may anger and disappoint francophones elsewhere in Canada, together with sympathetic anglophones within Québec. The federal policy of balanced bilingualism, symbolising a linguistic partnership from coast to coast and suggesting a more equitable basis for ‘national unity’, did not appeal to the majority of francophones within Québec. Despite Trudeau’s enthusiasm it was never likely to, for one of the most notable features of Québécois society in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the growth of a new middle-class, overwhelmingly concentrated in the burgeoning public sector, which recruited francophone social scientists, engineers, planners, business graduates, lawyers and public administrators. It was clearly in the material interest of members of this new class to support moves toward French-language dominance in those spheres they could influence, for their social position was dependent, in part, on the establishment of a francophone provincial and local public-service sector. However, once the provincial sector began to be adequately manned, language proficiency and requirement became an important political issue of group conflict as the aspiring middle-class, blocked in its expectation to swell the state bureaucracy, looked to the anglophone-dominated private sector for employment. Disadvantaged linguistically, and experiencing blocked mobility in public and private sectors, the thwarted aspirants backed the independantiste intelligentsia who saw in separatism a collective political solution to Québécois problems. This difference in language and social philosophy of the independantistes from previous governments is evident in the first major piece of legislation introduced by the PQ provincial government after its election in November 1976, the ‘Québec Charter of the French Language’ (QCLF, 1978) – Bill 101, sanctioned as law on 26 August 1977 after a number of important changes from its predecessor, Bill 1. Bill 101 declared French to be the sole official language of Québec because, as discussed earlier, it was deemed to be ‘the distinctive language of a people that is in the majority French-speaking’ and was viewed as ‘the [principal] instrument by which that people had articulated its identity’. It was thus resolved to make ‘French the language of Government and Law, as well as the normal and everyday language of work, instruction, communication, commerce and business’ (QCLF, 1978: 103). The PQ government insisted that Québec should be as French as Ontario is English. The francisation programme, arising directly from Bill 101, was to provide the legislative and political impetus to give a thoroughly French face to Québécois society. Specifically, the bill outlined the rules by which the relations between French and English would be determined. The consequences of determining one official language were profound. Only French


would be used as the official version of Québec’s laws (nevertheless an English version would continue to be provided); only French would be used on public commercial signs (with due respect paid to freedom of expression as it was conceived of at that time). This entailed the provision that French was not compulsory for public messages dealing with religious, ideological and political matters (Maurais, 1991). The Bill also limited entry to English-medium schools in the province to children with at least one parent who had attended an English-medium school in Québec, but as Fournier (1991: 89) observed it included ‘traditional measures to avoid dividing the children in a family, as well as special dispensations for persons living in Québec temporarily’. Within the workplace, Bill 101 obliged all companies with 50 or more employees to comply with a francisation programme. Contrary to Bill 22, where the practice was optional, the goals of francisation had to be implemented by firms in their internal workings, their hiring and promotional policy, their catalogues, instruction manuals and in their public face to the outside world. Clear sanctions against offenders were also established. Adopting a more comprehensive interpretation of the Direction des etudes et recherches of the Conseil de la Langue Française, Jacques Maurais (1991) argues that it was ‘deemed unrealistic to impose French as the only language in the workplace, the use of French should be generalised at all levels but, as part of its francisation programme, a firm may negotiate with the Office de la Langue Française the list of positions that require knowledge of another language with a view of ensuring communication among departments of the firm or with other companies outside Québec’. Instead, provisions were formulated whereby specific domain-related language uses were required. For example, French was not mandatory in the communication of a firm with its partners outside Québec. Ten years after the passage of Bill 101, the Office de la Langue Française revealed that 40 per cent of Québec firms affected by the Bill still did not have a francisation certificate. A further 54 per cent of francisation committees were considered to be inactive and these were present in firms which represented less than half the workers in Québec affected by the programme (Fournier, 1991: 92). The constitutionality of Bill 101 was also queried. The whole of Chapter 3 of the French Language Charter, dealing with the language of the Assemblée Nationale and appearances before the courts (which was based on a similar bill adopted in Manitoba in 1890), was declared unconstitutional in 1979 by the Canadian Supreme Court. In maintaining the logic of its decision the Supreme Court also declared as unconstitutional Manitoba’s law, almost a century after its adoption. In these two domains only French-English bilingualism in Québec is official, despite the wording of Bill 101, since it was rejected by the Supreme Court (Maurais, 1987: 368–9). Bilingualism is also permitted in all the domains where Bill 101 does not require the exclusive use of French ‘where this act does not require use of the official


language exclusively, the official language and another language may be used together’ (QCLF, 1978: Section 89). The francisation programme devoted to institutionalising French in the education system, the workplace, the service and retail sector and the cultural landscape of the province, did not play well with many parts of Canadian society. Federalists felt betrayed by this move for it threatened to undermine the political principle of a balanced coast-to-coast bilingualism (Cartwright and Williams, 1982), even though this principle would clearly never be realised as the social goal of bilingualism was restricted to the federal parliament, its departments and agencies and was compulsory nowhere else (Maurais, 1987: 363). Proulx (1985) has itemised four ways in which this structural impasse was articulated. First by proposing a ‘symmetrical bilingual model’ and championing the rights of the official language minorities, the federal government was seen as defending the interests of Québec’s anglophone minority rather than securing the cohesion of the francophone majority. Second, Waddell (1986: 107) notes that ‘both provincial and federal charters of rights and freedoms seek to protect individuals and minorities from potential abuses by the majority. However, Québec society constitutes a Canadian and continental minority, and if the Charte de la langue Française sought to give it the necessary protection as a simple law it is inefficient, because subordinate to both federal and provincial charters’. Third, it was argued that the federal Liberal government was electorally committed to the defence of the anglophone minority, making it difficult to realise a buttress for majority francophone interests by reference to pan-Canadian political parties. Fourth, Proulx argues that francophone militancy had disappeared because the Québec government has championed French rights and has itself become a prime instrument for linguistic affirmation. Nonetheless, the passage of Bill 101 reversed several trends which caused anxiety to (French) language activists. In the first year of operation, 1977–1978, the number of children with neither French nor English as a mother tongue who enrolled in French-language schools increased by 6.4 per cent (Coleman, 1981: 470). The majority of parents whose mother tongue was neither French nor English enrolled their children in Frenchlanguage kindergartens, whilst enrolment in the English-language equivalent dropped by 15.6 per cent (1981: 471). Critics of unilingualism argued that the erosion of a high-quality English-language school system would disadvantage Québec in producing skilled participants in a Canadian context. But it is in the economic domain that the most damning charges have been made by opponents who have detailed the outmigration of key firms from Montreal to Toronto or Calgary, ostensibly because they wished to avoid working in French, as well as Québec’s high personal and corporate income taxes and the ultimate threat of secession (Esman, 1982: 248). There is a strand of truth in these charges, but they also coincided with the


shift of economic activity westward, which was largely due to economic forces and not cultural ones, independent of language changes emanating from the National Assembly in Québec City. The economic stagnation and partial deindustrialisation of the Province must also play a role in the departure of Anglo-Québec institutions and families. The defeat of the Sovereignty-Association referendum in the spring of 1980, discussed earlier, was clearly a severe blow to the indépendantistes. But the subsequent re-election of the PQ on 15 April 1981 confirmed the PQ’s hold with 49 per cent of the vote (the best result achieved until then by the PQ). Support for the PQ was thus not necessarily a vote for independence as Hamilton and Pinard (1982: 208–23) make clear. Indeed, since that time, successive Québécois governments have sought to maximise their own autonomy via five broad political claims (see Gagnon, 1989: 153): 1. Recognition of Québec as a distinct society; 2. Reform of the federal constitution that guarantees Québec a veto power, and maximises the scope of Québec’s jurisdiction in most policy fields; 3. Re-apportionment of federal-provincial fiscal resources to reflect Québec’s needs; 4. A reduced federal role in the development, implementation and financing of provincial policies/programmes; 5. An increased role for Québec, both in determining the composition and operation of federal institutions, and also in decisions regarding the development, implementation and financing of federal policies and programmes. Ironically, in the light of these autonomist principles, other provinces, notably Ontario, are making similar demands as part of normal provincial-federal relations.

Constitutional repatriation The key question arising from these demands was whether recognition of Québec as a ‘distinct society’ could be achieved within a reformulated constitution or whether Québec was necessarily being driven towards an increasingly ‘independentist’ position. Early evidence of the difficulty of accommodating Québec’s renewed demands came in the critical period between October 1980 and November 1981 when Trudeau’s ‘re-patriation’ reform of the Canadian Constitution and the (1982) Charter of Rights and Freedoms was agreed by nine out of the ten provincial governments. Trudeau’s ‘renewed federalism’ was decided upon in the absence of Québec in what has become known as the night of the ‘longs couteaux’. René Levesque, then First Minister of Québec, did not sign the agreement, for the question of the ‘Québec Nation’ had not been resolved by the repatriation episode. The Canada Act 1982 marked a new era in Canadian nation-building, by cutting its constitutional umbilical


cord with Britain, but it soured relations between Québec and the rest of Canada, which necessitated a second round of constitutional negotiations to bring Québec back into federation. The nub of the problem was the extent to which there was a genuine desire to establish the promise of a renewed federalism which Trudeau had made to opponents of Québécois sovereignty as their reward for having voted ‘No’ to the referendum in May 1980. Fournier (1991) suggests that the patriation issue was a time bomb and a crushing blow for Québec. It had lost its right of veto, which although not inscribed in the British North America Act had been normalised by constitutional custom. It had also lost its claim to being recognised as a constituent nation, or even as the only province with a francophone majority. Fournier further suggests that this ‘rejection was justified in the name of the equality of provinces, and the priority of individual rights’ (1991: 12). The issue of collective-versus-individual rights is a classic problem for all states, particularly federal states, as we saw in the earlier discussion on Québec language laws. However, Trudeau’s attitude to Québec’s collective claims has been described as contradictory, for whilst denying the national group rights of his fellow Québécois he affirmed the collective rights of other groups, such as Aboriginal peoples, women, the young and the disabled. Fournier is particularly scathing regarding this double standard: The trouble starts with ‘national affiliation’. The Trudeauites maintain that the rights of a geographically based ethnic group should not be given the same recognition as the rights of natives [sic] or linguistic minorities. It is high time to denounce this double standard, this contradiction that is at the heart of the elaborations of the former Prime Minister and his disciples. Ultimately, by denying the collective rights of the Québécois, Trudeau simply gave precedence to the collective rights of the Anglo-Canadian majority, thereby inevitably sanctioning its domination. (1991: 12) Patriation was perceived by many in Québec as a missed opportunity at best and a deliberate attempt by Canadian centralists to curb its historical rights as a co-equal, co-founding nation. Fournier argues that everyone, except Québec, gained from a renewed federalism that was, ironically, designed initially to meet Québec aspirations: The federal government obtained ‘its’ Charter of Rights, the west won additional powers in the field of natural resources and ‘its’ amending formula, the Maritime provinces obtained a firm commitment to equalisation and to the principle of equal opportunities between provinces, and Ontario managed to avoid the imposition of bilingualism in Parliament and the courts, something which had existed in Québec since the early days of confederation. (1991: 13)


The economic crisis of 1982–83, the public sector cuts, the election of the Conservative Brian Mulroney (a bilingual Québécois) as Federal Prime Minister, and the defeat of the Parti Québécois in December 1985 at the hands of a resurgent Québec Liberal Party led by Robert Bourassa, all encouraged fresh constitutional proposals being put to the Canadian people and the provinces. This mood was given fresh urgency by the slump of 1989–1993 which quickened the demands to reform the economy and re-open negotiations on the Constitution.

Meech Lake and the 1992 referendum Essentially, the Meech Lake Accord was a pragmatic counter to the hiatus in constitutional affairs bequeathed by Trudeau’s ideological excursions of 1980–82. Whereas Trudeau had a firm vision of Canadian state development, Mulroney had a negotiator’s eye on the process of reconciliation rather than the principled defence of the Canada Act 1982 which Québec had rejected. Consequently, on 30 April 1987 the federal government and all ten provincial premiers agreed on a constitutional revision which would bring Québec back into the fold – ‘dans 1’honneur et 1’enthousiasme’ to use Mulroney’s words. This agreement was ratified in the constitutional accord of 3 June 1987. Following Burgess (1988, 1990) and Fournier (1991), one may ask what did Québec want and what price was Mulroney prepared to pay for Québec’s signature on the Canada Act 1982? In May 1986, at Mont Gabriel, the Québec Liberal Party premier, Bourassa, presented six conditions for recognising the legitimacy of the 1982 amendments to the Constitution and participating fully in constitutional reform. Five of these conditions were met at the Meech Lake Accord and are presented below: 1. The recognition that Québec constitutes within Canada ‘a distinct society’. 2. A formal voice in Supreme Court appointments: three of the nine judges will be nominated by the Québec Government. 3. Immigration policy: recognition that Québec has a particular interest in this and that it will negotiate an agreement with the Federal Government which will be constitutionally entrenched. 4. Limits to federal spending powers in areas of provincial jurisdiction: the federal spending power to remain an area of exclusive federal jurisdiction but provincial bargaining rights to be strengthened by stipulating that provinces should be compensated if they chose not to participate in national shared-cost programmes and decided instead to establish similar provincial programmes. This would not apply to existing national social programmes, such as Medicare, but only to new programmes established after the new provision comes into effect.


5. The provisional veto on constitutional amendments affecting the province: the principle of unanimity is operative for changes to federal institutions – the Senate, House of Commons, Supreme Court – and for the establishment of new provinces or their extension into the territories. (See Burgess, 1988: 18.) The sixth condition, set out by Gil Remillard at Mont Gabriel aimed specifically at improving the situation of francophones outside Québec. As Fournier observes: ‘This proposal was rejected by some of the western premiers. The francophones outside Québec weren’t mistaken, then, when they accused Robert Bourassa of abandoning them’ (1991: 54). Even so, for the first time since 1867, Québec’s distinct nature had been formally recognised within the Canadian Constitution. Intended as a recompense for the ‘nuit des longs couteaux’, the Meech Lake Accord engendered very different reactions and interpretations in English Canada and Québec. This was because the Québec government agreed to the modification of a number of the conditions but had to present a case that it had gained everything it wanted when it defended the Accord to its own constituents. By contrast, opponents of Meech Lake within English Canada argued that Québec had been given concessions which were intolerable to most Canadians and had weakened the dualistic nature of federalism. Critics, such as Fournier, argued that ‘by creating the illusion that it could lead to increased powers for Québec, the distinct society provision concealed the main shortcoming of the accord, which was precisely that it established no new division of powers’ (1991: 22). Furthermore, there remained inherent ambiguities as to what precisely the Accord meant in real terms in relation to such sensitive issues as immigration, federal spending power, the right of veto, the distinct society and the whole question as to whether Canada itself constituted a ‘national’ society in need of strong central (that is, federal) government and direction. A crisis First Ministers’ meeting was held in Ottawa from 3–9 June 1990, but the Meech Lake Accord failed when on 22 June the Manitoba and Newfoundland legislatures adjourned without endorsing the constitutional amendment (all provinces had to endorse the Accord for it to pass into constitutional law). The Meech Lake failure gave a new edge to the autonomy versus renewed federalism debate. Economic difficulties, the repercussions of the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Canada in 1989, a revived separatist cause after ten years or so of beleaguered Québec nationalism and a Québec provincial government which had denounced the federalist option, had combined to create the conditions for a constitutional impasse. The federal government response, ‘Shaping Canada’s Future Together’, tabled in the House of Commons on 24 September 1991, led to a referendum based upon the principles enshrined in what has since become known as the Charlottetown Accord, convened on 28 August 1992, namely regional


equality across Canada, and the special status of Québec as a co-founding nation in Canada. The result of the national referendum held on the date initially set by Québec for a provincial referendum on sovereignty – 26 October 1992 – was a resounding vote of ‘No’, not only by Québec voters but also by all other Canadians. The federal government’s strategy of making cultural concessions, but of not increasing decentralised power-sharing, had backfired to the profound annoyance of almost all parties concerned.

Irreconcilable nationalisms? Prescient observers have argued that English-speaking Canadians can only act on their national identity through the federal government (Kymlicka, 1998). In consequence, they are compelled to reject any measure of decentralisation which inhibits the federal government’s ability to forge national development policy and strengthen Pan-Canadian identity, hence the rejection in English Canada of the Charlottetown Accord. Conversely, the Québécois can only act on their national identity through the provincial government and thus would reject any constitutional reforms which do not reverse federal intervention in areas of social policy and strategic planning. The PQ’s response to this constitutional impasse was to demand a radically fresh Québec–Canadian relationship. The complexity of this impasse in terms of ethnolinguistic issues may be illustrated by trends throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The federal solution to language rights, expressed in the Official Languages Act of 1969 and resting on the ‘personality’ language principle, as discussed earlier, emphasised individual citizen rights. It seemed to be irreconcilable with Québec’s group-rights approach which effectively ‘territorialised’ the French fact throughout the Province. It might have been anticipated that the federal attempt to pacify Québécois grievances through institutional bilingualism would accelerate the shift toward provincial unilingualism. However, McWhinney (1982) argues that executive pragmatism had averted a potential crisis on language policy through the 1970s. Both the federal government, in resisting a direct attack on Québec unilingualism, and Québec’s own self-restraint in the application of its language-of-work stipulations, had demonstrated a political acumen in so much as ‘pragmatic adjustments and compromises…have facilitated coexistence of federal and Québec language policies, with distinct and separate, but not conflicting, zones of application for each’ (McWhinney, 1982: 38). Given more recent trends (see below) one cannot afford to be so sanguine! In July 1984 the Supreme Court rendered Chapter 8 of Bill 101, on the language of instruction, inadmissible because it was incompatible with Article 33 of the 1982 Constitution Act. This judgement substituted the ‘Canada clause’ for the ‘Québec clause’ in Bill 101, enabling children to enter English schools if one of their parents had received their primary


education in English anywhere in Canada (Fournier 1991: 93–4). This was a major challenge to the unilingual conception of Québec and a source of much confusion in the school system. Earlier trends had evidenced the impact of Bill 101, in that in 1976 16.6 per cent of all pupils in Québec were studying in English. By 1986 this had dropped to 10.4 per cent (Fournier, 1991: 90). Similarly, in the same period the percentage of allophones attending English schools had dropped from 85 per cent to only 36 per cent. Later data suggested that by 1990, 81 per cent of allophones that had attended French schools continued studying in French at the CEGEP (provincial further and higher education colleges) level. Further evidence of the federal impress on Québécois language laws is provided by the Supreme Court judgement of 15 December 1988 which repealed articles 58 and 69 of Bill 101, which prohibited the use of languages other than French in commercial signs, advertising or corporate names, on the basis that these restricted ‘commercial’ freedom of expression (Fournier, 1991: 94). The emphasis on commercial signs is crucial here because, as Maurais (1991) advises, before the decision of the Supreme Court many interpreters assumed that commercial discourse was not included in the concept of freedom of expression. Such pertinent notions of freedom of expression – that is, political, ideological and religious messages – were not submitted to the requirement to use French only, or even to have a French translation; they could be in a foreign language only without any translation into French. In Maurais’ judgement this is a significant feature because ‘the provision on the language to be used on public signs is very often used to make Québec appear like a territory where fundamental rights are not respected’. Emphasis on the appropriate sociocultural context for the nurturing of French and/or bilingualism is an important reminder that questions of territorial control, the maintenance of contiguous regions wherein social communication networks can flourish in the threatened language, and relative geographic isolation from the anglicising tendencies of a metropolitan core, are often critical to the reproduction of a minority culture at the regional scale. But for how long? After all, a common (and ongoing) complaint of francophones throughout Canada, despite all the federal legislation, French-immersion education, and public-sector reforms, is the refusal of many federal and local agencies to recognise their claim to being a permanent national community, and not an ethnic minority, simply one amongst many. Multiculturalism policies, and the way the recent constitutional reform unfolded indicate a movement by federal authorities towards a formula which legally favours the individual to the detriment of the group (cf. Kymlicka, 1998). If one chooses the group-rights approach as favoured by Québécois politicians, one admits that the needs of the minority community are so great that they cannot be met on the basis of individual rights. This also institutes


the legal separation of one group from another, which in turn will lead to the strengthening of group distinctiveness and group boundaries, hence the whole thrust of Québécois language, educational and employment legislation from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Elsewhere, both New Brunswick and Manitoba have recognised the need to provide bilingual services for francophones. And, of late, Franco-Ontarians have come closer than ever before to receiving more equitable treatment within their own province. Cartwright (1988) has demonstrated that were the ‘cultural zone of transition’ between Ontario and Québec to be adopted as a functional bilingual territory, then a geographically limited but more socially effective delivery of public services such as French language daycare centres, recreational facilities and social and health services could be implemented. This underlies the significance again of having a territorial domain, within which both languages are respected, but where the minority language can be nurtured without the ever-present threat of displacement by the majority tongue. Obviously such a cultural zone would not be impervious to the overwhelming presence of English via the media and commerce, but it would allow scarce resources to be channelled more effectively so as to construct and reinforce a French-medium infrastructure. More recently Cartwright (1991, 1998) has elaborated his earlier ideas with a model of cultural contact in geographical transition zones and empirical observations on its applicability to the Québec–Ontario border. On the basis of survey evidence related to intercultural accommodation in that zone he concludes that there is greater possibility for interaction and mutual respect among the younger generations either side of the political border. Speaking of programmes designed to encourage active interaction he urges that: These traits must be preserved. This geographical region is the one location in the nation where these activities can develop, flourish and contribute to the demise of ethnic, social and cognitive distances that have become endemic in Belgium and in Northern Ireland. An example is provided for the rest of the nation that two solitudes need not be a legacy for Canada, linguistic territorialisation, with its negative connotations, need not be inevitable and empathy between French and English Canada can be attained in time. (1991: 243)

Symmetrical federalism under strain The federal government’s principle of symmetry would be greatly advanced by the adoption of Cartwright’s regionalisation process. But it would not be universally welcomed. The Conseil de la Langue Française, for example, has officially declared itself opposed to the whole concept of symmetry. In its 1988 statement ‘Le projet de loi federal C-72 relatif au statut et a I’usage des langues officielles au Canada’, it argued ‘l’egalité de statut et d’usage ne saurait


être atteinte par 1’application du mesures identiques à des situation différentes mais bien plutôt par des mesures adaptées dont l’effet est de donner à chacune des langues une méme sécurité de statut au Canada’. Were balanced bilingualism and symmetry to be given a geographic context by having parts of Québec officially declared bilingual it is probable that such a proposal would also be turned down by a majority of francophones. It would be further evidence to them of the federal government’s ‘Trojan Horse’ approach to societal bilingualism. In effect, some parts of Québec are already functionally bilingual, in that services may be obtained in both languages even in commercial outlets such as shops and other enterprises. However, many problems would arise if such bilingual districts were made official (Maurais, 1991). Some provision for social and health services in English has been made by Bill 142 (1986), and, as such, there may not be any need for further legislative action, especially in the current political climate which does not favour the extension of an outmoded federal conception of bilingual symmetry. Cartwright’s articulation of a cultural zone of transition leading to increased empathy appeals to nation-builders because it offers the possibility of reduced conflict, but cynics would argue that such cross-border accommodation has not reduced rates of anglicisation by one jot. Neither has symmetrical federalism guaranteed the survival of French outside the Québécois heartland, for there has been a consistent decline in the proportion of the francophone population who habitually use French as their home language (Cartwright, 1988; Joy, 1992). Indeed, Québec apart, 75 per cent of those outside Québec claiming French as their mother tongue and 82 per cent of those in 1971 claiming to use it at home are concentrated in New Brunswick and Ontario. This reinforces the long-held view that the speed of anglicisation is inversely proportional to the concentration of francophones in a region. It also reminds us that the only true areas with a significant bilingual presence outside Québec are New Brunswick and Ontario, highlighting the real difficulty of describing Canada in toto as a bilingual country. In short, current trends reveal that the original French-English Canadian duality has been severely eroded, as well as demonstrating that countermeasures to bolster the francophone population are far from realisable at either federal or provincial levels. Even within Québec, for example, demographic trends continue to suggest the ongoing relative decline of Frenchlanguage speakers, despite provincial legislation, such as Bill 101, aimed at securing French within its territory (Lachapelle and Grenier, 1988; Joy, 1992; Castonguay, 1992, 1994, 1997). Meanwhile, much of the substance of popular politics continues to deal with misconceptions as regards demolinguistic competition, and feeds on rather closed cosmologies vis-à-vis interpreting group identity and national claims and counterclaims. Nowhere is this more vital than in the contemporary discussions focused on the possibility of the future partitioning of parts of Canada.


The issue of partition In modern societies, control of the local state, as a limited expression of national autonomy, is vital for group survival. It is the local state which sets the conditions of possibility for cultural reproduction through the formal agencies of education, the law and public administration. However, there is a real danger that if language planning is embraced uncritically by the constituent group, it could lead to an even greater dependence upon the formal state apparatus. In effect, this is the Trojan Horse argument used by Québécois opponents to the federal policy of equality, and of establishing bilingual districts within Québec which would increase the anglicised nature of federal bilingual services (Cartwright and Williams, 1982). But we must also recognise the irony that the local state is the only institution which can afford to mount the expensive services now deemed essential to minority cultural reproduction. It has been claimed that if Québec secedes then a further partition of its territory along ethnolinguistic lines should be instituted. Physical removal and separation of conflicting parties is a time-honoured expedient, but partition is a complex multifaceted process, dictated as much by the external characteristics of the international system as it is by internal negotiation and rapprochement. This is an important issue for three reasons. First as a matter of principle any change to the constitutional status of Québec will impact upon francophones living outside Québec in other Canadian provinces. Second, many of the Franco-Ontarians and Québécois who voted ‘no’ in 1997, and who live predominantly in the Ottawa Valley, are deeply integrated into the federalist structure and serve as a mirror for the rest of Canada as to how its bilingual citizenry operates in and around the capital (Ottawa). Third, if the partition of Québec becomes a more pressing reality, there will be other voices questioning the right of parts of Ontario to be ceded to Québec (Cartwright and Williams, 1997a and b). Should partitionists recognise the enclave situation of Montreal and the Ottawa Valley, they must be prepared to address the problems of sustaining a demographically vital population, of attracting and holding investment capital and the inherent problems of travel to and fro from such enclaves that are surrounded by a country that is unsympathetic to their linkages with the Rest-of-Canada. Inevitably, such residents would be perceived by the rest of the world as second-class or diluted Canadians, with all the consequent negative implications for economic and social life. If the economy of Montreal has been weakened because of the current uncertain political climate, it is doubtful that an enclave existence could improve on this. The removal of even a portion of Montreal and the Ottawa Valley from the posited Republic of Québec would be a serious blow to the economy of the nascent country and, consequently, may not be endorsed through international law. Similarly, the loss of the hinterlands in northwest


Québec, through demands by Canadian Aboriginal peoples for partition (cf. May, this volume), could constitute a further erosion of Québec’s economic viability (cf. Vaillancourt, 1985, 1998). This is not to deny the right of Aboriginal peoples to remain within Canada, nor that these lands do indeed adjoin the Rest-of-Canada, but such recognition must be balanced against the rights of Québec to expect its northern territories to be used as a continued resource base. This area has received considerable capital development, and contains resources that are essential to Québec’s future economic well-being. Cartwright and Williams (1997b) have suggested that an accord could be reached for this frontier region similar to that for Northern Ireland (the Anglo-Irish Agreement, 1985), whereby Britain and the Republic of Ireland consult over the administration of that peripheral territory. Admittedly this is an uncomfortable precedent, but joint administration would permit Aboriginal peoples to retain Canadian citizenship, while Québec would have clear access to resources in the region. Those who reject the Cartwright and Williams (1997a and b) position on the issue of partition will say that they have not fully addressed the wishes of federalists within Québec who wish to remain a part of Canada. There are precedents in international law for their situation. While the Canadian government will not endorse the claim of sovereigntists that Québecers will automatically have a right to Canadian citizenship upon separation, individuals may apply for that right. Cartwright and Williams endorse such a provision as this would reduce the potential for conflict. In the future, if life in the Republic of Québec is not to their liking, federalists may use that right to move to the Rest-of-Canada.

Respect for ethnonational identity in multicultural societies The attempt to reconcile differences both between Québec and Englishspeaking Canada, and between these and more recent immigrant cultures has had a chequered history. Dr Hedy Fry, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, defined multiculturalism as the new framework for Canadian unity. ‘As a national policy of inclusiveness, multiculturalism’s activities aim to bring all Canadians closer together, to enhance equal opportunities, to encourage mutual respect among citizens of diverse backgrounds, to assist in integrating first-generation Canadians, to promote more harmonious intergroup relations, and to foster social cohesion and a shared sense of Canadian identity’ (Fry 1997; see also Canadian Heritage, 1998). The renewed multiculturalism programme has been charged with the responsibility of holding the country together. It has three objectives: • social justice: the program will seek to break down the barriers to equality, like racism and discrimination.


• civic participation: the program will encourage and enable individuals, groups, institutions and the private sector to ensure that all Canadians regardless of their origins, can participate fully in the social, economic, cultural and political life of the country. • identity: the program will promote social equality and cultural diversity as fundamental Canadian values. (Fry, 1997) This, of course, presumes that cultural diversity is a positive and growing feature of most societies. It has value not only at the individual level of recognising human worth but also at a societal level as legitimising access to political power and free participation in the democratic process. It follows that the ways of managing cultural diversity will vary according to why we think it has value. Let us consider the difficulties of operating an ideology of Canadian multiculturalism within a model of liberal society which purports to recognise more than the mere survival of cultures by acknowledging their permanent worth. A great stumbling block in the recognition of equal worth is the operation of the market and bureaucratic state which, as Charles Taylor argues, strengthens the ‘enframings that favour an atomist and instrumentalist stance to the world and others’ (1991: 11). Community solidarity and public participation in the decision-making process are weakened and ethnolinguistic groupings, for example, are drawn closer into their own subcultures rather than forming a distinct part of the whole society. As Taylor continues, this fragmentation occurs partly through ‘a weakening of the bonds of sympathy, partly in a selffeeding way, through the failure of democratic initiative itself. Because the more fragmented a democratic electorate is in this sense, the more they transfer their political energies to promoting their partial groupings, and the less possible it is to mobilise democratic majorities around commonly understood programme’ (1991: 113). One of the key determinants of majoritarian democracy, in Québec no less than in Canada, is the degree to which immigrants feel sufficiently empowered both to trust the host majority and to align themselves with others to pursue common programmes for the public good, whether that be in the field of conventional public services such as education or more specialist interest-oriented projects which do not necessarily have an ethnic overtone or implication of fragmentation (cf. Williams, 1996). Clearly the Canadian state is deeply implicated in this process of change with regard to its multicultural policy, but the conventional focus on training in official languages to immigrant adults to integrate them into the economy is now in straitened circumstances. In consequence, the government is trying to find the means to withdraw from the financial implications of support and give back the matter to the provinces and the non-governmental organisations. The sharp end of this focus is immigration. Any disputes about the presence of immigrants are concentrated on


issues such as employment and racism, the profile on language training is low and the language per se is not an issue, just access through to it via training. Such considerations appear to sidestep the central obligation of the multicultural state to supply an adequate infrastructural support upon which may be grafted the aspirations and legitimate expectations of the constituent groups, so that they may flourish because of, not despite, state intervention and sustenance. This smacks of backtracking from the central commitment of the 1970s to promote universal bilingual education in state languages, English and French, as the cement for nation-building. What of the demand for bilingual education outside Québec? If Québec becomes more detached from Canada will this demand decline for all, save the social and economic elite?

Asymmetrical federalism Kymlicka (1998) argues that English Canadians perceive Canadian federalism in ‘territorial’ terms, rather like the US, while French Canadians have adopted a multinational vision of federalism whereby the constituent elements are people rather than geographical regions. Given the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, along with previous attempts to save an essentially territorial conception of federation, ‘the only remaining question is whether English-speaking Canadians can be persuaded to accept the multination conception of federalism’. By abandoning Pan-Canadian nationalism and adopting an asymmetrical federal structure, English Canada could engage with Québec on a more realistic basis, always remembering that the right to secede by democratic means from this multinational federation would be guaranteed. As society becomes more plural, and social mobility increases, there is an increase in the tension between the functional provision of bilingual public services and the formal organisation of territorial-based authorities charged with such provision. This tension is exacerbated by steady immigration into fragile language areas, for it leads to language-related issues being publicly contested as the intrusive language group penetrates each new domain. This, not multiculturalism, is the pertinent linguistic reality of Canada. Some would argue that multiculturalism disguises the fact that Canada is divided into distinct linguistic and cultural zones, the anglophone and the francophone, each of which is separated from the other by a bilingual buffer zone, which, to the west of Québec, runs down the Outaouais Valley, and to the east cuts across northern New Brunswick. Apart from those zones, Canada is divided into two solidly monolingual areas, with a few marginal exceptions here and there (Wardaugh, 1983). In a sense Wardaugh’s ‘real’ Canada is the most cogent single refutation of the multicultural model on its own terms, with a variety of other attempts to grasp the multicultural nettle becoming entangled in a web of regionalisms, interest groups, ethnic


stereotyping and other factors. Various other non-Marxist analyses go beyond Wardaugh in linking the central dichotomy in Canada to the question of Québec nationhood and traditional social inequalities between anglophone and francophone Canadians. As McAll observes, for example, ‘the real impetus in Québec nationalism is not, surprisingly enough, considered to be primordial ethnic sentiment but rather “class conflict in linguistic disguise”’ (1990: 176–7).

Conclusion We have seen that attempts by Québec to institute the widespread legitimisation of the French language have been largely successful within the public domain. Corresponding attempts by other provincial governments to serve their territorial minorities have been far less effective, though this is hardly surprising given the complexity of Canada’s multiethnic society and the government’s commitment to a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework, initiated by Trudeau. The limitations of territorial language planning are evident in Canada and Québec. The political power of Québécois nationalists has enabled the French language to be strengthened as the primary language of provincial government and also as a language of commerce and private industry, thus rewarding language fluency in all aspects of socioeconomic life. To this extent the Québécois case would provide an important illustration of the centrality of capturing political control to legitimise a change in group relations, and to provide the conditions of possibility whereby this change may be institutionalised within new patterns of labour. In consequence, I conclude that the issue of language promotion should be viewed not only in terms of cultural reproduction, but also in terms of a struggle for political and economic control which can increase access to resources and occupational mobility in a bicultural society. The trend toward establishing an autonomous public sector, separate from the governing state apparatus, will inevitably satisfy many of the legitimate demands of the French language community, but will also call into question its ability to so influence the private sector in a like manner. The analysis has also demonstrated that the federal response has been to undermine the original French Canadian conception of confederation, because Ottawa, as Cardinal (1999) has argued, has attempted to transform the national question into one of an individual’s linguistic choice. In effect, speaking French in Canada is a reflection of an individual’s characteristics, not a structuring element of a national community. Thus rather than fight for French as a common good of society, the state is functionally restricting its concerns to the rights of official language minority groups ‘where numbers warrant’. It has sought to detach the question of language rights from the political context – that is, the recognition of


Québec as a nation (Cardinal, 1999: 85). This remains the abiding Canadian conundrum, for since 1867 elements within the federation have been grappling with the question of how to reconcile the claims of national justice in recognising Québec, while simultaneously recognising the evolving multinational character of Canadian society.

References Bourhis, R. H. (ed.) (1984) Conflict and Language Planning in Québec (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Burgess, M. (1988) Meech Lake: whirlpool of uncertainty or ripples on a millpond, British Journal of Canadian Studies 3 (1), 15–29. —— (1990) Meech Lake: the process of constitutional reform in Canada, 1987–90, British Journal of Canadian Studies 5 (2), 275–97. Canadian Heritage (1998) Multiculturalism: Respect, Equality, Diversity (Ottawa: Department of Canadian Heritage). Cardinal, L. (1999) Linguistic rights, minority rights and national rights: some clarifications, Inroads 8: 77–86. Cartwright, D. (1988) Language policy and internal geopolitics: the Canadian situation, in C. H. Williams (ed.) Language in Geographic Context (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), pp. 238–66. —— (1991) Bicultural conflict in the context of the core-periphery model, in C. H. Williams (ed.) Linguistic Minorities, Society and Territory (Clevedon, OH: Multilingual Matters), pp. 219–46. —— (1998) French-language services in Ontario: a policy of ‘overly prudent gradualism’, in T. Ricento and B. Burnaby (eds) Language and Politics in the United States and Canada (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 273–300. —— and Williams, C. (1982) Bilingual districts as an instrument in Canadian language policy, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 7, 474–93. —— and Williams, C. (1997a) Les enclaves linguistiques ne régleraient rien, Le Devoir, 18 November, p. A9. —— and Williams, C. (1997b) If Québec is divisible, so is Ontario, The Gazetter, 22 November, p. B6. Castonguay, C. (1992) The demographic collapse of Canada’s French-speaking population, mimeo, 3 pp. —— (1994) Reversing Language Shift in Québec – Fact and Fancy, mimeo, University of Ottawa, 16 November. —— (1997) The fading Canadian duality, in J. Edwards (ed.) Language in Canada (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Coleman, W. (1981) From Bill 22 to Bill 101: the politics of language under the Parti Québecois, Canadian Journal of Political Science 14, 459–85. Daigle, J. (ed.) (1982) The Acadians of the Maritimes (Monction: Centre Etudes Acadiennes). Esman, M. (1982) The politics of official bilingualism in Canada, Political Science Quarterly 97, 233–53. Fournier, P. (1991) A Meech Lake Post-Mortem. Is Québec Sovereignty Inevitable? (Montreal and Kingston: McGill – Queen’s University Press). Fry, H. (1997) Multiculturalism – a framework for Canadian unity, Profile, Newsletter of the Royal Society of Canada, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring, pp. 1–4.

46 Ethnonational Identities Gagnon, A. (1989) Canadian federalism: A working balance, in M. Forsyth (ed.) Federalism and Nationalism (London: Leicester University Press), 147–68. Gazette, The (1993) PQ fails to clear air with ethnic groups (Montreal: The Gazette), 4 February, p. A1. Hamilton, R. and Pinard, M. (1982) The Québec independence movement, in C. H. Williams (ed.) National Separatism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 203–33. Joy, R. (1972) Languages in Conflict (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart). —— (1992) Canada’s Official Languages: the Progress of Bilingualism (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press). Knopff, R. (1980) Democracy versus liberal democracy: the nationalist conundrum, The Dalhousie Review 58: 638–46. Kymlicka, W. (1998) Multinational federalism in Canada: rethinking the partnership, in R. Gibbins and G. Laforest (eds) Beyond the Impasse: Towards Reconciliation (Montreal: The Institute for Research on Public Policy), pp. 15–50. Lachapelle, R. and Grenier G. (1988) Linguistic Aspects of the Demographic Evolution in Canada (Ottawa: Statistics Canada). Laurin, C. (1977) Quebec’s Policy on the French Language (Québec: Ministry of State for Cultural Development). Levine, M. (1990) The Reconquest of Montreal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Mackey, W. (1992) Assessing Canadian Language Policy, mimeo. Maurais, J. (ed.) (1987) Politique et Amenagement Linguistiques (Québec: Conseil de la Langue Française). —— (1991) Personal communication, 2 April. McAll, C. (1990) Class, Ethnicity and Social Inequality (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press). McRoberts, K. and Postgate, D. (1980) Québec: Social Change and Political Crisis (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart). McWhinney, E. (1982) Canada and the Constitution, 1979–82 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Nelde, P., Labrie, N. and Williams, C. (1992) The principles of territoriality and personality in the solution of linguistic conflicts, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 13, 387–406. OLA (1969) Official Languages Act, Elizabeth 11, chapter 54, session 1, 17–18 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer). Proulx, J. (1985) La Charte de la langue: Autopsie d’une bataille perdue, Le Devoir 10, January. QCLF (1978) Québec charter of the French language, Statutes of Québec, Chapter 5 (Québec City: Editeur Officiel du Québec). Reid, S. (1993) Lament for a Notion: the Life and Death of Canada’s Bilingual Dream (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press). RCBB (1967) Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Chairman: A. Laurendean-Dunton. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer. Taylor, C. (1991) The Malaise of Modernity (Toronto: Anasi). Vaillancourt, F. (ed.) (1985) Economie et langue (Québec: Conseil de la Langue Française). —— (1998) The economics of constitutional options for Québec and Canada, Canadian Business Economics, Winter: 3–14. Waddell, E. (1986) State, language and society, in A. Cairns and C. Williams (eds) The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Language in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 67–110.

Colin H. Williams 47 Wardaugh, R. (1983) Language and Nationalism: the Canadian Experience (Vancouver: New Star Books). Whebell, C. (1998) Personal communication, 29 September. Williams, C. (1989) The question of national congruence, in R. J. Johnston and P. J. Taylor (eds) A World in Crisis? 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 229–66. —— (1990) Canada and the Arctic: a stable democracy, in P. Taylor (ed.) World Government (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 44-51. Williams, C. H. (1996) A Requiem for Canada?, in G. Smith (ed.) Federalism: the Multiethnic Challenge (London: Longman), pp. 31–72.

3 Late Arrivals at the Nationalist Games: Romani Mobilisation in the Czech Lands and Slovakia Will Guy

With numbers estimated between seven and eight-and-a-half million in Europe alone, Roma (or Gypsies) form the continent’s largest ethnic grouping without a nation-state of its own or even a distinct homeland.1 Almost three-quarters live in the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (Liégeois and Gheorghe, 1995: 7), where Roma have been characterised as ‘the poorest, most disadvantaged and despised of all East Europeans’ (Barany, 1994: 246). Despite this unenviable situation, the Roma have been among the least successful of minority groups in mobilising themselves and gaining national and international recognition, although some progress has been made in the final years of the twentieth century. In 1993 the Council of Europe declared ‘Gypsies’ were ‘a true European minority’ (Kovats, 2001a: 95–6), meanwhile Roma and non-Roma academics were theorising Roma ‘as a transnational rather than a national minority’ (Gheorghe and Acton, 1994: 25). Eventually, at the fifth World Romani Congress held in Prague in July 2000, the claim was made by the International Romani Union (IRU) that Roma constitute a fully fledged nation – albeit without any demand for national territory (Acton and Klímová, 2001: 198, 218–9). This chapter considers attempts at Romani ethnic mobilisation in general but focuses especially on the territory of the former state of Czechoslovakia, both in the Communist period after the Second World War and since its ending with the Velvet Revolution of 1989. These selected cases are significant because they represent concerted attempts to attain national representation for Roma in very divergent political settings but also reveal the restricted potential for such action. In effect, Romani mobilisation was limited by contemporary dominant ideologies and specific political forms, as well as by state perception of the economic worth of Roma. A further relevant factor was the ambitions of governments representing majority peoples. In this way the chapter seeks to examine structural constraints on mobilisation using illustrative examples, rather than provide an exhaustive account of the multiplicity of Romani organisa48

Will Guy 49

tions. However, this account needs to be located in the broader context of worldwide Romani mobilisation. During these contrasting periods, Czech and Slovak Roma played a highly influential part in the broader struggle for international recognition, providing both the first and current presidents of the foremost organisation that aspires to represent all Roma – the International Romani Union. Recently there has been considerable debate within the field of migration studies about transnationalism in the sense of ‘multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation states’ (Vertovec 1999: 447; see also Barot, this volume). Yet if any grouping fully exemplifies this concept it would seem to be the Roma who, long before the migration westward that followed the ending of Communist rule, were already spread in an extensive diaspora throughout Europe and beyond. This dispersal has profound implications for the possibilities of successful international political mobilisation and, indeed, domestic mobilisation has also been affected by the frequently scattered location of Roma among majority populations.2 However, of even greater significance than geographic distribution for transnational and national Romani cooperation has been the peculiarly reviled status of this unfortunate people.

The context for Romani mobilisation Throughout their long residence over more than five centuries in the European countries they inhabit, Roma have invariably been regarded as outsiders and pariahs. At the same time, a parallel and contrasting identity is also attributed to them for, although often loathed, they are sometimes grudgingly admired as a version of Rousseau’s ‘primitive savage’ – as improbable survivors in a modernising world (in similar vein, in fact, to indigenous peoples; see May, this volume). Whether viewed negatively or otherwise, Roma have commonly been seen as bearers of a unique culture. Recent and more sophisticated studies have recognised that partly due to the diaspora, akin to that of the Jews and resulting in an ‘archipelago’ of Romani communities, this culture is highly varied and should be more appropriately characterised as ‘multiculturality’ (Gheorghe and Acton, 1994: 19–20). Willems queries whether it even makes sense to talk of a single people (1997: 3–7).3 Nevertheless, the idea of a presumed unitary Romani cultural identity, with nomadism at its core, is deeply entrenched. For example, the current Co-chair of the Council of Europe Specialist Group on Roma/Gypsies made the misinformed assertion that CEE Romani refugees in the 1990s represented ‘merely a return to the normal mobility of Gypsies’ (Verspaget, 1995: 13).4 Likewise, Kymlicka (2000: 204) dismissed the usefulness of comparing Roma with US ‘blacks’, partly on the grounds that the latter ‘have always lived in settled communities’, apparently unaware that most CEE


Roma have lived in this way for centuries. Evidently some still seem to believe that Romani cultural patterns have remained fundamentally inflexible and largely unaffected by the surrounding societies in which they have lived. This account is implausible, despite the persistence of certain marked Romani cultural elements (language, customs, beliefs, etc.), for even in the face of periodic persecution, Roma have survived only by supplying a variety of craft goods and services to non-Roma (gadje)5 (Fraser, 1992; Okely, 1983). Far from being a completely isolated and self-contained ‘other’, they were always in close symbiotic economic relations with larger and more powerful host communities. Therefore it was improbable that Roma remained untouched by their surroundings and ‘as a small and vulnerable minority, it was far more likely that their history would be more a tale of what was done to them than what they themselves had done’ (Guy, 1975a: 203). Although in close contact with others, the relationship was by no means equal, for the highly distinctive Roma almost invariably occupied marginal economic niches and remained socially segregated from other groups. The ensuing adverse and often extreme conditions under which Roma lived, shaped their identity in the eyes of others and even their own (Gheorghe and Acton, 1994: 20; Mirga and Gheorghe, 1997: 4). Consequently the development of Romani ethnic identity and possibilities for mobilisation have also been affected by the combined effects of their diaspora, by cultural differences between subethnic groups and most profoundly by their disadvantaged socioeconomic situation and low social standing. Here it is important to differentiate the situation in Western Europe from that in Central and Eastern Europe where much larger numbers of Roma have always been found and, contrary to popular stereotype, the vast majority are settled and have been so for many years. In the Balkans, for example, many Roma live in Romani urban neighbourhoods or quarters (mahala) in towns, a pattern established in Ottoman times, and it is no accident that the earliest Romani political activity occurred in these densely populated urban settings. However, in Central Europe a common pattern is ‘segregated…[Romani] settlements (called kolonia in Hungary, osada in Slovakia and Poland and tabor in Transcarpathian Ukraine) [located] some distance from [non-Romani] villages and towns’ and more recently in urban ghettos (Marushiakova and Popov, 2001a: 42–3).6 This more fragmented situation proved a less promising environment for political mobilisation than the sizeable Balkan mahala but nevertheless a more advantageous base than the transient stopping-places of many Romani nomads in Western Europe. Rather than simply interpreting sedentarisation among Roma as a loss of their supposed culture of ‘ancestral nomadism’ (Clébert, 1967: 222), it is better understood as linked to patterns of economic development in host

Will Guy 51

regions and related responses by the state. In Central and Eastern Europe, where feudalism often lingered well into the nineteenth century, the Romani labour force was ‘an important resource which [periodically] had to be put under a harsh dependency in order to be used/exploited’ (Gheorghe, 1997: 159).7 In the most extreme case of the Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldova (in present-day Romania), Roma were enslaved from soon after their first arrival to the mid-nineteenth century and their identity was determined by their slave status. ‘[There,] the fragmentation of the Gypsy population was reinforced by the legal treatment of them as property, starting from the Middle Ages’ (Gheorghe, 1997: 158–9). This was a totally different situation from that in most of Western Europe where Roma remained peripheral to the mainstream economy and were invariably regarded as an unwanted irritant by the state: The underlying difference in determining state policy towards Roma was the structural demands of the host economies in which they lived and the extent and manner in which their labour power was required. Consequently, the development of capitalism in the West, where Roma were regarded as ‘unproductive vagrants’, led to legislation ‘to limit their numbers’ or expel them, while to the contrary in the East, there were attempts to settle Roma in order to make better use of them. (Guy, 2001a: 7) In the regulation of Roma as labour power in much of Central and Eastern Europe, attitudes of the state towards them found expression in policies which either directly or indirectly defined their place in wider society, delimiting very real social and political boundaries – both to their opportunities and hopes. As Barany put it: ‘the state plays a quintessential role in determining the success of ethnic mobilisation. More specifically, state policies towards the Roma have been more important in determining their conditions than the particular circumstances of Romani mobilisation…’ (Barany, 1998: 319). Likewise, the significant influence of state policies on the formation of ethnic identity has been recently emphasised by Barth (1994).

Beginnings of ethnogenesis Since the first arrival of Roma in Europe, localised representation in dealing with current rulers has been a feature of their relations with majority communities,8 but such forms should be distinguished from wider Romani mobilisation, for ‘the activities of single individuals, speaking for their group, must be seen differently from large-scale efforts to reunite Romani populations…’ (Hancock, 1991: 139). On the basis of fragmentary records, Hancock suggested that Roma have attempted to achieve broader political


aims by common action throughout Europe from the fifteenth century onwards (1991: 139). However, it is only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that Roma activism can be unequivocally identified as wider mobilisation, no doubt influenced by, and in some cases as a reaction to the contemporary nationalist movements of ethnic majorities amongst whom Roma lived. In this period, Romani conferences were reported in Germany (1872), Hungary (1879), Bulgaria (1905) and Romania (1934) (Acton, 1974: 101; Hancock, 1991: 139–40). However, it was from the constituency of the more densely populated and longer established Romani communities of the Balkans that such conferences voiced what can be clearly recognised as modern political demands. The first Romani conference in Bulgaria was a direct response to growing Bulgar nationalism, following the foundation of the independent Bulgarian state in 1878. It was convened at Vidin in 1901 to protest at the removal of voting rights from Muslim Roma (the majority) and nomads earlier that year, and resulted in a petition to the national parliament. A further conference and petition in 1905 were eventually successful in restoring the constitutional rights of Roma. However, this was not the first instance of organised activism by the very diverse Romani population of Bulgaria, for during Ottoman times an appeal had been made in 1867 for the establishment of an independent Romani church and even before this, ‘when the first Bulgarian textile factories were established in Sliven, most of the workers were Gypsies who played an active part in the syndicalist and other political struggles of the time’ (Marushiakova and Popov, 2001b: 373–4). After the First World War, when new states were created from the defeated Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires on the supposed principle of national self-determination, ‘Romani political activity flourished in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia and Romania’ (Hancock, 1991: 140). In the newly established Soviet Union, Roma were recognised as a national minority in 1925 and an All-Russian Gypsy Union was formed in the same year, only to be closed down again in 1928 (Lemon, 2001: 228). Although the renowned Moscow Romani theatre was permitted to continue its activities, the national minority status of Roma was eventually withdrawn in 1936 (Stewart, 2001: 74). While there is insufficient space here to chronicle the full extent of mobilisation during the interwar period, a number of Romani political organisations with associated newspapers were active in both Romania and Bulgaria at this time.9 In 1933 an international conference in Bucharest ‘adopted a [world-wide] programme…to revive national consciousness and to fight for civil rights’, and also agreed to a ‘national Romani flag’ (Kenrick and Puxon, 1972: 205; Hancock, 1991: 140–1). Meanwhile, during the 1930s, various self-styled ‘Gypsy kings’ from the extended Kweik family in Poland (see Ficowski, 1991) imitated the Jewish Zionist movement and called for the recognition

Will Guy 53

of Roma as a nation by the League of Nations and for the creation of a Romani state, either in India, South Africa or Abyssinia (Acton, 1974: 101; Hancock, 1991: 141–3). A few years later, the Nazis thought death camps a more suitable destination for the region’s Roma, and up to half a million perished alongside the Jews.10 In countries like Bulgaria and Slovakia, where Roma were not transported en masse to concentration camps, many were used as forced labour and some fled to join the partisans or else aided them (Marushiakova and Popov, 2001b: 374–5, Guy, 1975a: 213). The Second World War ended before the planned extermination of the entire Romani population could be carried out. During the interwar period the growing engagement of Roma activists with the largely unreceptive political structures of non-Roma represented a very different strategy to the more common pattern of self-regulation and avoidance (Mirga and Gheorghe, 1997: 3). Later, this approach gathered support among Roma in Central and Eastern Europe, after their experience during the Second World War had starkly exposed the bankruptcy of the former practice of evasion as a form of self-defence, and when a dramatic change of regime gave rise to new hope.

Understanding Roma policies of Communist regimes In discussing Communist policy towards Roma in Central and Eastern Europe it should be recognised that this atypical and problematic minority was far from the top priority of party leaders. They had more urgent concerns and were far more occupied with establishing and consolidating Communist control over generally unenthusiastic majority populations. Indeed, it has been plausibly argued that ‘whenever the Gypsies became the focus of state policy, they were always the secondary and additional target of political decisions aimed at some other minority, other social structures or society as a whole’ (Marushiakova and Popov, 2001b: 377). However, it is remarkable that even in such extreme circumstances as the aftermath of the War, ‘the theoretical journal of…the [Hungarian] Communist Party at least considered whether to address the Gypsies as a distinct group with their own interests’ (Stewart, 2001: 73).11 The years of Communist rule can be divided crudely into two periods – the late 1940s and early 1950s, when confused and even contradictory practice was applied towards Roma in the absence of a coherent overall plan, and the late-1950s onwards, when most countries of the region responded to the 1956 lead given by the Soviet Union in banning nomadism (see also below). Nevertheless, there were significant anomalies in policy during this second period. Barany (2000) offers a more varied typology for the whole period of three distinct patterns: ‘consistent coercion (Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria)’, ‘erratic intrusion (Poland, Romania)’ and


‘decreasing pressures (Hungary)’ (Barany 2000: 424–7). However, this apparently more refined approach does not help clarify what was essentially a complex situation. To take the case of ‘consistently coercive’ Czechoslovakia, this state exemplified in practice all three of Barany’s categories. As is explained below, it attempted a comprehensive assimilation programme, then permitted a remarkable degree of Roma autonomy for a few years before reverting to repressive measures and eventually lapsing into ‘decreasing pressures’ in the final years of the regime. Likewise, Hungary had a far more mixed experience than is suggested by Barany’s characterisation of ‘decreasing pressures’. Most misleading of all is the recent tendency by post-Communist governments and some supranational organisations and commentators to dismiss the entire Communist approach as uniformly repressive and assimilatory. Such crude blanket condemnation neither acknowledges the diversity of the period nor assists the development of effective policy initiatives (Guy, 2001c: xvi, xvii)

Roma mobilisation under Communist rule Many Roma of Central and Eastern Europe had every reason to welcome the liberating Red Army for not only did its arrival save them from almost certain death but the professed credo of the Soviet order held out universal rights and the promise of equality. Roma had noted without surprise that, in the same way that their fellow countrymen had sometimes conducted pogroms against them in the 1930s, their annihilation during the Second World War had not been solely at the hands of Nazis from Germany. Local people, too, had often proved willing participants. Against this pervasive threat, incoming Communist-dominated governments seemed to offer a safeguard. Where wartime atrocities had been most savage, ‘the Romani population was numb. Political activity was minimal, and Gypsies were reluctant even to…draw attention to… [their ethnic identity] through group effort’ (Hancock 1991: 143). Bulgaria, however, had suffered relatively lightly and here the strong tradition of Romani activism was quick to revive. As early as March 1945, a nationwide organisation was founded under the prewar leader, Shakir Pashov. Shortly after, local branches were affiliated to the Communist umbrella organisation for all civic societies, and a national conference was held in May 1948 which affirmed Romani support for Communist rule. Prior to this, a Romani newspaper and theatre had been established in Sofia. In the 1950s these independent Romani organisations were abolished as part of a more general policy switch to homogenise the ‘Bulgarian socialist nation’ and in the process utilise Romani labour power to the full (Marushiakova and Popov (2001b: 375–6). A similar approach was repeated throughout the CEE region.

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Following the lead of the Soviet Union, which issued a decree banning nomadism in 1956, other CEE satellite states made concerted efforts to pursue a consistent programme of settling the relatively few remaining nomads and assimilating them along with the much larger numbers of sedentary Roma. In 1958 and 1959, corresponding laws were passed in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Poland, while even the more politically independent Communist-ruled states of Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania followed suit in the 1960s and 1970s (Marushiakova and Popov, 2001a: 46). It was argued that the only way to ensure the integration, equality and productiveness of Romani populations was by insisting on their full and rapid assimilation.12 This policy was proclaimed to be ideologically correct and pragmatic. All aspects of Romani culture, including language, were seen as outdated relics, distorted by the oppression of previous social orders, and as hindrances to full integration. To emphasise the ideological position that a separate Romani identity was no longer viable and was to be eliminated, the usual term ‘gypsy’ was officially replaced in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria by the formulation ‘citizen of gypsy origin’. Yet long before Marxist-Leninist theorists had fashioned this rationale, governments had already begun to recruit Roma into the mainstream workforce, mainly as unskilled workers. That the issue of wasted employment potential was fundamental was evident from the 1959 Czechoslovak handbook for local authorities:13 Heavy losses to the national economy…are caused by this labour reserve of tens of thousands of predominantly young gypsies who either do not work at all or else whose work output is very low. (Czechoslovak Socialist Government, 1959: 7–8) By a strange irony a very similar assimilation campaign had been waged two centuries earlier on much of the same territory by the Habsburg monarchs, Maria Theresa and Joseph II. This policy, too, had involved the enforced stripping from Roma of any separate Romani identity and their renaming as Neubauern (new farmers) or Ujmagyar (new Hungarians). Like that of its Communist successors the Habsburg attempt had been largely motivated by the desire to utilise Roma more effectively by maximising their productive potential (Horváthová, 1964: 113–36; Guy, 1975b, Fraser, 1992: 157–61).14 Nevertheless, despite their commitment to the assimilationist approach during most of their period of rule, the Communist Parties in Hungary and Czechoslovakia also experimented briefly with the alternative – limited Romani autonomy. In both cases this was a response to initiatives by Romani activists, but occurred in the aftermath of major political and military shocks which threatened the legitimacy and even existence of the


regimes. The short-lived Romani organisations that emerged as a result were undoubtedly the most significant manifestations of mobilisation during the Communist period since the Bulgarian experiment of the immediate postwar years, and can be seen as influential precursors to the Romani political activism of the post-Communist years. A year after the Hungarian ‘uprising’ of 1956 had been ended by a Soviet invasion, a dedicated and enterprising Romani journalist, Mária László, persuaded the Ministry of Culture to allow the establishment of the Cultural Alliance of Hungarian Gypsies (Stewart, 2001: 76). The constitution of the Alliance urged that state and Roma should work together towards better opportunities and living conditions for Roma, and László successfully assisted a number of Romani metal-working cooperatives (Stewart, 2001: 80). In addition, ‘initial plans emphasised the promotion of Roma languages and culture, leading Sághy to conclude that the aim of the Alliance was “unambiguously to create the basis for achieving nationality status”’ (Kovats, 2001b: 337). László had to proceed with caution and decided not to turn the Alliance into a membership organisation with local branches like other national minorities, as this would have been regarded as too provocative. Nevertheless, her campaigning for Romani rights and opposition to discrimination led to her removal in 1958 and tighter central control over the activities of the Alliance (Stewart, 2001: 80). This initiative coincided with and ran directly counter to the general policy shift towards outright assimilationism throughout the region, which may have prompted the Ministry of Labour to commission an investigation into the situation of Roma – in the very same year the Alliance was founded (Stewart, 2001: 78). The resulting report sought to undermine any claims to nationality status, asserting that Romani society was ‘stagnating or possibly developing backwards’, and eventually led to ‘the 1961 politburo decree, which abolished the Alliance, declaring it “unsuitable” for the tasks ahead’ (Kovats, 2001b: 337). The Czechoslovak experiment occurred a little later and lasted for a similar period of around four to five years – from 1969 until 1973. As in Hungary, this initially arose during a period of political turbulence and uncertainty. However, unlike the Hungarian case, the assimilationist model had been long-established by this time and the new initiative represented a major policy reversal. Furthermore, in their explicit aims and organisational structure with subsidiary branches, the Czechoslovak Romani associations more closely resembled the Bulgarian example of the late 1940s. The experience of Roma activists in Czechoslovakia is discussed in more detail in the sections below. But at this point it is relevant to note that some commentators deny the validity of any Romani associations established under Communist regimes, regarding them as completely

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remote from genuine mobilisation and amounting to nothing more than a cynical exercise in state containment: [A] few organisations [were] created for the Roma by East European states in order to mollify the few Romani activists and control their lives. The task of these bodies was not to safeguard or represent the Roma’s interests…but to shape Romani social cultural and political activities into a manageable and controllable institutional form. (Barany, 1998: 314) Barany later qualified this dismissive, one-sided view, acknowledging that ‘notwithstanding the state-socialist social control policies, a measure of independent Romani activism did emerge, laying the groundwork for post-socialist Gypsy mobilisation’ (Barany, 2000: 422). However, this partial retreat still fails to recognise the part played by permitted organisations. Although the state undoubtedly sought to contain and channel the activities of such associations, these did provide Roma with important opportunities for raising the profile of their people, gaining experience in organising and even for political expression. As will be shown, not only are there links in key personnel between Communist and post-Communist Romani organisations in the Czech lands and Slovakia but consideration of the international dimension reveals a continuity in which activism during the Communist era plays a pivotal part. Stewart takes a similar view of the significance of the Cultural Alliance of Hungarian Gypsies. This was the first ever national organisation of Hungarian Gypsies and despite its short-lived existence remained an inspiration to the generation of activists who emerged thirty years later during the twilight years of state socialism. (Stewart, 2001: 76)

The case of Czechoslovakia: postwar change and the assimilation campaign The ending of the Second World War marked a watershed, both for the majority Czechs and Slovaks and their minority peoples. After the First World War, the dominant Czechs had seen themselves, much as their predecessors the Habsburgs had done, as culturally superior leaders of an enlarged multiethnic state containing not only the Slovaks but substantial minorities of Hungarians, Ruthenians, Jews, Roma and – most significantly – over three million ethnic Germans living mainly in areas of heavy industry near the German and Austrian borders (the Sudetenland) and in Czech towns. But from 1945 onwards the actions of Czech-dominated governments were to result in a progressive shedding of non-Czech peoples. This drawn-out process, at times amounting to ethnic cleansing, eventually led


to the creation in 1993 of the present-day Czech Republic, with ominous consequences for the Roma. As soon as the war ended the newly established coalition government set about expelling unwanted minorities in retribution for their part in dismantling the interwar state. In the immediate postwar period, 90 000 Hungarians living in Slovakia were exchanged for Slovaks and, more significantly, almost all Germans were forcibly ejected from the Czech lands.15 Meanwhile, three other minorities had almost vanished from the prewar mix of peoples. Border revisions transferred Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia to the Ukraine, meanwhile most of the Jews had been liquidated as had almost all the prewar Romani population of the Czech lands. All these changes left the reconstituted Czechoslovak Republic far more ethnically homogeneous than its predecessor had been. The changes also resulted in an immediate and acute labour shortage. Consequently, a flood of workers swept into the Czech lands from underdeveloped rural areas such as East Slovakia, including thousands of Roma. Shortly after they had been forced to work under the puppet Hlinka regime, Roma were once more in demand for their labour power.16 Initially Roma were transferred in enforced relocations, eventually discontinued in 1947, but such workers were soon far outnumbered by those recruited directly by Czech firms and by a flood of voluntary migrants (Grulich and Haisˇman, 1986). Contrary to the misleading stereotype of Romani experience under Communist rule, these Slovak Roma were eager for new employment opportunities and decent homes in place of their prewar lot of poorly rewarded ‘traditional’ craft occupations and hovels in segregated, rural settlements (Lacková, 1999, Guy, 2001a).17 By 1958, although no precise figures are available, the Romani population was estimated at between 120 000 and 150 000 of which perhaps a quarter were in the Czech lands. These rural-to-urban migrants had more than replaced the former Romani population, virtually annihilated during the war, and occupied the typically unskilled jobs of migrant workers. Men worked mainly as labourers and women frequently in the service sector. At first, incoming migrant families had sometimes been housed in the empty homes of expelled Germans but local authorities later assigned them to dilapidated innercity housing as more suitable for them, where they increasingly coalesced into what amounted to minor ghettos. This practice was frankly acknowledged by a Czech historian in the mid-1950s (Jamnická-Sˇmerglová: 89). Meanwhile, despite continued population movement westwards, the reservoirs of Romani migration in the Slovak countryside continued to grow, swelled mainly by the high fertility rate among Roma but also by remigration, intensifying the overcrowded and insanitary conditions. As in Hungary, the ruling Communist Party had discussed what approach to adopt towards Roma, but it was not until after the 1956 lead of the USSR that an ambitious, nationwide assimilation campaign was launched.18 A 1958

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law effectively banned the travels of the very small minority of Vlach Roma in their horse-drawn wagons but, more significantly, the key term ‘nomadism’ was extended to regulate the continuing migration of the overwhelmingly larger numbers of settled Roma. This latter point needs to be emphasised. Misleading characterisations of the 1958 measures, for example as ‘a rapid and comprehensive campaign to settle and assimilate the Roma throughout the country’, spread the mistaken views that most Roma were nomadic and that they were ‘forced…to find regular employment’ (Barany, 2000: 424). The reality was that over 90 per cent of Czechoslovak Roma were sedentary and that they were migrating voluntarily in order to find better-paid work in the industrial areas. Although comprehensive guidelines were issued in 1959 to local authorities, instructing them on how to disperse Roma to accelerate their complete assimilation into the workforce and socialist society, progress was slow. In response, a coordinating government committee was established in 1965 to eliminate the many remaining and highly visible population concentrations of Roma within a few years by means of a carefully planned programme of ‘transfer and dispersal’ (prˇesun a rozptyl). Under this scheme Roma were to be taken, mainly from segregated settlements in Slovakia, and relocated and set to work among non-Roma, often in the more rural areas of the Czech lands. As a Romani spokesman sardonically commented: ‘They planned the numbers for each village – horses, cows and Gypsies’ and ‘a quota was set of not more than five per cent Gypsies’ (Hübschmannová, 1968: 37–9). Within three years the plan had ground to a virtual halt, mainly frustrated by the obstinate resistance of Czech local authorities who often claimed that no suitable accommodation was available. But it was also sabotaged by Roma who wanted to live with relatives in the cities and enjoy the higher wages of industrial employment and therefore continued to migrate to their chosen destinations regardless of ineffectual restrictions such as the nomadism law. A Czech Ministry of Labour report stated wryly that ‘during the three years from 1966 to 1968 there were over three times as many recorded unplanned moves by Gypsies [from Slovakia] into and within the Czech lands as there were [officially] planned moves’ (Guy, 1977: 334; original emphasis). In recognition of the failure of the whole policy, as well as the inadequacy of the overall supervision, the government committee was eventually dissolved in November 1968 (Guy, 1977: 351).

The Associations of Gypsies-Roma in Czechoslovakia When the dispersal programme collapsed the Czechoslovak Communist Party conceded, almost in desperation, that integration and socioeconomic equalisation did not necessarily require the wholesale destruction of Romani identity. To the contrary, for a brief interlude of almost five years,


Roma were permitted to establish their own cultural and economic organisations for the first time in Czechoslovakia. There had been previous initiatives by Romani activists but they had not been permitted, as in 1948 when an attempt had been made to gain consent for a Romani association in Slovakia (Vasˇecˇka, 2001: 175–6). A decade later in Slovakia, Romani architect Anton Facuna requested permission to set up a musical group and magazine. When he offered to collect a thousand signatures in support of the proposal, he was accused by the party functionary with responsibility for the ‘gypsy question’ of being ‘a gypsy bourgeois nationalist in favour of segregating Gypsies’ and was threatened with imprisonment (Hübschmannová, 1968: 37). The timing of the abrupt policy reversal of the late 1960s might suggest it was entirely due to the dramatic programme of political reform and party renewal, known as the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968, when Stalinism was briefly replaced by ‘socialism with a human face’. Certainly, the changed atmosphere encouraged Romani activists, for it permitted fresh perspectives on national minority rights, including increased autonomy for Slovakia in a federalised republic. However, the collapse of the assimilation programme had its own momentum and the complete bankruptcy of policy-makers ensured that the policy reversal survived into an altogether more hostile period of repression – the imposition of political ‘normalisation’ to reestablish party control following the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968. After a year of preparation, an Association of Gypsies-Roma was established in Slovakia in April 1969 and in August in the Czech lands. Initially the plan had been for a unitary organisation, given that Roma in both parts of the Republic were the same people, but separate organisations reflected the political structures of the recently federalised state (Davidová 1995: 205). Each Association had two component parts: a section for cultural and social activities and another for economic matters. The former activities included folklore, music, publishing, educational work, liaison with official bodies, social work and advice centres, etc. The latter consisted mainly of setting up work cooperatives to encourage greater economic participation by Roma.19 These associations were by no means given free rein, and party control was maintained partly by withholding national minority status from Roma but more directly by placing the organisations and their local branches under the all-embracing umbrella organisation for all civil groups, the National Front. An equally important factor in exerting influence was the nature of the leadership personnel. Drawn inevitably from the tiny Romani intelligentsia, these were often party members but this was hardly surprising.20 Some were even holders of nomenklatura posts reserved for trusted cadres. The two most prominent leaders in the Czech lands were in this category – Tomásˇ Holomek, a military judge and member of parliament, and his nephew Miroslav, a sociologist and first president of the Czech Association.

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Despite such structural constraints and the unpromising political climate, views expressed in the publications of these organisations could be surprisingly forthright. The Inaugural Congress of the Czech Association addressed the question of national minority status for Roma in far from placatory tones, directly challenging the validity of the still-unrevoked Marxist-Leninist rationale for assimilation. If the Gypsies have not been recognised yet as a nationality, the main cause has been fears of the results of granting various rights to the Gypsies as a nationality. Arguments – like the lack of several characteristics (territory etc.)…were only a means to prevent recognition of the Gypsies as a nationality. (Programme of the Inaugural Czech Congress, quoted in Guy, 1975a: 223) This was to repeat the demand for national minority status already made by some Romani leaders and supported by Czech academics (Hübschmannová 1968: 36–7; Davidová, 1995: 206). The same view was shared by a broader constituency of Roma, who declared themselves ‘of unacknowledged Romani nationality’ in the 1970 census, even though this category did not formally exist as an option (Kauerová, 1984: 170). However, Roma were to remain unrecognised, even as an ethnic group, until after the ending of Communist rule. The Associations recruited steadily during their years of existence, with the Czech branch growing from an initial 1500 at the end of 1969 to 8500 by 1972, but their influence extended far beyond their formal membership (Davidová, 1995: 206). The most successful and acclaimed of their cultural and educational activities were music festivals, competitions and school initiatives, as well as the publication of magazines, newsletters and books, some using the Romani language. The impact of this surge in visibility gave rise to a nationwide vogue for songs in Romanes, though sung by non-Roma like the Czech pop star Karel Gott. At the same time the term ‘Roma’ became widespread in the media and was used increasingly in everyday speech by ordinary Czechs and Slovaks, beginning to replace the denigratory cikán or cigán (gypsy). The outcomes of the associations’ social activities were more problematic as expectations on the part of both Roma and official agencies were unrealistically high, and disillusion followed when these were not met. Local authorities saw organisation officers as agents for controlling Roma and anticipated the speedy resolution of a range of social problems. Meanwhile, they made few concessions, thereby denying these Romani representatives the visible signs of progress they needed to establish trust and authority amongst their own people. Housing problems were the most pressing concern for Roma. In the Czech towns these were exacerbated by local authorities refusing to register


incoming Romani families as residents, even though this practice had been condemned as illegal by the Government Committee in 1965 (Guy, 1975a). As a result, newcomers were forced either to crowd in with relatives or squat in semi-derelict buildings. In a situation of general housing shortage, local authorities were unwilling to relocate Romani tenants to better flats, using as an excuse the undesirable state of their current accommodation. These conditions were often due to the presence of relatives, a situation which tenants and association officers alike were powerless to prevent (Guy, 1975b). In rural Slovakia overcrowded Roma faced a different but equally serious predicament. Local authorities claimed planning permission could not be given for new houses in segregated and isolated settlements, destined in the unrealisable plans for ultimate demolition. Meanwhile attempts by Roma to buy existing Slovak-owned village houses or build their own amongst the Slovaks were frequently blocked. Consequently, Roma were often forced to build new homes without planning permission in unhygienic settlements lacking in basic infrastructure. According to the regulations, these houses should have been demolished, although this did not usually happen in practice. In this process, too, association officers were unable to intervene effectively (Guy 1975b). The activities of the economic sections were also fraught with difficulties. Although these encouraged some ventures specialising in Romani crafts, such as metal working and basket weaving, the great majority of Roma saw in cooperatives the opportunity for economic independence in an occupation they knew only too well – heavy labouring. While setting up their own work gangs was a wholly rational strategy, the effect was to be disastrous, perpetuating and strengthening Romani representation in this limited sector of the economy rather than broadening opportunities for the future. These new cooperatives were immediately faced with the problem of a severe shortage of experienced personnel for management and administration. Consequent serious irregularities in bookkeeping procedures and observance of labour norms prompted criticism, both from state bodies and Roma themselves (Davidová, 1995: 206–7). One of the most significant achievements of the organisations illustrated their uneasy relationship with the Communist regime and was linked with their eventual termination. In 1971, a delegation from the Czech Association was permitted to attend the first World Romani Congress in London. The evident intention of the beleaguered government was to gain international credibility for its stance on Romani issues and a speech to that effect was duly delivered. However, enough informed critical comment had been circulated and published on the situation (for example Hübschmannová, 1968; Davidová, 1970; Guy, 1970) for other delegates to question this bland account and have their doubts confirmed.21 Instead of rubber-stamping the regime’s record, the Congress became a landmark in

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the process of gaining international acceptance of Romani rights and eventual recognition by the UN of national minority status for Roma (Acton and Klímová, 2001: 158). Ultimately the strictures within which the associations were forced to operate proved unbearable, as one activist in the Czech lands, Romani historian Bartolomeˇj Daniel, confided secretly in his notebook. [Throughout its existence] the position of the Association was not easy and its possibilities were strictly limited. The establishment of the Association was agreed by the Communist Party on condition that Roma would undertake the solution of Romani problems only in co-operation with state bodies. The boundaries and scope [of its activities] were defined in a way that not only the content but also targets were clearly specified. The Association found itself in an unenviable situation. On the one hand, it faced the pressure of ordinary Roma pleading for their social situation to be redressed and on the other, the pressure of state bodies, which undermined the Association’s authority at various stages of its development and eventually engineered its abolition. (Quoted in Davidová, 1995: 209) The associations were abolished without warning in early 1973, on the stated grounds that they had failed in their allotted tasks (in which the party had made it impossible for them to succeed). Undoubtedly financial misdemeanours and missing funds were a factor but fears of renewed demands by Roma for national minority status also played a part (Davidová, 1995: 206–9). The decision was bluntly announced at a meeting of the Czech Association by a Party Central Committee representative, who added cynically: ‘Perhaps things will be different in ten years – that is, if your [people’s] intellect has improved in the meantime’. A detailed account of the proceedings was published, without authorisation, in the final issue of the association’s newsletter by its courageous Jewish editor, who was rewarded for his temerity by being sent to work as a labourer in a steel stockyard (Romano L’il, 1973). The demise of the associations was by no means the end of activism for the Roma of Czechoslovakia. One of the leaders of the Slovak Association, Ján Cibula, the country’s first Romani doctor, went into exile and joined with others especially from Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in establishing the International Romani Union in 1977, becoming its first president (Acton and Klímová, 2001: 158).22 Delegates from both countries had attended the 1971 World Romani Congress, from which this organisation emerged. Six years after the ending of the associations, a highly critical report on the situation of Roma in Czechoslovakia was published by the most prominent dissident organisation, Charta 77. In addition, the report anticipated that should the economy be restructured, the largely unskilled


Romani workforce would become redundant, leading to their destitution and a consequent upsurge of Romani nationalism and interethnic strife (Charter 77, 1979b: 7). A decade later Communist rule collapsed and this dire prediction began to be fulfilled.

Post-Communist mobilisation by Roma in the Czech lands and Slovakia For Romani activists in Central and Eastern Europe, the revolutions of 1989, which dramatically toppled the Communist regimes of the region, seemed to offer realisation for their long-suppressed aspirations, both for political representation in their own right and for recognition as a specific people. Alliances forged earlier with dissidents sometimes led to the inclusion of their newly formed political parties as coalition partners in the umbrella groupings that were often immediate successors to Communist rule. Also, within a short period, Roma were acknowledged as a national or ethnic minority in many countries.23 In such cases they were recognised as a single minority identified simply as Roma.24 Yet, at the same time, other developments soon led to a rapid deterioration of the situation of most Roma. Inefficient command economies were drastically restructured, involving the closure of outdated and labourhungry industries and the loss of many unskilled jobs. These massive systemic changes affected not only centres of heavy industry but also rural areas where state and cooperative farms were privatised by the return of land to former owners. The result for the vast majority of Roma labourers was pandemic unemployment and they were forced to subsist on whatever little social support that existed, or seek precarious earnings in the black economy. In a troubled atmosphere, where post-revolutionary euphoria had been replaced by widespread foreboding, Roma were once more cast in their familiar role as scapegoats. Those who were destitute were vilified as undeserving parasites, while the few that prospered, such as traders, were accused of exploiting the suffering of non-Roma. The result was an upsurge of racist attacks against Roma throughout the region, sometimes amounting to pogroms, and increasing attempts to segregate them socially by excluding them systematically from employment opportunities, from mainstream education, from integrated residential areas and from public space. Meanwhile, their precarious political representation in national parliaments all but vanished within a few years as new political parties crystallised. These appealed to constituencies unsympathetic to Roma and consequently the highly unpopular and marginal Roma were virtually ignored. Romani organisations appeared powerless to affect this deteriorating situation. Their exclusion from any influence on political decision-making, which had been achieved by straightforward coercion under Communism,

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was now maintained indirectly by the combined effects of market forces, legal deregulation and official indifference to the plight of Roma. In both periods the end result was similar, Romani politicians found themselves helpless to improve the lot of their constituents. Probably these structural constraints on their effectiveness did far more to undermine their credibility and weaken support for Romani parties than the endemic factionalism to which they were said to be prone (Barany 1994: 248). Yet, despite the continued inability of Romani organisations to bring about change, the material conditions of Roma were now acknowledged to be very different. A full decade after the advent of liberal democratic rule in the region, the head of the Council of Europe Specialist Group on Roma declared that Central and Eastern European Roma were now worse off than under Communist rule: More Roma – compared with the period before – are without a job, also compared with other parts of the population. More Roma lack education. Many more Roma children, compared with the situation ten years ago, do not go to school. You can compare also the human rights situation with ten years ago. There are many more racist attacks on Roma. (Verspaget, quoted in Hill 2000) Developments in Czechoslovakia reflected this overall, negative pattern, as explained below. In the immediate aftermath of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, in which Roma had played an active part by joining the mass demonstrations, the omens for greater Romani integration into Czech and Slovak public life appeared promising. Roma achieved political representation in the first post-Communist parliaments as the newly formed Romani Civic Initiative (ROI) was included as a partner in the broad-based coalitions which were overwhelming victors in the immediate post-Communist elections – Civic Forum (OF) in the Czech lands and Public against Violence (VPN) in Slovakia.25 In April 1991 Slovakia acknowledged Roma as a national minority and the Federal and Czech governments soon followed suit. Meanwhile there was an immediate flowering of Romani culture. Newspapers and magazines in the Romani language26 appeared throughout the Republic and over thirty cultural organisations applied for official registration. A museum of Romani culture was founded in Brno, while in East Slovakia a Romani theatre opened its doors in Presˇov and an innovatory department of Romani music was established as part of an existing conservatory in Kosˇice. Many of these cultural and political activities were launched and sustained with financial support from the state. This new beginning was celebrated in July 1990 by the staging in Brno of a World Romani Festival, attended by President Václav Havel (Davidová, 1995: 223–7).


Yet the very freedoms which permitted these new developments for Roma allowed others licence to vent their hostile feelings against them. Roma were verbally and physically attacked throughout the country, as well as suffering discrimination from employers and local authorities. Romani organisations could do nothing except protest about the repeated assaults – to little apparent effect. Neither could they alter the discriminatory practices of local authorities or employers. In both the Czech lands and Slovakia local employment offices frequently marked records of Roma with the letter ‘R’, in order to meet the requests of employers for exclusively non-Roma job applicants (Czech Government, 1997: I 18, Vasˇecˇka, 1999: 2).27 After the 1990 elections the fragmentation of the umbrella parties left Romani political movements isolated and they were faced with the unenviable choice of once more seeking a majority partner, which would accept whatever votes could be delivered but pay little heed to their concerns, or campaigning on a separate platform. The largest grouping (ROI) opted for the latter course in the 1992 elections but received only 0.53 per cent of the votes and thereafter no Romani political party has been represented in either the Czech or Slovak parliaments (Vasˇecˇka 2001: 176).28 In this uncompromisingly hostile political climate, schisms developed between Romani leaders that have yet to be bridged in any way that assures sustained cooperation. In their frustration some Roma accused their would-be representatives of inefficiency and nepotism, others voted for the Communist Party as their former protectors, while many saw voting as pointless (Guy, 1998: 50; Barany 1994: 248). Support for Romani parties melted away to be replaced by profound pessimism about any realistic expectation of progress. The dismemberment of the Czechoslovak state at the beginning of 1993, in what was dubbed the ‘Velvet Divorce’, dealt a further blow to Romani hopes. For Roma in the Czech lands the new citizenship law demonstrated that discrimination extended to the very highest administrative levels. Although the governing centre-right Czech party sought the partition partly because it saw populist Slovak nationalism as a threat to its radical economic reforms (Kavan, 1996: 38), it nevertheless seized the opportunity presented by partition to rid the newly minted Czech Republic of unwanted ‘outsider’ population groups. These were regarded as both socially undesirable and an economic burden on the state. An internal government document, leaked to the press, spelt out explicitly the law’s underlying intention: We should use the process [of the division of the Republic] for the purpose of departure of not-needed persons from factories, especially for the reasons of structural changes, and for the departure of people of Roma nationality to the Slovak Republic. (Prostor, 21 July 1992, quoted in Human Rights Watch, 1996: 19)

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While Slovakia granted citizenship to anyone previously a citizen of the Federal Republic, the Czech Republic invoked a legal technicality of the 1968 federalisation law in order to require those classified as Slovaks to satisfy stringent criteria before being accepted as Czech citizens. These requirements were targeted mainly at Roma and included proof of permanent residence for two years and a clean criminal record for the past five years. Because many Roma living permanently in the Czech lands had suffered difficulties over registration and often had convictions for petty theft, they were thereby ineligible for Czech citizenship, even though perhaps as many as two-thirds of them had been born there (Gross, 1994: vi). NGOs and the Czech Ministry of the Interior offered wildly differing estimates of numbers excluded from Czech citizenship in this way.29 Several hundred appeared to have been expelled to Slovakia (Human Rights Watch, 1996: 28) and some were even made stateless, but undoubtedly the vast majority of the estimated 150 00030 or more Roma in the Czech Republic simply remained there, irrespective of legal status. In the process many suffered the loss of their rights and became ‘foreigners in their own land’ (Gross, 1993). Soon after the new law came into force, its message, that Roma were not just unwelcome but the target of ethnic cleansing, was reinforced on national TV by the words of a Czech beauty queen. To public applause she proclaimed: ‘I want to become a public prosecutor…so I can clean our town of its dark-skinned inhabitants’ (Stewart, 1997: 2). The transparently discriminatory citizenship law provoked sustained criticism from home-based pro-Roma and Roma NGOs and international organisations such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Council of Europe. Inevitably it was those organisations addressing an international audience that made the most noticeable impact, such as the Tolerance Foundation and Helsinki Committees in the Czech Republic and Human Rights Watch and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) abroad. These were generally better-resourced, non-Romani NGOs, although they often had Roma members. However, it would be mistaken to discount the significant input to such reports of Romani organisations like the Dzˇeno Foundation in the Czech Republic and the Nevipe Foundation in Slovakia. After continued protests and some cosmetic changes the Czech government eventually repealed the citizenship law on 9 July 1999. By this time the predicament of Roma had been further underscored by the highly publicised waves of refugees to the West. During this period both the Czech Republic and Slovakia were seeking entry to the European Union and the treatment of their Roma minorities was being closely scrutinised as part of the accession process. In mid-1997, Romani despair found expression in the mass departure of over 1000 Czech and Slovak Roma seeking asylum, first in Canada and then in Britain. As if to reinforce the point that there was no future for


them at home, the fares of some were subsidised by a Czech mayor, on condition that they gave up existing residential rights. Their departure was prompted by Czech-made TV documentaries offering illusory promises of life without discrimination against Roma in these states but, while Canada accepted that their home state had failed to protect them, only a handful have since been granted refugee status in Britain (Guy, 2001d). In the Czech Republic, but especially Slovakia, mainstream politicians and media alike suggested that the refugee phenomenon was politically engineered in order to put pressure on governments. Public resentment in Slovakia was inflamed still further by the response of several Western governments in imposing visa restrictions on all Slovak citizens. The daily Pravda headlined its front-page story ‘Organised Exodus’ (Pravda, 6 July 1999), while Slovak President Schuster believed the migration was a plot, insisting that ‘time will confirm how these Roma were organised, in what manner, and why they were chosen’ (Naegele, 1999). However, the 2000 Regular Report on Slovakia took a more sanguine view of events. While noting that ‘[s]ome political representatives have blamed the situation on the Roma themselves or attributed it to organised gangs’, it added: ‘The underlying social and economic roots can nevertheless not be ignored’ (European Commission, 2000b: 21). The emotive issue of emigration proved divisive for Romani organisations in both republics. The longer established ROI feared that outright defence of refugees would incite even more anti-Roma hostility from the public and therefore tended to side with governments in criticising asylumseeking as pointless, and in appealing for their return. In fact, the flight of large numbers of Roma undermined their attempts to seek accommodation with the state and thus gain concessions and material support – the type of strategy pursued with considerable success in neighbouring Germany by the Sinti grouping.31 In contrast, members of newer and more radical Romani groups, such as the Roma Intelligentsia for Co-existence (RIS) in Slovakia and the transnational Roma National Congress (RNC) in the Czech lands, defended the actions of refugees. These explained the emigration by the continued discrimination suffered by Roma in their homelands (Vermeersch, 2000: 10). In this context, new policy approaches on Romani issues were adopted in the Czech and Slovak Republics from around 1997 onwards. Although these were partly in response to the embarrassment of Romani emigration, which undermined these states’ democratic credentials and directly threatened their political aim of achieving EU membership, they were also the consequence of significant changes in government. Following the comprehensive and sharply critical Bratinka report in 1997 (Czech Government, 1997) on the situation of Roma in the Czech Republic, new administrative structures were established with Romani representation to coordinate and develop policy. Eventually a new, overall conception for integrating Roma

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was agreed in June 2000 (Guy, 2001b: 301–4). Likewise, in Slovakia, the often overtly anti-Roma stance of premier Mecˇiar was replaced by the altered perspective of a more democratic government, which committed itself to making progress in integrating what was described as ‘the largest Romany minority of all EU-hopeful countries, and the one with the lowest social status’ (Vasˇecˇka 2001: 170). This differing approach included the appointment of a Rom to the newly established post of Plenipotentiary for Addressing Romani Minority Problems.32 In both countries, EU aid to support the implementation of these policies was provided through the Phare programme and projects funded in this way included many by new Romani NGOs, often directing their activities at the high proportion of children and young people in the Roma population.33 Attempts were made in October 1999 to establish an independent association of Slovak Romani NGOs. Despite such efforts at self-help and increased levels of funding, Romani organisations remain very under-represented and in Slovakia, for example, ‘should be at least twenty times greater’ (Vasˇecˇka, 2001: 179). In the Czech Republic an earlier study of NGOs concerned with Romani issues revealed problems of impermanence, limited resources and disorganisation (Sˇiklová, 1999). Schisms among Romani political groups have already been discussed and indeed an international comparison of Romani mobilisation in former Communist states suggested that in most cases, including the Czech Republic, Roma have remained ‘profoundly divided and, consequently, politically ineffective’ (Barany, 1998: 318, 321). The same is true of Slovakia where, ‘[e]ver since its birth in 1990…the Romany political scene has been strongly fragmented’ (Vasˇecˇka, 2001: 176).34 Yet, as Barany himself noted, a main factor determining the success of mobilisation has always been the political conditions created by the state. Thus, irrespective of the degree of unity among Roma, little progress could have been expected ‘because a number of successive Slovak governments have neglected the Roma and their problems’ (Barany, 1998: 320; Orgovánová, 1994: 7–8, 21–22).35 For this reason, the more positive approaches of post-1997 Slovak and Czech governments now seem to offer more promising political environments for cooperation by Roma activists, although there is evidence that old attitudes still persist in places at all levels of government (see Guy, 2001b: 301–6). In Slovakia, 14 Roma political parties and 37 Roma NGOs agreed in October 2000 to work together for the parliamentary elections of 2002 under the leadership of the longest-established Romani party, ROI, headed by Ladislav Fízik. Nevertheless, it is uncertain that this remarkable unity can be sustained36 and, even if it is, whether the barrier of the 5 per cent threshold for parliamentary representation can be crossed (Vasˇecˇka, 2001: 177). In the Czech Republic, prominent Romani politicians adopted rather different strategies. Karel Holomek, son of the 1970s Czech Association leader Tomásˇ Holomek, was a former dissident now associated with human rights


organisations, striking a moderate note as leader of the Society of Roma in Moravia (Davidová, 1995: 225–7). In contrast, leading activist Ondrˇej Gin ˘a of the RNC, criticises official complacency about the slow rate of progress and has defended Roma refugees. He also helped organise resistance to the attempt by a local council in the North Bohemian town of Ústí nad Labem to wall-off a block of flats, inhabited mainly by Romani families, and played an important role in the eventual removal of this powerful symbol of the segregated ghetto (Sˇídlo, 1999). However, it must be recognised that disunity among Roma poses problems for governments too, when seeking negotiating partners for agreeing and implementing policies and, equally importantly in the current situation, in demonstrating political participation of Roma to the EU. Recognising this situation, Emil Sˇcˇ uka the leader of the ROI, the most influential Romani party in the Czech Republic, has made use of his position as secretary general and more recently president of the International Romani Union (IRU) to seek broader accommodation with the Czech government. This tactic is fully acceptable to Czech politicians since it corresponds with their desire to present the ‘Roma problem’ as one of international dimensions rather than wholly the concern of individual governments. In line with this position the Czech government provided support for the fifth World Congress, held in the former federal parliament building. A pragmatic alliance of this kind would appear advantageous to both sides, boosting the pro-Roma credentials of the Czech government as well as the international stature of the IRU leader in an arena where he most needed exposure (Acton and Klímová, 2001: 165–8, 197–8).

International Romani mobilisation For all their difficulties in mobilising mass support at grassroots level, or in exerting influence at national level to any significant effect, Romani organisations have steadily increased their visibility on the international stage (cf. ‘Indigenous peoples, self-determination and international law’, in May, this volume, pp. 87–90). Originating with an initial committee in 1965, what is now the International Romani Union has held periodic World Romani Congresses since 1971 and gained observer status in the United Nations Council for Social and Economic Questions in 1979. This led to wider representation on international bodies such as UNICEF, UNESCO and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE), as well as the Geneva Conference on Minorities as part of the Helsinki process (Liégeois and Gheorghe, 1995: 21–8; Barany, 1994: 248–9; Gheorghe, 1997: 153–7). Although having no single homeland of their own, Roma were helped in this growing recognition by the mediation of successive Indian governments, including Indira Gandhi’s acknowledge-

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ment of Roma as an Indian population outside of India and continued support for World Romani Congresses (Hancock, 1991: 146). Acton explained how former acceptance of a common goal and strategy for Romani political action has been replaced by doubts about the future direction of the movement. ‘Despite the vigorous factionalism of international Romani politics, there has been more or less consensus that a common national identity has to be built in order to underwrite shared institutions which will be strong and legitimate enough to represent a Romani people internationally’ (Acton, 1998: 11). This was partly to negotiate reparations for genocide during the Second World War, similar to those paid to the Jews, but also in order to put effective pressure on national governments to remedy the predicament of their own Romani citizens. Nonetheless, the achievement in gaining international recognition has not translated into tangible improvement in the situation of Roma in former Communist states. Instead, their material and social conditions have steadily worsened. This paradox has caused growing anguish among Romani activists involved in civil rights, education and culture and ‘[f]or them, the continual failure of the aspirations that Romani nationalism formulated in the 1960s is deeply frustrating. [In consequence, the] failures of Romani political organisations have become the subject of theoretical investigation and debate by Romani intellectuals themselves’ (Acton, 1998: 11). Nicolae Gheorghe, a Romani sociologist from Romania,37 viewed the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe as a group, whose previous ethnic identity was predominantly a social identity deriving from their despised and inferior position in society – at its most extreme in Romania where they remained slaves until the mid-nineteenth century. In the attempt to move from this status to ‘some kind of respectability with a sort of equality with other social groups…on the basis of a revised perception of their identity’, he saw Roma as currently undergoing a process of ‘ethnogenesis’ (Gheorghe, 1997: 158). From this standpoint, Gheorghe criticised the pursuit of international recognition of Roma as a national minority as unnecessary and ill-advised, since such an approach implicitly acknowledges the nation-state to be the legitimate property of those ethnic majorities which have fortuitously appropriated them (see also May, this volume): The discourse of national minorities is another way to reproduce and to reinforce the nation-state. The fact that the nation-states are so generous now with these ‘minorities’ is just one device to reinforce the legitimacy of these states as ethnic states, states which actually belong to an ethnic ‘majority’. So, ethnic minority policies are exhibited as if in a display cabinet, like a showcase in international politics to make sure the Council of Europe and the western democracies think that things are good in Eastern Europe. (Gheorghe, 1997: 158)


The Romani poet, Attila Balogh, was even more scathing about the eagerness of the region’s new governments to demonstrate their equitable minority policies, particularly towards the Roma. Referring here to Hungary, where the granting of Romani national minority rights appears to have been more generous and progressive than elsewhere, yet where for Roma the reality is unemployment rates and racist attacks that match those in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, he wrote: Our modern-day little kings [i.e. non-Roma political leaders] are now obliged, before entering NATO or the European Union, to fall in love with the Gypsies for at least fifteen minutes and to demonstrate their enthusiasm for democracy before the various committees considering these applications. Therefore [in 1995] they created the National Gypsy Minority Self-Government to give apparent legitimacy to the Gypsies’ constitutional rights. (Balogh, 1998: 4) According to Gheorghe, a concomitant effect of pursuing this path is that the process of ethnogenesis is deformed by the participation of Romani intellectuals and politicians in this unequally structured system, as they attempt ‘to exploit this niche provided by the political ecology of our society…[and] insert themselves at this level of national minority politics’ (Gheorghe, 1997: 160). Balogh, with caustic wit, was more forthright in his condemnation of both amoral officials and ambitious Romani leaders, who allow themselves to be used to meet the state’s need to contain Romani politics by a policy of divide and rule. At the same time he lamented the eclipse of egalitarian Romani umbrella groupings such as the Roma Parliament, ‘which sought to act as a collective forum, independent from the state’ (Kovats, 2001b: 343). Barany’s criticism of the Communists’ cynical realpolitik in manipulating Roma organisations (see above) was here directed squarely at the corresponding practice in post-Communist Hungary: Well-organised apparatchiks carefully oversaw the fraud of electing Gypsy leaders, exploiting differences within the Gypsy intelligentsia to ensure the victory of easily programmed vassals. With foreign policy interests at stake, the Constitutional Court turned a blind eye to this electoral fraud. …Now the rebellious Gypsy intellectuals are lying low and, amidst the strains of authentic folk music, wait for a seat in Parliament or job in the Ministry to become available. (Balogh, 1998: 4) Balogh’s viewpoint was elaborated more fully by Kovats (2001b) who argued that during the final years of Communist rule in Hungary, the Party realised its resources were insufficient to achieve the former goal of socioeconomic equality for Roma. Instead, a policy of the promotion of Romani

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‘difference’ was adopted, whereby the separate identity of Roma as a minority was acknowledged and their culture promoted as a substitute for material improvements. During the post-Communist period this policy reversal was merely taken further as the token formal rights of the minority law and self-government system were introduced but did nothing to affect the appalling housing conditions and severe unemployment of Hungarian Roma: …[I]t must be remembered that the formal expression of Roma interest representation was created in 1985 precisely to reduce the obligations owed by the state towards its Roma citizens. This role for Roma politics was merely extended in the 1990s as the inherent weakness of the Roma as a political community meant that it was relatively easy for the state to manage its development. (Kovats, 2001b: 342; original emphasis; see also 1997: 70–1)38 Rather than reverting to a Romani nationalism which mimicked the traditional forms of nation-building in the region, which have led to so much interethnic dispute and bloodshed, Gheorghe took his inspiration from supranational or non-national institutions such as the United Nations. He suggested these would be more suitable organisational models for the Roma as a transnational people spread out in a global diaspora. It would also prove a more pragmatic option for a region where Roma ‘are confronted with ethnic states which are in the process of becoming more nationalist than they were some years ago’ (Gheorghe, 1997: 157). In the same year Gheorghe and Mirga, a Romani anthropologist from Poland,39 wrote a joint paper which conceded that ‘at the present time the ethnic mobilisation option is the strongest’ but urged the ‘Romani elites’ to undertake the difficult task of developing a new approach (Mirga and Gheorghe, 1997: 34–5). By ‘elites’, which they saw as a potential resource, Gheorghe and Mirga meant principally the significant numbers of Romani intelligentsia in the region, like themselves members of ‘a small Gypsy bourgeoisie, …educated and articulate…[who were] created by socialist or communist parties which did have a discourse with the poor, the disadvantaged and those who suffered from the fascist regimes’. Gheorghe characterised this ‘important group of people’ as ‘integrated into society’ and ‘able to maintain a dialogue with the different establishments – political, administrative and academic’ (Gheorghe, 1997: 157). Yet this high degree of integration, which made such educated Roma convenient partners in government negotiations, also undermined their credibility with non-Roma for they were suspected of not being ‘true Gypsies’ since they ‘no longer live[d] in the traditional conditions…documented by ethnographers and anthropologists’. It also caused ‘a crisis of legitimacy for [these]…Romani intellectuals’ own “ethnic identity”,


towards…[their] own constituency’ of ordinary Roma. This was not helped by the fact that ‘[m]any of them hardy spoke about their Gypsiness before 1989. Then, their main strategy was that of masking themselves, being assimilated as Romanians or Czechs, or whatever. They hardly spoke the Gypsy language’. Now, however, some saw this previously stigmatised identity as a resource and were using it in ‘building careers in Gypsy politics’ (Gheorghe, 1997: 157–8). While Gheorghe envisaged bodies like the International Romani Union continuing to play an important role in negotiating the rights of Roma, other Romani activists were fiercely critical of such organisations as empty shells, remote from the real interests of those they claimed to represent. In a 1997 article, Rudko Kawczynski, an outspoken Romani civil rights activist and member of the Roma National Congress (RNC) with a constituency where Roma refugees are prominent, bitterly mocked ‘the myth of worldwide representation’. In particular, he castigated the most high-profile organisation, the International Romani Union, as undemocratic, underfunded, organisationally weak and ultimately ineffectual as it had ‘never been able to get beyond the status of a paper tiger’. Although Kawczynski conceded the praiseworthy motivation of key figures in the IRU, this did not excuse ‘the undemocratic and paternalist structures that some IRU functionaries brought from their [C]ommunist past’ and he classed its unelected leadership among the modern Romani equivalents of ‘Gypsy kings, barons [and] chieftains’ (Kawczynski, 1997: 25). In his view, such remote representatives, supported by governments and non-Romani ‘Gypsy experts’ building their careers in the ‘Gypsy industry’, posed no real threat to states pursuing anti-Roma policies. Yet, while they achieved little, they attracted all the attention of non-Roma and in this way ‘interfere[d] with true Romani representation by monopolising the discussion’. This was in sharp contrast to their lack of credibility among ordinary Roma: The IRU has never played any significant role in the Romani community. It is a gadje-oriented organization, and its officials have always attached more value to it being recognized by gadje institutions than by Roma. It is, therefore, not surprising that it has never been taken seriously by Roma, let alone been considered their true representative. (Kawczynski, 1997: 27) Notwithstanding such sharp criticism, the IRU is still regarded as the foremost organisation promoting the cause of Roma on the international stage. In July 2000, at the fifth World Romani Congress, which elects IRU officers, the most striking outcome was the demand that Roma should be recognised not as a minority but as a fully fledged nation, albeit without territorial claims (Acton and Klímová, 2001: 216–7). The intention was

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clearly to increase the influence of the IRU on international bodies, on national governments and particularly on the EU at a time when former Communist countries with the largest Romani populations were seeking to become members within a few years. In the context of an expanding, multiethnic and radically changing Europe, Gheorghe and Acton believe ‘the agenda of Roma activism may be’ to spearhead the deconstruction of the concept of majority nations and, in consequence, ‘nothing less than the abolition of the nation-state’ (2001: 69).

The path of Martin Luther King or Malcolm X? By an ironic twist of fate, only a few years after Czechs had rejoiced in the almost homogeneous ethnic composition of what closely approximated to the ideal of a monoethnic ‘nation-state’, they were required to reinvent themselves as ‘multicultural’ to satisfy the entry criteria of the EU. Even more galling, this was all for the sake of an unwanted minority of perhaps 3 per cent of the population at most, towards which many Czechs feel deep antipathy. There is, of course, a world of difference between proclaiming multiculturality and actively embracing it. The November 2000 EC Regular Report on progress made by the Czech Republic on integrating its Romani minority noted that ‘estimated Roma unemployment remains very high at 70–90 per cent. Health and housing conditions are still much worse in the Roma communities than amongst the local population. Attitudes at local level are largely unaltered…’ (European Commission, 2000a: 26). Meanwhile the Slovak state was still attempting to come to terms with its much larger Hungarian and Roma minorities and populist politicians like Róbert Fico were warning of Roma becoming the majority within a few years. The 2000 EC Regular Report on the Slovak Republic was equally bleak, commenting that ‘there remains a gap between policy formation and implementation on the ground. Tangible improvement of the Roma minority…has therefore not been achieved to a large extent’ (European Commission, 2000b: 22). The Charter 77 report of 1979 had predicted the rise of ‘a new ethnic consciousness’ among Roma as a response to ‘their social ostracism and material oppression’ but, following the fall of Communism, no form of ethnic mobilisation appeared to offer a clear-cut solution to their desperate plight. Neither campaigning at international level through the IRU nor on a more local basis – whether by organising Romani political parties, collaborating with non-Romani parties, or by grass-roots activism outside the parliamentary process – has yet delivered any substantial change. Flight was never an option for more than a fraction of the Romani population, but now this door has been significantly barred by visa restrictions, by British immigration officers screening Roma at Prague airport, and by other measures. Unless improvements are delivered far more swiftly than at


present, some will turn to hopelessness and the oblivion of alcohol and drug dependency while others will stand their ground and fight – politically or by other means. In recent years there have been increasing press reports of young Roma defending themselves against attacks, sometimes taking lives in the process. In May 1998, Roma in the Czech Republic responded to the inflammatory words of the Republican Party leader Miroslav Sladek, who was campaigning on a virulently anti-Roma platform, by beating him up together with his bodyguards. This symbolic act raised the spectre of violent resistance to a new level. Although the prospect of widespread interethnic fighting on the streets of Czech and Slovak towns and villages still seems remote at this stage, there are clear signs of growing Romani anger at the failure of postCommunist democracy to defend their basic human rights and improve their material conditions. In their own words: ‘There is an absolute lack of trust among Roma now; they don’t trust the government, the courts or the institutions’. At the same time they are frustrated by the continuing powerlessness of their own leaders to reverse their relentless decline. ‘Roma leaders are caught between a rock and a hard place – they are unelected and represent only their own consciences, but they can’t deliver anything [for their people]’. Consequently, some see a spread of violence as almost inevitable. ‘I warned a Czech official recently – there will be riots.’ ‘We have negotiated with this government for eight years without result. We can leave…or we can take justice into our own hands.’ One posed the dilemma facing Roma at this present time in the starkest terms: ‘The question before us is this: do we follow the path of Martin Luther King – or Malcolm X?’ (The comments of Roma in the Czech Republic, March 1998, quoted in Schlager, 1998: 28). Although these comments were made in 1998, the promised improvements which might make them redundant have yet to be realised – in both the view of the European Commission and that of most Roma. Whether, or to what extent, increased international recognition of Roma might make a difference remains a matter of speculation.

Notes 1. Both ‘Roma’ and ‘Gypsies’ are now used as inclusive, umbrella terms to denote ‘the ethnic groups’ either ‘formed by the dispersal of commercial, nomadic groups from within India from the tenth century, and their mixing with European and other groups during their diaspora’ or speaking ‘varieties of the Romani language’ or ‘identified by others as “Tsigane” [Gypsy] in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey, plus those outside the region of East European extraction’ or ‘Romani people in general’ (Liégeois and Gheorghe, 1995: 6). The numbers given are crude estimates of ‘“stable” numbers’, made by experts and currently accepted for policy purposes by the EU (Liégeois and Gheorghe, 1995: 7, 35).

Will Guy 77 2. The fact of dispersal across national boundaries, in itself, does not imply interaction and raises the question of the extent of shared identity among Romani groups (see Marushiakova and Popov, 2001a). 3. Willems’ view is that Gypsies are a motley collection of differing groups, many indigenous, who can be identified as Gypsies mostly on the basis that they have been labelled as such by host communities. 4. The vast majority of these asylum seekers were long-settled Roma and, as Yaron Matras perceptively remarked, ‘the extraordinary feature of Romani migration is that so many Roma are prepared to take the risks of migrating despite their lack of nomadic traditions’ (Matras, 2000: 32, emphasis in original). 5. Like the Jews, who have a single name for all non-Jews (Goya), the Roma refer to all non-Roma as gadje – or variants of this name (for example gorgios in Britain). 6. Meanwhile some Romani groups throughout the CEE region continued to travel, particularly in parts of the former Russian Empire, and nomadism was only terminated by Communist legislation in the 1950s (Lemon, 2001: 230–1; Mróz 2001: 254–60). 7. While Gheorghe is writing about what is now part of Romania, a similar general model is applicable to much of Central and Eastern Europe. For fuller discussion, see Guy (2001a). 8. For negotiating strategies adopted by Romani bands arriving in Western Europe during the fifteenth century, see Fraser (1992: 60–84) and Acton (1974: 97–100). 9. In Bulgaria, an organisation called ‘Egypt’ was founded after the First World War, suppressed in 1925, but re-established under the different name of Istikbal (Future). ‘In 1931, the Gypsy “Mohammedan Cultural Organisation for National Education” began publication of the newspaper Terbie (Education)’, but the organisation was suppressed following a coup in 1934 as part of more general political repression (Marushiakova and Popov, 2001b: 374). 10. Kenrick and Puxon originally gave what they regarded as a conservative estimate of a quarter of a million deaths (Kenrick and Puxon, 1972: 183–4). The IRU now claims that ‘over half a million persons were exterminated’ (Acton and Klímová, 2001: Appendix 3). 11. For Communist Party interest in Roma during this earlier period, see Kálmán (1946) for Hungary, and Haisˇman (1999) for Czechoslovakia. 12. For fuller discussion of the rationale, see Guy (1975a: 213–29) for Czechoslovakia, and Stewart (2001: 77–88) for Hungary. 13. Similarly, according to the Bulgarian decree of 1958, Roma were required ‘to undertake labour beneficial to society and to work according to their strength and abilities’ (Decree 258, 17 October 1958, quoted in Marushiakova and Popov, 2001b: 376). 14. In the case of the Habsburgs, the state was seeking to increase its tax revenue from productive subjects (Fraser, 1992; Guy, 1975a). 15. In the process large numbers of Germans were massacred and estimated deaths vary widely from ‘several hundred thousand’ (Plichtová, 1993: 14) to ‘18 889…of ˇTK 1995: 2). which 5 596 died a violent death’ (C 16. Gypsies were moved from Slovakia to Czech industrial centres…[near] the Czech-German border where they were employed, housed primarily in camps, and paid meagre wages. Their labour served, in part, to put the Czechoslovak economy back on its feet (Kostelancik, 1989: 309). 17. Common distortions of Romani experience suggest that formerly, and in the idealised interwar era, they were mostly nomadic (Verspaget, 1995) and pros-


18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

pered as smiths and musicians (PER, 1992) in a tolerant ‘live-and-let-live’ society ˇ, 1969), while during the demonised Communist period Roma were forcibly (UlC transported and proletarianised by ruthless Communist apparatchiks. See Guy (1977, 2001a and b) for an alternative account of both periods. The timing was also related to preparations for Czechoslovakia’s planned transition from a People’s Republic to the more elevated status of Socialist Republic, declared in 1960 (Guy, 1975a: 214). There is no space here to give more than the outlines of the assimilation policy but for fuller accounts, see Haisˇman (1999), Jurová (1993) and Guy (1975a and 1977). These cooperatives were in no way a special initiative for Roma but part of general restructuring to stimulate sluggish economic growth. The only political party during the interwar period to talk about the rights of Roma was the Communist party and as a result, some Roma had become loyal Party members even at that time. The author accompanied the Czech delegation to this congress as an interpreter. At the fifth World Romani Congress, held in Prague in July 2000, Ján Cibula was elected MP for Switzerland in the newly established Roma Parliament. For detailed accounts of developments in the various states of the region, see chapters on individual countries in Part Three of Guy (ed.) (2001e). Roma activism was particularly vibrant in Bulgaria (see Marushiakova and Popov, 2001b) and in the republics of former Yugoslavia (see Kenrick, 2001). While it was convenient for governments to legislate for a unitary Roma minority, there are considerable divisions within populations generally regarded as Romani peoples (see Marushiakova and Popov, 2001a). In Germany and Austria the selfappellation Sinti is adopted to bolster the claim of longer established Romanies to be treated as an indigenous minority and differentiated from more recent arrivals such as Romani refugees (see Tebbutt 2001: 275–6). Some of these groups deny Romani origins entirely, such as those who claim Egyptian descent in Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania – for a brief account see Kenrick (2001: 420) and for full discussion Duijzings (1997). No doubt, governments would seek to promote and acknowledge diverse Romani identities in order to weaken the position of the majority Romani group should the political need arise (Willems, 1997: 3). In June 1990, six Romani deputies gained seats in the Czech parliament, of which five were Civic Forum (OF) candidates and one (VNP) in the Slovakian equivalent (Vermeersch, 2001: 3). Magazines and newspapers still flourish in both countries such as Gendalos (Mirror), Romano hangos (Romani Voice), Romano kurko (Romani Week), Romano nevo l’il (Romani New Letter). TV and radio programmes include the likes of Romale (Roma to Roma) and O Roma vakeren – Hovoria Rómovia (Roma speak), and there is also a scholarly journal Romano dz ˇaniben (Romani Science). ‘In 1999 the [incoming] Dzurinda administration [in Slovakia] ordered this discriminatory and illegal practice to be discontinued; however, officers at many bureaus then began to write the letter ‘B’ for biely (white) in the dossiers of majority population applicants’ (Vasˇecˇka, 2001: 180). Since 1998 the only Roma MP in the Czech Republic has been Monika Horáková of the Union of Freedom Party (US). Roma are unrepresented in the Slovak Parliament. However, demography and activism have combined to begin to make an impact at local level, for in the 1998 local elections 6 Romani mayors and 86 council members were elected (Vermeersch, 2000: 10). The Czech Ministry of the Interior claimed that only 200 former Czechoslovak citizens had been denied Czech citizenship by the end of 1995 but NGOs

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30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38. 39.

estimated on the basis of survey research that between 10 000 and 25 000 remained without Czech citizenship (see Guy, 2001b: 297–9). Estimating numbers of Roma in any CEE country is a quagmire. The 1991 Census, when Roma had the right to declare themselves as such for the first time in 60 years, showed there were 32 903 Roma in the Czech Republic and 75 802 in Slovakia, forming 0.32 per cent and 1.4 per cent respectively of the total populations (Kalibová, 1999: 96–7). This was roughly a fifth of official estimates, based on the last (1989) administrative count from the Communist era. Plichtová tried to explain the huge discrepancies in the figures as partly due to ‘a low level of ethnic awareness’ among Roma but also suggested ‘fear of possible discrimination’ might have been a factor (Plichtová, 1993: 17, 42). This far more plausible explanation was eventually accepted by the Czech government in 1999 (Czech Government, 1999: 33). It was hoped that the 2001 Census would provide a more realistic picture, but preliminary results indicated that even fewer, only 11 716, had declared their ethnicity as Romani. According to this figure Roma represented 0.1 of the total population of 10 292 000 in the Czech Republic. Results are not yet available from the 2001 census in Slovakia, undertaken later than in the Czech Republic. Under the leadership of Romani Rose and his predecessors, what is now the Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma (Central Council of German Sinti and Roma) has gained financial support by pressing the claim of long-established Romani groups to be accepted as a legitimate German minority. This strategy is in contrast to the IRU concept of Roma as a transnational nation and was challenged in the 1990s by the arrival in Germany of large numbers of Romani refugees particularly from the Balkans (see Tebbutt, 2001: 275–6; Matras, 1998). Roma representation by political appointment rather than by direct election by Roma is common throughout the CEE region and raises fundamental issues about the nature of democratic participation. In Slovakia, children under fourteen make up 43.4 per cent of the Roma population, as opposed to 24.9 per cent for the majority population (Vasˇecˇka 2001: 187). In fact Barany writes of ‘relative cohesiveness among the Slovak Roma’ (Barany, 1998: 320), a view not shared by domestic commentators on Romani issues in Slovakia. Klára Orgovánová, a respected Romani activist in the NGO sector, was appointed in July 2001 as Plenipotentiary for Addressing Romani Minority Problems to the Slovak Government. ‘Ladislav Fízik, the chairman of Slovakia’s united Roma political parties, the Slovak Roma Parliament, was recalled from his post [on] September 8 for failing, among other things, to deliver a list of Roma candidates who are to stand in the regional elections [on] December 1 within the set time limit’ (Slovak Spectator, 17 September 2001). In 1999 Nicolae Gheorghe was appointed as Adviser to head the Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues at the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). This Office forms part of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). See Kovats (1997 and 2001b) for fuller discussion of Hungarian minority policy in relation to Roma. For several years Andrzej Mirga has been associated with the prominent US-based, conflict resolution-oriented organisation Project for Ethnic Relations (PER).


References Acton, T. (1974) Gypsy Politics and Social Change (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). —— (1998) Authenticity, expertise, scholarship and politics: Conflicting goals in Romani studies, Inaugural Lecture by Thomas Acton, Professor of Romani Studies, Greenwich: University of Greenwich, 11 June. Acton, T. and Klímová, I. (2001) The International Romani Union – An East European answer to West European questions? Shifts in the focus of World Romani Congresses, 1971–2000, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 155–200. Balogh, A., (1998) Untitled and unpublished paper for ‘New Directions in Romani Studies’ conference, Greenwich: University of Greenwich, 11 June. Barany, Z. D. (1994) Nobody’s children: the resurgence of nationalism and the status of Gypsies in post-Communist Eastern Europe, in J. Serafin (ed.) East-Central Europe in the 1990s (Oxford: Westview Press), pp. 235–56. —— (1998) Ethnic mobilisation and the state: the Roma in Eastern Europe, Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (2): 308–27. —— (2000) Politics and the Roma in state-socialist Eastern Europe, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 33, 421–37. Barth, F. (1994) Enduring and emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity, in H. Vermeulen and C. Govers (eds) The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’ (Amsterdam: het Spinhuis). Charter 77 (1979) Dokument 23 o situace Cikánu˚ v Cˇeskoslovensku, Listy 2, 47, Prague: Charta 77. Translation by M. Jackson in Labour Focus, 1979 March/April (Charter 1979a) and May/June (Charter 1979b). Clébert, J.-P. (1967) The Gypsies (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Czech Government (1997) Report on the Situation of the Romani Community (known as the Bratinka Report), Prague: Office of Minister without Portfolio, accepted 29 October. —— (1999) Information about Compliance with Principles set forth in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities according to Article 25, Paragraph 1 of this Convention, Government of the Czech Republic, April. Czechoslovak Socialist Government (1959) Práce mezi cikánsky ˘ m obyvatelstvem (Work among the gypsy population), Handbook for local authorities – ‘for official use only’, Edice cˇasopisu Národní vy ˘bory, Prague: Úrˇad prˇedsednictva vlády. CˇTK (1995) Racism in Czech Republic: profile, CˇTK News Archive, backgrounder 64, Czech News Agency Internet posting, 18 May. Davidová, E. (1970) The Gypsies in Czechoslovakia I: Main characteristics and brief historical development, trans. W. Guy, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society 3 (49): 3–4, July/October, 84–97. —— (1995) Romano Drom/Cesty Romu˚ 1945–1990 (Romani Roads) (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého). Duijzings, G. (1997) The making of Egyptians in Kosovo and Macedonia, in C. Govers and H. Vermeulen (eds) The Politics of Ethnic Consciousness (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave). European Commission (2000a) Regular Report on the Czech Republic’s Progress towards Accession, Brussels: European Commission, 8 November. —— (2000b) Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress towards Accession (Brussels: European Commission), 8 November. Ficowski, J. (1991) The Gypsies in Poland: History and Customs (Warsaw: Interpress).

Will Guy 81 Fraser, A. (1992) The Gypsies (Oxford: Blackwell). Gheorghe, N. (1997) The social construction of Romani identity, in T. Acton (ed.) Gypsy Politics and Traveller Identity (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press), pp. 153–63. Gheorghe, N. and Acton, T. (1994) Dealing with multiculturality: minority, ethnic, national and human rights, ODIHR Bulletin 3, 2, winter 1994/95, Warsaw: OSCE, 18–25. —— (2001) Citizens of the world and nowhere: Minority, ethnic and human rights for Roma during the last hurrah of the nation state, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001), 54–70. Gross, T. (1993) The world overlooks Czech bigotry, Prague Post, 27 October. —— (1994) A blot on the conscience: Czech attitudes on citizenship for gypsies come under fire, Financial Times, Supplement on Czech Republic, 19 December. Grulich, T. and Haisˇman, T. (1986) Institutionální zájem o cikánské obyvatelstvo v ˇeskoslovensku v letech 1945–1958, C ˇesky´Lid 73, (2): 72–85. C Guy, W. (1970) Czechoslovakia’s assimilation policy, unpublished paper for ‘Gypsies and Travellers’ conference, Oxford: Nuffield College. —— (1975a) Ways of looking at Roma: the case of Czechoslovakia, in F. Rehfisch (ed.) Gypsies, Tinkers and Other Travellers (London: Academic Press), reprinted in D. Tong (ed.) (1998), 13–48. —— (1975b) Historical text (no pagination), in J. Koudelka, Gypsies (New York: Aperture). —— (1977) The Attempt of Socialist Czechoslovakia to Assimilate its Gypsy Population, unpublished PhD thesis, Bristol: University of Bristol. —— (1998) Afterword 1996, in D. Tong (ed.) (1998), 48–68. —— (2001a) Romani identity and post-Communist policy, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 3–32. —— (2001b) [The Roma of] the Czech lands and Slovakia: Another false dawn?, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 285–323. —— (2001c) Introduction, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), xiii–xvii. —— (2001d) No soft touch: Romani migration to the UK at the turn of the 21st century, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 14 (3), Autumn-Winter. —— (ed.) (2001e) Between Past and Future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press). Haisˇman, T. (1999) Romové v Cˇeskoslovensku v letech 1945–1967: Vy´voj institutionálního zájmu a jeho dopady’, in H. Lisá (ed.) (1999), 137–83. Hancock, I. (1991) The East European roots of Romani nationalism, in D. Crowe and J. Kolsti (eds) The Gypsies of Eastern Europe (London: M. E. Sharpe), pp. 133–50. Hill, D. (2000) East: Poor Conditions for Roma Harm all Citizens, reporting statement by J. Verspaget, head of the Council of Europe Specialist Group on Roma, Prague: RFE/RL, 27 January. Horváthová, E. (1964) Cigáni na Slovensku (Bratislava: Vydavatel’stvo Slovenskej akadémie vied). Hübschmannová, M. (1968) ‘cikáni = Cikáni?’, Reportérova rocˇenka 1968 (Prague: Reportér), pp. 32–9. Human Rights Watch (1996) Roma in the Czech Republic: Foreigners in their Own Land, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Report, 8, 11(D), New York: Human Rights Watch. Jamnická-Sˇmerglová, Z. (1955) Deˇjiny nasˇich cikánu˚ (Prague: Orbis). Jurová, A. (1993) Vy´ voj romské problematiky na Slovensku po roku 1945, Spolocˇenskovedny´ústav SAV n Kosˇiciach (Bratislava: Goldpress).

82 Ethnonational Identities Kalibová, K. (1999) Romové z pohledu statistiky a demografie, in H. Lisá (ed.) (1999), 91–114. Kálmán, A. (1946) A Magyar cigányok problémaja (The problem of Hungarian Gypsies), Tarsadalmi Szemle 8–9: 656–8. Kauerová, V. (1984) Neˇkteré demografické, ekonomické a kulturní charakteristiky ˇSSR 1980 (Some demographic, economic and cultural cikánshého obyvatelstva v C characteristics of the Gypsy population in the CˇSSR 1980), Demografie 26 (2): 161–78. Kavan, Z. (1996) Democracy and nationalism in Czechoslovakia, in B. Einhorn, M. Kaldor and Z. Kavan (eds), Citizenship and Democratic Control in Contemporary Europe (Cheltenham/Vermont: Edward Elgar). Kawczynski, R. (1997) The politics of Romani politics: wresting the Romani future from the majority, Transitions 4 (4): 24–9. Kenrick, D. (2001) [The Roma of] Former Yugoslavia: a patchwork of destinies, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 405–25. Kenrick, D. and Puxon, G. (1972) The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies (London: Chatto Heinemann). Kostelancik, David J. (1989) The Gypsies of Czechoslovakia: political and ideological considerations in the development of policy, Studies in Comparative Communism, XXII, 4: 307–21, Winter. Kovats, M. (1997) The good, the bad and the ugly: three faces of ‘dialogue’ – the Roma in Hungary, Contemporary Politics 3 (1): 55–71. —— (2001a) The emergence of European Roma policy, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 93–116. —— (2001b) [The Roma of] Hungary: Politics, difference and equality, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 333–50. Kymlicka, W. (2000) Nation-building and minority rights: comparing West and East, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 26 (2): 183–212, April. Lacková, I. (1999) A False Dawn: My Life as a Gypsy Woman in Slovakia (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press/Centre de Recherches Tsiganes). Lemon, A. (2001) [The Roma of] Russia: politics of performance, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 227–41. Liégeoise, J.-P. and Gheorghe, N. (1995) Roma/Gypsies: A European Minority, Minority Rights Group International Report 95/4 (London: MRG). Lisá, H. (ed.) (1999) Romové v Ceské republice 1945-1998, Prague: Socioklub. Marushiakova, E. and Popov, V. (2001a) Historical and ethnographic background: Gypsies, Roma, Sinti, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 33–53. —— (2001b) [The Roma of] Bulgaria: ethnic diversity – a common struggle for equality, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 370–88. Matras, Y. (1998) The development of the Romani civil rights movement in Germany 1945–1996, in S. Tebbutt (ed.) Sinti and Roma: Gypsies in German-speaking Society and Literature (Oxford: Berghahn), pp. 49–63. —— (2000) Roma migrations in the post-Communist era: their historical and political significance, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. XIII, no. 2, spring–summer. Mirga, A. and Gheorghe, N. (1997) The Roma in the Twenty-First Century: a Policy Paper, Project on Ethnic Relations policy paper (Princeton NJ: PER). Mróz, L. (2001) [The Roma of] Poland: The clash of tradition and modernity, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 252–67.

Will Guy 83 Naegele, J. (1999) Slovak authorities suspect ‘plot’ behind Romany exodus to Finland, Radio Free Europe, 14 July. Okely, J. (1983) The Traveller-Gypsies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Orgovánová, K. (1994) Prepared statement, Human Rights Abuses of the Roma (Gypsies), Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Security, International Organisations and Human Rights of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Washington DC: US Government. Printing Office. PER (1992) The Romanies in Central and Eastern Europe: Illusions and Reality, Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) report on roundtable discussions in Stupava, Slovakia (30 April–2 May) (Princeton NJ: PER), September. Plichtová, J. (1993) Czechoslovakia as a multi-cultural state in the context of the region: 1918–92, in Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, Minority Rights Group International Report, 93/1 (London: MRG). ˇSR). Romano L’il (1973) Romano L’il, Zpravodaj 2 (Brno: Svaz Cikánu˚-Romu˚ v C Schlager, E. (1998) Roma in the Czech Republic: the path of Martin Luther King or Malcolm X?, CSCE Digest 21 (4), April. Stewart, M. (1997) The Time of the Gypsies (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). —— (2001) Communist Roma policy 1945–1989 as seen through the Hungarian case, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 71–92. Sˇídlo, J. (1999) ‘Od ohneˇ ke svobode[e]’, Respekt 47, 15–21 November. Sˇiklová (1999) Romové a nevládní, neziskové romské a proromské obcˇanské organizace prˇispívající k integraci tohoto etnika, in H. Lisá (ed.) (1999), 271–89. Tebbutt, S. (2001) [The Roma and Sinti of] Germany and Austria: The ‘Mauer im Kopf’ or virtual wall, in W. Guy (ed.) (2001e), 268–84. Tong, D. (ed.) (1998) Gypsies: An Interdisciplinary Reader, New York: Garland. UlCˇ, O. (1969) Communist national minority policy: the case of the Gypsies in Czechoslovakia, Soviet Studies, April. Vasˇecˇka, M. (1999) Put down in the under-class, The New Presence 10, October. —— (2001) ‘Roma’, in G. Mesezˇnikov, M. Kollár and T. Nicholson (eds) Slovakia 2000: A Global Report on the State of Society (Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs). Vermeersch, P. (2000) Minority rights for the Roma and political conditionality of European Union accession: the case of Slovakia, unpublished paper for ‘Conference 2000: New Directions in Roma Studies’, University of Greenwich/University of Birmingham, 28 June–1 July. —— (2001) Roma identity and ethnic mobilisation in Central European politics, unpublished paper for European Consortium for Political Research, Grenoble, 6–11 April. Verspaget, J. (1995) The Situation of Gypsies (Roma and Sinti) in Europe, report adopted by the CDMG (Strasbourg: Council of Europe), 5 May. Vertovec, S. (1999) Conceiving and researching transnationalism, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 447–61, March. Willems, W. (1997) In Search of the True Gypsy: From Enlightenment to Final Solution (London: Frank Cass).

4 Indigenous Rights and the Politics of Self-Determination: the Case of Aotearoa/New Zealand1 Stephen May

This chapter begins with a brief review of the debates surrounding the rights and standing of indigenous peoples within both national and international law, with particular emphasis on the issues surrounding the nascent but burgeoning politics of indigenous self-determination. Various supranational and national developments in relation to indigenous rights will be discussed, but particular attention will be paid to the Aotearoa/New Zealand context where the indigenous Ma¯ori, or tangata whenua (people of the land), have increasingly adopted a postcolonial politics of self-determination in their social and political relations with the dominant Pa¯keha¯ (European) group. The implications of such developments in the Aotearoa/New Zealand context will be discussed and evaluated in light of the wider trends evident in supranational and other national contexts.

The ‘return of the “native”’ No doubt most states owe their existence to some combination of force and fraud. However, the issue is not simply a matter of how a state came to be, but of how it can become ‘morally rehabilitated’. (Ivison, et al., 2000a: 3) There is currently much debate within social and political theory, and within national and international law, over the legitimacy, or otherwise, of minority rights in modern nation-states (cf. Kymlicka, 1995; Waldron, 1995; Joppke and Luke, 1999; Kymlicka and Norman, 1999). Indigenous peoples are currently at the forefront of these debates, in both arenas. In social and political theory, indigenous rights are often drawn upon as an exemplar of the rights of national minorities to some form of public recognition and distinction within nation-states (cf. Kymlicka, 1989; Young, 1993, 2000; Carens, 2000; Ivison, et al., 2000b; Levy, 2000). Accordingly, opponents of such rights also focus on (or, rather, take aim at) indigenous peoples in their ripostes (cf. Kukathas, 1992, 1997; Waldron, 1995, 1999). 84

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The same can be said about national and international law where, as we shall see below, the arguments over indigenous rights – both for and against – have taken on increasing prominence in recent years. Why is there such interest in the particular circumstances of indigenous peoples at this time – a set of peoples of whom one might have reasonably expected the vicissitudes and brutalities of colonial history to have effectively silenced by now? After all, indigenous groups have in nearly all cases a long history of colonisation which has seen such groups faced with systematic disadvantage, marginalisation and/or alienation in their own historic territories (cf. Kymlicka, 1989, 1995). As a result, they have been undermined economically, culturally and politically, with ongoing, often disturbing consequences for their individual and collective life chances. At the same time, indigenous peoples have been viewed extremely pejoratively in relation to modernisation – i.e., as ‘primitive’ or premodern. Consequently, they have been subjected in many cases to forced assimilation, on the misplaced assumption that this was the only viable option for their social and cultural survival and/or advancement. The shocking case of the ‘stolen generations’, recently brought to light in Australia, illustrates the extremes of such a position all too starkly. For 60 years, from 1910 to 1970, the Australian authorities enforced a systematic policy of ‘resettlement’ which saw up to a third of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island children forcibly removed from their families and adopted out to white families or, more often, simply fostered or institutionalised. In the process, original family records were deliberately destroyed because, it was thought, any life was better than a traditional Aboriginal one (see Edwards and Read, 1992; Perera and Pugliese, 1998; Pilger, 1998).2 Put simply, indigenous peoples have not had access, in many instances, to even the most basic rights ostensibly attributable to all citizens in the modern nation-state. Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders, for example, were only granted full citizenship rights in Australia in 1967 – some two hundred years after the advent of European colonisation there. Where indigenous peoples have had such access, they have, more often than not, been treated solely as a disadvantaged ethnic minority group rather than as a national minority ethnie, or ‘nation’ (cf. Fenton and May, this volume) within the nation-state. That said, indigenous peoples have been granted, in certain circumstances, some ‘special privileges’ and protection not afforded ‘regular’ citizens. Traditional systems of social order, for example, including the right to very limited forms of governmental autonomy (e.g., tribal or band government on Native American reservations) have been preserved in some cases in order to allow indigenous peoples to exercise a modicum of control over their traditional territories and ways of life (Churchill, 1986; Kymlicka, 1989). However, it is perhaps not surprising that protectionism in this form has, most often, simply been used as a variant of assimilation.3


The extremely limited nature of these concessions has also tended to place indigenous peoples in a double bind. On the one hand, such concessions have done little, if anything, to redress the extreme marginalisation facing indigenous peoples in modern nation-states. On the other hand, the granting of even very limited local autonomy to indigenous peoples is usually viewed with a good deal of suspicion, and often with outright opposition, because it may infringe on the individual rights of majority group members. Again drawing on Australia as an example, the recent rise (and, thankfully, even more recent decline) of the populist and overtly racist politician Pauline Hanson, with her ‘One Nation’ Party and her specifically anti-Aboriginal policies, illustrates the extreme antagonisms which such a position can promote (see May, 1998). Given this historical background of colonisation, and the ongoing reticence of many nation-states to recognise its legacy, indigenous groups could be forgiven for opting for resigned acquiescence. But this has not been the case. In fact, the primacy of indigenous rights issues today has much to do with the efforts of indigenous peoples themselves to raise these issues for public consumption and debate, particularly in relation to better treatment, but also the wider issue of greater self-determination within nation-states. Where nation-states have ignored or derided their claims, indigenous peoples have turned instead to supranational organisations, and international law, with surprisingly successful results (see Kymlicka, 1999; Feldman, 2001; May, 2001). But what exactly constitutes an indigenous group, since indigenous groups, like all broad groupings, exhibit a range of significant inter- and intragroup differences? The caveat of heterogeneity notwithstanding, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169 (Article 1.1), formulated in 1989, may serve as a useful starting point: a) tribal peoples in independent countries whose social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community, and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations; b) peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions. (My emphasis) Lest objectivist definitions be accorded too much weight, however, Article 1.2 adds the rider that ‘self-identification as indigenous or tribal shall be regarded as a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the provisions of this Convention apply’. Suffice it to say at this

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point, that self-identification, along with the qualification ‘irrespective of their legal status’ highlighted previously, are both central to any discussion of indigenousness since not all nation-states are willing to recognise indigenous groups in their territories. Indeed, governments in Malaysia, India, Burma and Bangladesh have at times claimed that everyone is indigenous and that no-one is thus entitled to any special or differential treatment (de Varennes, 1996a). The ILO Convention 169 is also significant for another reason. It replaces an earlier convention (107), drawn up in 1957, which exhibited a much more paternalistic approach to indigenous peoples. These differences are reflected in both the wording and the general intent of the two conventions. With regard to wording, for example, Convention 107 (a) uses the phrase ‘tribal populations’ whereas 169 (a) employs ‘tribal peoples’. This is significant, given the connotations of the term ‘peoples’ in international law (see below). Convention 169 (a) also states that the social, cultural and economic conditions of tribal groups are distinguished from other sections of the national community whereas 107 (a) employs the more pejorative phrase ‘at a less advanced stage’. Likewise, where Convention 169 (b) states that indigenous peoples ‘retain some of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions’, 107 (b) specifically equates these institutions with premodern practices and contrasts them with ‘the [modern] institutions of the nation to which they belong’. These differences are not simply semantic ones. More broadly, Convention 107 clearly views indigenous culture as a temporary obstacle to modernisation. As such, it is as much concerned with the assimilation of indigenous peoples as with their protection. In contrast, Convention 169 reflects a far more positive view of indigenous cultures and is specifically anti-assimilationist in intent (see Thornberry, 1991b: 18; de Varennes, 1996a: 252–53).

Indigenous peoples, self-determination and international law The distinctions between the two ILO conventions illustrate the different status that has gradually come to be accorded to indigenous peoples in international law over the intervening 40-year period, and subsequently to the present day (see Anaya, 1996 for a full review; see also Stamatopoulou, 1994; Tennant, 1994). Central to this change has been the argument of indigenous groups that they are not simply one of a number of ethnic minority groups, competing for the limited resources of the nation-state, and therefore entirely subject to its largesse, but are peoples, with the associated rights of self-determination attributable to the latter under international law. This argument has been articulated by such organisations as the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) and the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), the latter being established in 1982 as part of the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination


and Protection of Minorities. The work of the WGIP has been particularly influential here and has contributed to a growing tendency to regard indigenous peoples ‘as a separate issue [from other minority groups] in international and constitutional law’ (Thornberry, 1991b: 6). The culmination of these developments thus far has been the (1993) United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document that clearly outlines the key legal and political demands of indigenous peoples. Article 8 of the Declaration states, for example: ‘Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right to maintain and develop their distinct identities and characteristics, including the right to identify themselves as indigenous and to be recognised as such’. Article 3 is even more unequivocal: ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to selfdetermination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’. Such demands, if accepted, would involve a fundamental reconceptualisation of national and international law and practice. It is perhaps not surprising then that, despite the more favourable view adopted towards indigenous peoples in recent times, there remains considerable reticence about the right of self-determination being accorded to them. Thus, in the ILO Convention 169 – which is clearly positive towards indigenous peoples – there is also a clear caveat which states: ‘The use of the term “peoples” in this Convention shall not be construed as having any implications as regards the rights which may attach to the term under international law’ (Article 1.3). Much of this reticence has to do with the specific meaning of self-determination in international law. The right of minority national groups (including indigenous peoples) to self-determination is not actually inconsistent with international law since the (1945) United Nations Charter clearly states that ‘all peoples have the right to self-determination’. However, the term ‘peoples’ is not defined by the UN and the injunction has tended to be interpreted only in relation to the recognition of postcolonial states (the ‘salt water thesis’) rather than to national minorities within existing nation-states, even though the latter may have been subjected to broadly the same processes of colonisation. Self-determination has thus been limited in practice to existing states in the post-Second World War era (Thornberry, 1991a; Clark and Williamson, 1996). This widely accepted practice has been further reinforced by the implicit assumption that the right of self-determination includes, crucially, the right to secession (Scott, 1996; see also below). The contested nature of these debates around self-determination and its applicability, or otherwise, to indigenous peoples is ably demonstrated by the workings of the subsequent United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) Working Group, whose brief is to agree a final (and, by definition, politically acceptable) version of the (1993) Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The first session of the UNCHR Working

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Group was convened in November 1995 to review the Draft Declaration. Unlike that document, which had been the result of a decade-long dialogue between indigenous peoples and the UN legal representatives on the WGIP subcommittee, the UNCHR Working Group was to be dominated once again by the interests of states. This was because the UNCHR Working Group, as part of the formal apparatus of the UN, was restricted in its membership to attested non-government organisations. As a result, many indigenous groups involved in the formulation of the Draft Declaration were excluded while, at least theoretically, any state could veto an objectionable element of the draft under review. In this latter respect, state representatives on the UNCHR did endorse the WGIP text as a ‘sound basis’ for future drafting. However, subsequent proceedings saw many substantive objections raised by states about specific principles outlined in the Draft Declaration. Some states, notably Japan and the US, even contended that the text as a whole was ‘not a reasonable evolution of human rights law’ (Barsh, 1996: 788). The full range of contentions raised by the various states need not concern us (for an extended discussion, see Barsh, 1996) – here we will concentrate solely on the issue of self-determination. As already indicated, the key problem for many states in this respect was that any claim to self-determination by indigenous peoples (the term ‘peoples’ rather than ‘people’ being, in itself, an indication of this) carried with it an implication of secession. On this basis, the potential threat of secession that self-determination implied could simply not be accepted by many states (although, interestingly, international law nowhere says that ‘peoples’ have the right to secede from existing states by virtue only of the right to selfdetermination; see Scott, 1996: 818). However, in the course of discussion, some states argued for a more restricted view of self-determination, termed by some as ‘internal self-determination’, and by others as ‘autonomy’. Thus, Chile argued that the idea of internal self-determination allowed: [a] space within which indigenous peoples can freely determine their forms of development, [including] the preservation of their cultures, languages, customs and traditions, in a manner that reinforces their identity and characteristics, in the context and framework of the States in which indigenous peoples live. (Cited in Barsh, 1996: 797) Similarly, Australia argued that the right of indigenous peoples to selfdetermination could be accepted, ‘subject to the understanding that the exercise of this right should [remain] within existing State boundaries, that is not [including] a right to secession’. Nicaragua agreed that ‘autonomy’ captured the ‘sense and meaning of the concept of self-determination, without affecting the unity of the State’ (both cited in Barsh, 1996: 799). Some states, notably France, Japan, and to a lesser extent the US, continued to oppose any notion of self-government for indigenous people, in principle.


However, the general position which emerged from this first session of the UNCHR Working Group was one of qualified support for greater ‘internal self-determination’ or ‘autonomy’ for indigenous peoples. An earlier observation by the Aotearoa/New Zealand government on the conclusions of the WGIP provides a useful summary of this position: There is no indication at present that governments will recognise a right of external self-determination for indigenous peoples, that is, including the right to secede from a state. Any ‘right of self-determination’ for indigenous people would therefore have to be understood differently from its traditional meaning in international law if it were to be acceptable to governments. [In this regard] international law may be moving towards recognition of an ‘aboriginal right to self-determination’ or autonomy which does not include the right of secession. (Te Puni Ko ¯ kiri, 1994: 9; my emphasis) In effect then, we are seeing the emergence, however tentatively, of an intermediate position in international law with respect to self-determination which acknowledges the right to greater autonomy within the nationstate for indigenous peoples but which does not necessarily include the right to secession (see Clark and Williamson, 1996). This form of ‘internal self-determination’ emphasises negotiated power-sharing, both through constitutional reform and within existing institutions, and extends well beyond the desultory measures of local autonomy already established for some indigenous groups. As Madame Daes, the UN rapporteur for the WGIP has observed of this: ‘the existing state has the duty to accommodate the aspirations of indigenous peoples through constitutional reforms designed to share power democratically. It also means that indigenous peoples have the duty to try and reach an agreement, in good faith, on sharing power within the existing state and to exercise their right to selfdetermination by this means to the [fullest] extent possible’ (cited in Te Puni Ko ¯ kiri, 1994: 11). More broadly, Craig Scott has observed that rethinking the notion of self-determination has required us ‘to begin to think of self-determination in terms of people existing in relationship with each other’ (1996: 819; my emphasis; see also Anaya, 1996). This is not to say that the debate is over – any consensus over this issue, let alone others raised by the Draft Declaration, remains a long way off (see Barsh, 1996: 804–13). Indeed, the process of ratification may well take us past the officially designated International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995–2004; note the use of the term ‘people’ here). There also remains some reticence about the applicability, or usefulness of self-determination to the claims of indigenous peoples, even in reconceived form (see, for example, Corntassel and Primeau, 1995; Kymlicka, 1999; Murphy, 2001).

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Indigenous peoples and national law Despite these ongoing debates, developments in international law since the Second World War clearly signal a more accommodative approach to indigenous peoples, and their claims to greater self-determination. This approach has also been paralleled, at least to some extent, within the laws of (some) nation-states. Thus, in Brazil, the adoption in 1988 of a new constitution recognised for the first time the indigenous Indians’ social organisation, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions, along with the right of native title to their lands (Constituição, Chapter VIII, Art. 231; Brasil, 1996; see also Hornberger, 1997). Norway also moved in 1988 to revise its constitution in order to grant greater autonomy for the indigenous Sámi, after a century of enforcing a stringent ‘Norwegianisation’ (read assimilationist) policy towards them. As the amendment to the Norwegian Constitution stated: ‘It is incumbent on the governmental authorities to take the necessary steps to enable the Sámi population to safeguard and develop their language, their culture and their social life’ (cited in Magga, 1996: 76). The effects of this new amendment are most apparent in the regional area of Finnmark, in the northernmost part of Norway, where the largest percentage of the Sámi live. The formal recognition accorded to Sámi has led to the subsequent establishment of a Sámi Parliament in Finnmark (in 1989), while the Sámi Language Act, passed in 1992, recognised Northern Sámi as its official regional language (see Corson, 1995; Magga, 1995, 1996; Huss, 1999; Todal, 1999). The precedent of regional autonomy for indigenous peoples set by Finnmark has been built upon considerably in more recent times in Canada. In December 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision (subsequently referred to as the Delgamuukw Decision) in favour of the recognition of indigenous land rights. This ruling coincided with an initiative entitled ‘Gathering Strength’, developed over the course of the 1990s by the Canadian Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, that aimed to redress and, crucially, make actual restitution for the colonial appropriation of the lands and resources of Canada’s indigenous peoples (Purvis, 1999a). The culmination of both these developments, at least thus far, has been twofold. First, an autonomous Inuit-led government was created in April 1999 as part of the formal establishment of the new Arctic province of Nunavut. And second, the Nisga’a Agreement, requiring the return of a proportion of the traditional lands of this Native Canadian tribe in Northern British Columbia, was formally ratified by the Canadian Parliament in December 1999 (having first been signed the previous year). The establishment of Nunavut, the first formal subdivision of territory in Canada for 50 years, is the end result of a 20-year negotiation process with the 22 000 Inuit of the region (out of a total regional population of 25 000). In return for ceding wider claims to their traditional territories


across the north of Canada, the Inuit have been granted 22 000 square kilometres of territory to the immediate northwest of Hudson Bay, a comparable degree of autonomy to Canada’s other provinces, and a current annual budget of C$620 million. The new provincial administration is dominated by Inuit and it is proposed that the local Inuit language, Inuktitut, be made co-official with English and French in the region, as well as being the first working language of the provincial government (Purvis, 1999b; Corson, 2001). Given the scale of these developments, it is perhaps surprising that so little controversy has actually attended them (at least thus far) – although, no doubt, the remoteness of the territory, and the relatively sparse non-indigenous population within it, have played their part here. In contrast, the Nisga’a Agreement has proved to be far more controversial. Originally agreed in 1998, again after a 20-year period of negotiation, it called for the transfer of nearly 2000 square kilometres of land to the 5500-member Nisga’a band (who now describe themselves as a ‘nation’) in Northern British Columbia. Restitution amounting to $C330 million, and the granting of substantial powers of self-government – including an autonomous legislature responsible for citizenship and land management – were also central features of the agreement (Purvis, 1999a). This, in turn, was based on a long-standing claim – first raised in the nineteenth century – against the colonial appropriation of Nisga’a lands. However, the subsequent ratification of the agreement in the Canadian Parliament was characterised by strong and vituperative opposition from the then Reform Party (now Alliance Party), a conservative, anglocentric ‘one nation’ party that had also been prominent in opposing any separate recognition of Québec. The Reform Party claimed that the agreement would give the Nisga’a too much power over local businesses and non-indigenous peoples, and that it would set a precedent for the establishment of similar treaties with Canada’s 50 other Native Canadian bands. Consequently, the Reform Party tried to derail the legislation by tabling 471 amendments and required the Liberal-led Canadian Parliament to sit in session for over 42 hours before managing to pass the Agreement in its original form (The Guardian, 11 December 1999: 23). Setting aside the clear inconsistency that seems to have escaped the Reform Party – that non-indigenous control of indigenous peoples is regarded as legitimate without question, whereas the reverse is not – this opposition highlights the strong antipathy to any notion of distinct (and distinctive) indigenous rights within modern nation-states. The effects of the latter are also graphically illustrated by the successes, and subsequent reverses, in Australian policy towards Aboriginal land rights over the course of the 1990s. In 1992 the High Court of Australia ruled in favour of Koiki Mabo and four other plaintiffs over their claims that a common law property right of ‘native title’ had existed prior to European colonisation and the subsequent

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annexation of their lands by the Queensland government (see Hill, 1995; Patton, 1995). The Mabo Decision (Mabo v. Queensland (no. 2), 1992) set a major new precedent, since up until that time European colonisation of Australia had been predicated on the convenient legal fiction of terra nullius (empty land). Consequently, indigenous land rights were never acknowledged and did not evolve as part of Australian land and property law – in contrast to Aotearoa/New Zealand, for example (see below). The consequence of the Mabo Decision was the belated recognition that Australia’s indigenous peoples could lay claim to native title on the 25 per cent of Australia that remained Crown or public land. The (1993) Native Land Act, implemented by the Australian Labor Party, formalised and clarified this position. The Mabo Decision also required that indigenous peoples had to demonstrate a continued (and continuous) association with their traditional lands. However, this caveat was modified somewhat by the Wik Decision of the High Court in 1996, which ruled that where land had been given to white farmers under a colonial pastoral lease scheme, native title was not automatically extinguished.4 The response to these decisions, particularly the latter, can be seen in a high-profile campaign of ‘white hysteria’ (Perera and Pugliese, 1998) that has been waged subsequently. This is most apparent in the rise of Pauline Hanson’s ‘One Nation’ Party with its overtly anti-Aboriginal policies, and in the orchestrated opposition of the National Farmers Federation (NFF) to the Wik Decision. With respect to the latter, the NFF has disingenuously argued that it would give carte blanche to Australia’s indigenous peoples to make claims on private land – although what is actually at stake is the land granted under the colonial pastoral lease scheme. At the same time, the NFF campaign has continued to promote the ‘myth’ of the centrality of the white pioneers to Australia’s ‘national’ (read colonial) heritage and identity. In response to this often vitriolic campaign, and with the subsequent election of a conservative government, under John Howard, a significantly delimited Native Title Act was implemented in 1998, retrenching much of the gains achieved for Aboriginal peoples in the Mabo and Wik decisions. The subsequent re-election of the Howard government (twice), most recently in November 2001, along with increasing antipathy among white Australians towards Aboriginal peoples and other minorities, has seen a further delimitation of the (limited) advances of the early 1990s with respect to Aboriginal rights. To reiterate, it is clear from the above examples that recent developments towards greater ‘internal self-determination’ for indigenous peoples, both at national and international levels, have been significant. As Fernand de Varennes comments of these developments: ‘Whilst there is certainly no unanimity, both international and national law appear to be heading towards increased recognition of the special position which indigenous peoples occupy within a [nation-state’s] legal and political order’ (1996a:


274). But just as clearly, these gains remain fragile and subject to ongoing, often debilitating opposition. This is despite the fact that indigenous claims are not principally concerned with the politically contentious question of secession. Indigenous peoples are not consumed with questions of secession since, generally, their limited socioeconomic, demographic and political strength precludes such an option. Rather, indigenous peoples are advocating a right to separate representation, alongside national majorities, on the basis that they constitute a distinct ethnie or national minority in the nation-state. Indeed, as we have seen, many nation-states already acknowledge as part of their internal law, however begrudgingly, that indigenous peoples have either retained some degree of inherent sovereignty that has not been extinguished by conquest and/or colonisation, or have a continuing legal status that sets them apart (de Varennes, 1996a and b). These national minority claims thus contrast with the usual polyethnic concerns of (immigrant) ethnic minority groups for the abolition of barriers that lead to disadvantage and preclude greater integration into the nation-state (cf. Kymlicka, 1995). This is not to say, of course, that these concerns are not shared by indigenous peoples – they clearly are. However, polyethnic claims are not their principal preoccupation. Thus, state policies that address only these concerns, on the basis that indigenous peoples are simply one of many disadvantaged ethnic minority groups, do little to allay their specific demands.

Addressing essentialism Before proceeding to examine in more depth the specific articulation of indigenous rights within Aotearoa/New Zealand, there is one further general caveat to be addressed. While indigenous rights are clearly gaining greater legitimacy and visibility, both in national and international contexts, there is nonetheless the potential in such arguments to reinforce a static and reified view of what constitutes (or is said to constitute) ‘indigenousness’. This is most often demonstrated via notions of cultural ‘authenticity’ and ‘purity’ and a related, unhelpful contrasting of indigenous and dominant ‘European’ cultural and linguistic practices. While a potentially useful strategy of social and political demarcation in the claim to rights, such an approach simply ends up reinforcing notions of cultural essentialism (cf. Young, 1993; May, 1999a and b). The potential for essentialism in the articulation of indigenous rights – particularly in relation to claims to self-determination – is thus a real issue and one that needs to be directly addressed and monitored, both at the theoretical and political levels (cf. Murphy, 2001). However, unlike critics of indigenous rights who have tried to suggest otherwise (see, for example, Hanson, 1989; Roosens, 1989; Waldron, 1995), it also needs to be recognised that potentialities are clearly not the same as inevitabilities. Rather, as Will

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Kymlicka argues, the assertion of indigenous rights to self-determination (or self-government rights, as he describes it) does not preclude the possibilities of cultural adaptation, change and interchange: there is no inherent connection between the desire to maintain a distinct societal culture and the desire for cultural isolation. In many cases, the aim of self-government is to enable smaller nations to interact with larger nations on a more equitable basis. It should be up to each culture to decide when and how they adopt the achievements of the larger world. It is one thing to learn from the larger world; it is another to be swamped by it, and self-government rights may be needed for smaller nations to control the direction and rate of change. (1995: 103–104) As Kymlicka proceeds to argue, advocates of indigenous rights (and minority rights more broadly) are actually rarely seeking to preserve their ‘authentic’ culture if that means returning to cultural practices long past. If it were, it would soon meet widespread opposition from individual members. Rather, advocates are concerned with the right ‘to maintain one’s membership in a distinct culture, and to continue developing that culture in the same (impure) way that the members of majority cultures are able to develop theirs’ (1995: 105). The key issue for indigenous peoples thus becomes one of greater autonomy, or control, rather than one of retrenchment, isolationism or stasis. Emergent practice has also tended to demonstrate this more contextual, relational approach – one that incorporates a dynamic and ongoing process of ‘cultural negotiation’, rather than a simple return to, or retrenchment of past practices. As Alice Feldman observes of the international indigenous movement, for example: In international contexts, indigenous peoples have sought to articulate a unifying and politically operational identity emanating from their shared experiences of colonialism and goals of self-determination, as well as the diversity of their localized experiences and immediate needs. They have drawn upon cultural traditions, both intact and fragmented, to construct and empower an overarching ‘indigenousness’ that is simultaneously hybrid. Recognition of their identity as peoples and nations who have legitimate claims to the rights and means of sovereignty and self-determination constitutes the foundation of this collective consciousness and the claims it animates, and serves as a central vehicle for change. (2001: 149–50) An exemplar of just such an approach at the national level can also be found in the growing articulation of indigenous rights among Ma¯ori in Aotearoa/New Zealand – a development that is itself both a product and


illustration of a wider repositioning of identity and minority rights issues within this once ‘British settler society’ (see Larner and Spoonley, 1995; Fleras and Spoonley, 1999; Pearson, 1990, 2000).

Aotearoa/New Zealand: a tale of two ethnicities When one significant section of the community burns with a sense of injustice, the rest of the community cannot safely pretend that there is no reason for their discontent. (Waitangi Tribunal, 1986: 46) Until the 1960s, Aotearoa/New Zealand had regarded itself, and been regarded by others, as a model of harmonious ‘race’ relations; a rare success story of colonisation. Pa¯keha¯ (European)5 New Zealanders, in particular, looked back with pride at a colonial history of mutual respect, cooperation and integration with the indigenous Ma¯ori iwi (tribes). This colonial history began with Pa¯keha¯ settlement of Aotearoa/New Zealand in the late eighteenth century, although prior to the arrival of the first Pa¯keha¯, Ma¯ori had been resident in Aotearoa/New Zealand for around a thousand years (Walker, 1990). Colonial relations between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ were subsequently formalised by the British Crown in the nineteenth century and were interrupted by only brief periods of antagonism, notably the Land Wars in the 1860s. The foundational colonial document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) – signed on 6 February 1840 between the British Crown and local Ma¯ori chiefs – was a surprisingly progressive document for its time. The Treaty specifically attempted to establish the rights and responsibilities of both parties as a mutual framework by which colonisation could proceed. Captain Hobson, the Crown’s representative, was instructed to obtain the surrender of Aotearoa/New Zealand as a sovereign state to the British crown, but only by ‘free and intelligent consent’ of the ‘natives’. In return, Ma¯ori iwi were to be guaranteed possession of ‘their lands, their homes and all their treasured possessions (taonga)’. Consequently, the Treaty had come to be commemorated as the central symbol of this apparently benign history. The words ‘he iwi tahi ta¯tou’ (we are all one people) – spoken by William Hobson, at the Treaty’s signing – provided its leitmotif. In short, while undeniably a white settler colony in origin, the emergence of Aotearoa/New Zealand as a nation-state was seen to have avoided the worst excesses of colonialism. Ma¯ori were highly regarded, intermixing and miscegenation were common, and Ma¯ori language and culture were incorporated, at least to some degree, into Aotearoa/New Zealand life. Or so the story went. From the 1970s, a quite different story emerged into the public domain. A generation of young, urban and educated Ma¯ori articulated a history of continued conflict and oppression of Ma¯ori by the Pa¯keha¯ (Sharp, 1990); a

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theme that was to be taken up in subsequent revisionist histories of the country (see Orange, 1987; Kawharu, 1989; Walker, 1990: Sinclair, 1993; Belich, 1986, 1996, 2001). It was a history that had been consistently told by many Ma¯ori over previous generations but one that had seldom actually been heard before. In this view, the Treaty of Waitangi was a fraud; an inconvenient document that had been quickly and ruthlessly trivialised by Pa¯keha¯ settlers in their quest for land. The issue of legitimacy centres on the question of whether the informed consent of Ma¯ori was ever obtained at the signing of the Treaty. Much of this has to do with the discrepancies between the English language version of the Treaty and the Ma¯ori language version that the chiefs actually signed. The Treaty comprises three articles. In the 1st Article, for example, there is a distinction between the ceding of ‘all the rights and powers of Sovereignty’ in the English version – equating to the term ‘tino rangatiratanga’, or absolute chieftainship, in Ma¯ori – and the actual use in the Ma¯ori text of the lesser term ‘ka¯wanatanga’, or governorship. In the 2nd Article this discrepancy is reinforced. In the official English translation Ma¯ori are granted ‘exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates, Forestries, Fisheries and other properties which they may individually and collectively possess…’. In the Ma¯ori translation this becomes ‘the absolute chieftainship [tino rangatiratanga] of their lands, of their homes and all their treasured possessions’. The chiefs are thus likely to have understood Article 2 as confirming their own sovereign rights in return for a limited concession (granted in Article 1) of Pa¯keha¯ ‘governorship’. The 3rd article – the least contentious – extends to Ma¯ori the rights of British citizens, although the Ma¯ori version talks again of governance, rather than sovereignty – reinforcing the previous emphases (see Orange, 1987; Kawharu, 1989; Walker, 1990; Belich, 1996). In short for Ma¯ori, power was to be shared under the aegis of the Treaty and its central principle (so they thought) of partnership, for the British colonisers, it was simply to be transferred (Fleras and Spoonley, 1999). And this was not the only thing that was to be transferred, since the subsequent ruthless quest for land is supported by any considered reading of New Zealand history. While a period of prosperity and relative stability between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ followed the signing of the Treaty, this ended with the Land Wars of the 1860s in which the Settler Government (established in 1852) invaded the Taranaki and Waikato districts of the North Island of New Zealand. The ostensible aim of these campaigns was to move against iwi supporters of Kı¯ngitanga (the King movement) – a confederation of tribes under the Ma¯ori king, Te Wherowhero – who supposedly posed a threat to law and order. The actual aim was to remove the opposition of Kı¯ngitanga to the expropriation of Ma¯ori land for the rapidly growing numbers of Pa¯keha¯ settlers (Walker, 1990). When military means proved inconclusive, the government resorted to legislation which trans-


formed communally owned Ma¯ori land into individual titles – as in English law – in order to expedite the further sale of the land. This proved so successful that by the turn of the century almost all New Zealand territory was in European hands. Concomitantly, the Pa¯keha¯ population had risen from 1000 in 1838 to 770 000 by 1900 while the Ma¯ori population had fallen from an estimate of between 100 000 and 200 000 at the time of European settlement to the nadir of 45 549 in 1900; in effect, a 75 per cent population collapse of Ma¯ori over the course of the nineteenth century (Stannard, 1989; Walker, 1990). As Claudia Orange concludes: ‘In many respects New Zealand, in spite of the treaty, has been merely a variation in the colonial domination of indigenous races [sic]’ (1987: 5). The degree to which Treaty obligations came to be overtaken by ‘events’ is reflected by the New Zealand Chief Justice Sir James Prendergast, who in Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington (1877), could declare the treaty ‘a simple nullity’. This legal view was to hold sway until the 1980s. As Orange’s previous comment suggests, what resulted for Ma¯ori were the usual deleterious effects of colonisation upon an indigenous people – political disenfranchisement, misappropriation of land, population and health decline, educational disadvantage and socioeconomic marginalisation. The cumulative weight of this historical process, allied with the rapid urbanisation of Ma¯ori since the Second World War,6 had seen their economic and social incorporation into a metropolitan-based cultural division of labour, usually at the lowest point of entry – that of surplus unskilled labour (Miles and Spoonley, 1985; Pearson, 1990; Spoonley, 1996). The economic downturn precipitated by the oil crisis in the 1970s, and the New Right economic agenda of successive New Zealand governments since the 1980s, exacerbated further the disparities between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ on most social and economic indices. Thus, while Ma¯ori comprised 14 per cent of the total population of 3.5 million in Aotearoa/New Zealand at the time of the 1991 census, they were significantly over-represented in social and economic ‘at risk’ categories.7 Ma¯ori workers, for example, were heavily under-represented in high-income, high-skilled and growing sectors of the economy. Conversely, they were over-represented in low-paid, lowskilled, declining occupations, and among beneficiaries and those not in paid employment (Manatu ¯ Ma¯ori, 1991). The emasculation of low-skilled, semi-skilled occupations over the last two decades, under the New Right economic agenda, has also resulted in a disproportionately high level of unemployment for Ma¯ori; 24 per cent of all Ma¯ori over 15 years compared with 11 per cent for the total population. Young Ma¯ori, in particular, have borne the brunt of the depressed labour market. In 1991, 43 per cent of all Ma¯ori teenagers (15–19 years) were unemployed. Moreover, given that 52 per cent of this group did not hold a school qualification, future employment prospects appear limited (Davies and Nicholl, 1993).

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Some are suggesting, from this, the emergence of an increasing Ma¯ori underclass (Jarden, 1992; McLoughlin, 1993). When these economic statistics are linked to social and educational statistics for Ma¯ori, this pattern seems to be confirmed. In 1991, 56 per cent of Ma¯ori aged between 15 and 59 years were receiving some form of income-support benefit and Ma¯ori were also proportionately over-represented on all other welfare benefits, except for the pension. With respect to the latter, 4.3 per cent of the Ma¯ori population received a pension compared with 17.1 per cent of non-Ma¯ori.8 David McLoughlin (1993) argues that while some of this has to do with the young age structure of the Ma¯ori population, it is also because too few Ma¯ori live long enough. Health indicators here present a disturbing picture. Ma¯ori do not live, on average, as long as non-Ma¯ori. The immunisation rates of Ma¯ori children – less than 60 per cent compared with 90 per cent for most other ‘developed’ countries – see Ma¯ori children suffer disproportionately from preventable diseases. Half of all Ma¯ori over 15 years smoke (compared with about a quarter of the non-Ma¯ori population). This includes 45 per cent of men and 57 per cent of women, with Ma¯ori women having one of the highest lung cancer rates in the world. Educational status completes the picture of comparative disadvantage for Ma¯ori. Though increasing numbers of Ma¯ori have been completing school and pursuing tertiary education, particularly in the last decade (Chapple et al., 1997; see also below), 60 per cent of Ma¯ori aged over 15 years still held no formal educational qualifications in 1991. This compared with 40 per cent for non-Ma¯ori. At the same time, Ma¯ori were nearly half as likely as the total population to hold a tertiary qualification. This low level of educational attainment is also a central explanatory variable for the current poor position of Ma¯ori in the labour market (Davies and Nicholl, 1993). In light of these clearly unfavourable social and economic indicators, Ma¯ori activists have increasingly rejected the assimilationist tenets upon which colonisation, and much public policy towards Ma¯ori, had historically been based. Drawing initially on contemporary notions of ethnic nationalism (Mulgan, 1989) and subsequently on the right as indigenous peoples to self-determination (Wilson and Yeatman, 1995; Durie, 1998; Bishop and Glynn, 1999; Fleras and Spoonley, 1999), they have argued, instead, for the separate recognition by the state of Ma¯ori political culture and social organisation, and for the recognition of the cultural and linguistic distinctiveness of Ma¯ori. As one might expect, these claims have not gone uncontested by the Pa¯keha¯ majority (see Fleras and Spoonley, 1999). But such was their momentum that by the early 1980s they had set the platform for a significant realignment of Ma¯ori–Pa¯keha¯ relations. This realignment took the form of a constitutional revolution that saw the Treaty of Waitangi returned to centrestage in Aotearoa/New Zealand public life after more than a century of neglect. As a result of increasing Ma¯ori advocacy and


political protest, greater emphasis was placed on pursuing legal and constitutional redress for Ma¯ori iwi in relation to the Treaty. In this regard, the principal constitutional vehicle for arbitrating Ma¯ori claims has been the quasi-legal body, the Waitangi Tribunal. Originally set up in 1975, with limited powers to hear Ma¯ori grievances, it was invested in 1984 with the retrospective power to settle Ma¯ori claims against the Crown, dating back to 1840. While land issues have been the principal focus of the Tribunal’s subsequent deliberations, it has also ruled on the status of, among other things, the Ma¯ori language and customary fishing rights. The Waitangi Tribunal has thus been central to reinvesting moral and legal authority in the Treaty of Waitangi. It has defined the Treaty, through its deliberations, as ‘the foundation of a developing social contract, not merely a historical document’ (Sorrenson, 1989: 162). More tangibly, it has led, both directly and indirectly in recent years, to considerable restitution by the Crown to iwi claimants. This has included public apologies from the Crown for the unlawful confiscation of Ma¯ori land during the colonial period, the return of Crown land to Ma¯ori iwi-based control and, in some cases, major compensation as well.9 As a result of the Treaty’s return to prominence, the concept of biculturalism has come increasingly to the fore in Aotearoa/New Zealand. While retaining an emphasis on some degree of separate development and/or autonomy for Ma¯ori, the concept has been employed increasingly to describe a partnership between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯, under the Treaty’s auspices, rather than separation of one group from the other (see, for example, New Zealand Ministerial Advisory Committee, 1986). This clearly accords with a non-essentialist approach to indigenous rights, as discussed above, as well as reflecting accurately the close and symbiotic relationship between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ since the time of colonisation. The partnership model also emphasises the Crown’s active commitment to redressing past injustices towards Ma¯ori, and its commitment to the inclusion of Treaty ‘principles’ within the constitutional and administrative framework of the modern New Zealand nation-state. Where the government has baulked at its own rhetoric, it has been kept to its task by the judiciary. In June 1987, for example, the New Zealand Court of Appeal, in a landmark judgment, ruled against a key piece of government legislation – the State Owned Enterprises Act – which would have seen the transfer of Crown land to semi-privatised ‘state owned enterprises’ (SOEs). The central legal point of the case concerned the Treaty. Section 9 of the SOE Act stated that nothing in the Act shall permit the Crown to act in a manner inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty. Accordingly, the five appeal judges were unanimous that the Treaty of Waitangi prevented the Crown from transferring land without entering into proper arrangements to protect Ma¯ori rights. It was a historic judgment. As Ranginui Walker observes, in the space of just a few years, the Treaty had been transformed ‘from “a simple nullity” to the level of a

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constitutional instrument in the renegotiation of the relationship between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ in modern times’ (1990: 266). In short, the doctrine of biculturalism had become established in political and public discourse by the late 1980s, and institutionalised to some considerable extent in law. These developments notwithstanding, there remain a number of attendant difficulties with the debates surrounding biculturalism. First, the politics of biculturalism has clear implications for other ethnic minority groups within Aotearoa/New Zealand, who tend inevitably to be overlooked in such a bifurcated construction (see also below). Indeed, with its recognition of the central place of indigenous Ma¯ori language and culture, biculturalism is seen by many opponents to overlook entirely the interests of other minority ethnic groups. Instead, multiculturalism, where Ma¯ori would be seen merely as one claimant among many, has at times been advocated as a ‘fairer’ and more inclusive policy. While the view that all minority cultures should be recognised equally within Aotearoa/New Zealand might appear attractive, proponents of biculturalism reject this position. In their view, multiculturalism, in practice, would simply work in favour of the numerically dominant Pa¯keha¯ group. Minority groups would be encouraged to fragment and to compete with one another for limited resources, thus maintaining current Pa¯keha¯ dominance (Spoonley, 1993). Specifically, relegating Ma¯ori to the status of a single group among many (albeit a large and influential one) disadvantages Ma¯ori in two ways: it denies Ma¯ori people their equality as members of one among two (sets of) peoples, and it also tends to deny the divisions of Ma¯oridom their separate status while exaggerating the status of other immigrant groups. In the end, Ma¯ori interests become peripheral, combined with other special problem areas. (Benton, 1988: 77) The Waitangi Tribunal is equally clear on this point: We do not accept that the Maori is just another one of a number of ethnic groups in our community. It must be remembered that of all minority groups the Maori alone is party to a solemn treaty made with the Crown. None of the other migrant groups who have come to live in this country in recent years can claim the rights that were given to the Maori people by the Treaty of Waitangi. Because of the Treaty Maori New Zealanders stand on a special footing reinforcing, if reinforcement be needed, their historical position as the original inhabitants, the tangata whenua [people of the land] of New Zealand… (1986: 37) Here again, biculturalism emphasises the right of Ma¯ori to exist and persist as a distinct and unique people – an ethnie or nation – on equal terms with Pa¯keha¯ (Sharp, 1990). This position is reinforced by an awareness


that support for multiculturalism amongst some Pa¯keha¯ arises less out of a valuing of diversity, and/or a concern for the interests of minority groups, than from a fear of the possible fulfilment of Ma¯ori bicultural aspirations (Simon, 1989). However, as these definitional disputes between biculturalism and multiculturalism already suggest, another difficulty with the concept of biculturalism is its potential for reifying culture. Class and gender divisions in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and their complex interrelation with ethnicity (at both intra- and intergroup levels), are consequently consistently understated (Larner, 1996; Maxwell, 1998). And yet, notwithstanding these reservations, there is a very real sense in which Ma¯ori ethnicity and culture can be regarded as distinct from Pa¯keha¯. For example, in the April Report of the Royal Commission on Social Policy (Royal Commission on Social Policy, 1988), the following values were held to be representative of Ma¯ori culture: Te Ao Tu ¯roa (guardianship of the natural environment), Whanaungatanga (the bonds of kinship), Manaakitanga (caring and sharing), Mana (authority and control among themselves), Kotahitanga (an emphasis on group commitment rather than individualism), Taonga-tuku-iho (cultural heritage) and Tu ¯rangawaewae (a place to stand; a piece of land inalienably one’s own). Even sceptics and critics broadly accept this description. As Andrew Sharp argues, in relation to the Commission’s summary, ‘irritating, unsubtle, simplifying, romantic, and naive as such a summary gloss of any culture must be… [this] nevertheless does capture much of the way things were’ (1990: 53). Current Ma¯ori identity has inevitably been constructed out of colonialism and a symbiotic interaction with Pa¯keha¯. Following Anthony Smith’s formulation of an ethnie (see Fenton and May, this volume), Ma¯ori may be said to have drawn on shared historical memories, myths of common ancestry, and a growing sense of solidarity, in order to develop a common ethnic and cultural parlance in the face of a colonising power. Indeed, the construction of a pan-Ma¯ori identity (where previously none had existed) was the principal means by which Ma¯ori came to distinguish themselves from Pa¯keha¯. A pan-Ma¯ori ethnic identity has not, however, replaced previous forms of identity formation among Ma¯ori, notably wha¯nau (family), hapu¯ (subtribe) and iwi (tribal) affiliations. Rather, it has emerged as an additional form of identity that both accommodates and is in tension with more particularistic and traditional affiliations (Pearson, 1990). The continued interaction – and, at times, discontinuities – between these different levels of identity for Ma¯ori highlight the multifaceted nature of identity formation. Despite these various tensions, Ma¯ori also clearly have a sufficient basis and claim to be recognised as a separate ethnie or nation within Aotearoa/New Zealand. Their political assertiveness is based on some form of unity, implied or actual, and the claims to resources and rights have been made on the basis of their rights as indigenous peoples. The politicisa-

Stephen May 103

tion of Ma¯ori ethnicity then can perhaps be best described by the aphorism ‘old symbols, new meanings’ – the phenomenon of going into the future by way of reclaiming the past (Greenland, 1991). This process has also inevitably involved the (re)mobilisation and (re)articulation of Ma¯ori identities – in a dynamic and changing combination of traditional, new and hybrid forms – as a basis for their claims to greater self-determination, a feature that is characteristic of the wider international indigenous rights movement as well (Feldman, 2001).

Conclusion It would seem that indigenous peoples’ long-held attempts to gain a measure of justice and restitution from those who colonised them are finally beginning to be recognised and redressed by modern nation-states, however slowly and inadequately. Certainly, this is the case in Aotearoa/New Zealand. What is clear is that such developments have been achieved largely by indigenous peoples themselves and the national and international political movements associated with them. In so doing, the indigenous peoples’ movement has highlighted the limits of democracy and the colonial underpinnings of much nation-state formation. Indigenous peoples have also consistently brought to our attention the ongoing processes of imperialism and disadvantage to which they have been subjected in the name of both. What is equally clear, however, is that such gains are still relatively limited, remain contested and, as the earlier example of Australia demonstrates, can still be easily reversed. Nonetheless, if recent national and supranational developments are anything to go by, the indigenous politics of (greater) self-determination looks to be here to stay, whether nation-states like it or not.

Notes 1. Aotearoa (land of the long white cloud) is the original Ma¯ori name for New Zealand. The term ‘New Zealand’ itself derives from the Dutch origins of the explorer Abel Tasman, the first European to ‘discover’ the area in the seventeenth century. The conjoint use of both names has been increasingly adopted in recent years to signify the bicultural origins of the country as well as, by implication, political support for this (see also below). 2. For discussion of a comparable example in the US, see McCarty and Watahomigie (1999). 3. Joshua Fishman is particularly critical of this kind of ‘protectionism’. As he argues, ‘even in such settings indigenous populations are robbed of control of the natural resources that could constitute the economic bases of a more self-regulatory collective life and, therefore, robbed also of a possible avenue of cultural viability as well’ (1991: 62). 4. Pastoral leases were first granted to European farmers in 1848, allowing them access to Aboriginal lands for the purposes of (limited) grazing and cultivation.


5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

While they were not intended to deprive Aboriginal peoples of their rights to roam and hunt on the land, this is very quickly what happened. Many farmers began to treat the land as private property and began commandeering Aboriginal peoples as free labour. The ongoing genocide of Aboriginal peoples, apparent throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, was also ‘vindicated’ on the basis of the ‘protection’ of these pastoral leases (see Perera and Pugliese, 1998: 68). ‘Pa¯keha¯’ is the Ma¯ori term for New Zealanders of European origin. Its literal meaning is ‘stranger’, although it holds no pejorative connotation in modern usage. Prior to the Second World War, less than 10 per cent of Ma¯ori had lived in cities or smaller urban centres. Currently, 82 per cent of Ma¯ori live in urban areas (Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Ma¯ori, 1995). Ma¯ori have thus undergone what is perhaps the most comprehensive and certainly the most rapid urbanisation process in modern times. I am aware that any discussion of unfavourable social, economic and educational indices can, by its very nature, lend itself to a pathological conception. This has certainly been the case in many past analyses of Ma¯ori, for example. However, it is not my intention here. Rather, I am simply wanting to demonstrate in what follows how Ma¯ori have come to be unequally placed within Aotearoa/New Zealand, and its key institutions, as the result of these historical processes. For statistical purposes, the category ‘non-Ma¯ori’ refers to all those within Aotearoa/New Zealand who do not identify as having some Ma¯ori ancestry (the option to identify as Ma¯ori on the basis of ancestry, rather than by formal racial(ised) weightings, has been a feature of the New Zealand census since 1986). Non-Ma¯ori thus include Pa¯keha¯, European migrants who do not identify as Pa¯keha¯, and non-European migrants, including those from the Pacific Islands and Asia. To date, the two most prominent examples of this process have been the settlement in 1995 of the Tainui iwi’s claim concerning the illegal confiscation of 1.2 million acres of land in the Waikato during the Land Wars of the 1860s (discussed earlier in relation to the Kı¯ngitanga movement), resulting in a public apology from the British Queen herself, the return of 39 000 acres of Crown land, and a cash settlement of NZ$70 million. In 1998 the Ngai Tahu iwi, the principal iwi in the South Island of New Zealand, received an even larger settlement, amounting to NZ$170 million (see Fleras and Spoonley, 1999: 133–39).

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Stephen May 105 Bishop, R. and Glynn, T. (1999) Culture Counts: Changing Power Relations in Education (Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press). Brasil (1996) Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil (CF/88) (São Paulo: Editora Revista dos Tribunais). Carens, J. (2000) Culture, Citizenship and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Chapple, S., Jeffries, R. and Walker, R. (1997) Ma¯ori Participation and Performance in Education. A Literature Review and Research Programme (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education). Churchill, S. (1986) The Education of Linguistic and Cultural Minorities in the OECD Countries (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Clark, D. and Williamson, R. (eds) (1996) Self-Determination: International Perspectives (London: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave). Corntassel, J. and Primeau, T. (1995) Indigenous ‘sovereignty’ and international law: revised strategies for pursuing ‘self-determination’ Human Rights Quarterly 17, 343–65. Corson, D. (1995) Norway’s ‘Sámi Language Act’: emancipatory implications for the world’s indigenous peoples, Language in Society 24, 493–514. —— (2001) Qulliq Quvvariarlugu: Policy Options for Bilingual Education in the Territory of Nunavut. A Report to the Government of Nunavut (Iqaluit NU: Government of Nunavut). Davies, L. and Nicholl, K. (1993) Te Maori i roto i nga Mahi Whakaakoranga. Maori Education: A Statistical Profile of the Position of Maori Across the New Zealand Education System (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education). de Varennes, F. (1996a) Language, Minorities and Human Rights (The Hague: Kluwer Law International). —— (1996b) Minority aspirations and the revival of indigenous peoples, International Review of Education 42, 309–25. Durie, M. (1998) Te Mana, Te Ka¯wanatanga: the Politics of Ma¯ori Self-Determination (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press). Edwards, C. and Read, P. (1992) The Lost Children. Thirteen Australians Taken From Their Aboriginal Families Tell of the Struggle to Find Their Natural Parents (London: Doubleday). Feldman, A. (2001) Transforming peoples and subverting states: developing a pedagogical approach to the study of indigenous peoples and ethnocultural movements, Ethnicities 1, 2, 147–78. Fishman, J. (1991) Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Fleras, A. and Spoonley, A. (1999) Recalling Aotearoa: Indigenous Politics and Ethnic Relations in New Zealand (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press). Greenland, H. (1991) Ma¯ori ethnicity as ideology, in P. Spoonley, D. Pearson and C. Macpherson (eds) Nga Take: Ethnic Relations and Racism in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press), pp. 90–107. Hanson, A. (1989) The making of Maori: culture invention and its logic, American Anthropologist 91, 890–902. Hill, R. (1995) Blackfellas and whitefellas: Aboriginal land rights, the Mabo Decision, and the meaning of land, Human Rights Quarterly 17, 303–22. Hornberger, N. (1997) Literacy, language maintenance, and linguistic human rights: three telling cases, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 127, 87–103. Huss, L. (1999) Reversing Language Shift in the Far North: Linguistic Revitalization in Northern Scandinavia and Finland (Uppsala, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis).

106 Ethnonational Identities Ivison, D., Patton, P. and Sanders, W. (2000a) Introduction, in D. Ivison, P. Patton and W. Sanders (eds) Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–21. —— (2000b) Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jarden, K. (1992) Education: making a Maori underclass, Race, Gender, Class 13, 20–25. Joppke, C. and Lukes, S. (eds) (1999) Multicultural Questions (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kawharu, I. (ed.) (1989) Waitangi: Maori and Pakeha Perspectives of the Treaty of Waitangi (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press). Kukathas, C. (1992) Are there any cultural rights? Political Theory 20, 105–39. —— (1997) Cultural toleration, in W. Kymlicka and I. Shapiro (eds) NOMOS XXXIX: Ethnicity and Group Rights (New York: New York University Press), pp. 69–104. Kymlicka, W. (1989) Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press). —— (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press). —— (1999) Theorizing indigenous rights, University of Toronto Law Journal 49, 281–293. —— and Norman, W. (eds) (1999) Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Larner, W. (1996) Gender and ethnicity: theorising ‘difference’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand, in P. Spoonley, C. Macpherson and D. Pearson (eds) Nga Pa¯tai: Racism and Ethnic Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press). —— and Spoonley, P. (1995) Post-colonial politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand, in D. Stasiulus and N. Yuval-Davis (eds) Unsettling Settler Societies (London: Sage), pp. 39–64. Levy, J. (2000) The Multiculturalism of Fear (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Magga, O. (1995) The Sámi Language Act, in T. Skutnabb-Kangas and R. Phillipson (eds) Linguistic Human Rights: Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), pp. 219–33. —— (1996) Sámi past and present and the Sámi picture of the world, in E. Helander (ed.) Awakened Voice: The Return of Sámi Knowledge (Kautokeino, Norway: Nordic Sámi Institute), pp. 74–80. Manatu ¯ Ma¯ori (1991) Ma¯ori and Work: The Position of Ma¯ori in the New Zealand Labour Market (Wellington, New Zealand: Economic Development Unit, Manatu ¯ Ma¯ori). Maxwell, A. (1998) Ethnicity and education: biculturalism in New Zealand, in D. Bennett (ed.) Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity (London: Routledge), pp. 195–207. May, S. (1998) Just how safe is Australia’s multilingual language policy?, in S. Wright and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds) Managing Language Diversity (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), pp. 54–57. —— (1999a) Critical multiculturalism and cultural difference: avoiding essentialism, in S. May (ed.) Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education (London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer), pp. 11–41. —— (ed.) (1999b) Indigenous Community-Based Education (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). —— (2001) Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language (London: Longman).

Stephen May 107 McCarty, T. and Watahomigie, L. (1999) Indigenous community-based education in the USA, in S. May (ed.) Indigenous Community-Based Education (Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters), pp. 79–94. McLoughlin, D. (1993) The Maori Burden, North and South, November, 60–71. Miles, R. and Spoonley, P. (1985) The political economy of labour migration: an alternative to the sociology of ‘race’ and ‘ethnic relations’ in New Zealand, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 21, 3–26. Mulgan, R. (1989) Maori, Pakeha and Democracy (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press). Murphy, M. (2001) The limits of culture in the politics of self-determination, Ethnicities 1, 3, 367–88. New Zealand Ministerial Advisory Committee (1986) Pu¯ao-Te-Atatu (The Report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Ma¯ori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare), (Wellington, New Zealand: Government Printer). Orange, C. (1987) The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, New Zealand: Allen and Unwin). Patton, P. (1995) Post-structuralism and the Mabo debate: difference, society and justice, in M. Wilson and A. Yeatman (eds) Justice and Identity: Antipodean Practices (Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books), pp. 153–71. Pearson, D. (1990) A Dream Deferred: the Origins of Ethnic Conflict in New Zealand (Wellington, New Zealand: Allen and Unwin). —— (2000) The Politics of Ethnicity in Settler Societies: States of Unease (New York: Palgrave). Perera, S. and Pugliese, J. (1998) Wogface, anglo-drag, contested aboriginalities: making and unmaking identities in Australia, Social Identities 4, 39–72. Pilger, J. (1998) Australia, a paradise of blondes and barbecues, shark-infested waters and silver beaches. It has other similarities with South Africa, too, The Observer (Review Section) (22 March 1998), 5. Purvis, A. (1999a) Whose home and native land? Time Magazine (Canadian edition) (15 February 1999), 16–23. —— (1999b) Homeland for the Inuit, Time Magazine (Canadian edition) (15 February 1999), 34–35. Roosens, E. (1989) Creating Ethnicity: the Process of Ethnogenesis (London: Sage). Royal Commission on Social Policy (1988) April Report, Vols. I–IV (Wellington, New Zealand: Government Printer). Scott, C. (1996) Indigenous self-determination and decolonization of the international imagination: a plea, Human Rights Quarterly 18, 814–20. Sharp, A. (1990) Justice and the Maori: Maori Claims in New Zealand Political Argument in the 1980s (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press). Simon, J. (1989) Aspirations and ideology: biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand education, Sites 18, 23–34. Sinclair, K. (ed.) (1993) The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Sorrenson, M. (1989) Towards a radical reinterpretation of New Zealand history: the role of the Waitangi Tribunal, in I. Kawharu (ed.) Waitangi: Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ perspectives of the Treaty of Waitangi (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press), pp. 158–78. Spoonley, P. (1993) Racism and Ethnicity (rev. edn.) (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press). —— (1996) Mahi Awatea? The racialisation of work in Aotearoa/New Zealand, in P. Spoonley, C. Macpherson and D. Pearson (eds) Nga Pa¯tai: Racism and Ethnic

108 Ethnonational Identities Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press), pp. 55–78. Stamatopoulou, E. (1994) Indigenous peoples and the United Nations: human rights as a developing dynamic Human Rights Quarterly 16, 58–81. Stannard, D. (1989) Before the Horror (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press). Tennant, C. (1994) Indigenous peoples, international institutions, and the international legal literature from 1945–1993, Human Rights Quarterly 16, 1–57. Te Puni Ko¯kiri (1994) Mana Tangata. Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 1993: Background and Discussion on Key Issues (Wellington, New Zealand: Te Puni Ko ¯ kiri (Ministry of Ma¯ori Development)). Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Ma¯ori (1995) He Taonga te Reo (Wellington, New Zealand: Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Ma¯ori (Ma¯ori Language Commission)). Thornberry, P. (1991a) International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford: Clarendon Press). —— (1991b) Minorities and Human Rights Law (London: Minority Rights Group). Todal, J. (1999) Minorities within a minority: language and the school in the Sámi areas of Norway, in S. May (ed.) Indigenous Community-Based Education (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), pp. 124–36. Waitangi Tribunal (1986) Findings of the Waitangi Tribunal Relating to Te Reo Maori and a Claim Lodged by Huirangi Waikerepuru and Nga Kaiwhakapumau i te Reo Incorporated Society (Wellington Board of Maori Language) (Wellington, New Zealand: Government Printer). Waldron, J. (1995) Minority cultures and the cosmopolitan alternative, in W. Kymlicka (ed.) The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 93–119. —— (1999) Cultural identity and civic responsibility, in W. Kymlicka and W. Norman (eds) Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 155–74. Walker, R. (1990) Ka Whawhai Tonu Ma¯tou: Struggle Without End (Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin). Wilson, M. and Yeatman, A. (eds) (1995) Justice and Identity: Antipodean Practices (Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books). Young, I. (1993) Together in difference: transforming the logic of group political conflict, in J. Squires (ed.) Principled Positions: Postmodernism and the Rediscovery of Value (London: Lawrence and Wishart), pp. 121–50. —— (2000) Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

5 Identity Politics and Nationalisms in Colonial India1 John Zavos

Introduction As a form of identity, Hindu nationalism has a significance and meaning which has been ferociously contested in Indian politics. Its exponents often present it as the ‘real’ or ‘true’ form of Indian nationalism, to be contrasted with western-inspired, universalist concepts of ‘pseudo-secularist’ nationalists.2 Opponents, on the other hand, present it as the very antithesis of ‘real’ or ‘true’ nationalism. That is, if it is acknowledged as meaningful at all. Some academics have denied its existence altogether, arguing that right-wing Hindu political organisations have successfully ‘appropriat(ed) the uncontested terrain of nationalism’ in order to characterise a political ideology which is manifestly anti-national (Mahajan, 1997: 5). This line of argument states that only communalism – the mutual antagonism of different communities – can adequately describe the projections of religious (or quasi-religious) identity which have come increasingly to dominate the political landscape in India. Hindu communalism, the argument goes, is the most institutionalised and the most powerful form of this identity; it is therefore the greatest threat to the Indian state, and to the very idea of the Indian nation. To characterise such a concept as nationalism, then, does indeed appear paradoxical. So what, then, if anything, is signified by the concept of Hindu nationalism? Exponents appear to equate it with Indian nationalism, whilst rejecting the universalist nationalism of so-called pseudo-secularists. Opponents equate it with communalism, the antithesis of (universalist) nationalism. From this, it is at least clear that there is a strong relationship between Hindu nationalism and two key concepts: Indian nationalism and communalism. These two concepts have established a critical dialectic in modern Indian politics. They form a kind of framework of polarisation, which configures much of the debate over the nature of politics, and the particular significance (or otherwise) of concepts such as Hindu nationalism. This framework has a history; indeed it is now a fairly well-established history in 109


modern Indian historiography, locating the 1920s as the significant period of development. During this decade, communalism, or more specifically the communal riot, emerged as a systematic feature of political life in northern India (cf. Barot, this volume; Hewitt, this volume).3 This emergence was mirrored by the self-conscious articulation by Jawaharlal Nehru and others in the Indian National Congress of ‘pure’ nationalism, ‘unsullied, in theory, by the “primordial” pulls of caste, religious community etc.’ (Pandey, 1990: 235).4 These concurrent developments created a means of interpreting Indian politics and culture which has in many ways set the parameters of debate over issues such as secularity, national integration, the rights of minorities and the nature of national identity. This chapter will focus on the development of Hindu nationalist identity in a period prior to the 1920s. That is to say, it will focus on a period prior to the critical period in the development of this framework of polarisation between Indian nationalism and communalism. My objective is to examine the way in which Hindu nationalism developed autonomously; without, as it were, the framework of polarisation to configure its meaning. I will concentrate on the ideological development of the Hindu Sabha movement, which emerged in the first decade of the twentieth century in northwest India. This movement undoubtedly represents an attempt to propagate a nationalism based on the idea of Hindu identity. What will be demonstrated is that this form of identity nevertheless developed very much within the context of rapid change and intense scrutiny of another form of identity, that of Indian nationalism. The chapter argues that the development of these competing nationalisms was intimately related: they operated on the same discursive terrain of middle-class consciousness, and they addressed the same central question of how ‘the people’ should be represented in relation to the state. This example will hopefully call into question the idea that identity politics – based on ethnicity or other cultural configurations – is implacably opposed to universalist nationalism in India. Two points, then, must be established at this stage. First, any analysis of Hindu nationalism needs to take account of a specific history of polarity between two key concepts: Indian nationalism and communalism. This study takes appropriate account of this context, in the sense that the period covered self-consciously predates the critical phase in the development of this framework of polarisation. Second, my analysis posits a close relationship between Hindu nationalism and Indian nationalism during this period, seemingly in direct contravention of the framework of polarisation. My point, however, focuses on Hindu nationalism, not Hindu communalism. This conceptual distinction is central to the argument in this chapter. It is also, I would argue, central to an understanding of how Hindu nationalism operates in Indian politics. Initially, we must examine this distinction, and suggest a theoretical model

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for the separation of the two concepts. In our immediate context, this will also allow for a clearer understanding of ideological dynamics in the pre-1920s period.

Hindu nationalism and Hindu communalism In the framework of polarisation between Indian nationalism and communalism, the latter is presented as specifically anti-national, a set of ideologies ranged precisely against the emerging hegemony of the Indian nation. This is clear in much analysis of the late colonial and postcolonial polity in India (see, for example, Desai, 1976: 381–431). Recent work by van der Veer (1994), however, has argued that this is a problematic polarisation, in that it places religious nationalism in the position of a traditional, reactionary force, holding back the modernity of Indian nationalism. A good deal of work has shown how this opposition of modernity and tradition is a distorted model, and that ‘traditional’ social and political formations are an integral part of the project of modernity.5 Van der Veer has gone further, by arguing that communalism and nationalism are simply radical and moderate tendencies within the same ideology of nationalism. ‘The moderates’ he says, ‘accept cultural pluralism and equality among different religious communities within the nation, while the radicals see the nation as the community of co-religionists’ (1994: 22–23). It is all part of the same conception of nationalism, which for van der Veer is based on precolonial notions of religious community. Although this questioning of the polarity of communalism and nationalism is helpful, the second part of van der Veer’s argument appears to be dangerously close to the colonialist notion that Indian nationalism was in fact inherently communal, because of the primordial antagonism of various religious cultures. This is certainly not an intentional proximity, as he is at pains to point out, but nevertheless his employment of a linear model of nationalism limits his options. On this basis, for example, he rejects the validity of secular nationalism, in that it fails adequately to accommodate religion as an aspect of Indian national identity. This is an argument developed from the work of Madan (1987) and other sociologists, such as Nandy (1990), opposed to the proposition of secularism in Indian society. But it is the linear model that demands it, as secularism cannot be accommodated in the moderate-to-radical scale, with its implication of the common denominator of religious identity. The problem in identifying communalism as what van der Veer (1994) calls ‘only a form of nationalism’ in which ‘a common religion…is imagined as the basis of group identity’, is that it fails to acknowledge the flexible nature of this term. Gyanendra Pandey (1990) has been instrumental in explaining this flexibility.6 Most significantly, Pandey recognises the fact that communalism is not specific to religiously configured


communities. It is rather a term that is applied to any form of community that displays an antagonistic stance towards another community, within a colonial or postcolonial context – religious, yes, but also linguistic- and caste-based communities. This antagonism, it must be noted, is always directed primarily towards communities based on the same kind of signifier as their own. The ‘other’ of the communalist, then, is a kind of conceptual echo: a linguistic communalist will direct his or her hostility towards another linguistic group; a religious communalist towards another religion, and so on. Communalism, then, is a fairly stark and simple structure. It is defined first and foremost by what is other than itself, and that other is principally some form of conceptual echo of itself. Because of this simplicity, communalism does not necessarily generate its own ideology; it is more likely, in fact, to appropriate existing ideologies to extend its form, deepen its impact. This, I argue, is precisely the relationship between Hindu communalism and Hindu nationalism. The latter provides the ideological tools for the development and extension of the former. Let me make the distinction clear: 1. Hindu nationalism is defined as an ideology that seeks to imagine or construct a community (i.e. a nation) on the basis of a common culture – a culture configured by a particular notion of Hinduism. This ideology, I would further suggest, was developed largely by middle-class Indians, over a period coterminous with the development of elite-led Indian nationalist ideology. 2. Hindu communalism is a kind of structure that aligns the interests – social, cultural, political, economic – of this imagined or constructed community precisely against the interests of other religious communities, particularly, of course, the Indian Muslims. This distinction allows for the exploration of an ideological development in the nineteenth and early twentieth century – that of Hindu nationalism – which is less teleologically burdened. As we have already noted, the 1920s constitute the point at which communalism is crystallised as a systematic feature of Indian politics, and the framework of polarisation between Indian nationalism and communalism begins to emerge. This crystallisation does not constitute the culmination of a process of ideological development. It rather must be perceived as a process driven by the interplay of several historical factors, some of them ideological, but also others that were structural, ‘event-led’, and even external to local politics. The ideology of Hindu nationalism was of course a major factor in the process of communalisation, but its development as an ideology needs to be divorced from the process, as it had, and still has, its own existence independent of the structure of communalism.

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Hindu nationalism and Indian nationalism If, then, we can think of Hindu nationalism as autonomous of communalism, we have to consider the issue of what kind of ideology it was. Evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries demonstrates that it was a middle-class ideology (see Zavos, 2000). This raises questions about how it developed, what it represented, and what distinguished it from the very middle-class ideology of elite-led Indian nationalism? These questions have been addressed by the political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot (1993a and b, 1996). Jaffrelot recognises the emergence of Hindu nationalism as a distinct political ideology around the turn of the twentieth century in North and Northwest India. The development of this ideology constituted the first stage of what he calls the ‘birthing process’ of Hindu nationalism. The second stage, located in the 1920s, saw the emergence of Hindu nationalism as a form of political mobilisation that drew on identity symbols provided by this ideology (see especially, 1993b). This would appear to be a similar model to that suggested in the previous section, in that Jaffrelot recognises the existence of an apparently autonomous ideology that informs the mobilisation of the 1920s. But Jaffrelot further theorises his model, by placing it within the framework of ethnic nationalism. It is this ethnicity, he says, that distinguishes Hindu nationalism from the universalism of Indian nationalist ideology, with its projection of ‘all individuals, all communities living within British India’ as the nation. The framework of ethnicity obliges Jaffrelot to situate Hindu nationalism in relation to its attendant tensions: most notably, the tension between primordialist and instrumentalist approaches to the development of ethnic movements. As a form of identity, Hindu nationalism was not primordialist, drawing on an established sense of ethnicity; yet at the same time, it was not instrumentalist, a cynical construction of the elite, because it does reinterpret themes drawn from the established tradition of Hinduism. Jaffrelot rather suggests the ideological construction of Hindu nationalism as a cultural strategy to defend brahmanical hegemony. This strategy was pursued by certain socio-religious reform organisations, particularly the Arya Samaj.7 As it moves into its second stage of political mobilisation, however, it is more straightforwardly interpreted as an instrumentalist movement driven by what he calls ‘ideologically minded Hindu elites’. To my mind, this projection of Hindu nationalist ideology as somehow structurally different because of its ethnic or cultural conception of the nation is problematic. First, it leaves little room for the development of the culture of Indian nationalism – the latter is presented as a rather flat political nationalism that can have no influence over the development of an exclusivist, combative Hindu sense of ethnicity. This belies the increasing sophistication of Indian nationalism towards the end of the nineteenth


century, and leads Jaffrelot to describe the extremist strategy of the Congress nationalists Tilak and Aurobindo as a product of their ‘Hindu leanings’ (1996: 17–18; for an alternative view of extremism, see below). This kind of extremism, interestingly, is reminiscent of van der Veer’s moderate-to-radical scale of nationalism. Secondly, Jaffrelot’s emphasis on Hindu nationalism as a strategy designed to defend brahmanic hegemony is particularly problematic in the context of the Arya Samaj, as in its early years around the turn of the twentieth century this organisation faced fierce resistance from precisely those groups – the established hierarchies of Hinduism – whose interests it is presented as protecting. But most significantly, although Jaffrelot presents Hindu nationalism as a distinct ideology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, he nevertheless states that it was not ‘codified’ until the early 1920s. By this he means that it was not until this period that the ideology was consciously articulated, largely through the written work of V.D. Savarkar. This codification constitutes the ‘second stage’ of the birth of Hindu nationalism, and although it is perceived as different, in that it represents a straightforward instrumentalist project of the elite, it is not perceived as a conceptual difference. Communalism emerges simply as a more extreme form of Hindu nationalism, and the construct of ethnic nationalism is shown to be implemented differently, only because of the different demands of those ideologically minded Hindu elites. Instrumentalism therefore emerges as so central to the development of Jaffrelot’s construct of Hindu nationalism as communalism, that the elaboration of an earlier form of the ideology seems irrelevant. In this sense the whole category of ethnic nationalism, with its accompanying baggage of instrumentalism and primordialism, appears unhelpful as a way of theorising Hindu nationalism, obscuring rather than clarifying the development of the ideology (cf. Fenton and May, this volume). The reason for this is that Jaffrelot’s notion of ethnic nationalism draws on a particular conception of ideology, developed by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Geertz perceives ideology as what he calls ‘schematic images of social order’ – symbols or metaphors – consciously constructed as a means of rationalising change in a modernising society (1993: 218–19). Ideology, then, fulfils a specific function in this context. In addition, despite his assertion that ‘the function of ideology is to make an autonomous politics possible’, Geertz is curiously reticent in defining its relationship to class – a point acknowledged by Jaffrelot8 – and also to colonialism, even though much of his work draws on the ethnology of postcolonial Southeast Asia. This approach engenders a limited perception of ideology. It emerges as a facet of culture, a reinterpretation appropriated as a means of establishing and defending that culture in the face of rapid change. Although this may be an attractive model for the interpretation of Hindu nationalism, it does not encompass the complexities of the problem.

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Jaffrelot’s identification of a direct link between the reformist ideology of the Arya Samaj and Hindu nationalism, ignoring implicit contradictions between the two, provides us with a good example of its limitations. An alternative approach would be to refer to the wider conception of ideology developed by Gramsci, and the extension of his work, particularly in relation to culture, by Stuart Hall. Here, ideology can be resituated in a far more strategic relation to culture itself. Ideology, Hall states, constitutes the ‘mental frameworks’ – the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation – which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works (1996: 26). The fundamental position that ideology assumes here in relation to people’s perception of the world means that far from being an aspect of culture, ideology is a means through which culture is defined. What is perceived as culture is dependent upon the dominance of particular ideologies. Using this model, in conjunction with the idea of communalism as a structure, rather than an autonomous ideology in itself, the development of the ideologies of Hindu nationalism and Indian nationalism as middle-class ideologies in the pre-1920s period is less problematic. They remain distinct, but are not burdened by the historical necessity of implacable opposition. Indeed, the evidence of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that the two ideologies developed in the same discursive space, competing precisely on this level of ‘mental frameworks’. This is evident, for example, in the work of V.D. Savarkar, Swami Shraddhanand, Lajpat Rai: all three of these ‘architects’ of Hindu nationalism had been in prison because of their activities as Indian nationalists, and all were perceived as – and perceived themselves as – genuine Indian nationalists during the 1920s. By employing Geertz’s perception of ideology as limited, it may be possible to present this apparent paradox as symptomatic of figures who were Hindu nationalists in cultural terms and Indian nationalists in political terms. My argument suggests that examples of almost simultaneous expression of the competing ideologies simply reflect the struggle for dominance of these ‘mental frameworks’ on the discursive terrain of middleclass Indian public life. The proximity of these ideologies meant that they blended and clashed frequently in both cultural and political contexts. This close relationship is evident particularly when shifts occurred in the common discursive field. Middle-class Indian nationalism, grounded even in the 1880s in a very rigorous economic critique of colonialism, was most instrumental in providing a coherent challenge to the hegemony of the colonial state. A significant consequence of – and vehicle for – this challenge was a progressive questioning of the boundaries of middle-class political discourse, by which is meant political discourse recognised as legitimate by the state. The first decade of the twentieth century was a particularly dynamic period in this process. During this decade, the established


discourse of Indian nationalism in the Congress organisation was challenged by what became known as ‘extremism’. In the following sections, it will be argued that the emergence of the Hindu Sabha movement towards the end of this decade must be viewed in the context of this discursive challenge. The representation of the community of Hindus, an idea which underpinned the Sabha movement from the outset, was related directly to struggles within Congress over how precisely the Indian nation was to be represented. It is this notion of representation which dominated the politics of this period, and, in a sense, provided the space for the articulation of the community of Hindus.

The battlefield of representation: extremists, moderates and strategies of confrontation The 1905–1908 campaign against the partition of Bengal is indicative of emerging trends of considerable significance in the Indian national movement. First, it forced the diversity of views in the Congress into two oppositional ‘parties’: moderate and extremist. Second, it marked the development of strategies of confrontation which worked specifically to expose the perceived (economic) contradiction between the interests of the state and the putative Indian nation. The extremist strategy of boycott and swadeshi as employed during the anti-partition campaign was based primarily upon an economic resistance to colonialism. The central focus of the movement was the boycott of Lancashire cloth (and other British goods) and the parallel encouragement of local industries. The boycott was extended from this base into a more sophisticated network of boycotts (a ‘doctrine of passive resistance’, as it was called by the Bengali extremist Aurobindo Ghose), encompassing education, justice and administration. The central economic focus was employed despite the fact that partition was not primarily an economic issue. Boycott was rather a strategic response. As the Maharashtrian extremist B.G. Tilak commented in 1905, ‘people will not persevere in the swadeshi movement, unless they burn with indignation at Manchester…robbing the country of so much wealth’.9 As this indicates, the emphasis of the movement was on expanding political comprehension of colonial economic relations. This theme of comprehension underpinned the whole strategy. Tilak again states, in relation to the administrative boycott, that ‘it may not be feasible to boycott Government service altogether, but that is no reason why we should not try to impress upon the minds of the people that Government service exercises a debasing influence upon character’.10 The literal success of the boycott was not the issue here. Its principal objective was rather to increase popular consciousness of – to ‘impress upon the minds of the people’ – the damaging implications of British rule.

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The objective of this strategy, then, was ideological. It sought to transform the ‘mental frameworks’ which middle-class nationalists like Tilak and Aurobindo saw as holding key social classes in thrall to the enduring image of the colonial imperative. In this sense, boycott and swadeshi may be defined as a strategy of counter-hegemony, configured precisely to undermine the idea that the state worked primarily in the interests of the Indian people. Consequently, the organisational structures that they sought to employ were directed not towards government, seeking redress, but towards the people, seeking the tangible expansion of the constituency of Indian nationalists. This was undoubtedly a shift of discursive focus, but in practice the only potential organisation through which to implement such an expansion was the Indian Congress. This organisation was controlled by the moderate ‘party’, which continued to articulate politics through established discursive structures. Here, the idea of representation was legitimised through the invocation of parliamentary or democratic idioms, whilst at the same time eschewing any mechanism to link representation to particular constituencies. The representational claims of moderates, therefore, were symbolic. Their claim was that the Congress was a symbol of the nation, and their authority was based on the recognition of this symbol in colonial politics. The pressure which the divergent approach of extremism exerted on this dominant idea of symbolic representation led in 1907 to a split in the Congress. In effect, this split expelled the extremist strategy from the organisation, and reasserted the significance of symbolic representation in the national movement. Nevertheless the parameters of debate, the possibilities of elite nationalism, had developed significantly. The state had to confront the growing counter-hegemonic potential of the strategy of boycott and swadeshi. It did so by attempting to marginalise extremism and actively accommodate moderatism, through the strategic offer of constitutional reform. Reform was an indication of political progress, signalling a further affirmation of moderate methods. Why turn to new forms of articulating nationalism, the state in effect declared to the middle classes, when the old forms have reaped such a reward? For the moderate Congress, this was a critical affirmation of its strategy. As G.K. Gokhale commented to the Secretary of State, John Morley, in 1908, without reforms ‘the extremists will have their own way; confusion, danger, ruin will follow’ (quoted in Wolpert, 1962: 237). Because of this pressure, the actual content of the reforms was of less significance to the moderates than the concept, the image, of reform taking place. This is reflected in the Act which eventually emerged in 1909 (known as the Morley-Minto reforms) after four years of deliberation.11 Other than the formal recognition of separate Muslim interests, it appears that the Act had no substantial transformational effects on the structure of Indian government.12


It was, in this sense, a symbol of constitutional progress, which was appropriately linked to the moderate strategy of symbolic representation. An example of this pervasive symbolic approach is provided by the debate over the retention of the Seditious Meetings Act in the newly constituted Imperial Legislative Council in 1911. In planning to soften this oppressive act in deference to Gokhale and other elected members of the Council, the Viceroy Lord Hardinge commented that: We must be careful not to reduce the Act to an absolute nullity. Still, some impression would be made if the amendments to the Act were moved and accepted in open Council, so that the non-officials might get the credit for having effected something, and the government might appear to have made some concession to opinions in the Council. (Quoted in Nanda, 1977: 383; emphases added) The image of the process, then, was central. In this sense, the reforms of 1909 represent an attempt to reiterate the principle of symbolic representation as a meaningful framework for the expression of political aspirations, in the context of the emergence of a counter-hegemonic discourse in middle-class nationalism. As noted above, one significant feature of the reform package was the institution of exclusive Muslim colleges in the electorate for Provincial Legislative Councils. This explicitly affirmed the recognition of a Muslim community, and in doing so it also implicitly affirmed the recognition of a Hindu community. In what sense, though, were these communities recognised? The colonial state had, of course, long perceived religion as the defining principle of Indian identity, Indian history and culture. Morley and Minto certainly invoked this perception in their presentation of the reforms.13 In our context, however, the influence of symbolism is also evident here. The Muslim and Hindu communities that the Act called up were the symbolic constituencies of incipient political organisations, in the same way that the Indian nation had been the symbolic constituency of Congress nationalism in its moderate form. The government’s invocation of these constituencies gave powerful impetus to attempts to articulate the politics of identity on this level. But it was the implicit debate over the nature of representation in Indian politics which underpinned these developments.

The Hindu Sabha: defining the structure of Hindu politics The Hindu Sabha movement developed in this context as an attempt to represent the interests of a putative Hindu constituency. The movement emerged in the volatile political atmosphere of Punjab during the first decade of the twentieth century (cf. Barot, this volume). From 1906 a series

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of Hindu Sahaik Sabhas were established which consisted of ‘the cream of the Arya, Brahmo, Theosophist, Sikh, Sanatanist Societies…’ (Tribune, 24 August 1906). The principal aim of these Sabhas was to ‘protect the interests of the Hindus by stimulating in them the feelings of self-respect, self-help and mutual co-operation so that by a combined effort there would be some chance of promoting the moral, intellectual, social and material welfare of the individuals of which the nation is composed’. The common theme was collaboration: inaugural meetings were attended by the ‘heads of all sections’ coming together to ‘work with co-operation on a single platform’ (see Tribune, 8 September 1906). The idea was to create a conglomeration of organisations which together would form a spectrum of religious affiliation. As long as the spectrum presented a coherent image, it could claim to ‘represent the interests of the Hindu community’. The community of Hindus was created by binding together in one organisation a series of existing organisations which purported to represent the various components of this larger community. This image replicates the idea of symbolic representation noted in the previous section as underpinning moderate strategy, and as central to the established structure of political discourse. This point is supported by the fact that the kind of organisations involved were almost exclusively middle class: the Tribune’s list above confirms this doubly, by emphasising the elitism of those involved (‘the cream of the Arya, Brahmo, Theosophist…’ etc.). In the context of the Congress split in 1907, and the constitutional reforms of 1909, the movement gathered pace. Work was focused on the reform package, and on the Punjab Alienation of Land Act of 1901, which was perceived as particularly discriminating against the urban-based Hindu middle class.14 As well as addressing communications to both the provincial and central governments on these issues during 1909 (see Jaffrelot, 1993b: 27), the Sabha made its presence felt by voicing concern over the reform package to the Viceroy in person, as part of a welcome address during a short visit to Lahore in April. The address was reported to have ‘touched the Viceroy to the quick and led His Excellency to remark that the questions raised in it did not suit the occasion’.15 This incident was widely commented on in the press, and the Sabha consolidated the resulting heightened profile by preparing for a Provincial Hindu Conference in Lahore in October 1909, as a demonstration of the unity of Hindus in Punjab. A prime mover in these preparations for the Conference was Lala Lal Chand, the first prominent leader of the fully established Sabha movement. Lal Chand was a well-known Arya Samajist of the College branch. He was also a judge in Lahore and one of the founders of the Punjab National Bank. Beginning in February 1909, he published a series of articles in the Punjabee under the title ‘Self-Abnegation in Politics’. These were subsequently published in book form (Chand, 1938), and have since gained


stature as a foundation text of the Sabha movement. The somewhat obscure title refers to the attitude of Hindus towards politics, which Chand perceived as self-denying, always allowing the claims of other forces in society to take precedence. The concession of separate Muslim electorates in the MorleyMinto reforms is presented as the apotheosis of the tendency. Blame for this loss of self-assertion is laid fairly and squarely at the door of the Congress, an organisation that ‘makes the Hindu forget that he is a Hindu and tends to swamp his communal individuality [sic] into an Indian ideal, thus making him break with all his past traditions and past glory, (Chand, 1938: 112–113). The Congress ideal of a composite nationhood, he continues, ‘was not only erroneous to start with, but…has become impossible under the declared hostile attitude of the other community’. The only way forward, then, was ‘to start anew on a fresh basis, abandoning, if not pulling down, the fabric which instead of giving political shelter and refuge has exposed the (Hindu) community to winds and hailstorms from every quarter’ (ibid.: 113). Lal Chand’s agenda was explicitly political. His articles reiterate again and again the point that ‘the object is not to discuss the general amelioration of the Hindu community in its various aspects’, but rather ‘the political aspect of the Hindu community under its present environments’ (ibid.: 98; emphasis in original). As such, he largely sidesteps the issue of identity, of what precisely constitutes the Hindu community which he is addressing. Beyond the invocation of fairly widely understood notions of Hindu history, and an attempt at defining patriotism in terms of community as opposed to territory, Lal Chand does not appear to be overly concerned with issues of culture, religion or ethnicity. He nevertheless asserts the need for consolidation, but it is a political consolidation – one might even say a symbolic consolidation: Weak and disunited we are and divided into various sects. But the remedy lies in bringing the sections on a common political platform where they would realise that they are merely branches of the same stock and community, and not lead them further astray and to teach them as if no such community exists or has a political status. (1938: 118) The structure of the Hindu Sabha, with its spectrum of religious organisations, is legitimised here. The existence of the constituency – the Hindu community – is ensured by the presentation of a united front of these ‘various sects’ in the Sabha organisation. The unified Sabha, then, becomes a powerful symbol of the consolidated community. This inclination towards the value of symbolic representation is reiterated in Chand’s response to the Morley-Minto reforms. This needs to be seen not only in terms of the recognition of separate Muslim interests, but also in terms of the increasing impotence of Congress moderatism, and the

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related ideological struggle to assert counter-hegemony as the strategic focus of Indian nationalism. Lal Chand rejects the latter in no uncertain terms. His understanding of politics is ‘in the sense of relations between the governed and the governors’; he does not therefore endorse politics based on the ‘uprooting of these relations’. ‘It is mere tall talk’ he continues, ‘to speak of self-growth and self-development’ when the community is so weak. Because of this it is of ‘paramount importance to reconcile, and not to make needlessly antagonistic, the powers that be’ (ibid.: 99–100). Later he refers to the split in Congress at Surat in 1907 as a result of the clash of these opposing strategies towards the state: Self-help [i.e. swadeshi and the rejection of state-centred politics]… threatened at one time to cause a split in the Congress camp and not improbably did cause the split. The advocates of the theory [i.e. extremists] would discredit their opponents [moderates] by calling them mendicants. Their scheme was to make no appeals to Government nor send any memorials, but to achieve political ascendancy without Government help. The theory is attractive in form as it appeals to self-pride but I, at any rate, am at a loss to understand how resolutions passed at meetings will redress the grievances unless it is intended – whether so addressed in form or not – that these should reach Government and induce it to take measures for redress. (ibid.: 109) The politics of extremism do not fall within the purview of this prominent judge of Lahore. The moderate Congress, however, had also patently failed to deliver any tangible political gain. ‘When the time came for rewarding the labours a little, the substantial portion of the reward was assigned to the other community’ (ibid.: 112). The problem, however, lay not in the structure of Congress politics – i.e. the ‘[appeal to the authorities…to address the wrong’ – but rather in the projection of the Congress constituency (through, of course, symbolic representation) as a united nation. When Lal Chand talks of starting anew, of pulling down the fabric of contemporary politics, he is referring largely to the substitution of this constituency for a Hindu constituency. In this context, the appropriation of the existing political discourse – with symbolic representation at its heart – and the existing structure of politics – based on the alignment of quasiparliamentary bodies towards the state – is the logical means of representing the putative constituency of Hindus. Thus Lal Chand, at the very end of his series of letters, proposes: the substitution of Hindu Sabhas for Congress Committees, of a Hindu press for the Congress press, [the] organisation of a Hindu Defence Fund with regular offices and machinery for collecting information and seeking redress by self-help, self-ameliorations and petitions and memorials


supplemented by agitation in the press and advocacy through trusted leaders in matters both special and common but dominated primarily by regard for Hindu interests. (ibid.: 125) It is possible that Lal Chand’s approach in Self-Abnegation was influenced by the Government’s crack-down on Arya involvement in politics following the Punjab disturbances of 1907 (see Jones, 1976: 269–79). Certainly, he places great emphasis on his objection to the Congress demand for selfgovernment within the Commonwealth as an ‘impracticable demand and a pure source of irritation’, and is keen at other points to emphasise his loyalty (Chand, 1938: 116). It is in any case perhaps not surprising that such a prominent citizen of the British Indian state should be anything other than an advocate of strictly legitimate politics. What is interesting, however, is that this dry and somewhat unwieldy series of articles should emerge as what Jaffrelot calls the ‘ideological charter of the Hindu Sabha’ (1993b: 28).16 As Hindu politics emerged, it became fused to the idea of symbolic representation, a method of structuring politics which neatly avoided the thorny question of who precisely was being represented. Conforming precisely to the state’s own idea of how a political organisation should operate (not only in the sense of symbolic representation, but also of course in the sense that the projected constituency was – in some sense at least – religious), Lal Chand’s vision of the Hindu Sabha intended to call the constituency of Hindus into being simply through the power of political articulation in the context of discursive change. Self-Abnegation set the pattern for the first Hindu Conference, which was held in October 1909 in Lahore. Prior to the Conference, the Arya daily newspaper, the Punjabee, began collecting comments from the national press which indicated that the Sabha movement ‘has made its infant existence, albeit devoid of any achievements, felt’ (Punjabee, 7 October 1909). For example, it quoted admiringly from the Reis and Rayyat, a Calcutta English-language weekly, which had suggested an admittedly somewhat vague definition of the parameters of Hindu unity in anticipation of the Conference: ‘the Hindus scattered all over the Indian peninsula are divided into various forms. But there is the bedrock of uniformity in the belief in the Vedas and some other essential dogmas (Punjabee, 5 October 1909). A few days later, an approving article in the Bengalee was extensively quoted. This article compares the unity of the Sabha movement to the fractious state of Congress nationalism: ‘While the echoes of the Congress controversy continue to reach our ears, the great Hindu community of the Punjab are silently maturing their plans and are slowly but steadily moving forward towards the formation of a great Hindu federation’. The Bengalee also had a suggestion for the defining principle of unification in this federation: ‘Race, and not religion, ought to be the guiding principle of the organisation. For the Hindu is the most tolerant

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of human beings and the Hindu faith the most comprehensive that one can think of, embracing within its fold the believers in cults and creeds of the widest divergence’. This idea of tolerant ‘unity in diversity’, based on a range of unifying principles, was the overriding theme of pre-Conference comment. A confirmation of this unity, it appeared, was the most significant, the most sought after objective to which the Conference could aspire. As the Punjabee’s Special Conference Issue commented, ‘This is the first time, we believe, in the history of modern India, that the Hindus as a body have sought to give expression to their communal consciousness, as distinguished from the detached movement of sects and castes’ (Special Conference Issue, 23 October 1909). Lal Chand’s address to the Conference as Chair of the Reception Committee reflects this central concern. He began by commenting that ‘numbers carry great weight in this age and help materially in deciding the fate of any struggle. The progress of a community is now as much measured by its numerical strength as by its moral and economic achievements’. He then went on to urge the point made in Self-Abnegation, that, for Hindus, defining this community was simply a question of articulating it on the level of colonial politics. Although he did refer to the ‘needless corrosive differences’ of sub-caste in his critique of contemporary Hindu society, as any good Arya of the time would, his solution was based firmly in the realm of symbolic representation. ‘All that is needed’, he argued, ‘is to advocate the interests of the community at large, and the moment we realise this germinal idea, this sacred obligation, …all self-imposed differences and schisms will vanish away like chaff’. As soon as Hinduism is presented as united politically, then, social divisiveness will disappear. The image of a politically organised Hinduism assumes the status of principal objective in Chand’s vision of the Sabha movement. The importance of this objective is evident in the resolutions that emerged from the Conference. Not surprisingly, consensual issues were prominent: the promotion of Sanskrit and Hindi, support for cow protection and ayurvedic medicine, the promotion of ‘brotherly feelings’ among Hindus and a commitment ‘to consolidate and strengthen the sense of common nationality’. These were accompanied by more hard-nosed resolutions regarding the Punjab Alienation of Land Act and representation in Legislative Councils, which reflected the new political presence indicated by Self-Abnegation. Several resolutions, however, were not put before the Conference, ostensibly through lack of time. These included reformist issues such as support for widows, low-caste amelioration and the removal of sub-caste distinctions. The idea that these resolutions were dropped not due to lack of time but due to ‘strife apprehended over them between the orthodox and the unorthodox’ was denied at length after the Conference, but undoubtedly the need for consensus was a prominent factor, and the


Punjabee rounded off its denial of the above with a reminder that the main objective was ‘union as opposed to division’. One of the resolutions which was approved was that calling for the establishment of Hindu Sabhas ‘all over the country’, and to hold an annual allIndia Hindu Conference. In 1911 the first Hindu Sabha was established in the United Provinces, and by 1915 enough momentum had been generated to establish the All-India Hindu Sabha as a representative body for local and provincial Sabhas. It is this body which was to become fully active in the early 1920s as the Hindu Mahasabha.17 Throughout this period the emphasis on the need for an image of ‘union as opposed to division’, which had emerged in 1909 as closely linked to the discursive implications of symbolic representation, remained central. By the 1920s, when the sangathan, or organisation movement, dominated the agenda of the Hindu Mahasabha, this notion of consolidation had developed into a defining principle of Hindu nationalism.

Conclusion This historical review places the development of the Hindu Sabha and its incipient Hindu nationalist ideology in context. It has been demonstrated that during the first decade of the twentieth century, certain Indian nationalists became increasingly committed to ideological struggle as the central strategy of confrontation with the state. This strategy began to shift the parameters of political discourse which occupied both middle-class nationalists and the state at this time. One important feature of this shift was that representation now emerged as a site of political struggle. The state claimed always to act in the best interests of the people as a whole. Nationalists sought to counter this claim by illustrating the inherent contradictoriness of British benevolence, claiming that nationalism, and not the state, represented the interests of the people. This battlefield of representation was made more complex by the intranationalist struggle. Leaders like Tilak hoped to extend the representative quality of nationalism by wresting its organisational machinery (principally the Congress) from the control of the moderates. Leaders like Gokhale remained convinced that the state was ultimately benevolent, and so needed to be approached on its own terms, employing the quasi-parliamentary idioms dictated by the established political discourse. The state undoubtedly capitalised on this struggle, attempting to marginalise extremism by confirming the success of moderatism, through the offer of constitutional reform. In a fascinating reflection of the established discursive framework of colonial politics, the reform package which emerged in 1909 was largely insubstantial, characterised by the overriding need to promote the image of reform. As the moderates projected themselves symbolically as the representatives of the people, so the reforms to

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which they were committed constituted a symbolic shift in the balance of administrative power. At the same time, the reforms provided a window of opportunity for the more forceful projection of a politically organised Hinduism. The incorporation of separate electorates implicitly invoked a constituency of Hindus within a discursive framework which confirmed symbolic representation as a legitimate form of political expression. The constituency of Hindus could be represented, simply by providing a united image within existing discursive parameters. It was precisely this image that the Sabha movement attempted to project. As Lal Chand asserted during the 1909 Conference, to create a politically significant Hinduism ‘all that is needed is to advocate the interests of the community at large’. This was not, however, simply a reaction to the Morley-Minto reforms. Clearly it was an idea with a history intimately linked to the development of moderatism, and to the emerging power and sophistication of counterhegemonic nationalism. What is demonstrated here, then, is the close interrelation of Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism on a discursive level, and the articulation of opposition (in our case Hindu nationalist opposition to the Indian nationalist Congress) precisely on this level. The Hindu Sabha self-consciously echoed the structure of moderate Indian nationalism even as it rejected the Congress organisation as a toothless and unrepresentative force. This proximity meant that there was always a tension in this opposition – it was not clear cut, and depended on the continuing struggle for dominance on the level of ‘mental frameworks’. For this reason, there was often a blurred quality to the distinction between the two ideologies. But this was not, I would contend, a quality derived from the laying over of political nationalism with cultural or ethnic nationalism. The preoccupations of the Hindu Sabha demonstrate that even in its earliest forms Hindu nationalism operated as a political nationalism, articulating its identity on the basis of, and in response to shifts in the established discourse of colonial politics. In the arena of symbolic representation, the space between the Indian nation and the Hindu nation was not an implacable divide, nor did it signify completely different ways of thinking about nationalism. Rather, it signified different interpretations of what was largely the same pool of ideas about history and culture. These interpretations were based on different concerns in relation to colonialism, but they were articulated in the same public space, and the image of the nation – Indian or Hindu – was produced in much the same way. I have argued that this similarity is not problematic if an appropriate conceptual distinction is made between Hindu nationalism and communalism. Communalism is an alignment, rather than an ideology in itself. Ideologies such as Hindu nationalism informed this alignment, but nevertheless maintained an autonomous existence on the level of mental frameworks. The development of a structural dialectic in Indian politics between


(religious) communalism and (secular) nationalism during and after the 1920s has, I would suggest, obscured this autonomous existence. The discursive proximity demonstrated here between Hindu nationalism and the ideology of Indian nationalism must be acknowledged independent of this structure of polarisation. Only then can the role of Hindu nationalism be fully addressed as a developing ideology in the modern history of Indian politics, enabling a more flexible analysis of its movement and influences in ‘mainstream’ political settings. This may also contribute to an understanding of the way identity politics operates in Indian political discourse, freeing it from ahistorical notions of primordiality and associating it more schematically with the modernity of universalist nationalism.

Notes 1. An earlier version of this chapter has previously appeared in Economic and Political Weekly Vol. XXXIV, No. 32 (7 August 1999). 2. The Hindu nationalist leader M.S. Golwalkar, for example, expressed this contrast: ‘We…say that our Hindu Nationhood is a truth, borne out by logic, experience and history. It is the supreme solid fact of our national life and not any fleeting “ism” born out of political and economic theories or exigencies’. See Golwalkar (1966), p. 127. 3. In 1931, a Congress Enquiry listed a total of 43 major riots since 1921. See Congress Cawnpore Riots Committee Report, reprinted in Barrier (1976: 228). 4. Pandey gives numerous examples of the articulation of this kind of nationalism in opposition to communalism (1990: 235–43). 5. See, for example, Rudolph and Rudolph (1967), Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), Chatterjee (1986) and Raychaudhuri (1988). On the relationship between tradition and modernity, particularly in the context of constructions of history in colonial India, see Kaviraj (1995: 107–57). 6. Whilst van der Veer does refer to Pandey’s identification of communalism as an ‘orientalist term’, produced as a form of orientalist knowledge, he does not pursue the argument around flexibility. 7. As Jaffrelot argues, ‘Hindu nationalism…largely reflects the brahminical view of the high caste reformers who shaped its ideology’ (1996: 13; see also 1993b: 3–7). 8. As Jaffrelot admits, ‘neither Geertz (nor Fallers) places sufficient emphasis on the social background of the reinterpreters who shape ideologies’ (1996: 12). 9. Kesari, 26 September 1905; Report on the Native Press in Bombay Presidency (National Archives of India), No. 39. 10. Kesari, 19 February 1907; Report on the Native Press in Bombay Presidency, No. 8. 11. On this question of image versus substance, it is interesting to note Morley’s comment to Minto as early as June 1906: ‘Not one whit more than you do I think it desirable or possible, or even conceivable, to adapt English political institutions to the nations who inhabit India’. Nevertheless, he continues, ‘the spirit of English institutions is a different thing…’ (quoted in Wolpert, 1962: 186). 12. Minto admitted in 1909 that ‘in fact I always thought our proposals [were] very conservative in many ways, and was surprised at the good reception they met

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13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

with from Congress circles’ (quoted in Nanda, 1977: 318). A few months before the Bill was due to pass through parliament, Morley wondered whether ‘we shall not be laughed out of court for producing a mouse from the labouring mountain’ (quoted in Wolpert, 1962: 237). For an overview of the content of the reforms, see Sarkar (1983: 137–44). In presenting the reforms to the House of Lords in 1909, Morley stated that: ‘Only let us not forget that the difference between Mahommedanism and Hinduism is not a mere difference of articles of religious faith. It is a difference in life, in tradition, in history, in all the social things as well as articles of belief that constitute a community…’ (quoted in Philips, 1962: 86). For a summary of the provisions of this Act and its implications, see Jaffrelot (1993b: 22–23). For more detailed accounts, see Barrier (1966, 1967). Jhang Sial, 17 April 1909; see Punjab Native Newspaper Reports (India Office Library, London),1909, which also includes further examples of press comment in the Hindustan and the Watan, 16 April 1909. Indeed, Jaffrelot has gone as far as to describe it as a Hindu version of the two-nation theory. The new name was bestowed at the Hardwar session of the Sabha, 1921. For a good account of this period of development, see Gordon (1975).

References Barrier, N. (1966) The Punjab Alienation of Land Bill of 1900 (Durham: Duke University). —— (1967) The Punjab disturbances of 1907: the response of the British Government in India to agrarian unrest, Modern Asian Studies 1, 353–83. —— (ed.) (1976) Roots of Communal Politics (New Delhi: Heinemann). Chand, L. (1938) Self-Abnegation in Politics (Lahore: Central Yuvak Sabha). Chatterjee, P. (1986) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed Books). Desai, A. (1976) Social Background of Indian Nationalism (Bombay: Popular Prakashan). Geertz, C. (1993)The Interpretation of Culture (London: Fontana). Golwalkar, M. (1966) Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikram Prakashan). Gordon, R. (1975) The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915–1926, Modern Asian Studies 9, 145–204. Hall, S. (1996) The problem of ideology: Marxism without guarantees, in D. Morley and K-H. Chen (eds) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge). Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds) (1983) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jaffrelot, C. (1993a) Hindu nationalism: strategic syncretism in ideology building, Economic and Political Weekly 20 (March), 517–24. —— (1993b) The genesis and development of Hindu nationalism in the Punjab: from the Arya Samaj to the Hindu Sabha (1875–1910), Indo-British Review, 21, 3–39. —— (1996) The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India 1925 to the 1990s (New Delhi: Viking Penguin India). Jones, K. (1976) Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Punjab (New Delhi: Manohar). Kaviraj, S. (1995) The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press).

128 Ethnonational Identities Madan, T. (1987) Secularism in its place, Journal of Asian Studies 46, 747–58. Mahajan, S. (1997) Which Swaraj? Ram Raj or Hindu Raj: the making of India’s post-independent polity. Unpublished Seminar paper: University of Sussex. Nanda, B. (1977) Gokhale: the Indian Moderates and the British Raj (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Nandy, A. (1990) The politics of secularism and the recovery of religious tolerance, in V. Das (ed.) Mirrors of Violence (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 69–93. Pandey, G. (1990) The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Philips, C. (1962) The Evolution of India and Pakistan 1858–1947: Select Documents (London: Oxford University Press). Raychaudhuri, T. (1988) Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in NineteenthCentury Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press). Rudolph, L. and Rudolph, S. (1967) The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Sarkar, S. (1983) Modern India 1885–1947 (New Delhi: Macmillan India). van der Veer, P. (1994) Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Wolpert, S. (1962) Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Zavos, J. (2000) Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).

6 An Area of Darkness, Still?1 The Political Evolution of Ethnic Identities in Jammu and Kashmir, 1947–2001 Vernon Hewitt At the onset of the twenty-first century, the political crisis over Kashmir and the urgent need to represent adequately Kashmiri identity, continues to plague regional stability in South Asia. In the context of the almost certain deployment of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan in the near future, this crisis has profound implications not just for the people living and suffering in Kashmir, but for global peace generally. This chapter will argue that a large part of this crisis is not simply the inflexibility between India and Pakistan over their claims to the former Princely State, but the overwhelming difficulty of defining a stable Kashmiri identity, either within India or Pakistan, or within any future independent sovereign state. This is both an academic and a practical difficulty. It is academic in that the growing literature on ethnicity points to its contextual nature and thus stresses its ‘fuzziness’ (Eriksen, 1993). Increasingly, writings on the subject repeatedly draw attention to its constructed nature, to the fact that ethnicity is devised and deployed often consciously as part of an explicit political agenda, using whatever is to hand, be it religious, linguistic or cultural signifiers. This agenda is usually – but not always – implicitly linked to issues of socioeconomic and cultural well-being. It is written up in a language of cultural or spiritual loss and the need for reclamation, awakening or even renaissance. Its historicism is not always separatist, and usually invites inclusion (although often on its own terms). In its most potent form, however, its claims to a territorial homeland reproduce the dynamics of nationalism itself, and are hostage to subsequent ethnic mobilisation by subsets of identities within itself (Gellner, 1997). Like nationalism, the imaginations of ethnicity are thus not fixed in space or time; they are indeed liable to move in response to differing cultural and political contexts. Thus ethnicity is a particular form of political self-awareness, and political representation which, in specific circumstances, can become extremely polarised against other forms of identities and associations. In such circumstances, the dynamics of ethnicity are deeply paradoxical. For it claims for 129


itself a permanence, a primordialism even, belied by its origins and its own mutability. As we shall see, this is particularly the case of Kashmiri identity within the regional context of emerging (and contested) ideas of what it is to be a Pakistani or an Indian. It is in the wider context of this competition that the definition of Kashmiri identity becomes so fractionalised and largely ideological. As one official in the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs put it to me in 1998, ‘Identifying Kashmiri identity is like nailing a jelly to a wall’. This process of identification becomes further complicated when it is acknowledged that the ‘wall’ in question, that is the Republic of India, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, are relatively new and, in themselves, profoundly pluralistic. Here, put bluntly, is the practical difficulty that ethnicity poses in the case of Kashmir. Each particular strand of Kashmiri identity claims an exclusive representative function, and has sprouted both political and militant organisations to support it. How do you construct a set of representative institutions, which require a certain degree of compromise, around such unstable and competing identities, each claiming authenticity? More critically, how do you devise a style of political management that balances emergent identities in a way that does not encourage direct, violent, competition with the neighbouring constructions of Pakistani and Indian (and to a lesser extent, Chinese) nationalism? The uniqueness of the Kashmiri situation is that ethnic mobilisation has involved a sort of three-way split, a process in part determined by its geographical location. There are sections of Kashmiris living in Indian-administered Kashmir that wish to join Pakistan. There are some, living in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, who wish to secede to India, and there are many in both who wish to have their own state altogether. Yet it remains of vital importance – a crucial component, if you will – for both Indian and Pakistani nationalism, and arguably, more, for Pakistan, as we shall see. These are issues – the formation of ethnic identities, the attempts to mediate them, the transformation of ethnic identities over time towards explicit secessionism – which I wish to explore in this chapter. In doing so I am conscious of the great corpus of ideas on ethnicity, and the huge literature on Kashmir which I will have to ignore.2 There is one further caveat that needs to be mentioned at the outset. In stating that ethnic mobilisation and the potential demands for secession are highly political acts, they remain open to political mediation and solution. There is a solution to the Kashmir crisis. It lies in part with the political elites of India and Pakistan, and in part with the Kashmiri elites themselves. The solution must come out of the South Asian sub-state system, since it will involve a reconfiguration of regional power, and it must come out of some form of constructive engagement by the international community. I shall return to these issues in the Conclusion (see also Wirsing, 1998).

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The broad outline: Indian and Pakistani nationalism Before discussing the details of Kashmir itself, it is necessary to briefly sketch the context in which the crisis has unfolded, and continues to do so. In this case, perhaps more than any other, ‘the historical story is all’. In South Asia, ethnicity has largely involved the recognition of group rights, defined by region, religion, language or caste (see Brass, 1974, 1990). This degree of diversity is a fact of social, and colonial, history (see also Barot, this volume; Zavos, this volume). The wisdom of Indian and Pakistani leadership after Independence resides in the recognition that territorially defined nationalism cannot be exclusive, that it needs to draw synergistically on these group identities to sustain legitimacy and cohesion (see Khilnani, 1997). That said, such a strategy has not always been followed, and if followed, has not always been successful. Of all the specific ethnic signifiers mentioned above, religion was to be the Achilles heel of both the Indian and Pakistani political settlements. The genesis of this weakness lay in partition, and the failure of the Indian National Congress (INC) to retain the loyalties of Muslim political elites situated in Muslim majority areas to the northwest and the northeast of the British Indian Empire. Starting from the 1930s onwards, the INC failed to build up and retain Muslim support, and was to be increasingly portrayed as a ‘Hindu’ party by the Muslim League (Jinnah, 1985; Robinson, 1987). The INC claimed to be a secular party committed to represent all of India’s diverse population, and refused to recognise politically religious differences, both in its party constitution, and in its emergent commitment to Independence from the British. Nonetheless, by 1946, the Congress failed to hold off the challenge posted by the mobilisation of Muslim identity around the provocative slogan of ‘Islam in Danger’. The fact that this Muslim identity was merely one of many linguistic and cultural identifiers, which in turn divided the Muslims of South Asia as much as united them, remains one of the greatest ironies of the history of South Asia. Because of the peculiarities of the partition process, in which the electoral support for a separate state of Pakistan would come from Muslim minority areas destined to remain within the Republic of India, the secession of territories on the basis of religion created an acute dilemma for India’s new leaders (see Hodson, 1985). On the one hand, and despite large-scale ‘ethnic cleansing’ in both states, partition left a large minority of Muslims within India, who looked to the Indian National Congress to support and sustain their identity, derived in part from Urdu, the orthodox Sunni faith, and from a syncretic Hindustani culture of caste and jati. On the other, the refusal of the INC to allow religion any political legitimacy threatened Muslims with sociocultural and economic emasculation. Congress was acutely aware that it must defend the Muslims without appearing to do so on the basis of their faith alone. This difficulty would


increase with time, especially with the onset of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s premier Hindu nationalist party, and their rise to national power in 1996 (see below). Ironically, the creation of Pakistan as a state for the Muslims of South Asia did not give Pakistani nationalism any particular advantage over India’s unwieldy degree of social pluralism. Despite Jinnah’s commitment to a Muslim identity, ethnic sentiments within Pakistan were almost as diverse as in India, premised on language and cultural traits and the many differing traditions and orthodoxies found within Islam itself. Indeed Jinnah’s rather paradoxical claim to head a ‘secular’ state was a recognition of the difficulties of establishing a clear definition of who or what a Muslim was once a state for the Muslims of South Asia had been achieved (Talbot, 1998). Forced to embrace Muslim culture and yet shun the political fulcrums of the mosque and the madrassi (an Islamic religious seminary or school), Pakistan’s elite would remain highly sensitive and vulnerable to Islamic sentiments, and their success in mobilising public opinion under both civilian and military regimes. At the level of official discourse, Pakistani nationalism was as equally determined to exclude religion from politics as was India. Yet the paradoxical nature of Pakistani identity created a much greater source of proximity between the politician and the ulema than that found between the Congress wallah and the sardoo (holymen), at least until the 1980s. In contrast to its neighbour Pakistan, the Indian state had one significant advantage at the time of independence, which gave it a slight edge in sustaining a secular, polyglot ‘idea of India’. It inherited, largely intact, a constitutional and political ethos wedded to the principles of democracy and federalism (see Morris-Jones, 1971). As such, the state had an enormous degree of institutional capacity to manage social pluralism, and an elite sufficiently experienced and confident to make these institutions work. Pakistan, through no fault of its own, had basically to reconstitute itself from scratch, and because of its geographical narrowness was acutely disrupted by the social upheavals and the mass migrations experienced through August to October 1947. Democracy and federalism, in particular, enabled the Indian state to devolve significant elements of power to provincial governments – by 2001, 28 states – the territories of which mapped closely on to powerful linguistic, cultural and even caste identities (cf. Barot, this volume). Pakistan was never to enjoy this degree of federalism, and when it tried, it would often encounter serious regional tensions (see Hewitt, 1997). The states in India were given significant financial outlays to advance their own language and cultural centres and, by and large, to follow their own education policies. More critically, they were able to pursue specific types of affirmative action aimed at improving the socioeconomic wellbeing of specific groups (based usually on caste and jati names) through job

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reservations and preferential placements in universities and state-owned industries. These policies were constrained only by the Indian apex court, by the logic of electoral politics, and by the constraints imposed by secularism and the refusal to countenance the political use of religious identities. For the first few decades after independence, this strategy appeared to work. Yet for reasons that are important too, but somewhat beyond the argument of this chapter, religious identities were nonetheless to encroach increasingly into the Indian political domain at the expense of other ethnic signifiers, as they were to do in Pakistan. Explanations for the increasing mobilisation of religious ethnicity in India is complex and controversial. I will confine myself here to highlighting three most likely explanations, before turning in detail to the issue of Kashmir. First, the founding fathers of the Indian constitution, dominated as they were by Nehru’s own views and prejudices on the subject, might well have persistently underestimated the resilience of religious sentiment in India, and the extent to which it could provide the basis for collective action, especially during elections (Kavaraji, 1997; Bhargava, 1998). This was not just the case with Indian minority religions, but increasingly true of the Hindu majority as well. Secularism in India always ran the risk of appealing to a small Westernised elite which was otherwise alienated from the religious sentiments of its largely rural constituents. As Indian democracy deepened the involvement of the subaltern and the moffussil, these sentiments arguably came to dominate the politics of India at all levels of the federal system, bringing with them a change in the nature of political mobilisation in India and the idiom of national politics. Second, the state, in recognising one set of rights and ignoring others, encouraged ethnic identities in India to disguise their religious agendas, and failed adequately to comprehend the multiple nature of ethnic signifiers within a specific group and their dynamism over time. Much of the literature on the Sikh crisis in India begins, for example, with the misguided belief by the Indian centre that the formation of a Punjabi-speaking state in 1966 would satisfy Sikh demands for autonomy. Such a belief, although clearly responding to Sikh demands, failed to notice the degree to which the demand for a linguistic state (‘allowed’ by the Indian constitution) smuggled in the beginnings of a Sikh state (‘disallowed’ by the constitution) (see Jeffrey, 1986; also Barot, this volume). The most complex – but perhaps the most compelling – explanation for a rise in religious identities in India comes in part from the last example. That is, put rather crudely, the failure of secularism in India to differentiate between a religious group, and a cultural one. The BJP’s concept of Hindutva is that Hinduism is a cultural identity, not a religious one. This enables the party to demand that Muslims accept key aspects of Hindu ‘culture’ while still being allowed to practise their own faith. This strategy – perceived as a threat to Muslim identity based upon a public recognition of


their religious difference – enabled the BJP to mobilise Hindu votes around what were ambiguous cultural-religious symbols: Lord Ram, the proposed Temple at Ayodhya, so-called affirmative action aimed at ‘placating’ Muslims. Such a strategy – brilliantly deployed – from 1989 onwards, paralysed the Indian states’ defences against religious intolerance by appearing to capture the language of secularism itself, by portraying India’s religious majority as a culture, containing within it a diversity of differing religious beliefs. Such a change in the nature of secularism brought about a defensive mobilisation of other religious minorities around explicit religious symbolism, which made them appear to be anti- or pseudo-secular. Third, although the Indian state’s commitment to federalism has emerged centrestage since the end of Congress party dominance in 1989, there has been a high degree of central intervention into the politics of the states, often involving political corruption and, in the case of Kashmir, electoral rigging. Such intervention, often deliberately intended to create a political crisis premised on an ‘ethnic threat’ in order to appeal to the nation(-state) as a whole, has generated a serious and extended degree of political estrangement long after the short-term political gains have accrued to a particular leader. Punjab, Kashmir and Assam all provide examples of this type of high-risk political intervention. The Indian state, while allowing for a degree of tactical decentralisation, has, as the case of Jammu and Kashmir makes clear, never abandoned its strategic commitment to centralism. Indira Gandhi’s deliberate courting of Sikh separatism for electoral purposes has been well-documented. In Kashmir, Rajiv Gandhi’s deliberate interventions into the politics of the National Conference, played a significant part in the crisis of 1989 and the unfolding collapse of political order. Thus, despite having a federal constitution in which a large number of states have had regional parties in power, federalism has not, by itself, provided a protection against ethnic mobilisations moving towards explicit religious signifiers, and on the basis of these, towards secession. In the case of Kashmir, we will find that all these three factors are involved in offering a plausible background to the crisis that overtook the Indian state from 1989 onwards. In other words, they made what happened possible, and in some cases, even quite likely. By the mid-1940s, South Asia was thus to be divided by two competing sets of national identities, born in direct competition with each other. One was a conception of territorial citizenship, premised on Western liberal principles laying claim (however problematically) to a notion of secularism, in which religion was confined to the private sphere. The other, equally problematically, was a conception of identity based upon Muslim culture which, however proximate to Islam, sought – for the first thirty years or so – to establish what was in effect a secular polity and one at pains to avoid becoming a theocracy. In the intense rivalry of partition, both sought to

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undermine the other. Pakistan’s elite continued to believe that India could not adequately defend the rights of its Muslim minorities, being in effect a state for the Hindus. On the other hand, India’s elite portrayed Pakistan as a sort of theocratic bastard state, unable to defend it’s own minorities, and increasingly incapable of preventing the Islamisation of the political process itself. Kashmir lay at the very heart of this dispute – as Gowhar Rizvi once so eloquently put it, it was the brink that joined the two separate structures of Indian and Pakistani nationalism (Buzan and Rizvi, 1985). More seriously, it became the litmus test for both to prove their legitimacy, to their own citizens, and more widely, to the international system as a whole. For purposes of brevity, I wish to separate out in the ensuing discussion of the Kashmir crisis two distinct elements. The first is a legal dispute that concerns the nature in which power was transferred from Princely India to the newly formed dominions of India and Pakistan. The other is a dispute over which of these options, if either, were most popular with, and desired by, the people living within the territory of Kashmir itself. To separate out these elements is to add a certain degree of artifice, since for reasons that will become clear they are obviously and intimately related. Yet in separating them as I do, much of the subsequent context in which ethnic mobilisation and secession has occurred will become clearer.

Kashmir: the legal and procedural dispute Much of the historical literature on the Kashmir dispute concerns itself with the legality of India’s claims to the territory over Pakistan’s. This, in turn, concerns itself with the processes devised by the British to deal with the issues posed by Princely India, a large number of quasi-sovereign states joined in alliance with the British Crown through the doctrine of paramountcy (see Ashton, 1982). Excluded from the administrative and electoral reforms experienced within British India from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, the Princes posed a problem to the territorial integrity of India (and, after June 1947, to Pakistan). For a start, they constituted a large swathe of territory liberally scattered over both India and Pakistan, many of them too small to be self-reliant, and many of them dependent on services situated in the British provinces. Furthermore, they consisted in the main of autocratic states led by ruling families, some with the trappings of representative government, but in the main administered through political appointees of the Princes themselves. It was not uncommon for the religious identity of the ruling family to be at variance with the religious identities of a majority of the population. In the wider context in which the relationship between religious identity and citizenship was the central element in the dispute between India and Pakistan, this fact was to be particularly vexing.


Second, from the time of the 1935 Government of India Act, there existed within the doctrine of paramountcy the possible route to independence once the British decided to leave the subcontinent. Since the Princes had signed a treaty recognising the British Crown as the paramount power, the lapsing of paramountcy restored the Princely states to full sovereign entities with international personalities. This point was well recognised by the British themselves, and towards the end of the British Indian Empire they tried to remove this legal interpretation as in any sense desirable or possible (see Hewitt, 1996). Once it was agreed, reluctantly, that the British Indian Empire was to be partitioned, and that the Princes were to be abandoned, it became vital to ensure their smooth integration into one or other of the new Republics. The newly constituted State’s Department set about resolving this problem by devising two legal instruments, the Stand-By Agreement, and the Instrument of Accession. The Stand-By Agreement was an interim measure that ensured the continuity of services and economic supplies emanating from outside the state until the state had agreed, via its signature on the Instrument of Accession, which of the two new dominions it was to be integrated into. The Instrument of Accession closed off the legal avenue to full sovereignty. It presented the Princes with the stark choice of either joining with India or joining with Pakistan. How was this decision to be made? On the religious basis of the majority population of the state, on the basis of the religious identity of the ruling household, or on the contiguity of the borders of the state with the appropriate dominion? In some cases, where all three principles clashed, the basis for a decision appears to have been overwhelmingly on preserving the territorial integration of the two new dominion states.3 In the Princely state of Hyderabad for example, the ruling house was Muslim, a majority of the population were Hindu, and the surrounding territory was Indian. The initial desire of the Nizam was to join with Pakistan, then to try and become an independent state, and then, under pressure from both the British and the Indian Home Ministry, to join with India. Such an outcome, determined in large part by geography and the refusal of the Indian National Congress to tolerate a new state with a large juridical hole in the middle, made a mockery of the element of choice apparently held out to the Princes under the Instrument of Accession. Yet it was in Kashmir itself, within the Dogra Kingdom of Hari Singh, that this crisis was to reveal itself most fully. Like Hyderabad, there existed within Kashmir a religious dichotomy between the ruling House of the Dogra Rajputs (Hindus), and a majority of the population, who – confined in large part to the Vale of Kashmir – were Sunni Muslims. Unlike Hyderabad, however, the Dogra kingdom of Kashmir consisted of specific regional zones containing differing religious and ethnic groupings, a product of the expansion of Dogra rule by force of arms during

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the late nineteenth century onwards. While the majority of the kingdom was Muslim, this majority was confined to one populous region. Hindus made up the majority to the South in the area of Jammu and the foothills, with an elite Pandit community situated in the valley itself. The Kashmiri Pandits had served Muslim, Sikh and Hindu leaders in their time, as Kashmir had been incorporated into differing variants of regional and central kingdoms. Punjabi Kashmiris dominated in the areas of Poonch and around Muzzafarabad, and shared a distinct identity separate from their fellow Muslims in Srinagar and the great glacial vale itself. Buddhists lived in the bleak, beautiful landscape of Leh, Shi’ite Muslims in the districts of Kargil, and animists and tribals in Baltistan and the distant agency of Gilgit and Hunsa. Many of these groups – Gujjars and Bakawals, for example – lived pastoral lifestyles and travelled across the kingdom. Finally, unlike Hyderabad, Kashmir was situated in such a geographical position that it could have become part of either India or Pakistan, without necessarily threatening the territorial integrity of either state. In keeping with the procedures set down by the State’s Department, the Maharaja of Kashmir was presented with two documents some time in late July 1947. One he signed – the Stand-Still Agreement with both India and Pakistan, feasible and necessary in the context of the geographical location of the Kingdom. The other – the Instrument of Accession – he prevaricated over. Like the Nizam of Hyderabad, his initial desire was for an independent state, a position that enjoyed some degree of popular support throughout the Maharaja’s administration, elements of the Pandit community, and some of the Muslim leaders situated in the valley. He was aware, however, of powerful pressures emanating from both Pakistan and India, encouraging him to join Karachi or New Delhi. The Indian claim was premised on the basis that one of Kashmir’s premier political organisations (the National Conference) was pro-Indian, and that the basis of Kashmiri identity was in fact secular. Pakistan claimed the state on the basis that it was a majority Muslim state, and that elements of its indigenous political elite, grouped around the hereditary position of the Miwaiz (the titular head of the Muslims of Kashmir) and the Muslim Conference, favoured Jinnah. The identities and relative merits of these individuals and institutions will be explored more fully below. For the moment, allow me to assert that they helped underpin the positions taken by India and Pakistan. More generally of course, both Jinnah and Nehru were acting under the compulsions of their respective nationalist agendas (one secular, the other religious/cultural) and it has often been alleged that Kashmir was of critical strategic concern to the security of both India and Pakistan, and therefore was seen as essential to the completion of either state (Lamb, 1991). Hari Singh’s prevarications were cut short by the onset of tribal incursions from across the emergent border between Pakistan and the Dogra kingdom. These incursions started not long after partition, and were, to


some extent, part of the general violence that was associated with the creation of the new international border with Pakistan. There is also important evidence to suggest that the violence around the Poonch area was linked to an ongoing rent strike between Muslim tenants and Hindu landlords. In the old Poonch jagir, there existed long-standing resentments against the Dogra Rajputs, and there had existed an earlier legal battle contesting the Dogra jurisdiction over Poonch. By late September and early October 1947, however, they had become part of a sustained and more organised assault on the territories of the Dogra kingdom, and were arguably part of a deliberate Pakistani strategy to force the Maharaj’s hand in favour of Jinnah. Of all of the events of 1947, this one is the most stubborn in yielding to rational thought and empirical analysis. For New Delhi, the involvement of officials working both in the administration of the NWFP (which had opted to join Pakistan through a referendum) and the newly formed Pakistan Army, are concrete evidence that Pakistan sought to use coercion to obtain Kashmir. For others, myself included, the events surrounding the invasion merely reveal the chaos surrounding the creation of the South Asian state system, the inability of the newly constituted Pakistani national government in Karachi to find out what exactly the state government of NWFP was doing, and inherent traditions of looting and raiding still fashionable within elements of frontier society. To accuse Pakistan of masterminding these events is to grant it an institutional capability it did not have, and indeed was rarely to have, in the NWFP areas. In the spirit of Lord Birdwood (1956), however, it is quite reasonable to assume that once the scale of the incursions became apparent to the leaders of Pakistan, and to Jinnah himself, they may have seemed beneficial to Pakistan’s aims generally. This aside, there is no doubt that the incursions were to have a dramatic effect on the Dogra kingdom. As the tribal invaders approached the summer capital of Srinagar, the Maharaja sought to deploy his own troops and then sought help from the Republic of India. It transpired that this help was only to be forthcoming on two or three conditions. One, not surprisingly, was that the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession (and did so, apparently on 26 October 1947). The other, was that Sheikh Abdullah (leader of the National Conference, and until recently a prisoner of the Maharaja) be sworn in as Chief Minister of the state. The third was that, in the doomed words of India’s Governor-General, Mountbatten (suggested to and supported by Nehru): Where the issue of accession has been the subject of dispute, the question of accession should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of the state. It is my government’s wish that as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir, and her soil cleared of the invader, the question of the state’s accession should be settled by a reference to the people.4

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In conclusion, the signature on the Treaty of Accession was made conditional on various elements extraneous to the document itself, and which were unnecessary for the process of the transfer of power as devised for the Princely States. After the signature (some would state, before) Indian troops flew to Srinagar and were, by 1948, engaging with elements of the Pakistani Army in the first Indo-Pakistan war over Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah, having been released earlier from the Maharaja’s jail, was sworn in as the wazir, or chief minister of the state, to be involved intimately with the subsequent negotiation with India. By the time of an agreed ceasefire, in the early part of 1948, and a referral of the case to the United Nations, the former Dogra kingdom was effectively partitioned by Indian and Pakistani troops. Pakistan controlled approximately 30 503 square kilometres of the former Dogra kingdom, just under a third. In 1962 China was to occupy a further slither of territory in the sparsely populated area of Aksi Chin, adding to a small territorial claim granted by Pakistan in the 1950s. Two subsequent wars – in 1965 and in 1971 – would not in essence change the ceasefire line established in 1948 (although the language of Line of Control emerged on the Shimla Agreement of 1972). Shimla sought, successfully for a time, to resolve the Kashmir issue bilaterally between India and Pakistan (Ganguly, 1986). It made no reference to the issues of Kashmiri nationalism as such, but merely left in a state of suspended animation the fate of Kashmir as either an Indian or a Pakistani territory. The Line of Control was devised as potentially a soft border, over which, in time, and conditional on improved Indo-Pakistan relations after the 1971 war, Kashmiris could cross with ease. In outline, Shimla envisaged the tacit belief that Kashmir would be divided between the two parts of the former British Indian Empire.

The representative argument: what did the Kashmiris want? The legal argument aside, the issue of what the Kashmiris desired, and how and to what extent this informed the actions of Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri leaders, is a vital area of enquiry. For it poses at the onset the problematic notion of who or what a Kashmiri was (and is), and what kind of political system they desired to be part of, in 1947 and more critically now, in the twenty-first century. Reference has already been made to the degree of regional and social diversity within the former Dogra kingdom. In part this was a feature of state formation under the Dogra Rajputs and their policy of expansion and annexation (often with tacit British consent). More significantly, this degree of social pluralism is indicative of the complex history of assimilation and resistance experienced by religious and cultural groupings situated in northwest India, the traditional land corridor through


which so many social, economic and cultural influences were to arrive on the South Asian subcontinent. Given this degree of social diversity, it is surprising that there emerged any concise conception of Kashmiri identity at all, even within the Vale with its relatively cohesive Sunni community and the longevity of its shared historical experience. However, evidence points to the emergence of such an identity as early as the fourteenth century, with the consolidation of the so-called Kashmiriyat. This composite identity, testified to in historical and social texts, was to become an important ideological justification for India’s claims to the former Dogra kingdom, and indeed part of Nehru’s affinity with Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference. The Kashmiriyat refers to a shared communality in important social practices, dietary habits and clothing, and the centrality of the Kashmiri language, without any explicit reference to religious difference. Indeed, such commonality drew together what on the surface often appeared to be differing and even opposing religious identities. Discussions on the authenticity of the Kashmiriyat have, not surprisingly, expanded dramatically in recent years. On the face of it, such a construct is not implausible and can be found throughout India and Pakistan. For example, Sikhism, like Buddhism before it, began as a radical reform movement against specific Hindu practices. Long after these beliefs formed the basis of separate religions, they continued to share some of the cultural artefacts of Hinduism. Even Islam, entering the subcontinent from the northwest, came in a particularly mystical and saintly form, understandable to a native population used to Hindu and Buddhist practices. Sufism, and Sayyidian Islam, and perhaps most importantly the central role of the Rishi Muslims in their veneration of the isolated mystic and saintly behaviour, all drew upon shared experiences of the population living in the Vale from the twelfth century onwards. Indeed, within Kashmir (as throughout South Asia as a whole) voluntary religious conversions have taken place because of shared culture, even if they have acted in the long term to divide that culture along confessional lines. Discussions on the Kashmiriyat illustrate that an emphasis on religion in the history of Kashmir threatens to downplay shared experiences which provided bridges between what otherwise appear to be distinct and isolated communities. A majority of Kashmiris prior to the twelfth century were Buddhists, Hindus or animists. Evidence exists to show that there was considerable dynamism between the first two, involving conversions and reconversions (especially following the rise of the populist Shiva cults). In some cases Islam created its own tensions, with other faiths and with its own factions, but its outlines were sufficiently flexible to merge with other social and cultural practices. Crucial to the success of this merger was the ability of the Pandit community to retain their access to courtly rule, despite a change in dynastic religion, and the emergence of a Sunni Muslim majority

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in the valley by the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. In this regard, the switch from Sanskrit to Kashmiri by the Pandits was a tactical move. In comparison with other areas of Muslim South Asia, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Islamic practices were not orthodox Sunni, but reflective of divergent practices representative of the synergistic elements within the Kashmiriyat as a whole (Khan, 1994). Nonetheless, the evidence for the existence of the Kashmiriyat weakens once outside the Vale itself. In Ladakh and the so-called Northern Territories, there is little evidence that this commonality replaced Buddhist or Shi’ite Muslim identities, or that it even extended the pale of spoken and written Kashmiri. Indeed, more critically, recent sociological work has sought to downplay the importance of the Kashmiriyat. Madan’s (1987) fieldwork suggested that, while sharing specific cultural commonalties, Hindus and Muslims in the valley have always retained a knowledge that they are different, and that they are competitors for jobs and other resources. The contemporary significance of the Kashmiriyat is, of course, its apparent secularism, and its links, starting from the 1930s onwards with the rise of regional politics and political parties. Premised on language and other shared cultural traits, the Kashmiriyat appeared to contain a degree of religious pluralism and a secular, even socialist outlook. This belief had been most forcibly expressed by Sheikh Abdullah, following his creation of the National Conference after a dispute with the more Muslim orthodox leaders of the Muslim Conference. The scope for political mobilisation prior to 1947 was extremely limited. There was a very small franchise, and the then Praja Sabha – the assembly – had limited powers. The Muslim Conference contained a Muslim elite, largely traditional in outlook, conservative in orientation, with a disproportionate number of its elite drawn from Kashmiri punjabi stock. Its leaders were aware of Muslim interests, conscious of the religious differences between themselves and the Maharaja, and the inequalities in living standards and job opportunities between themselves and the Pandits of the valley. With one or two notable exceptions, the Muslim Conference empathised and supported the mobilisation strategies of the Muslim League, and their privileging of a Muslim identity over all others. Sheikh Abdullah’s rise to prominence is associated with the same socioeconomic concerns, but the strategy of mobilisation he chose was not through communal identity, but by a commitment to socialism that appealed to a much wider constituency. Abdullah believed that only if Kashmiri Muslims shunned an identity based on the Koran and the Mosque could they make any significant political and economic headway within Kashmir, and within South Asia as a whole. His eventual split with the Muslim Conference in the 1930s (over the membership of non-Muslim Kashmiris) introduced a pattern of elite pluralism into Kashmiri politics


before a universal franchise and a fully empowered assembly had been established. However, with one or two caveats, the success of the emerging National Conference within the valley certainly testified to its popularity. There were several key similarities between the political outlooks of Nehru and Abdullah. Both shunned communalised, narrow-based appeals. Both saw themselves as representing a much more inclusive nationalism (cf. Zavos, this volume). The two men had been in contact with each other, and an important political friendship had developed between them. It was partly on the basis of this friendship, as well as arguably his own Kashmiri origins, that Nehru believed that the institutional capacities of the Indian state with regard to language and provincial autonomy offered the Kashmiris the best way to defend and even enhance their cultural interests. To a large extent, Sheikh Abdullah concurred. His popularity in and around Srinagar certainly gave the impression that, had there been a clear political vote on the matter under a universal franchise, the former kingdom would have gone to India under the auspices of the National Conference. This premise though is highly contestable. As already discussed, the political power of the National Conference was not necessarily representative of interests in Jammu, Ladakh and the districts of Poonch. The Pandits of the valley were supportive of the National Conference, but in Kargil district, Sh’ia Muslims retained an earlier political and cultural gravitation towards Afghanistan. In Poonch and the regions around Muzzafarad there is compelling evidence that the National Conference was less popular than its Muslim-based rival, the Muslim Conference, led by the spiritual leader of the Kashmir Sunni Muslims – the Miwaiz – Yunus Shah. More seriously still, it is clear from the onset that the commitment of Sheikh Abdullah to the integration of the former Dogra kingdom into the state of India was contingent on specific conditions aimed at defending Kashmiri interests. The Indian view of Sheikh Abdullah consistently underplays the extent to which he retained a view that Kashmir ought to be, in an ideal world, an independent state. His references to independence were highly rhetorical, and were often made with an eye to New Delhi, but they were in keeping with many of the thoughts of his former colleagues and adversaries. As early as 1944, with the publication of The New Kashmir, Abdullah had spelled out his ideas on an independent Kashmir, as summed up in his famous phrase, ‘the Switzerland of South Asia’. Certainly, Abdullah saw Kashmir associated with, and not integrated into India. The subsequent negotiations between Kashmir and the Indian Union reveal the extent to which the outcome – the special status of Kashmir within the Indian Union – masked deep-seated differences between Abdullah and Nehru over the scale and permanence of that special status. I suggest that the divisions of the Dogra kingdom were thus as much a result of differing and competing views of what it was to be a Kashmiri, as it was to do with India’s and Pakistan’s determination to retain the terri-

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tory as part of their respective states. The Muslim Conference and the National Conference were already deploying, in embryonic form, differing types of ethnic mobilisation. There existed, of course, areas of great commonality between them – and it was to be on this basis that, many years later, many Kashmiri nationalists were to denounce both India and Pakistan. Had there been no armed incursions, no ‘great divide’ between India and Pakistan, there is intriguing evidence to reveal all the participants in this drama, the Maharaja, the Miwais, and Sheikh Abdullah himself, retained a commitment to Kashmiri independence. The Muslim League was even willing to continue to serve under the auspices of a Hindu Maharaja, if he would commit himself to, and fight for, an independent state. How such a state would have fared, and how it’s implicit two-party system would have emerged, are of course entirely academic. But to remind ourselves of its existence is an important corrective to the otherwise overwritten, over-italicised version that sees Abdullah as the most popular leader in the valley, and committed to the integration of his state with India.

The collapse of the indian settlements with Kashmir: 1954–1989 The ongoing dispute over Kashmir’s political status and autonomy within the Indian Union was first articulated clearly in the difference of opinion between Sheikh Abdullah and Nehru over the region’s future direction, as well as in clear differences on this same question expressed within both the Indian National Congress and the National Conference. At its simplest, the Instrument of Accession handed over to India three areas of administrative responsibility: foreign affairs, finances and communications. The rest was to be sorted out by a future state constitution, devised by an elected body, made manifest in 1951. This election was held on a universal franchise, while obviously excluding those areas that had been ‘occupied’ by the Pakistanis after 1948, and the National Conference won with a substantial majority. From 1952 until Sheikh Abdullah’s arrest in August 1953, two parallel sets of negotiations were to take place. The first concerned discussions between Abdullah and Nehru, which culminated in the 1952 Delhi Agreement. The other involved implicit and often secretive negotiations between Abdullah and members of the Muslim League across the ceasefire line, people such as Ghulam Abbas, and even possibly the Miwaiz himself. Despite Nehru’s concerns that the Instrument of Accession did not grant enough powers to the centre, the Indian National Congress agreed to a considerable degree of autonomy – already implied by the adoption of Article 370 in 1950. For example, the head of the executive would, uniquely throughout the Indian federal system, retain the title of Prime Minister.


With reference to the controversial Article 356 (President’s Rule), the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir would have to submit the decision to the assembly itself, and not, as in other states within the Indian Union, merely accept the decision of the state governor appointed by the centre. It was even permissible to fly the Kashmiri flag over state buildings along with the Indian colours. Other significant areas of economic and cultural rights devolved to the state assembly. To many within the Congress, this promised too much, and made the links with the Indian state too indirect. To members of the National Conference, this was too little. These concerns were underlined by one other, pressing difficulty. Apart from the actual scope and extent of autonomy, there was disagreement over the permanence of Article 370. India’s referral of the Kashmir case to the United Nations, and its offer of a plebiscite (this time explicit in its terms if not the conditions under which it would be held) made explicit the view that a permanent solution lay in reconciling the now divided territories of the former Dogra kingdom, and after ascertaining the will of the people (Blinkenberg, 1998). Until such a time, all other arrangements were by definition temporary. As the General Assembly discussions bogged down in wide and inconclusive recriminations over partition and convoluted debates about what level of neutrality was required for a free and fair plebiscite to be held, the Indian position hardened. Following the Delhi Agreement of 1952, the elected assembly, meeting in Srinagar, tried to thrash out these issues and devise and adopt a state constitution. Although it is difficult to be precise, it is likely that some time around 1952–53 the Indian centre began to seek ways of dropping its commitment to a plebiscite, and of diluting the promised degree of autonomy made to Abdullah. In doing so, it set itself on a collision course with a man recently considered by Nehru to be politically indispensable to the future of Kashmir’s integration with India. Abdullah was not unaware of this change in fortune. He had retained, however indirectly, links with his former political enemies situated in Azad Kashmir, and was aware that they were facing difficulties in negotiating a relationship with Pakistan. He was aware also that, like himself, the Muslim Conference remained committed to a plebiscite and would resist any attempts by the Pakistan authorities to materially alter the circumstances of Azad Kashmir and the so-called Northern Territories prior to such an election. Once it became clear that New Delhi was prepared for a plebiscite concerning the adoption by a directly elected assembly of a pro-Indian state constitution, he tried to act. In 1953 he was already associating himself with an organisation called the Plebiscite Front, which demanded Indian action on its promise outlined in Mountbatten’s letter to the Maharaja (see above). This organisation had clear links across the ceasefire line and was also not averse to talking about Kashmiri nationalism.

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In August 1953, the Indian government ordered Abdullah’s arrest, and replaced him with Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed. In 1956, the assembly voted for a constitution that declared Jammu and Kashmir to be an integral part of the Indian Union, subject to the provisions of Article 370. These events alone attest to the fact that, although elected on the coat-tails of Abdullah’s position in 1951, the National Conference was factionalised around issues of personality, and itself divided over the nature and extent of the Indian settlements. In defending their decision to oust Abdullah, the Indian authorities published correspondence between Abdullah and ‘foreign agents’, in this case (not unsurprisingly) members of the Muslim Conference. Moreover, it was stated that the Indian Government was concerned about various allegations of corruption and communalism associated with Abdullah’s administration, prejudices that had inflamed passions in Ladakh, and in particular an incident relating to the death in police custody of Dr Mookerjee, the leader of a national Hindu party, the Jan Sangh. Abdullah was not to be released from detention until 1968. He was to be re-arrested in 1971 by Indira Gandhi, released in 1975 to head a state government in Srinagar dominated by the Congress, and then after 1977 a National Conference government. By then much had changed both in the nature of Kashmiri identities, but also the wider context in which these identities played out. To summarise, both the Muslim and National Conference parties were formed prior to the onset of universal suffrage. Their structures were elitist and increasingly populist, not uncommon features of such movements elsewhere in the postcolonial world. While both shared a common commitment to Kashmiri identity, they did so in different ways and with radically different bedfellows. As the National Conference settled down into competitive elections, it is important to grasp that its ability to mobilise Kashmiri opinion was never entirely free of an innuendo of independence, however tactical its commitment to autonomy. It is difficult to clarify with any certainty how closely it resonated with popular sentiment. Abdullah’s Plebiscite Front boycotted state and local elections during their leader’s long incarceration, much as the Hurriyat has in the recent past (see below), and even though many state elections in Jammu and Kashmir have been marred by allegations of corruption and malpractice, sufficient electoral evidence exists to show that political parties closely associated with India, and a commitment to autonomy within India, have consistently won elected office. Yet such elections have never been entirely free of the suspicion of rigging and falsification either. The key variable in assessing the degree of India’s success in dealing with Kashmir thus resides in examining the extent to which autonomy has worked and to what extent Kashmiri identity has been able to accommodate itself within the limits of such autonomy. It is at this stage of the discussion that we will return to the three issues raised at the onset of this chapter.


First and foremost, Adbullah’s commitment in mobilising Kashmiri opinion behind a socioeconomic programme free of any references to Islam was conditional on the extent to which Kashmiri identity, especially in the valley, was determined by the so-called Kashmiriyat. As already discussed, this identity is contested, and Abdullah may have ignored the degree to which the majority of the population living in the valley were Sunni Muslims, and as such closely tied up with a religious identity. Even if the Kashmiriyat did exist, it would have to be politically nurtured as the political base of the National Conference widened through mass political activity. Evidence for an alternative, more religiously nuanced identity comes from several quarters. In the 1940s, there is clear evidence that leaders of the Muslim Conference, and the Miwaiz himself, were able to mobilise support in Srinagar, even as late as 1946 (see Lamb, 1991; Scofield, 1999). In 1963, the theft of a holy relic (a hair from the beard of Muhammed) and the formation of an Action Committee made up of important religious leaders (including the Miwaiz himself, returned to Indian-administered territory following a breach with Pakistan) was a turning point of sorts. The degree of popular indignation produced by this event illustrated how important, in certain circumstances, religious feelings could be. Over time, this degree of religious influence was to increase, in part through the tangible interventions from over the ceasefire line, in which Islamic groups funded by Pakistan (but not always controlled by them) sought to ‘Islamicise’ Kashmiri practices in order to undermine India’s position. In 1982, the decision by the then Farooq Abdullah government to allow the return of 20 000 Azadi Kashmiris to their ancestral homes was to have far-reaching consequences on the outlines of Kashmiri identity. Many of these were orthodox Sunni Muslims, a complex product of Pakistan’s influences on Azad Kashmir – in particular, the Islamisation programmes associated with General Zia. Many were (and remained) members of religious parties, both clandestinely, in that they remained associated with the Pakistani-based Jaamat, or openly in that they joined up to Islamic parties beginning to operate openly in Kashmir by the mid-1980s. There is, ironically, considerable evidence to suggest that powerful Islamic influences acted on Kashmir from India, and from the transformation in Islamic identities and practices that had been taking place in the plains from the late 1970s onwards. That such influences were able to take hold and change the lines of subsequent popular mobilisation is, in turn, accounted for by two other factors. One is the failure of socioeconomic reform promised by secular parties to have any significant effects on Muslims, and in particular, on a new generation of Kashmiri Muslims aware of their rights and anxious for suitable employment. The second, and related, reason is the continual

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interventions by New Delhi into the workings of Kashmiri politics, and their evident lack of faith in allowing for the established degree of autonomy to work unmolested. At the beginning of the 1950s, the socioeconomic programme of the National Conference had been to improve the education of Kashmiri Muslims and improve their job prospects and incomes. At the time of independence, the Kashmir Vale in particular was one of the poorest regions of India. By the 1970s, this position had not dramatically improved, despite extensive financial outlays from the central government. Many educated Kashmiris were unemployed and forced to leave the Vale to find jobs, while others failed to make headway into local government services which remained dominated by Pandits. In the mid-1970s, over 70 per cent of local government employees were Hindus, a situation not that dissimilar to 1947, and by the 1980s this position was virtually the same. This favoured position of a Hindu minority was to become increasingly problematic, and the fact that it remained despite the provisions of autonomy was of great concern. The failure of the socioeconomic transformation of Muslims led to widespread disaffection and cynicism throughout the population as a whole. By the early 1980s there was a general feeling that both Sheikh Abdullah, and following his death in 1982, his son Farooq, had used Kashmiri to further their own political interests and those of their party men. Corruption and nepotism, it would be frequently alleged, had wasted huge amounts of money earmarked for state development. Islamic identity moved into a vacuum created by a failed elite, who in turn blamed a failed promise of autonomy. To make matters worse, at the same time, secular parties sought to benefit from the emergence of Islamic sensitivities by couching their slogans and statements within an emergent religious idiom. Parties such as the National Conference, long associated with secular politics, began to court the rising tide of Islamic sentiments, narrowly seen as opening the way for electoral victory, while also containing the popularity of such religious parties. In doing so they were seemingly unaware that they were further encouraging their own political estrangement, improving the popularity of Islamic groups, and furthering the concerns of the Indian centre. More significantly, in the particular case of Kashmir, the rise of Islam as the fulcrum of state politics furthered the differentiation of localised identities in Ladakh and in Jammu. In both regions, and especially in Ladakh, there were increasing calls for regional autonomy from the valley, even, in some cases, for separate statehood within the Indian Union. That Kashmir was subject to intervention from New Delhi was already apparent from the background to the 1956 adoption of the state constitution. In the years that followed, further interventions would take place, and as a consequence the centralisation of power in favour of India


would manifest itself in two distinct forms. The first was in the actual erosion of Article 370 itself. By the late 1960s, for example, Kashmiri leaders called themselves chief, not prime ministers, and behind this symbolic abandonment lay central government encroachment on very specific aspects of state legislation (the appointment of civil servants, the transfer of judges, and the use of military facilities). The second, and more invidious, was the deliberate and often quite unconstitutional interventions by the centre into the affairs of state governments, the appointments of ministers and the misuse of party and government offices. Such excesses were often carried out on the eve of elections, and often to ensure that specific parties won (or retained) access to power. While this style of political management is best associated with Indira Gandhi, it was in the case of Kashmir to be most dramatically (and catastrophically) practised by her son, Rajiv Gandhi. The reasons for such gratuitous interventions (and centralisations) are difficult to fathom. In part, these actions (as much as the arrest of Abdullah in 1953) reflected the generic concerns Delhi felt for the politics of Kashmir, a frontier Muslim majority province next to an implacable enemy, easily infiltrated and difficult to control. These concerns were reinforced in 1965 when the Pakistanis infiltrated a large number of operatives over the ceasefire line in an attempt to soften up Indian positions prior to an invasion, despite the failure of such a move. In 1972, when India replaced the international ceasefire line with a modified Line of Control and sought, once and for all, to extract the Kashmir issue from the ruminations of the United Nations, it faced widespread hostility in Srinagar (as well as within Azad Kashmir). Such an expression of pan-Kashmiri sentiment was a reminder to Indira Gandhi that Kashmir (let alone Sheikh Abdullah) could not be relied upon. This mistrust – driven in part by the sheer meglomania of individual Indian leaders – was to have disastrous consequences. The 1977–82 period in Kashmir is instructive here. Abdullah had been returned to power in 1977, free of the constraints of a Congress coalition imposed upon him during the Emergency period of Mrs Gandhi (1975–77). During the state election, in the wake of the national defeat of the Congress in New Delhi, Mrs Gandhi had tried to form a coalition with the National Conference. Such an offer was rebuked, leaving Mrs Gandhi with a sense of betrayal and an anxiety that the terms of the Delhi Agreement (signed in 1975 prior to Abdullah’s release from prison) would be compromised. In 1980, following the spectacular disintegration of the ruling National Coalition in Delhi (the Janata Party) Mrs Gandhi was returned to power, and from 1980 until Abdullah’s death in 1982 she appeared bent on revenge. Through the agency of the Jammu and Kashmir Congress Party, Mrs Gandhi returned to a policy of intervention and personalised rule so characteristic of her Emergency years.

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As well as being embattled with New Delhi, there were growing signs that Abdullah was out of touch with sentiment within Kashmir. It was at this stage that the National Conference began an ambiguous relationship with some Islamic movements, and some symbolic flirtation with Islamic sentiment generally. Finally, and perhaps the most damning legacy that Abdullah would pass on to his son, Farooq, was that of a populist, authoritarian leadership. In 1983, another state election took place, with Farooq leading the National Conference against a rejuvenated Congress party. There was now growing concern with the violence in Kashmir and the ability (or willingness) of the state government to deal with it. The election campaign was particularly bloody and violent, and for the first time many Islamic parties were active, as well as Buddhist and Hindu parties in the respective regions of Ladakh and Jammu. Once more, the National Conference party was returned to power, but there were ominous signs. Islamic parties had managed to mobilise considerable crowds in Srinagar, and their calls for autonomy had made specific reference to Islam, and in one or two cases had been clearly pro-Pakistani. This was especially true of the Jamaat. And on the eve of polling, the tomb of Sheikh Abdullah, on the shores of the Dal Lake, had been vandalised. Meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi (who replaced his mother as Indian prime minister following her assassination in 1984; see Barot, this volume) set about to undermine Farooq directly within the National Conference party, by covertly supporting Farooq’s brother-in-law, G. M. Shah, and his claims to be chief minister. Such a move was inspired by the belief that Shah would be both more compliant to the centre, and a ‘safer pair of hands’. After almost a year of infighting and intrigue, the plot succeeded. In carrying out this act (the wholesale but unfortunately quite common abuse of President’s Rule), Rajiv Gandhi made use of the whole gamut of New Delhi’s concerns, from collusion with ‘foreign’ powers to corruption and communalism. With the aid of a compliant governor (appointed by the centre), Rajiv succeeded in removing Farooq in 1985. From this time on, state politics in Kashmir became increasing selfserving and almost entirely divorced from the wider, and keenly felt, social needs of the population of the state as a whole. The nature of Farooq’s removal was a blatant violation of the spirit of Article 370. The degree of infighting was such that entire development projects were neglected, with many grants and subsidies actually going unspent. Farooq toured India crying foul and associating himself with the emerging national opposition parties then grouping themselves under a National Front aimed at replacing the Congress at the Indian centre. As the crisis worsened, the state authorities seemed increasingly incapable of dealing with a variety of political parties and militant outfits – most notably in the run up to 1989, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) – which came suddenly to prominence.5


The abuse of public office and the neglect of good governance in Kashmir had, by 1987, opened up a large political space. The mobilisation of support behind secular politics had been seriously eroded – in part it would lay itself open to the subsequent capture by parties and militant outfits claiming an independent, secular state. Furthermore, the shift in the politics of Islam had brought Kashmir closer, at least rhetorically, to Pakistan, or competing claims for sovereignty along confessional lines. Both processes further undermined India’s credentials for holding onto the state, and at the same time, increased New Delhi’s paranoia. It was into this vacuum that a newer, more blatantly ethnoreligious leadership sought to stake its claim to power, to the diverging ends of either a Pakistani Kashmir or an Independent Islamic Kashmir. The pro-Indian constituency appeared to self-destruct entirely, vanishing in 1989 with the mass migration of the Pandit community to the Jammu foothills. What remained of any commitments to secularism appeared to be occupied entirely by separatist Kashmiri nationalism. Even as early as 1985 it was clear that the National Conference had already ceased to be the main arbiter of Kashmiri identity, despite the scale of its 1983 victory. What was noticeable about political activity in the Vale was the extent to which it was increasingly dominated by Islamic parties and Islamic social movements, forces such as the Kashmir Liberation Front, the People’s League, and various Islamic student organisations. When the infighting between the various factions of the National Conference, and between the state government and the national government in Delhi, resulted in the dismissal of G. M. Shah, these Islamic forces had coalesced around a loose alliance known as the Muslim United Front (MUF). Central to the MUF were the old foci of power within the defunct Muslim Conference, Miwaiz Farooq, the son of the Miwaiz who headed to Azad Kashmir in the days following the outbreak of violence back in 1947. It was widely believed that the MUF was associated with illegal outfits such as the JKLF, and other groups just then beginning to make themselves known. In 1987 state elections were due in what was a troubled and increasingly violent political environment. Following the announcement that the MUF would contest the elections, both the National Conference and the Congress reacted with alarm. The basis of the MUF manifesto was a commitment to redefine, and where possible to deepen Article 370 and the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. There is some evidence to suggest that sections of the alliance wanted to be more assertive, to use a renegotiation of Article 370 to open up the way for some form of unilateral declaration of independence, or even to align themselves with Pakistan. What is clear is that Indian opinion, especially within the home ministry, feared that the assertion of an Islamic Kashmiri identity would prove fatal to India’s attempts to retain Kashmir within the conventions established since 1956.

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Such opinion was slow to grasp the extent to which the electoral basis of the National Conference had disintegrated completely. It is within this context that two critical decisions were made: to form an alliance between the parties of Rajiv Gandhi and Farooq Abdullah, and to resort to political intimidation and rigging if necessary to prevent the MUF coming to power. The tactical alliance between the National Conference and the Indian National Congress was, even by Indian standards, a surreal association, premised largely on mutual fear and self-interest. Both leaders had a great deal to lose from the rise of Islamic sentiment as a vehicle of popular resentment and impatience. Even to an electorate as sophisticated and as cynical as that of Kashmir, it was hard to swallow photocalls of Rajiv and Farooq holding hands and smiling. The 1987 election campaign was a violent, bloody slog, an event that witnessed widespread violence and one in which, for the first time, the mosque emerged as the dominant fulcrum of political activity. As polling day approached, there was general speculation that the MUF might well win, despite the fact that it was itself a disparate and somewhat incoherent political formation. The result was a political shock, with the Farooq–Rajiv combination being returned with an impressive margin of seats. This gave rise to the immediate allegation of widespread rigging and a conspiracy to defraud the electorate. Allegations of electoral fraud are not uncommon in India, and not by themselves implausible. Yet the scale of the operation required to overturn an MUF victory in Kashmir in 1987 is implausible. For it to have succeeded, the degree of complicity between state officials, the Independent Electoral Commission, and members of the all-India civil service, would have been hard to disguise. The degree of institutional autonomy in India, especially between the Electoral Commission and the state itself, makes such a crude conspiracy theory impossible to sustain, although it has proven vulnerable to local instances of intimidation and electoral fraud. It is thus probably not the case that in 1987 the MUF had its victory snatched away by ‘returning officers reversing the order of candidates and declaring Rajiv’s boys the winners’. However, in specific constituencies, there is evidence of voting irregularities, and evidence that inadequate security arrangements allowed voters to be intimidated and ballot boxes to be ‘stuffed’ with false returns. 6 More seriously, many MUF candidates turned to political violence and turned away from the political process itself, as opposed to working within the political space allowed them as a loyal opposition seeking to expose the weaknesses of the National Conference government. A majority of them became active in the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, fighting for an independent but secular Kashmir; others fought for an independent Islamic Kashmir. Still others fought for their unification with Azad Kashmir and the state of Pakistan.


Political violence quickly overwhelmed the Farooq government. Kashmiri Pandits became increasingly targeted by militants, and political assassinations became increasingly common. Prominent leaders of the JKLF were associated with kidnapping Dr Rubaiya Sayeed, the Indian home minister’s daughter. Her subsequent release, and exchange for JKLF prisoners, opened the floodgates to militant activity and the collapse of constitutional politics. The assassination of Lassa Kaul, the Pandit head of Kashmiri staterun television, and of several senior academics and businessmen led to widespread panic within the Pandit community. In the late winter of 1989–90, confronted by threats published in prominent Kashmir papers, and apparently advised by the governor, the majority of the Pandits left their ancestral homes, no longer assured that the state government could retain stability or save them from communal killings. Over ten years later, as many as 200 000 are still in refugee camps in Jammu awaiting the restoration of political order. In 1990, the Indian national government dismissed the Farooq Abdullah government and imposed central control. It did so in a situation in which militant and political outfits had suddenly mushroomed. By 1990–91, such militant outfits as Hizbul-Mujahideen, Ikhwanul Muslimeen, Al-Omar and the Allah Tigers were active in specific parts of the states, backed by a variety of agencies and interests – some of them, critically, backed by Pakistan (see below). By 1994–95, these groups would be confronted with Indian-sponsored ‘contra’ groups, former militants turned in captivity, and returned to act against pro-Pakistani, pro-independent groups active in the field. Many of these outfits had their own political wings that could be traced back to either the Action Committee of the early 1960s, or wider pan-Kashmiri interests going back even further. The militants were operative against members of the Indian and paramilitary forces, as well as each other and former members of the National Conference–Congress government. Indeed, Farooq and many other senior party officials left Srinagar in the face of numerous death-threats and bomb-attacks. By the early 1990s, many of these disparate political and social movements had gravitated to form a loose confederation known as the Hurriyat Conference, led by the son of the recently assassinated Miwaiz, killed by unknown assailants in 1990. The Conference, containing a wide range of parties, both Islamic and secular, proPakistani and pro-Independence, called for the holding of a plebiscite, but this time with an option for outright independence. Only when this condition was met would the Hurriyat contest any elections, or sanction the ‘normalisation’ of politics in Kashmir. Only on these terms (and without preconditions) would the Hurriyat negotiate with the Indian centre. Many leading members of the Hurriyat were not only veterans of Kashmiri politics, they were also members of the MUF that had contested the elections in 1987.7

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The Kashmir crisis: 1989–96 The crisis that overtook the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1989 was largely an insurrection. It was brought about by the systematic failure of party politics under the leadership of the National Conference to improve the conditions of the Muslims living within the state, especially within the environs of Srinagar. This failure, along with a more systemic failure of the Indian centre to deliver on promises of autonomy, brought about a significant degree of political alienation, and encouraged many to look towards Islam (and Pakistan) as a potential saviour. It is in this regard that the peculiar history of the Dogra kingdom, the division of the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan, and the ambiguity of Kashmir’s links with India, came to play their part. On the one hand they made such an outcome possible because, as has been shown, the language of secession was never far removed from the language of constitutional government, while the language of autonomy lived in uneasy proximity to that of independence. On the other, these issues demanded that any solution to the crisis would have to deal with questions of identity and politics, of communalism and nationalism, that had bedevilled the subcontinent since the early part of the twentieth century (see Zavos, this volume), and yet had been neglected in Kashmir since 1947. It is necessary now to allocate to Pakistan, and through Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and the northern territories, a more central location in the aetiology of this crisis. By 1992–93, India would claim that the basis of the Kashmir crisis lay in Pakistan, and the deliberate infiltration across the Line of Control of militant outfits working to ensure that Kashmir was returned to Pakistan. Certainly such groups as Hizbul, closely associated with the Jamaat el Islami party of Pakistan, would work to a pro-Pakistani agenda. By the mid-1990s they would be joined by other groups, factional breakaways such as Laskhar Tolba and Harkot, pro-Pakistani outfits but made up of differing ethnic groups such as Pathanis and Afghans, Uzbeks and even Sudanese. Between 1990 and 1993, it was clear that elements within the Pakistan military, associated with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) unit, were using former Afghan Mujahadeen militants in a covert war across the Line of Control. Indeed, it was partly the slowness of the Indian crackdown that allowed such a large number to cross the border. That such groups were active is beyond question, and that such groups were morally and materially supported by sections of the Pakistan state is indisputable. Yet ironically, the subsequent debates about Pakistani interventions since 1989 in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir have tended to follow the outlines of the debate over the tribal invasion of 1947. This was particularly true of the extraordinary Kargil incident of 1999, in which the Pakistani military authorities, without the consent (and apparent knowledge) of the Pakistan prime minister, moved several thousand


former Afghan Mujahadeen into Indian-controlled territory. The relationship between the ISI and the leaderships of Benazir Bhutto and Nawar Sharif testify to the extent of its autonomy, and the difficulty an elected leader has in restricting or curtailing military activity related to an Islamic cause. The US government attempted, with some success, to pressurise Benazir’s administration in 1990–91 to rein in the ISI, and there is evidence that, in the wake of this, the military switched its support to Sharif. Likewise, when forced by President Clinton to call upon his troops to disengage fighting the Indian troops around Kargil, Sharif lit a long fuse under his own legitimacy. He was eventually to be replaced by the very general who led the Kargil mission. Yet these events, however critical to the scale of the crisis, were not the cause. There is evidence that they might well have sustained the crisis after 1994–95, when pro-Pakistani groups moved to dominate the insurgents, and the outfits linked to the JKLF appeared to lose their momentum, in part through the success of Indian countermeasures. There is even evidence, from the recent remarks of one of the leading lights of the Hurriyat Conference, Abdul Gani Lone, that the presence of foreign militants within Kashmir is itself the biggest obstacle in the dispute. Yet the scale of Pakistan insurgency was made possible by the sheer political crisis that overtook Jammu and Kashmir from the late 1980s onwards. It presented an opportunity that no Pakistani politician could afford to miss. It is this point that is so often misunderstood by India, and which takes us back to what otherwise appears a rather obscure and academic debate about the ‘great divide’ of partition and the rise of two sets of competing nationalism within the shell of the British Indian Empire. As the fate of Sharif so neatly illustrated, it is incredibly difficult for Pakistan to distance itself from Kashmiri unrest, especially when that unrest is coloured by ethnic mobilisations informed by Islamic sentiment, because to do so is to imperil its own identity. The linkages here between various militant outfits, political parties, official government bodies and autonomous agencies working free of oversight is extraordinary, and it has ramifications on the solutions that can be offered to Kashmir. It is clear, for example, that Kashmir and the fate of Kashmir remains a potent source of public interest in Pakistan, indeed part of its own growing Islamisation since the 1970s. As the allegations of human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir spread in the early 1990s, Jamaat – one of the main Pakistani Islamic parties – was highly successful in mobilising support (from an otherwise divided and sectarian public) in favour of ‘fellow Muslims’. Although open to manipulation and propaganda, this support was genuine. No politician could afford to ignore it entirely. In July 2000, Hizbullah, one of the most organised and effective militant outfits operating in Jammu and Kashmir, announced a ceasefire with India. In part, the offer was made under clear pressure from the US administra-

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tion, but it also reflected general exhaustion and a recognition that the golden days of the mid-1990s were over. However, in offering the ceasefire without any apparent conditions, Hizbullah was put under tremendous pressure from Jamaat, its political wing, to include as part of a deal with India the involvement of the Pakistanis. Despite pressure from Musharraf on Jamaat to moderate its position, the ceasefire broke down. This again, as with Kargil, illustrates the difficulties of using political institutions, and the framework of government and ideas of ‘sovereignty’ as tools to bring about real changes. Indian newspapers which reported that ‘the Pakistan government has brought pressure on Hizbullah to withdraw the offer’ were hopelessly simplistic in their depiction of Pakistani politics and what, in effect, the ‘Pakistan government’ is, and is capable of.

Conclusion: the trajectory of ethnic demands in Jammu and Kashmir In 1996, after a long and painful process of adjustment involving both coercion and reform, the state of Jammu and Kashmir held its first state election since the crisis of 1989. The Hurriyat boycotted the poll on the grounds that it was a flawed exercise with a predetermined outcome. Other commentators noted widespread intimidation from both the Indian security forces and the various militant outfits that had now mushroomed into a bewildering array of differing factions and coalitions. Farooq Abdullah returned, along with his National Conference, from the political wilderness, committed to a policy of restoring autonomy and in defending human rights abuses. New state elections for Jammu and Kashmir are set for 2002, although at the time of writing these have yet to be called. Meanwhile, doubts remain that he can restore the legitimacy of the National Conference as the official arbiter of Kashmiri ethnic sentiment. Terrorism remained on the domestic agenda throughout 1998–9, although to a lesser extent than before. However, the hijacking of an Air India airbus to Afghanistan by Kashmiri militants over December ensured that the issue remained high on the international agenda into the new century. The militants called for the release of Islamic political prisoners in India, and for international mediation over the dispute itself. In January 2001, an Afghan militant outfit almost succeeded in assassinating the chief minister with two rocket-launched grenades. The Farooq Abdullah government continues to labour under the old dispensations. In 1999–2000, after much discussion, Farooq produced an autonomy bill for discussion in the Srinagar parliament. The document, central to their manifesto, was an erudite illustration of the extent to which so many promises of autonomy had been betrayed. Ironically, such a report coincided with a sense in which the national government in New Delhi – led by the BJP – was beginning to consider approaching the


Hurriyat and assisting its transition into mainstream politics. In part, such a tactic is a clever ploy by India in that it will assist the inevitable disintegration of the 22-party Hurriyat. In part, it is also a ploy to remind Farooq that there are other people to talk to should he begin to get difficult. Such a strategy, ignoring the differences in the nature of the two political entities – the National Conference and the Hurriyat – reminds one of earlier manipulative strategies that had aided, and not resolved, the crisis. The transformation of the political and cultural outlines of Kashmir cannot be exaggerated. The crisis of the 1990s has differentiated the Kashmiriyat beyond all recognition. Many of the Pandits now wish to form their own state within the Indian federal system, and have set up their own party to lobby their interests. The confessional breach with their fellow Muslim Kashmiris is to many beyond repair, with many of them refusing to return. The displacement of Muslim refugees from the Vale into Ladakh has brought about increased ethnic tensions between Buddhists, especially over issues of trade, while the presence of a large number of Pandit refugees in Jammu inflamed Hindu sentiment that, for too long, the Indian centre had ‘pampered Muslim sentiments’. Sunni-Shi’a divisions have also become a feature of the Kargil district itself. Attempts by the Indian authorities to restore the status-quo-ante are bedevilled by the legacy of ten years of political centralisation, and beyond that, almost twenty years of manipulative politics. It is true to say that the religious elements of Kashmiri identity are stronger now than they have been for many years, arguably since the Moghuls. In this regard, Farooq and members of the National Conference party are fully aware that should Islamic parties re-enter the constitutional fray (such as the MUF in 1987) they would very likely win power. One imagines that such a point is not lost on the BJP itself, and as such, the current flirtation with the Hurriyat smacks of an old-style intervention/manipulation type of management, one that has brought such chaos and suffering in the past. This last point remains true for all the political solutions currently under discussion for the Kashmir crisis. The differentiation of Kashmir identity makes the issue of an independent state problematic. Opinion is keenly divided between whether such a state would be secular or Islamic, and how such a state would deal with cultural diversity. Should the Vale and Ladakh ever return to Pakistan, Pakistan would confront the same dilemma – how to politically represent diverse and diversifying cultural identities. While Pakistan clearly has some gains to be made from the crisis in Kashmir, there is evidence that the returns on Pakistani intervention are fast diminishing. As the Hizbullah-Jamaat farrago illustrates, many of the militant outfits within Kashmir may well be too Islamic even for Pakistan. The ubiquity of ethnicity in India warns us of the difficulties – if not impossibilities – of devising political settlements on such transient identities. This recognition has led one commentator to the surprising observation that

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ethnic politics in India are so generalised as to be largely irrelevant (Manor, 1996). More revealingly, Ayesha Jalal (1995) has observed ruefully that the problem with ethnicity in South Asia is in large part the problem of the history of state-building and formation. It is not ethnicity per se. It is the recognition (and manipulation) by the state of ethnic identities which can, in specific circumstances, lead to intense conflict and, like the sowing of dragons’ teeth, lead to more and more ethnic identities, each with their own demands, each with their own authenticity privileged over their competitors. The crucial point to mull over is the contingent nature of this crisis. The fate of what I have called elsewhere the collapse of the ‘the Indian settlements’ is in large-part a failure of political management. Although the association between religion and culture in the specific context of Indian nationalism always made Kashmir a hostage to fortune, it is one that could have been avoided. There is a political settlement to this crisis, but it cannot come in a sense through the old language of autonomy and Article 370 – history, if nothing else, makes this all too clear. I suspect it cannot even come through the old institutions themselves, with their imprints of populism and personal government, since these are again likely to reinforce rather than mitigate the principal issues in dispute.

Notes 1. Much of my inspiration for writing on Kashmir is derived from having read V. S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, an extraordinarily evocative account of Kashmir around the time of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. 2. Representative of Western literature here would be Lamb (1991), Hewitt (1995), Ganguly (1997) and Scofield (1999) Many other writers, many of them Kashmiri, have added to this literature. 3. Lamb (1991) dissents on this, and believes that the decision over Kashmir reflected a religious bias in favour of the Hindu rulers. 4. The term plebiscite was not used in the letter sent from Mountbatten to Hari Singh. However, later writers assumed that, to Mountbatten, ‘reference to the people’ must have meant a plebiscite, or referendum. 5. The JKLF was founded in the UK in 1976, and was primarily associated until the mid-1990s with Amanullah Khan and Maqbool Butt. It had long articulated a secular version of Kashmiri identity and was to have parallel organisations on both sides of the Line of Control. 6. In 1994, a senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer confirmed to me in an interview that in several constituencies in Srinagar and the Vale (Baramula in particular) serious ‘anomalies’ had taken place during the count. While it is clear that such anomalies could not have overturned the result, they prevented the return of leading MUF candidates. Such incidents, however small, undermined the credibility of the election itself in a context in which electoral politics was already perceived to be farcical and irrelevant. 7. See ‘Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare’, US House of Representatives Republican Research Committee, Discussion Document: The Kashmir Connection, May, 1994.


References Ashton, S. (1982) British Policy Towards the Princely States (London: Curzon Press). Bhargava, B. (ed.) (1998) Secularism and Its Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Birdwood, C. (1956) Two Nations and Kashmir (London: Robert Hale). Blinkenberg, L. (1998) India–Pakistan: the History of Unresolved Conflicts. Vols 1 and 2 (Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press). Brass, P. (1974) Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). —— (1990) Politics of India Since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Buzan, B. and Rizvi, G. (1985) South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave). Eriksen, T. (1993) Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Pluto Press). Ganguly, S. (1986) The Origins of War in South Asia Indo-Pakistan Conflicts Since 1947 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). —— (1997) The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gellner, E. (1997) Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Hewitt, V. (1995) Reclaiming the Past? The Search for Political and Cultural Unity in Contemporary Jammu and Kashmir (London: Portland Books). —— (1996) Ethnic construction, provincial identity and nationalism in Pakistan: the case of Baluchistan, in S. Mitra and A. Lewis (eds) Subnational Movements in South Asia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). —— (1997) The New International Politics of South Asia. (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Hodson, H. (1985) The Great Divide: Great Britain, India and Pakistan, (2nd edn.) (Karachi: Oxford University Press). Jalal, A. (1995) Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jeffrey, R. (1986) What’s Happening to India? Punjab, Ethnic Conflict, Mrs Gandhi’s Death and the Test of Federalism (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave). Jinnah, A. J. (1985) The Sole Spokesman. The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kavaraji, S. (ed.) (1997) Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Khan, I. (1994) Kashmir’s Transition to Islam: the Role of the Muslim Rishis (New Delhi: Manohar Books). Khilnani, S. (1997) The Idea of India (London: Hamish Hamilton). Lamb, A. (1991) Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846–1990 (Hertingforbury: Roxford Books). Madan, T. (1987) Non-Renunciation: Themes and Interpretations of Hindu Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Manor, J. (1996) Ethnicity and politics in India, International Affairs 72, 459–75. Morris-Jones, W. (1971) Government and Politics in India (London: Hutchinson). Robinson, F. (1987) Separatism Among Indian Muslims: the Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims 1860–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Scofield, V. (1999) Kashmir Crisis (London: I. B. Taurus). Talbot, I. (1998) Pakistan: A Modern History (London: Hurst and Co). Wirsing, R. (1998) India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute: On Regional Conflict and its Resolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave).

7 Nationalism in South Asia and its Transnational Impact on the Indian Diaspora in Britain Rohit Barot

There are two strong and inventive themes in the sociology of nation and nationalism that are particularly relevant to the discussion in this chapter of India and Indians and their national consciousness. The first is the relation of nationalism to modernity; the second is the flexible ‘construction’ of national identities under differing circumstances. The importance of modernity to nationalism is directly signalled in the title of Liah Greenfeld’s book: Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Greenfeld 1992). In it she argues that the road towards a modernising and democratising state – in England, France, Russia, Germany and the US – was simultaneously a road towards the social and political construction of a nation. Gellner’s famous thesis about modernity and nationalism (Gellner, 1983) has been subjected to criticisms and re-explorations (Hall, 1998) but remains a key theoretical contribution in the field. Equally securely embedded in this field of inquiry is the idea that nations are not best viewed as ‘naturally occurring’ communities, but rather as political and cultural constructions (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Anderson, 1991; Billig, 1995). These constructed identities will mean different things to different people at different times, their emphases and even content will change, and their appeal to their potential constituencies will rise and fall. In the following discussion of Indian nationalism and nationalist movements at two historical moments, both these themes are clearly illustrated. Some strands of Indian nationalism were, as we shall see, importantly linked to the cultural themes of modernity. At the same time, we will also see how a pan-Indian consciousness at one moment was critically replaced by the emergence of a range of more disparate, competing ‘internal’ nationalisms, constructed, and reconstructed, as the changing exigencies of politics dictated. As Geertz observed in the early period of decolonisation, a secular pan-national ideology could not always ‘hold’ in the immediate postindependence period (Geertz, 1973). Consequently, since that time there 159


have been many illustrations of ‘internal’ nationalisms within the states which were constructed in the post-Second World War period. This chapter provides an important comparative dimension of the two, via a case study of nationalism in the shape of an anticolonial independence movement – namely the role of Indian nationalism in the move to independence from Britain – and, at a later moment, of the workings of an internal Indian nationalism in a now postcolonial state. Closely linked here are the additional themes of diaspora and transnational communities (Baumann, 1995; Cohen, 1997, Portes, 1999, Vertovec, 1999). Accordingly, in first examining anticolonial independence politics, I will focus principally on its effects among Indians living in the imperial homeland, Britain. The purpose of the argument here is to show that the Indians in Britain were actively involved in the independence movement that was to unite India as a nation under the Indian Congress Party. In the subsequent discussion of a postcolonial Indian nationalism – the Khalistani nationalism in the 1980s, which culminated in an armed campaign against the Indian state for a separate homeland for the Sikhs – the emphasis will focus on the dramatic shifts and allegiances that occurred among particularly Sikh communities, not only in India itself, but also in Britain, the US and Canada. The final part of the chapter will analyse some of the key issues which underpin the ‘politics of homeland’ in transnational Indian communities. To reiterate, although this chapter addresses itself to the question of particular nationalisms in the Indian subcontinent context, it is much more concerned with the effects such nationalist strivings have on Indian communities outside India, especially on the Indians who now live in large numbers in Europe and America. We are long familiar with the phrase ‘overseas Indians’; now the expression ‘Indian diaspora’ is gaining increasing currency. For instance, Gujarati papers based in Britain routinely use the English word ‘diaspora’ in Gujarati to refer to Indians in Britain. Newspapers and magazines from India refer to Indians living away from the subcontinent as ‘non-resident Indians’, or often simply as the ‘NRI’. In order to explain the effect of the politics of the subcontinent on Indians living in Britain, we may first look briefly at a comparable example. The conflict between the Protestants and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland, for example, has had a powerful impact on Irish communities in the US. During the period of conflict in Northern Ireland, it is well-known that Irish descendants in the US have lent varying degrees of political and financial support to Irish causes, as well as to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Likewise, migrants and settlers from the Indian subcontinent who live in Britain maintain close sociocultural, economic and political links with their homeland. These links open up the prospect of homeland conflicts coming to Britain in much the same way the Irish conflict was exported to the US. Transplantation of South Asian conflict to South Asian communities in Britain has a very similar character that has a specific historical, colonial and imperial context.

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British rule in India and Indian independence The English came to India in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, along with the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French. Their trading centres in Surat, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras grew in importance. In the competition for political influence between European powers, the English were more successful than others. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, they established the British Raj in India. With the decline of the Mogul empire, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they were able to bring most of India under their control through a combination of conquest and treaties. The introduction of colonial modernity was symbolised by Indians like Raja Rammohan Roy who accepted education based on science and technology, and the growing supremacy of the English language. The related introduction of economic, political, ideological and technological changes began to transform Indian society and, ironically, created a middle class that was eventually going to demand the independence of India. The establishment of the Congress Party towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the formation of the Muslim League in the earlier part of the twentieth century, marked the trajectories of nationalism in India (see also Zavos, this volume; Hewitt, this volume). The distinguishing feature of Indian nationalism at this time was its pan-Indian character, fashioned principally by and through opposition to the persistence of British rule in India. The Indian nationalist movement developed in two distinctive strands. The first strand stemmed from the ideology of armed resistance and revolutionary change, as in Bengal and elsewhere at the beginning of the twentieth century, exemplified by Subhash Chandra Bose’s formation of the Indian Liberation Army in opposition to the British rule in India. When Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, from 1919–1920 onwards a strand of non-violent politics developed in India. It deployed some of the traditional Indian values of non-violence and noncooperation in the struggle for the independence of India. The Gandhian view of politics without violence appealed to the Indian masses. It became a predominant feature of the Congress Party and its pan-Indian collective organisation, and finally led to the formation of the Indian Union in 1947. Under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, however, the Muslim League mounted a similar campaign for a separate Muslim state. The demand for a separate Muslim state eventually saw the partition of India, and the emergence of Pakistan, although not before the displacement of millions, and the killing of thousands as a result of war in 1947. The partition also created an ongoing dispute between India and Pakistan on the status of Kashmir (see Hewitt, this volume) – giving rise to transnational movements for the liberation of Kashmir from the Indian state jurisdiction.


And of course, Pakistan itself – originally divided (and separated) into West Pakistan and East Pakistan – was eventually to face its own dismemberment, with the transformation (again, by war) of East Pakistan into the independent Bangladesh in the early 1970s.

The impact of British rule on India Imperial powers exploited their colonies both for labour and natural resources. At the same time they had a real, if harsh, ‘modernising’ effect, as well as causing global movements of people. British rule in India helped the British to spread their influence also in Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Colonial rule greatly aided Indian migration to various parts of the Empire. As the British consolidated their control over India, they stimulated two different kinds of migration. With the construction of roads and railways, a large number of Indians began to travel and work in different parts of India. For example, people from places like Punjab and Gujarat began to settle in distant parts of India. As soon as African slavery ended (at least formally) in the 1830s, the colonial authorities began to recruit Indians to work as labourers all over the Empire. From the 1830s onwards, many Indians went as workers, commonly known as ‘coolies’, to various colonies in the Caribbean region. Even today many Indo-Caribbeans continue to live in countries like Trinidad and Guyana (see Premdas, this volume). In Africa, the British influence spread from South Africa, through East and Central Africa right up to the Sudan and Egypt. The British had recruited Indians to work in South Africa. Many traders from Gujarat were also going over to South Africa.1 In East and Central Africa, the British recruited Indians to build the Kenya–Uganda railway from Mombasa to Kampala, and many lost their lives in so doing. As time went on, Indians settled throughout East and Central Africa. A large number of them began to trade there from the later part of the nineteenth century. Indian merchants were already involved in commerce before the British established their control over Zanzibar and the East African coast in the middle of the nineteenth century. Throughout East Africa, Indians prospered as merchants and as government officials, and, of course, as ordinary workers. Similarly, Indians settled in Mauritius under both British and French influence. They also went to various countries of Southeast Asia. They settled in Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia and Singapore, Hong Kong and Fiji under the British colonial influence (for Malaysia, see Mariappan, this volume). Nearly eight million Indians now live in countries which came under British colonial rule during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Dotson and Dotson, 1968; Morris, 1968; Mangat, 1969; Ghai and Ghai, 1970; Kuper 1974; Tinker 1974, 1976, 1977; Clarke, et al., 1990).

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British colonial rule and Indians in Britain A British Indian historian, Rozina Visram (1986), provides much useful information about the Indian presence in Britain from the eighteenth century onwards. At the forefront of this was Raja Rammohan Roy, the Bengali reformer best known for his crusade against the custom of sati – the former Hindu practice of expecting a widow to self-immolate on her husband’s funeral pyre. Roy had also argued strongly for the establishment of modern institutions in India that would eventually pave the way for colonial modernity and nationalism. It was notable that he visited Britain in 1830 and lived in England for nearly three years. In 1833 he visited Bristol to meet his Unitarian friends Dr Lant Carpenter and his family. However, less than a fortnight after his arrival in Bristol, Rammohan Roy caught meningitis and died on 27 September 1833.2 Historian Percival Spear described Roy as the ‘greatest creative personality of India’, because the reformist activities he carried out in Bengal laid the foundation for the advance of the Indian national movement (1978: 289). He had an open attitude to the West and did not express blind opposition to the introduction of modern influences in India. He believed that both the East and West had a lot to offer to each other. He also actively encouraged the exchange of ideas between different civilisations, believing this could lead to a more enriching and fruitful outcome. In response to the rationality of science, for example, Raja Rammohan Roy had argued that the Hindu philosophical tradition was deeply grounded in rational inquiry, or gnyan marg as Hindus know it. According to him, Hindus did not have any difficulty in accepting the rationality of the modern world because they had a moral imperative, both in their own way of life and in the process of rational inquiry, to learn the truth. This might well help to explain the subsequent influence of modernity and rationality as two key driving forces behind the emergence of Indian nationalism in the later part of the nineteenth century. The establishment of English-language universities was also one of the most important consequences of colonialism in relation to modernity. Modern education was to provide a fertile basis for the emergence of ideas about freedom and nationhood. Many Indian students began coming to Britain in the earlier part of twentieth century in order to get the British qualifications necessary to join the Indian Civil Service and other professions such as law, engineering and medicine. Indian parents who could afford to do so sent their sons and daughters for higher education in England. Among many who studied in Britain from the last quarter of the nineteenth century were future nationalist leaders like Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi, who obtained his qualifications in law from London, and Jawaharlal Nehru who studied science at Cambridge and law at London.


Another of the Indians who came to Britain at this time – to settle in the southwest – was Dwijadas Datta, who had won an Imperial Government scholarship in Calcutta and spent several years towards the end of the nineteenth century in Cirencester where he studied farming at the Royal College of Agriculture. What was most interesting about Dwijadas Datta was that the context of revolutionary nationalism in Kolkata and Bengal was to induce his son, Sukhsagar Datta, to settle in Bristol well before the First World War. His arrival overlapped with an interest in revolutionary nationalism that had attracted young Indians in Bengal and other places. Sukhsagar arrived at the time when Shyamji Krishnavarma, a man from the Kutch part of Gujarat, had established the Indian Home Rule Society in London to advance the revolutionary cause for the freedom of India. Sukhsagar Datta was a member of this group. When one of its other members, Madan Lal Dhingra, assassinated Sir William Curzon Wylie at the Imperial Institute in London, the authorities closed India House and the police kept a close eye on the activities of students like Sukhsagar Datta (Barot, 1988). This revolutionary form of nationalism began to decline, however, as Mahatma Gandhi’s influence in the Indian Congress Party increased from the 1920s onwards (see Zavos, this volume), resulting in the emergence of his non-violent movement for Indian independence. As the Indian independence movement developed further, Indian nationalists and their British supporters played an important role in conveying to the British public the message of Indian independence. Visram (1986) notes that there were four personalities who attracted much political attention in Britain at this time. They were Dadabhai Naoroji, Mancherjee Bhownaggree, Shahpurji Saklatvala and Krishna Menon. A member of a progressive and prosperous Parsi community in Bombay, Dadabhai Naoroji had come to Britain in 1855 to work for the firm of Cama and Company. He had already worked in India in order to improve the social and political conditions for Indians under British rule, and kept up his political work in Britain. He was the first Indian MP elected to the British Parliament in 1892 as a Liberal candidate. He was critical of British rule. Mancherjee Bhownagree was a Parsi from Bombay. He was elected as a Conservative candidate to the House of Commons in 1885. The third Parsi to become an Indian member of the British Parliament was Shapurji Saklatvala who came to Britain in 1905 and soon joined the Independent Labour Party in 1909, subsequently becoming a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921. Saklatvala believed that achieving better conditions for the British working-class was connected to the struggle for Indian independence. He took these issues to parliament when he was elected to the House of Commons in 1922, and subsequently took every opportunity to bring home to the British public the unfairness and harshness of the British colonial rule in India. Krishna Menon, a South Indian, came to Britain in 1924

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as a student. As a secretary of the India League between 1929 and 1947, Menon actively promoted the cause of Indian independence. After he had qualified as a doctor, Sukhsagar Datta joined the Labour Party and the trade union movement to promote the cause of Indian independence. Datta knew Krishna Menon through his connection to the India League. During their meetings in London and Bristol the two men exchanged their views on how best to mobilise popular support for the independence of India in the UK. Sukhsagar Datta was deeply involved in the Labour Movement and had a unique opportunity to move a National Union of Railwaymen’s resolution at the Labour Party conference in 1944. He asked the party to grant freedom to India. When India became independent on 15 August 1947, Dr Datta and his Indian and British supporters founded the Bristol Indian Association to mark the long-awaited occasion (Barot, 1988). The most distinctive feature of the colonial period for Indians living in Britain was the degree to which they sustained a pan-Indian political consciousness that symbolised for them the freedom of India from British colonial rule, and the unity of Indian people in the international community after the end of the Second World War. As the following section shows, however, the postcolonial Indian migration to Britain was going to bring to the fore a process of identification predicated more on regional differences which tended also to coincide with linguistic, religious and cultural differences within the Indian population. The most striking example of such regional identity developed among the Sikhs in the Punjab and eventually gave rise to a political movement that demanded a separate state of Khalistan for the Sikhs. The impact that this regional, or ‘internal nationalist’ movement had on both Indians and Sikhs was to create at least a temporary divide between those who had usually identified themselves as Indians in Britain.

The postcolonial Indian presence in Britain: ethnicity and nationalism Once India became independent, the ruling Congress Party accepted the demand that state boundaries within the Indian Union coincide as closely as possible with linguistic boundaries. This measure created new states such as Gujarat and Maharashtra which were relatively coterminous with languages spoken within each such unit. However, the Sikh demand for a separate state of Punjab was more complex. As Grewal (1990) has explained, the Sikh political party, Shiromani Akali Dal, and religious organisation, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, campaigned for a separate state of Punjab within the Indian Union to preserve the Punjabi language, Gurumukhi script and Sikh religion, and to exercise greater authority and control over local affairs. This created


inevitable tensions between the centre and the periphery, as well as between Sikhs and Hindus in the local system of stratification (Ballard, 1994: 80–95). Sikhs were land-owners and the Hindus tended to dominate trade, commerce and professions. In 1966, the Punjab Reorganisation Act of the Indian Parliament created the state of Punjab and Haryana, but this measure did not satisfy the aspirations of the Sikhs. The Sikhs felt disenchanted with the central Indian state on the one hand and with the Punjabi Hindus on the other, as the latter were much less in favour of granting a greater share of power and resources to the Sikhs in whatever was going to be the future state of Punjab. Following the Anandpur Sahib resolutions in the 1970s, Akali Dal demanded a real ‘federal shape’ for autonomy and control (Grewal, 1990: 214). The Hindu population sided with the Congress Party which was, unsurprisingly perhaps, committed to the status quo. This ‘multiple polarisation’ affected the Sikh relationship with the centre as well as with the local Hindu population, creating a political context for separatism. Dr Jagjit Singh Chauhan became the President of the National Council of Khalistan in the early 1980s and immediately asked for a separate state for the Sikhs. As the Sikh demands were not met, the Akalis mounted what Grewal calls ‘the righteous war’, or dhram yudh (1990: 222). Sant Bhindranwale joined the Akali dhram yudh waged from inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar. As Grewal has noted, ‘There were bank robberies, thefts of weapons, cutting of telegraph wires, setting fire to railway stations, attacks on policemen, bomb explosions, murders of Nirankaris, murders of public men and attacks on ministers’ (1990: 223). The earlier part of 1984 saw spiralling violence engulfing the civilian population. In early June 1984, the Indian Army used tanks and helicopters against Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his supporters and took over the Golden Temple complex on 6 June 1984; 5000 civilians and about 700 officers and men lost their lives in this military operation. ‘Operation Blue Star’, as it was code-named, horrified Sikhs all over the world, and the destruction of the Akal Takht, the holiest of Sikh shrines, created a deep feeling of resentment against the government of India. On 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi’s Sikh guards attacked her: Beant Singh shot her and Satwant Singh used his sten gun which killed her. Following her murder, Hindu mobs burned Sikhs alive, killed women and children, looted shops, burnt cars, markets and houses while the authorities took a passive view of law and order in Delhi and other places. Operation Blue Star and the military operations in the Punjab countryside had a powerful impact on transnational Sikh communities, in the US and Canada, as well as in Britain (Tatla, 1993, 1999). The following section examines the impact of the Punjab crisis on the British Sikhs with particular reference to its effect on the Indian community in Bristol.

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The Punjab crisis and the British Sikhs According to the 1991 census, Britain’s total population at this time was 54 055 693; 51 086 144 people, or 94 per cent, identified themselves as white. Of the remaining 6 per cent, Indians represented the largest group, numbering 834 574 and constituting 31 per cent of the British ethnic minority population (Ballard and Karla, 1994). Although precise estimates for different social and cultural groups are not recorded by the census, according to Roger Ballard’s estimate, there were 300 000 Sikhs living in Britain, represented predominantly in the major urban areas (Ballard, 1994: 95). Operation Blue Star had a significant effect on the British Sikh population and, as Pritam Singh (1992) has shown, also attracted considerable attention in the British Parliament at the time. However, it is Darshan Singh Tatla’s (1993, 1999) studies which provide us with a fuller narrative, documenting the immediate impact of the Punjab crisis on Sikhs in Britain and its effects over the longer term. Tatla provides information on how Sikh households in Britain reacted to this tragedy, both in anger and deep shock. Tatla notes that on 10 June 1984, 50 000 Sikhs and their supporters marched from Hyde Park in London to the Indian High Commission to lodge their protest against the desecration of their holiest shrine. Collective chants of ‘Khalistan jindabad’ (long live Khalistan) expressed not only the protest but also support for an independent state for the Sikhs. A sentiment for collective mobilisation swept through Sikh communities in Britain and many were prepared to lay down their lives to protect the Sikh panth (the way, or tradition). Tatla refers to Akali Dal and Indian Workers’ Associations which mobilised around the Khalistan issue. Sikhs also formed other organisations, including the Khalistan Council, International Sikh Youth Federation, Babbar Khalsa and Dal Khalsa. Initially these organisations created a sense of common Sikh identification and unity. However, this soon gave way under the constant pressure created by differences of approach, fission and factionalism, interpersonal rivalry, violence and even the occasional loss of life (1993: 96–109). Throughout this time, as Tatla has rightly noted, the Sikh gurdwara (the Sikh temple) maintained important social and political functions as well as their usual religious, ritual and spiritual ones (1993: 96–109). Despite the increasing factionalism, they thus became the principal focus for the collective mobilisation of Sikhs against the Indian Government’s action, and for the formation of Khalistan. The following section examines the effect of this mobilisation on the relative degree of cohesion that had been typical of the Indian population in Bristol since the days of post-Second World War mass-migration and long-term settlement in Bristol.


The Punjab crisis and Bristol Indians The Indian population in Bristol is small. In the 1991 census report, the total population of Bristol was 376 146. There were some 19 281 persons of ‘ethnic minority’ origin living in the city, constituting 5.1 per cent of the total population. Indians, Pakistani and Bangladeshi residents of the city numbered 6047 and formed 1.6 per cent of the total population (Avon County Council Planning Department, 1994). The census data do not provide information on the distribution of specific religious communities. However, rough estimates indicate that among Indians, Sikhs constitute the largest group, followed by Gujarati and Punjabi Hindus, and ‘others’. The largest number of Sikhs come from the Bhattra community and a smaller number from the Ramgarhia and Jat social groups. There are three Sikh gurdwaras: Nanak Prakash Singh Sabha and Sangat Singh Sabha are closely connected with the Bhattra community and two sections within it. The Ramgarhia Board Sikh Temple, as the name indicates, represents the Ramgarhia community. There is also the Sikh Cultural Centre which is concerned with promoting the interests of all the Sikhs in Bristol. As in other centres of Sikh settlement, a chapter of the International Sikh Youth Federation was formed Bristol in 1985 in response to the crisis in Punjab. In order to explain the effect of the Punjab crisis on Bristol Indians, it is important to refer to the Bristol Indian Association as an organisation representative of all Indians. The invasion of the Golden Temple in Amritsar undermined solidarity among Bristol-based Indians and divided the Association between Sikhs and Hindus in the middle and late 1980s. After the Amritsar episode, Sikh anger and hurt was universal. As a young Ramgarhia Sikh student reported to me in an interview at the time: ‘I always felt Britain was not my real home. I thought my real home was in Punjab. Now the Indian Army has invaded the most sacred place of the Sikhs. I can no longer call Punjab my real home where I could feel happy and secure. I am now more homeless than ever before’. Bristol Sikhs mounted a public protest. On 2 July 1984, Rebecca Gooch reported in the Bristol Evening Post that 500 Sikhs had held a protest march at the end of which an effigy of Indira Gandhi had been burned. As the Bristol Sikhs transferred their feeling of resentment towards the action of the government of India to Indians generally, and to Bristol Indians in particular, the crisis created a temporary but strong feeling of estrangement between the Sikhs and the Hindus. The previous sense of unity that had existed within the Indian community had been seriously undermined. The Sikhs felt that they had to resist Hindu oppression just as their forefathers had resisted the Islamic rulers in India, and the idea of this resistance was bound to find local expression. Bristol Sikhs were unhappy that none of the Indian organisations, including the Bristol Indian Association, had come forward to criticise the

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government of India for its attack on the Golden Temple. Some Sikhs felt that Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was justified in allowing the accumulation of arms in the Golden Temple. Hindus argued that it was wrong for Sikhs to arm themselves in a place of worship and that, given the level of violence and murder, the government of Indira Gandhi had no option but to use force. The Sikhs complained that there was little or no expression of sympathy for individual Sikh families who had lost relatives and friends in Delhi and other cities after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The atmosphere was marked by tension, mistrust and rumours. As several Sikhs told me at the time, they believed that the Indian High Commission was using Indian leaders to collect information about individuals who were sympathetic to the Khalistan viewpoint. A particular Hindu Punjabi leader, who had previously enjoyed an excellent relationship with all Sikh groups in Bristol, came under strong suspicion in this respect. It was alleged that the Indian High Commission was distributing video films to Indians in Britain to present the official view of the current situation in the Punjab. The Sikhs who suspected that these films were to be screened in Bristol threatened to take ‘appropriate action’ against the individual concerned. An Indian social psychologist who had come to Bristol to undertake research among the local Indians found that her Sikh respondents were most unwilling to give her any information. I also found that I had to convince some of my respondents that I was in no way connected with the Indian High Commission, even though I had personally known some members of the Sikh community for more than 10 years. In order to monitor the movement of overseas Sikhs to India, the authorities in Delhi introduced a visa system to apply to all visitors to India from 1984 and early 1985. When a visa application for a Bristol Sikh was delayed, it was assumed that the President of the Bristol Indian Association had provided a list of Sikhs to the Indian High Commissioner to ensure that they were not allowed to visit India. Some of these unfounded rumours greatly strained the relationship between the two communities. In this tension-ridden situation, as Barbara Webb reported in the Bristol Evening Post on 13 July 1984, ‘Bristol Sikh Satinder Singh went to set fire to the city’s Hindu temple in revenge for the Indian Army’s attack on the Golden Temple of Amritsar’. Satinder Singh was arrested but released without charge. Though Rebecca Gooch had reported in the Bristol Evening Post of 14 June 1984 that both Hindu and Sikh leaders had united to condemn the violence in India, and to promise to continue their peaceful relationship in Bristol, the crisis in Punjab continued to strain relations between Hindus and Sikhs. The contest over the Bristol Indian Association The Bristol Indian Association felt the full force of the Punjab crisis when it held its annual general meeting in the summer of 1985. The Sikhs and


Hindus were regular and united participants in the activities of the Association. In the days before the Punjab crisis, they would have regarded their religion as being the ‘same’. Operation Blue Star and its aftermath shattered this traditional sense of sharing and togetherness, as the Sikhs began to define an identity categorically separated from Indians and the Hindu tradition. The 1985 annual general meeting of the Bristol Indian Association demonstrated this separation. When members of the Association assembled at St Werburgh’s Community Centre, it was striking for everyone present that a large number of Sikh men and women had decided that the Sikhs should take over the Bristol Indian Association since they constituted the majority Indian population in Bristol. The outgoing Hindu Punjabi leaders of the Association found it almost impossible to conduct the proceedings with any degree of order. The Sikhs unanimously demanded that the elections be conducted by a person of their nomination – a dynamic young Sikh. They also demanded that the elections should be conducted in Punjabi and not in any other Indian language. English had been the formal language of the Association since it came into existence in 1947, and had been viewed as a useful lingua franca. The issue of which language the Association should use clearly highlights the national and regional sensitivities involved here. The Sikhs conducted the entire proceeding in Punjabi. They used their own vernacular to indicate that they were in the majority and that they were going to dominate the Association and thus ensure the exclusion of Hindus – especially the Hindus from Punjab who, it was believed, had acted against the Sikhs in Bristol. The Sikhs displaced the Hindu Punjabis and others who had always taken an active part in running the Association. They were successful in taking over the Bristol Indian Association, leaving only two non-Sikh officebearers, both of whom had supported the Sikh cause. This marked a clear divide between the Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs who had hitherto shared the running of the Association. A number of Sikhs had come to the meeting wearing the saffron-coloured turban, symbolising martyrdom. There were collective slogans of victory and jubilation. Although the Indians in general and Hindus in particular had oppressed the Sikhs and caused them so much injustice at a national level in India, at the local level in Bristol the Sikhs were able to enjoy a symbolic euphoria of victory, and to counter Indian dominance in the Punjab by Sikh dominance of the Bristol Indian Association in Bristol. The birth of the Avon Indian Council Just as the Sikhs and Hindus were alienated from each other in Punjab, a similar but perhaps less severe pattern of dissociation marked the contact between them and other Indians in Bristol after the Khalistan episode. The

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Sikhs had won a victory of sorts against Indians by taking over their Association. Indians withdrew from the Association as they knew that de facto it had become a forum for the Sikhs. In 1988–89 a group calling itself Friends of the Indian Community organised a social function for a new and separate Indian association to be called the Avon Indian Council. In 1989, leaders of the Avon Indian Council invited Professor Bhikhu Parekh of Hull University to inaugurate the new organisation in the presence of many Indian men, women and children. At first sight it may seem that the Indian population had divided itself between Sikhs and non-Sikhs as a consequence of the events in Amritsar in 1984. While this feeling of divide was not without some social and political basis, the boundary between the Avon Indian Council and the Bristol Indian Association was by no means absolute. Several individuals, including Sikhs, held office in both the Avon Indian Council and the Bristol Indian Association. Although the divide between the Sikhs and Indians had not entirely ended, it was obvious from the distribution of individuals in the two separate organisations that the feeling of animosity and opposition which had marked the Sikh reaction to the Hindus in 1984 and 1985 had begun to decline from 1989 onwards.

Conclusion This chapter has explored a number of related themes by examining the colonial context of Indian independence, particularly in relation to those Indians who visited and lived in Britain before India became an independent nation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, revolutionary ideas of armed struggle had appealed to young Indians. However, strict measures against those who were professing a violent overthrow of British rule combined with the emergence of the Gandhian politics of non-violence may have limited the support for these revolutionary movements. Gandhian politics of ahimsa (non-violence) and satyagraha (steadfastness in truth) became more influential and eventually paved the way for Indian independence. The nationalist struggle against British rule had affected a small community of middle-class Indians who lived in Britain. Their primary focus of selfidentification was their shared nationality as Indians rather than their more particular identities as defined by their village, caste, religion, language and the regional culture of South Asia. Individuals like Krishna Menon in London, and Sukhsagar Datta in Bristol, gave full expression to this pan-Indian theme of modernity, nationalism and national identity. However, after the Second World War, and especially during the postcolonial period, Indians coming to Britain were from a variety of rural and urban backgrounds. Once Indian independence had been won, the need for national solidarity in opposition to British rule became redundant. The decolonisation of India and Pakistan brought into focus for self-identification


the region one came from and the community of language, culture and religion that one belonged to, both in South Asia and in transnational South Asian communities. The movement for the redrawing of the boundaries of Indian states, largely following the boundaries of languages, had spurred the Sikhs to make demands for a more autonomous state that would satisfy their particular cultural and political goals. However, these aspirations were frustrated by the impasse between the Akali Dal and the Indian Congress Party, and the conflict between the centre and the periphery, as well as between Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab and Haryana. The emergence of separatism in Punjab created a context for armed conflict in which thousands lost their lives. The events surrounding Amritsar’s Golden Temple, and the subsequent assassination of Indira Gandhi, had a powerful impact on Sikhs and Indians all over the world. In examining here the transnational Sikh communities in Britain, it is evident that the struggle for Khalistan reproduced animosity between Sikhs and other (particularly Hindu) Indians in Britain. Separation between Sikhs and other Indians provides a micro-sociological narrative of the way in which communities remain bounded to their ‘national’ and/or ‘regional’ homeland. What happens in real or imagined homelands has far-reaching consequences for transnational communities, as the experience of earlier Indian nationalists and Sikhs from Punjab also illustrates. Although Punjabis, be they Sikhs or Hindus, now inhabit many different parts of the world, from Hong Kong to Canada and California, the relationship they have with their religion and the link it defines with their territorial homeland as Sikhs or Hindus remains for many a vital part of their religious identity. In the Punjab, Shiromani Akali Dal expressed the aspirations of this identity in their demand for greater control over both material and non-material resources of the Sikhs. What is most significant is that this identity is not defined in isolation. It is defined in response to the tensions between the centre and the periphery as well as between Sikhs and Hindus – the latter, although resident in Punjab, having been identified with the central power of the state through the Congress Party as well as through various Hindu political and cultural organisations. There is a sense in which the conflict between the centre and the periphery thus becomes a struggle for material and non-material resources between Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab. In the absence of a satisfactory political settlement, the conflict takes on a totalising character and engulfs the communities in violence. As the historical and ethnographic evidence presented in this chapter reveals, the military action against the Sikhs in Amritsar’s Golden Temple, followed by the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the murders of thousands of Sikhs, and the destruction of their property, had a decisive effect on the relationship between the Sikhs and the Hindus, both in India and elsewhere. The movement for an independent and sovereign state of Khalistan received a powerful impetus from these events and fired the imagination of those Sikhs who

Rohit Barot 173

became committed to a Sikh nation – again, irrespective, it seems, of where they were actually living at the time. Operation Blue Star thus had a radical effect on the self-consciousness of the Sikhs, regionally, nationally and transnationally. In all these contexts, many Sikhs expressed their opposition both to the central state as well as towards the Hindus who dominate it. Although the devotional Hinduism of North India is inseparable from the development of Sikhism, after the military action at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, many Sikhs have sought to maintain a distance from the Hindu context of Punjab society in order to foster an exclusive Sikh identity. Although it may be possible and even desirable to argue for a greater sense of continuity between Hindus and Sikhs, the negative effects of the conflict between the Indian state and supporters of Khalistan cannot be underestimated in transnational Indian communities. Coupled with the demand for a separate state of Khalistan, the sense of persecution which the Sikhs experienced brought about the revitalisation of the ‘Sikh way’, the panth, and a sharper perception of religious difference once ‘the Indians’ were defined as oppressors. The Punjab crisis influenced the relationship between the communities at both the organisational level as well as at personal and individual levels. At an organisational level, as in Bristol, it may have undermined the traditional solidarity of Indian groups. Certainly the crisis has revived traditional Sikh values and changed the meaning of what it is to be a Sikh, both in modern India and in Britain. In my personal experience, for many, to be a Sikh had become an exclusive identity which has been conceptualised increasingly in non-Hindu Sikh terms. Subsequent changes which influence the Sikh community, and its relationship with Indians and Hindus in India and Britain, will thus depend more and more upon Indian and Sikh politicians and their ability to search for a peaceful political solution to ensure that the Sikhs can fulfil their legitimate aspirations for autonomy and self-determination.

Notes 1. Of course, one of the most famous Indians, who became known all over the world, started his career as a lawyer in South Africa. He was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, later to become Mahatma Gandhi. At the end of the nineteenth century, the South African Government had started taking measures which were discriminatory towards Indians. Gandhi had mounted a non-violent campaign against these measures and was subsequently to use his South African political experience in India in the 1920s and 1930s as a basis for the pan-Indian independence movement. 2. The memory of Raja Rammohan Roy is now acknowledged in the public domain in Bristol with the installation of his life-size bronze statue in 1997 in front of Bristol Cathedral.


References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn (London: Verso). Avon County Council Planning Department (1994) 1991 Census Characteristics of the Minority Ethnic Group Population in Bristol (Bristol: Avon County Council Public Relations and Publicity). Ballard, R. (1994) Desh Pardesh: the South Asian Presence in Britain (London: Hurst and Company). —— and Karla, V. (1994) Ethnic Dimensions of the 1991 Census: a Preliminary Report (Manchester: The University of Manchester). Barot, R. (1988) Bristol and the Indian Independence Movement (Bristol: University of Bristol Historical Association). Baumann, M. (1995) Conceptualising diaspora: the preservation of religious identity in foreign parts, exemplified by Hindu communities outside India, Temenos 31: 19–35 (available on the Internet). Billig M. (1995) Banal Nationalism (London: Sage). Clarke, C., Peach, C. and Vertovec, S. (1990) South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cohen R. (1997) Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: UCL Press). Dotson, F. and Dotson, L. (1968) The Indian Minority of Zambia, Rhodesia and Malawi (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books). Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Ghai D. and Ghai, Y. (eds) (1970) Portrait of a Minority: Asians in East Africa (Nairobi: Oxford University Press). Greenfeld, L. (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Grewal, J. (1990) The New Cambridge History of India: the Sikhs of the Punjab (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hall, J. (ed.) (1998) The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hobsbawm E. and Ranger T. (1983) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kuper, H. (1974) Indian People in Natal (Connecticut: Greenwood Place Publishers). Mangat, J. (1969) A History of the Asian in East Africa (London: Oxford University Press). Morris, H. (1968) The Indians in Uganda (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicholson). Portes, A. (1999) Conclusion: towards a new world – the origins and effects of transnational activities, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, 463–77. Singh, P. (1992) Economic interests and human rights in Indo-British Relations: House of Commons Debate on Punjab, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXVII, No. 13: 631–36. Spear, P. (1978) The Oxford History of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press). Tatla, D. (1993) The Punjab crisis and Sikh mobilisation in Britain, in R. Barot (ed.) Religion and Ethnicity: Minorities and Social Change in the Metropolis (Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House), pp. 98–109 Tatla, D. (1999) The Sikh Diaspora: the Search for Statehood (London: UCL Press). Tinker, H. (1974) A New System of Slavery: the Export of Indian Labour Overseas (1830–1920) (London: Oxford University Press).

Rohit Barot 175 —— (1976) Separate and Unequal: India and the Indians in the British Commonwealth (1920–1950) (London: C. Hurst and Company). —— (1977) The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, (London: Oxford University Press). Vertovec S. (1999) Conceiving and researching transnationalism, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22: 447–61. Visram, R. (1986) Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain (1700–1947) (London: Pluto Press).

8 Identity in an Ethnically Bifurcated State: Trinidad and Tobago Ralph R. Premdas

In a multiethnic state, identity formation and its manifestations assume a peculiar shape, simultaneously reflecting and reinforcing contradictory ethnocultural forces. Identities that are formed within a state that is relatively integrated by a body of shared values tend to pass through phases and display a shape different from those that evolve within a multicommunal milieu. Especially where intersectional relations have been inflamed, sustained by distrust and fear, it seems likely that this environment will engender peculiar identity and personality types. The same person is caught up in two or more social structures driven by different motivations. At one level, involving the home and family, a person is secure within a family and community, but at another level extending beyond that intimate group, the same person encounters a wider and more complex national society constituted of two or multiple rival value-systems (see also Mariappan, this volume). One level of identity may not dovetail into the others so that what is learned in the confines of a small locality often demands radical adjustment at a turn of the corner. From a relatively secure single-value order, the individual, in a wider context, faces conflicting demands. The claims on behaviour are caught up in multiple and contradictory currents, not only generated from the family and community to the national domestic polyethnic system, but extending beyond the boundaries of the state into regional, international and ecumenical contexts. In an era of spatial and temporal simultaneity, these multiple contexts converge and require great skill in identity management for successful survival. In the management of identities, the individual must consciously or unconsciously calculate and negotiate at all levels of encounter what identity choices offer maximum utility in security, resources, recognition, influence, membership in a symbolic community, and in avoiding isolation, deprivation, pain and punishment. As contestation, individual identity is calculating and when cast within the context of conflicting ethnocultural communities, the struggle requires reconciliation of rational individual instrumental needs with 176

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irrational communal claims. The former is often negated by the latter in conditions of stress and crisis. Collective identity practices in polyethnic systems are often about symbolic gains and losses as much as about material gains and gratifications in ongoing small-scale (interpersonal) and societal (political) contests with other communities. This chapter looks at how identities are formed and expressed in a multiethnic context and provides an analytic topology that shows how these are engaged at different sites of encounter and contestation, pointing to rival as well as reinforcing forces at play. The country which serves as the case history for this exercise is Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. The chapter begins a more detailed discourse of identity formation and provides, at the outset, the topology of identities in organising and interpreting the materials in the case.

The dialectics of ethnicity and identity Ethnicity may be defined as collective group consciousness that imparts a sense of belonging derived from membership in a community, bound putatively by common descent and culture. Among many other groups in which one may participate and simultaneously share multiple identities, the ethnic group is distinguished as a special sort of community, comprehensive in scope and compelling in allegiance, that confers gratification attending to an inner demand of a deeply embedded need for meaning and belonging (Gardels, 1991). Ethnic membership serves as a badge of identity. ‘Identity needs’ are realised institutionally in an extended kinship network (van den Berghe, 1981; Horowitz, 1985). Membership in an ethnocultural community is a psychological attachment with compelling powers over individual choice. This is quite unlike membership in a class which is socioeconomically determined and may incorporate persons who are widely dispersed and from many ethnic communities, bearing different values and speaking different languages. Apart from its symbolic role in conferring individual and collective gratification, ethnic identity serves as a ‘refuge’ and a buffer against uncertainty and adversity. In this regard, the so-called ‘primordial’ subjective link becomes a resource that is mobilised to serve instrumental needs in contact and competition with other groups (Horowitz, 1985: 131). Some analysts argue that this link is situationally invented (see, for example, Cohen, 1974; Despres, 1975; Premdas, 1989), lacking any fixed essence, serving as contrived rational responses, easily malleable, altering its bases of attachment, displaying many faces in the quest to adapt to new needs and circumstances (Anderson, 1991; Young, 1993). Hence, ethnic behaviour is described as being daily worked out and negotiated, defined and redefined (see Berger and Luckman, 1967; Roosens, 1989; Vail, 1989: Kondo, 1990). This view is a corrective to a conceptualisation of ethnic groups and their ‘labels’ as


fixed entities. But it is also a view which needs to be reconciled with the way in which – in some contexts – ethnic identities may take on a very stark oppositional quality. Ethnic identity is not necessarily always evident and may in fact be dormant and seemingly non-existent in normal and peaceful conditions. Its latency attests to its relational character, emerging as a response to the ethnic ‘other’. The ethnic group defines itself in a process of differentiation from others (Barth, 1969), ineluctably cast in ‘we–they’ antipathetic relationships. To belong at once entails to be included in a community and to be separated and differentiated from another or several. Identity formation and sustenance is relational, often oppositional and conflictual. This is not to suggest that these socially constructed boundaries and identities – which are usually manifested by cultural symbolic ‘gatekeepers’ – are closed systems. Rather, as Eriksen has noted, they are open and are submitted to ‘a continuous flow of information, interaction, exchange’ so that identities are always being constructed and reconstructed (1993: 39). In multiethnic societies, in conditions of peace and stability, exchange and interaction among the various communities may imperceptibly recast identities. This is not to argue that boundaries disappear and groups become assimilated, for intergroup differences are often maintained in subtle and symbolic ways (see, for example, LeVine and Campbell, 1972: 81–113). It is the case, however, that in many multiethnic milieux, more similarities in cultural practices may emerge among members of rival communities than will be easily admitted, even as they struggle in bitter conflict and proclaim their distinctive particularities.

Trinidad and Tobago: an introductory portrait The twin-island state of Trinidad and Tobago (hereafter, Trinidad), first colonised by the Spaniards in 1498 until it fell under British control in 1797, became independent in 1962. Plantation production of coffee, cocoa, cotton, and subsequently sugar led to the implanting of an immigrant multiethnic population. Mass labour recruitment came initially from African servitude and when slavery was abolished in 1833, the colonists procured indentured labourers from Europe, India and China. The vast majority, some 144 000, were Indians, most choosing to remain permanently in the colony after their indentureship expired, and becoming mainly rural dwellers. Most Africans eventually migrated to the urban areas where they evolved as a skilled and semi-skilled proletariat and adapted to English ways. They developed a contempt for the Indians who had willingly submitted themselves to the degrading regimen of the plantation. Indians in turn reciprocated by deprecating the Africans for readily accepting and acculturating to the ways of the oppressor. Herein lay the origins of IndianAfrican antipathy (see below).


Thus, with the arrival of Europeans, Africans, Indians and Chinese, along with the inevitable addition of a significant group of ‘mixed races’, a plural society was formed in Trinidad. The segmented ethnic structure was marked by multiple coinciding cleavages expressed in separate patterns of occupation, residence, language, religion and cultural practices. While some overlapping and sharing did occur, intercommunal rivalry between Africans (locally called ‘Creoles’) and Asian Indians (called Indians) emerged as the dominant feature in interethnic relations in the state. While sugar production is relatively old, petroleum was discovered at the turn of the twentieth century and slowly emerged as the dominant primary-producing export product, eclipsing sugar, coffee and cocoa. In a peculiar twist of events that can happen only in a plural society, ethnic identity and the economy became enmeshed: sugar production came to be associated with Indians, oil with Creoles, and big multinational business corporations with Europeans (locally called ‘French Creoles’). In the twentieth century, the Trinidad economy attained new levels of complexity, registered especially in the development of a large public sector employing about 60 000 public servants, about 70 per cent of whom were Creoles and ‘mixed races’. Indians did not remain with sugar even though most sugar workers and planters are still Indians. Most Indians have gravitated into small businesses, trades, teaching and the professions. When mass representation and a party system became a part of democratic politics after centuries of colonial rule, the fragmented social structure shaped political orientation and partisan preference. Ethnically based parties emerged and exacerbated communal tensions. In the 1950s, two major parties, the People’s National Movement (PNM) and the Democratic Labor Party, which in the contemporary political scene became the United National Congress (UNC), were organised mainly around the African and Indian communities respectively. Led by Eric Williams, the PNM governed the state for three decades. In 1995, the Indian-based UNC, in coalition with a minor party, won power under Basdeo Panday. During the long Table 1: Population and ethnic groups in Trinidad and Tobago African Indian Chinese Syrian/Lebanese White Mixed Others Total

444,804 452,709 4322 936 7302 207,280 25,773 1,143,126

Source: 1990 Census: Trinidad and Tobago Statistical Office.

– – – – – – – –

38.91% 39.60% 0.38% 0.08% 0.64% 18.13% 2.35% 100.00%


period of PNM rule, the Indian community bitterly complained about ethnic discrimination. Under the new Indian-dominated UNC dispensation, similar grievances were aired by Africans. Below the surface of Trinidad’s political peace exists an antagonistic ethnic monster often threatening to destabilise the state (see also Premdas, 1992). Below the veneer of public displays of intercommunal camaraderie lurks a sense of deep ethnically rooted malaise.

A topology of Trinidadian identities Conceptually, one can conceive a Trinidadian identity as constituted around many levels of expression. A level may in some circumstances overlap with another and in other instances be exclusive (cf. Mariappan, this volume). Each has its own base and behavioural structure and in its own way fulfils some particular need, symbolic and instrumental. Each identity establishes a social boundary and asserts a claim. Type I: ethnonational or ethnolocal identity The ethnonational or ethnolocal identity occurs in sub-state localities. The characteristic cluster of attachments tends to be partly territorial, but regardless of spatial expression it includes patterns of values and practices which impart a special and unique quality to life. This sort of localism is often associated with closely knit social systems that have mechanisms of closure to outsiders (Mead, 1934: 310). Essentially, the local identity is caught in a network of interpersonal primary and secondary face-to-face relations in the family, neighbourhood and community (cf. ‘Microethnicity’ in Mariappan, this volume, pp. 216–17) that comprehend and promote the totality of a unified consciousness that is relatively free from internal challenges and dissonance. Type II: national identity The national identity, where it exists, constitutes the highest attachment of group loyalty, superseding rival claims of locality and/or overseas community. It is important to underscore the point that a national identity is not constituted of persons who are related on the basis of face-to face interpersonal familiarity. As Benedict Anderson (1991) has pointed out, the emergence of a collective national sentiment owes its existence to available means of mass communications that made it possible to form a myth of common descent and community. For this type of identity to flourish it needs to override claims issuing from racial, cultural, language, locational and religious divisions. The internal pluralism of Trinidad militates against the forging of a single uncontested national identity. As we shall see, the claim of a national identity is a major source of strife in Trinidad.


Type III: regional identity Beyond the borders of the state, Trinidadians derive a wider sense of attachment to several institutions in the British Caribbean region. Among these are a university system, an ostensibly unified West Indian cricket team, and a common market in CARICOM. Type IV: trans-Caribbean Trinidadian identity This transnational identity occurs outside the Caribbean in all those places where peoples of Trinidadian origin reside. It is constructed from memories of assigned Trinidadian values, ecology and history. This identity, which is maintained in the peculiar circumstance of the overseas environment, is likely to be deficient in information about Trinidad with each succeeding generation. What is crucial to the retention of a Trinidadian identity in this situation is that it constitutes a new identity which combines myths of the Trinidadian homeland with the new facts and experiences of the diaspora (cf. Barot, this volume). It is in the diaspora that a trans-Trinidadian identity is invented, increasingly forgetful of the original environment and giving life to a new collectivity that embraces romantic fantasies of the island. But it is diluted and compromised by the claims of new identities emanating from their new home environment in the industrial countries. It is in this respect a divided identity, attached to many loyalties and dwelling in several locations simultaneously. In a global perspective of mass migration, it is not an unusual identity. It is a quest for community in a fragmented and fractured world.

Formation of the ethnolocal identity The construction of the ethnolocal identity for both the Indian and African and ‘mixed race’ Creole occurs within the arenas of the nuclear family, the extended relationships of kin and neighbourhood networks, and elementary and secondary schools. Within this matrix of institutions, both Indians and Africans are not isolated from each other. They learn very early from adults and friends of the existence and imputed character of ‘the other’ and easily absorb the prejudices in the stereotypes that these communities share. To the African, the Indian is not to be trusted. Selfish, the Indian is seen to be overly preoccupied with the pursuit of business goals and family interests in a clannish way that undermines public and community participation and obligations. Politically, Indians are portrayed as intent on capturing the government so as to control public service jobs that are deemed the historical prerogative of Africans. Indian ‘encroachment’, therefore, has to be vigilantly monitored and contained. Culturally, Indian heritage is denigrated as ‘coolie culture’, backward and unenlightened as compared with the Creolised British norms and language acquired


by the African. Indians are judged as uncouth and uncultured, a view derived from their historical rural isolation. It is imagined that they display this by the measure of poor grammar, table manners and civic etiquette. Together, it is a totalising stereotype in the belittling and demonising of the Indian who, even after nearly one hundred and fifty years in Trinidad, is deemed less than a full member of the society without legitimate rights in the political sphere (cf. Mariappan, this volume). The Indian reciprocates in degrading the African, incorporating a combined cluster of biological, social and economic traits in their own counterperceptual apparatus. To the Indian, the African is lazy, undisciplined, brutal, spendthrift, happy-go-lucky, promiscuous and thieving. As against the Indian home, the African is seen as ill-kept and unkempt. While the Indian woman is celebrated as a paragon of a housemaker and dedicated sacrificial wife, the African woman is deemed unruly and irresponsible. Indian men are seen as reliable breadwinners while African men are condemned as rootless and irresponsible, especially in their perceived promiscuity which leaves in its wake weak families run by single mothers. Africans are perceived as spendthrift, inclined to luxury and ostentation, while the Indian, deemed miserly by the African, views his habits of saving as sacrifice. Africans are seen as easy to incite to violence and readily steal to fulfil a need. In small communities and neighbourhoods – most Africans and Indians live in separate villages and town wards – these stereotypical images are relentlessly inscribed in the behaviour of the young long before the accuracy – or, rather, inaccuracy – of the claims can be experienced and verified. They act as an ideological map in creating, discerning, interpreting and reaffirming the boundaries between the rival communities. This is not to suggest that objectively the two groups lack a set of shared social and cultural traits but, rather, that they exaggerate their differences. In the postindependence period of intensified interethnic competition and conflict, these dichotomous perceptions, which establish veritable communal solitudes, are enacted in the choices of close friendships and membership in voluntary associations. Many of the interethnic prejudices have been fostered by the phenomenon of separation by space in the creation of ethnoregional enclaves in Trinidad since colonial times. The pattern of residence of the major ethnic communities has accentuated cultural pluralism. Colin Clarke identified six predominant ethnoregions in Trinidad and Tobago, and his recent survey concluded that: ‘Post-independence decolonisation [1960–80] did not bring about desegregation at the national scale. Indeed, segregation increased between whites, browns, and blacks, decreased between Hindus, Muslims, and Christian Indians, but increased between whites and blacks on the one hand and Hindus on the other’ (1993: 121). The rapid modernisation and industrialisation of Trinidad did not alter the ethnic pattern of residence: Black penetration of the sugar belt through suburban sprawl from Port of


Spain remained a minor phenomenon of little significance nationally. Young educated Hindus stayed in their parents’ villages and commuted to white-collar jobs in the towns. The predominant pattern of ethnic residence has been broken at many points creating ethno spatial mixes in many towns and villages and some intermarriages. However, this overlap has not evolved into a comprehensive set of shared cultural values and community cohesion. As Clarke concludes, ‘high segregation and low exogamy certainly characterise Indians and therefore Indian-Creole relations at the nation scale’ (1993: 120). Indian-African rivalry has served to reinforce and increase segmentation and prejudices through the agency of the schools and religious practices. It is in the schools, which tend to be predominantly African or Indian with similar lopsided ethnic ratios in teachers, that these prejudices are reinforced. Eric Williams, the first prime minister of independent Trinidad and Tobago, had proposed that ‘the educational system be the midwife of the emerging social order’ (1950: 10). This argument arose out of the fact that up to the period of independence Trinidad and Tobago had evolved, from colonial practices, a school system that was practically segregated into Hindu, Muslim and Christian schools with public schools also preponderantly monoethnic (see Tewarie, 1984). Towards the end of the twentieth century, the pattern of separatism, with the accompanying effects on interethnic prejudices, remained. A research project that examined IndianAfrican relations in one typical school concluded: …it has been espoused in texts, and hailed by intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike, that education and educational institutions provide a forum for the eradication of racism. Based on our experience as teachers and on the research we have conducted, we conclude that this is fallacy. In fact, schools are an ideal place to observe racist behavior and attitudes, both among teachers and students as well as between students and teachers. (Mathison and Carew, 1994: 44) In the area of religion, these adversarial images are further anointed and legitimised. Indians tend to be Hindus and Muslims, while Africans are for the most part Christians. There is some conversion of Hindus and Muslims to Christianity, creating intercommunal confessional and ecclesial memberships, to be sure. However, even where a number of Indians have become Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians, and some have become Presbyterians, these congregations have tended to be preponderantly Indian. The same is true with those Africans who are Muslim converts. Confessional and ecclesial coincidence with ethnic identity tends to be the norm and this, in turn, contributes to the shaping of the stereotypes. Reverend Idris Hamid (1971) concluded that the churches had become a breeding ground of ethnic antipathy and outright racism (see also Premdas, 1996a).


National identity and sites of contestation The national arena is the most tempestuous sphere, where the identity of Trinidadians is often visibly articulated as a divided self. This section will examine three sites of contestation which demonstrate how this occurs: elections, employment in the civil service, and culture. Elections and political campaigns In a society where interethnic suspicion is widespread and communal identity and power are symbolically interwoven and institutionalised in organised party politics, control of the government has always been seen as vital to the survival and well-being of each community. In Trinidad, no consensus for the sharing of power between the two dominant groups exists; rather, the political system built on the competitive parliamentary system is an adversarial arena for the contestation of power through elections. In a society where rivalry between the two main ethnic communities permeates every institution, and is played out in subtle symbolic ways every day in daily discourse over public policy, a regime shift in power through elections is a source of immense threat. Communal identities are at stake, for in electoral defeat the vanquished may witness the marginalisation of its way of life. Hence, the ascension to power by an Indian prime minister for the first time in 1995 carried with it significant security and status implications for the African and ‘mixed race’ communities in particular. Elections, then, constitute a significant site which demonstrates how interethnic relations between Africans and Indians are played out with consequences for identity definition. In Trinidad, as in some other multiethnic states, general elections tend to be organised around communally based parties. This has been Trinidad’s experience since 1961, when a two-party system became institutionalised around the Afro-Trinidadian and Indo-Trinidadian communities (see above), which together constitute over 80 per cent of the country’s population. Because of the stakes involved, election campaign periods have tended to elicit negative ethnic stereotypes and powerful solidarity responses that strain cross-communal friendships and assert identity claims (see Premdas and Ragoonauth, 1998). Only one section at a time tends to identify with the victorious party in government. In the absence of a power-sharing arrangement, which has been rare in Trinidad, the out-section is inevitably alienated (for a discussion of the role of elections in multiethnic states, see Milne, 1972; Premdas, 1972). However, the post-election climate usually witnesses a thawing out of communal tension, with boundaries of identity regaining some of their resilience and fluidity, expressed in numerous acts of overt intersectional amity and cooperation at workplaces, schools and recreational sites.


In the 1961 general elections in Trinidad, communal strife had reached unprecedented proportions with the African-based PNM charged with organised hooliganism and the Indian-based DLP with the threat of using arms. After 1961, ethnic tensions abated but were not fully restrained as a mobiliser of voters in the elections that followed 1961. It tended to be subterranean and subtle but always present. Since 1961, a modus operandi had evolved to limit the expression of ethnic claims and racial accusations publicly. In its place, a new vocabulary and symbolism had evolved that disguised the ethnic discourse in a contrived theatre of overt tolerance. In the 1991 election campaign, the vocabulary of ethnic appeals, which attempted to parade in disguise, took many forms but fooled no one. Panday of the UNC spoke of ‘alienation’ as one of his foremost issues, euphemistically referring to alleged ethnic discrimination by the PNM and the NAR governments against East Indians. Manning of the PNM spoke of the need for a ‘caring’ regime, referring to the alleged disproportionate share of adversity that ‘Black voters experience’. The verbal disguises and other symbolisms assumed many forms and variations. Sometimes they were open, such as the effort of each party to parade an ethnically mixed gallery of candidates, and to discuss issues that addressed the needs of all communal sections. Panday, for instance, representing Indians mainly, vigorously advocated programmes of economic amelioration to assist urban Blacks. Manning pointed to a ‘new’ PNM. The verbal foliage that offered a front for interethnic sensitivity and equity served as an important ingredient in instilling cross-communal camaraderie among party workers on the campaign trail. Everywhere no effort was spared to show East Indians and Africans sharing campaign platforms and saying amicable, innocuous things about national unity. All of this overt interethnic symbolism and ceremony, however, was belied by a different behaviour at the grassroots level of the election campaign. The very fact that the PNM and UNC canvassers tended to carry a map of supporters and non-supporters defined in ethnic terms, which in turn governed their canvassing strategies, attested to the salience of ethnic identity in the mobilisation of electoral support. This resulted in a campaign structure that was basically communalist. Indian canvassers for the UNC were chosen to canvass in Indian homes and neighbourhoods in the same way as African canvassers for African areas and homes. Apart from a pragmatism that informed such selectivity, there was also fear of breaching territorial codes of personal safety. The voter who breached these principles of solidarity openly risked ostracism, even violence. This sort of collective communal pressure served not only to reinforce communal solidarity but, in the long run, perpetuated ethnic division as the normal state of affairs in which to live, love and die in Trinidad.


Employment in the public bureaucracy Another major site of persistent controversy affecting the identity of Indians and Africans has occurred in public employment, especially in the public service – the state enterprises, the teaching profession and the municipalities. Following independence, the public bureaucracy emerged as the largest employer in the state, staffed with a preponderance of Africans and ‘mixed races’. This pattern had consolidated and eventually became entrenched during the thirty years of continuous PNM rule. While, in part, this ethnic imbalance in public employment stemmed from deliberate partisan practice, it was also due to historical factors. After slavery was abolished in 1833, Africans abandoned the plantations, seeking a new existence mainly in urban areas where they took advantage of English schooling, acquired skilled jobs, and acceded to openings in the emergent official bureaucratic sector. This inevitably led in the long run to African and ‘mixed race’ overrepresentation and concentration in the public service, especially since Indians stayed away from the English schools to preserve their culture and protect their religion. However, by the middle of the twentieth century Indians embarked on building their own schools and acquiring an English education, and sought access to jobs in the public bureaucracy. Therein resided, over subsequent years, a salient source of the ensuing African-Indian competition and malaise. Africans and ‘mixed races’ came to regard the public bureaucracy as their own preserve and identified Indians as the main threat. By 1988, for example, some 51.8 per cent of applicants into the clerical grades of the public service were Indians. Afro-Trinidadian scholar Selwyn Ryan underscores this phenomenon when he observes: ‘Indians were seen as being less than congenial as co-workers and social partners and were not generally welcomed in what was deemed the fortress of Creole bureaucratic power’ (1994: 6). Much of the apprehension of Africans and the ‘mixed races’ emanated from stereotypes they had acquired of Indians habits (see above). As the Ethnicity and Employment Practices Report notes, for example, in relation to the public sector: ‘these feelings of insecurity stem from the perception – nay, belief – that once an Indo-Trinidadian is put into a position of authority, he/she will naturally automatically, instinctively, without really thinking about it and not necessarily with any malicious intent, favour his/her own kind in all matters. This perception is very strong, and can be discerned very widely among Afro-Trinidadian public servants’ (1994: 25). In short, throughout its long tenure from 1956 to 1986, the PNM oversaw the recruitment of a public service which reflected by the end of this period undisputed overrepresentation of Africans and ‘mixed races’ (see Table 2). The struggle over public employment has become a constant source of dispute and anxiety. It has led Indians to demand the appointment of an Equal Opportunities Commission – a demand that has, in turn, been stoutly resisted by the PNM regime. What this entailed was that the issue became a

Ralph R. Premdas 187 Table 2: Ethnic allocations in the public service – 1990 Ethnic group

% of the public service

African Mixed Indian

50.01 14.86 34.18

% of population 38.91 18.13 39.60

Source: Central Statistical Office, 1990.

perennial preoccupation of politics in Trinidad and became a matter of communal identity. The public service served as a metaphor for the African while the central sugar plains of Caroni served the same for Indians. Africans and ‘mixed races’ feel justified in controlling the public service since Indians similarly predominate in the private and agricultural sectors. The contest is now a daily affair as Africans and Indians frequently come into contact with each other at their ethnically evocative workplaces. The public service employment pattern serves as a front line of interethnic contest. Cultural politics A major site of African-Indian contestation has occurred in the realm of culture, in particular in the sphere of musical forms (Premdas, 1999). The African community has evolved a unique cluster of self-defining symbols and narratives around the steelpan, calypso and carnival that has imparted pride and drawn much well-deserved international approbation. Keith Warner has underscored the point that ‘calypso is seen by the Trinidad and Tobago public as first and foremost a “Black thing”’ (1993: 227). Especially in the post-independence period of political Black hegemony, these musical and festive forms served to symbolise and assert African dignity and pre-eminence. The mode of expression which was characteristic of the calypso form was to be raucously and irreverently critical and funny, especially on current and controversial issues of the day. To some analysts, apart from their hilarity and poetic license, the calypso lyrics contained a more serious dimension in penetrative diagnosis and prognosis of Trinidad society’s ailments and issues. The calypsonian was therefore only a messenger and not an advocate. The ethnoracial divide was a daily experience which easily invited commentary from calypsonians (Rohlehr, 1990). At times, the calypsonian took aim at his or her own cultural community. However, calypso originally emerged as a form of counter-cultural commentary directed at European dominance and oppression. After selfgovernment was attained and Indian-African rivalry intensified, it quickly became implicated in the power struggle between Africans and Indians for control of the state. Trinidad Indians had not as yet developed a musical form and festive events on the scale of carnival that afforded an opportunity to portray overtly and publicly the African in negative images. This would, however, come later in the late 1980s and 1990s.


Celebratory rivalry, while it may provide immediate cathartic release and ritualised therapy, also serves as a new site for accentuating differences, supplying a legitimate but destructive outlet for an otherwise suppressed subliminal wrath against the ‘other’, expressed through symbols, rituals, and festivals. They keep alight deep-seated prejudices, invoke invidious comparisons, compound them into a new volatile mix, and in the end add fuel to the resentments that already divide the society (Premdas, 1997a and b). The following section looks first at the role of calypso in accentuating the African-Indian conflict. First elected to power in 1956, the PNM under Eric Williams established one year later a Carnival Committee. The committee was mandated to develop this cultural form and over the years was bestowed with increased funding from the public purse. It successfully reinforced at the cultural level the hegemony of Africans and ‘mixed races’ over other communities in the social practices called ‘Creole culture’, which privileged its carriers at all levels of state activity. ‘Creole culture’ was deemed by one calypsonian as a ‘civilisation’ which was fashioned into a legitimating complex of behaviour ‘on the basis approved by the urban mainly Afro-Creoles themselves’ (Rohlehr, 1990: 498). Many Indians who sought advancement found it necessary to acculturate to these Afrocentric Creole practices which became the measure of acceptable behaviour, superseding colonial English norms. In the same way as Africans developed an inferiority complex and a sense of self-contempt for their own values in relation to European colonial domination, Indians experienced the same impact vis-à-vis the hegemony of the ascendant African community. Instead of acknowledging the cultural pluralism of Trinidad and espousing a policy of multiculturalism, the PNM-run state adopted de facto a single cultural form as an assimilationist means of unifying the disparate cultural communities in this plural society. Even though seen by some as an instrument for nation building and unity, official recognition of the pan and calypso produced the opposite effect in promoting and privileging the image of one group at the expense of others. As David Trotman has observed, ‘Calypso is dragged into the effort to create a nation and integrate the warring factions into an harmonious whole. In fact, much lip service is paid to multiracialism, but it was a multiracial picture from which the Indian was strangely absent’ (1991: 393). The virtues of the hegemonic community were recognised, extolled and celebrated institutionally in a way that pointedly neglected or ignored other groups, sometimes even evoking negative images and memories of minority communities and thus diminishing their value. Commenting on the impact of this sort of domination, philosopher Charles Taylor argues: ‘Our identity is partly shaped by recognition and its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to


them a confining and contemptible picture of themselves’ (1994: 27). In effect, non-recognition or misrecognition, to say nothing of deliberate distortion, can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being. Looking at calypso and carnival from this perspective, Afro-Trinidadian scholar David Trotman comments: ‘Yet in listing the cultural achievements of this “racial paradise”, it is the steelband, calypso, and carnival which are given prominence with no mention of any Indian cultural contribution (1991: 394). Using the licence and freedom of carnival revelry, calypsos caricatured Indian efforts in learning Creole English (1991: 495), and exaggerated Indian speech and accent which provided laughter for one group and ridicule for the other (see Rohlehr, 1990: 495). Indians were perceived as a threat to African hegemony in the postcolonial successor state. The calypso lyrics reflected an Indian-African contest which in the economic sphere seemed to be increasingly won by Indians (Reddock, 1996; cf. Mariappan, this volume). Calypsos at carnival time threw up telling commentary on the underlying economic competitive struggle that characterised Indian-African rivalry. Many calypsos also take up the issue of Indian membership in Trinidad society. Coming as indentured labourers after the African community was emancipated from slavery, Indians were seen as temporary residents and, especially because of the retention of much of their Old World cultural forms, were referred to as ‘a recalcitrant minority’ by Prime Minister Eric Williams. They were regarded as ‘weird’ and ‘backward’ by the Afro-Creole community. As Trotman remarks: ‘today’s Indians still remain outsiders. They are still seen … as an outside clan not fully Trinidadian with a natural right to the national Trinidadian inheritance; they are an outside club of usurpers who, overnight, have stolen the patrimony of real Trinidadians – those of African Origins’ (1991: 398). Numerous calypsos have derided Indian habits and consigned them to a sphere outside of the Trinidadian mainstream, as defined by Creole culture. Rhoda Reddock has noted that as a result of this marginalisation, Indians continue to experience psychological ‘insecurities surrounding their rights of citizenship’ and the related tendency of Indians to express a ‘need to prove their Trinidadianess’ (1996: 9). Indian reaction to this state of affairs which submitted them to an annual pummelling at carnival time was tempered by the fact that they did not control the levers of power, had limited access to the largesse of state patronage and employment opportunities, and lived in fear of the Creoledominated coercive forces. To be sure, Indian organisations such as the Maha Sabha issued statements of protest, but this made no difference. However, in the privacy of their homes and community, Indians deepened their alienation from Africans and ‘mixed races’, building their solidarity around their own economic activities and cultural practices. They too defined themselves in a way that degraded the African in disallowing cross-


ethnic marriages and confining their friendships and associations as much as possible to their own kith and kin (cf. Mariappan, this volume). Indians had evolved a separate defensive cultural cocoon that offered privacy at the same time as it denigrated Creole cultural practices. Misra describes how Indians dug into their cultural practices as a form of self-defence: …there are other forms of cultural defence and strategies for preserving identity. In a hostile environment, in particular, these strategies are likely to come in all kinds of innocent looking forms such as erecting Jhandi (flags) in home compounds, exchanging greetings such as SitaRam, exchanging tharia and lota between kin and friends, preparing tasty parathas, engaging in domestic rituals, participating in congregational worship, playing Indian music and many such activities. Each one of these activities looks simple but interconnects people, links ideas and mythologies, generates moods and motivations, and transmits messages. A pattern starts emerging when the consequences of these strategies are interconnected. A culture gets constructed, its boundaries get marked. (1995: 222) Two Indian cultural events are noteworthy in this context, both made more salient still by the election for the first time of an Indian prime minister, Basdeo Panday. The first is the Indian invention of ‘chutney soca’ which is an Indianised musical adaptation of the calypso-carnival culture. Often performed at Indian weddings from where it derived, ‘chutney’ is an indigenous Indian musical dancing-and-singing form accompanied by a combination of Indian tassa drums, the chowtal and harmonium. ‘Chutney-soca’ combines ‘chutney’ with ‘soca’ (a variant of calypso) with the African steel pan, all put to a calypso beat with Indian strains and heavy erotic ‘wining’ (pelvic gyrations). In effect, the Indian countered the calypso-pan-carnival forms with a rival creation which although it has drawn many African and Creole contestants was seen as an ‘Indian thing’. Indians, however, did not utilise chutney-soca to denigrate Africans and Creole culture. Instead, a response to calypso critique of Indian cultural forms and practices would emerge from the second Indian cultural invention, ‘Pichakaaree’. First started in 1989, this festival, like calypso, served as a vehicle for social commentary. It invited Indians to tell their own story in song and music. Like carnival, but on a much reduced scale and lacking state subsidy, it threw up a variety of commentaries covering many aspects of Indian life. However, especially after Basdeo Panday became prime minister, an aspect was developed which consisted of songs that responded to the calypso criticisms levelled at Indian cultural practices. As yet it is not nearly as charged with the same mass power that carnival evokes and the openly risqué lyrics which disparaged Indians in calypso. But, with an increasingly emboldened Indian community, this is likely to be altered (Assang, 1997).


Prime Minister Panday attended for the first time in 1997 the Pichakaaree festival which was enacted immediately after the carnival season to celebrate the Indian festival of Pagwah. During the 1997 carnival period, Panday opened a full frontal attack against the standard plethora of anti-Indian racist calypsos which the season tends to produce. He did so in the name of promoting national unity. As Panday asserted: ‘Whatever you do, do not allow carnival and calypso to be used as a cover-up for racism and the denigration of innocent people as we see taking place in other parts of the country today’ (quoted in Gosine, 1997). Panday was particularly incensed because the carnival event was largely subsidised by the public treasury. He went on to state: ‘The government spends money on carnival and that money is contributed by all races [sic] in the country. It would be unfair to allow a few people to use the funds in order to divide the people and therefore government has to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not used in that way. That is the duty of the government’ (quoted in Manmohan, 1997). Panday’s statements evoked a storm of criticism from the Creole community which argued that the calypso was an art form that required uninhibited licence, a sentiment well-reflected by the former prime minister, Eric Williams, in his famous phrase: ‘Let the jackasses bray’. Panday instead threatened that the government ‘will ensure it does not happen again’ (quoted in Manmohan, 1997). Looking at this entire sequence of events in relation to our theme on the construction of a national identity in the ethnically bifurcated state of Trinidad, it is clear that the musico-cultural site afforded an opportunity to both communities to express their disdain for each other. While the African and ‘mixed race’ community had a head start in deprecating Indian cultural forms and practices in carnival and calypso, Indians did not have a monopoly over virtue. In soca-chutney they created their own site of riposte and in Pichakaaree an even more pointed form of response. In the end, these actions reinforced African-Indian antipathy and showed how each sought to define itself in opposition to the other.

A regional Caribbean identity Do Trinidadians share a collective identity with other Caribbean residents? The region is linguistically, geographically, culturally and politically fragmented, subdivided into Dutch, British, French, American and Spanish spheres (Premdas, 1996b). Few Caribbean people have transcended these cleavages in constructing a consciousness that comprehends the entire area. Trinidad falls within the British sphere known as the Commonwealth Caribbean, bound by a common link to Britain which bequeathed a legacy of the English language, educational curricula, cricket, higher education, a legal and constitutional order, capitalism and some internal trading arrangements embodied in CARICOM. The Commonwealth Caribbean is in many ways very distinct from the other subregional blocs. In the Dutch


Antilles not only is Dutch the lingua franca but the residents also share a common citizenship with members of the Netherlands, which provides the main source of investment, aid, trade, literature and news. The French possessions of Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana, which are administrative departments of France, are similarly configured, as are the American possessions of Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands. The Dominican Republic has strong links with the US, while Cuba and Haiti are relatively autonomous. Taken as a whole, the subregionalisation of the Caribbean has imparted a measure of differentiated identity to residents of the separate spheres but even the strength of this shared identity varies with the level of integration within these units. The Commonwealth Caribbean offers some shared symbols and institutions and a residual link to the British metropole but for the most part this regional experience is weakly and only discontinuously anchored, rivalled by stronger internal and ethnonational commitments as well as by global forces. Trinidad’s link to the Commonwealth Caribbean does confer a measure of regionality to a shared identity erected around cricket, the University of the West Indies, some educational practices (an educational council exists to construct and administer high-school diplomas, for example), aspects of carnival, and CARICOM. Together these elements add up to a weak configuration of formative forces in the shaping of a shared Trinidad identity. Powerful external competing claims emanate from American cable television, Western culinary choices (hamburgers, KFC, pizzas, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Seven Up, ketchup, etc.), Hollywood movies, music (hard rock, soul, jazz etc.), sartorial style (jeans and miniskirts), and other Western consumption values and practices. Much of the news, tourists, technology and literature also come from this source. More Trinidadians travel to destinations other than the Caribbean islands and make more phone calls and entertain more friends from other parts of the world than from the Caribbean. The regional factor is, however, not entirely submerged by this encroachment of Western and global forces. The attachment to the Commonwealth Caribbean is maintained less at the level of real commonly binding events and more at the level of symbolism – that is, a sense of sharing a larger space that provides a myth of ‘Caribbeanness’. This myth will come to play a powerful role in sustaining a wider fictional attachment to the whole Caribbean once Trinidadians move to locations in North America and Europe. Both Indo-Trinidadians and Afro-Trinidadians use this mythology; both invoke different aspects of it such as the University of the West Indies and cricket. The Caribbean regional identity tends to be invoked more frequently by Africans than Indians, in part because the latter are more concentrated in the southern Caribbean while the former are spread throughout the region. Many Trinidadians have relatives in the other Caribbean islands and many have travelled to other parts of the Caribbean at an earlier period seeking


employment than have Indo-Trinidadians. Further, many small islanders from St Vincent and Grenada have settled in Trinidad, strengthening regional bonds for many Afro-Trinidadians. Hence, even this regional factor shapes the identity in different ways for Indians and Africans, again reflecting the cultural bifurcation of the Trinidad state.

The transnational Trinidadian identity Trinidadians in the diaspora derive both dividing impulses from the domestic domain and unifying emotions from the regional sphere. About 250 000 Trinidadians reside outside the country. They are found mainly in North America, which has superseded Britain as the favourite external destination, following the imposition of tight immigration restrictions in Britain in the 1960s. Located in large numbers in Toronto, New York, New Jersey and Florida, Trinidadians form a new admixture of long-distance attachment to the homeland. For most, Trinidad will only be a memory. They nevertheless keep afresh and alive their Trinidadian and Caribbean identities as a means of solace in absence, and as a mode of solidarity against the dominant ethnic groups in their host communities. They at once differentiate into Indo- and Afro-Trinidadians, unite into Caribbean types for certain occasions, and amalgamate with other non-White immigrants from Africa and Asia, as well as local non-Whites for political programmes. The overseas context accentuates the imaginary connection with the homeland. Assembling under a common umbrella of community at picnics, parks, bars, restaurants, shopping centres, concerts and theatres, the chill – both of racism and the cold winters – may unite them as the homeland never could. But for the most part, Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians retain their antipathies and in the privacy of their families and associations re-enact the script of their old stereotypes and conflicts. When general elections occur in Trinidad for example, these groups share the same sentiments of ethnic solidarity with their respective communities back home, and many mobilise to offer support (cf. Barot, this volume). Carnival and chutney confer an ambivalent response, with the same sort of broad split as in Trinidad. Rivalry over the meaning of the Caribbean designation has occurred over such citywide festivals as Caribana in Toronto. Many Caribbean Indians have felt that the word Caribbean has been defined in an exclusively Afrocentric manner and have sought to reclaim the region as their own also. This rivalry continues with many Afro- and Indo-Trinidadian individuals and groups opposing each other in the diaspora. Caribbean ethnic newspapers reflecting Indian and African emphases have also emerged in the overseas sites, reinforcing the old contestations at home. Clubs, restaurants and associations also tend to be predominantly monoethnic with Indo- and Afro-Trinidadians finding more congenial companions from their own ethnic communities. Especially with regard to their religious and cultural


practices, the division is more pronounced. What is different in this regard is the fact that Indo- and Afro-Trinidadians do not meet and confront each other daily as they enact these practices. They live in different spaces and neighbourhoods so that residentially they are not only separated but also significantly outnumbered by a larger ethnic dominant population, as well as by many other similar communities. The overseas context, however, does provide a context for a number of unifying moments and shared activities. The fact of White racism has bred a solidarity for jobs, services and equitable police protection. Trinidadians of all ethnic origins discover their sameness in numerous small private friendships and acts of sharing (cf. Mariappan, this volume) that set them apart from Jamaicans, Guyanese and other Caribbean types. They take collective pride in carnival, the pan and calypso, even as they stand apart. It is a mixed site of contestation in regard to some activities. Indians, however, continue to hold a number of grudges over the period of PNM domination, which witnessed discrimination and exclusion towards the Indian ethnic community. Yet, the overseas context is different in respect to the opportunities for contact and confrontation. Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians can no longer construct their identities from each other’s presence since the wider environment pluralises their contests and affinities beyond the narrow polarity provided by the bifurcation in Trinidad itself. In their children born in the overseas communities, the older generation of communalised Trinidadians witness a dissolution of the old grip of Afro-Indo contestation. The young form wider friendships and are influenced by the ‘attractions’ of the new Western materialist order. These children, even where they hyphenate their identities as Indo-Caribbean Canadian or Afro-Caribbean American, are poor carriers of the old animosities. For the most part, they find friendships dispersed in a wider array of ethnic choices at school and the workplace. This may still be a predominantly non-White associational life but it is not constructed primarily from the contested themes of the old environment. To be sure, in a multicultural overseas environment, the young inscribe their identity with reference to the Caribbean origins of their parents, but at the same time they know little first-hand of the Caribbean. They maintain the transregional Caribbean fiction as a means of asserting their dignity and pride, and the young will study Caribbean culture and history to ‘discover their roots’. In this way, they imagine a realm which in their experience has no real resonance, but to which they are nonetheless fiercely loyal. They will easily repeat the virtues of their ‘Caribbeanness’ and join many cross-Caribbean groups as a means of self-definition, while they seek at the same time greater integration and opportunities from the dominant White host community. The next overseas-born community of Trinidadians are less likely still to perpetuate the old antagonisms in the same way as their parents.


Conclusion The Trinidadian self is caught up at the confluence of multiple reinforcing and confounding influences – from the start of the identity formation process to the national, regional and transnational arenas of interaction. The segmented social structure of Trinidad powerfully shapes individual identity. Yet, amidst the turbulence and dissonance of divisive and integrative cross-currents, a stable centre can be clearly discerned. Mainly, it is the ethnolocal family and community bond that provides the basis for the self. It locates the identity and security of the person in the values, institutions, and practices of the cultural group. From this basis, the individual learns to negotiate the cross-current of forces in the national arena with all its contradictions. On the one hand, this chapter offered three samples of national sites of interethnic conflict that have tended, more often than not, to divide the rival communities. Behaviours emanating from these different sites of Indian-African contestations are sifted through ethnic filters. On the other hand, there are unifying countervailing forces in a shared school and public transportation system, language, sports, workplace and laws. However, the balance of forces is tilted in favour of the paramountcy of the segments and the sentiments and claims of their particularity. In the world of frequent Indian-African interaction, the founding ethnolocal self may objectively be modified but subjectively it is still fed data and interpretations congruent with a particular cultural centre of gravity in its need for consistency and cohesion. As a result, it becomes defensively an inner intolerant self, unable consciously to accommodate the claims of ‘the other’, bound by an internal imperative for order and community belonging in a world of schizophrenic pressures. At the regional Caribbean-wide level, some unifying themes which seek to transcend the claims of ethnic particularity may occasionally appear, but they fail to redefine radically the scope of the intimate shared Afro- or Indo-Trinidad meanings that underpin their respective ethnic communities. In the transnational dimension, Trinidadians of the older generation, born and raised in the divided Trinidad, re-enact the claims of the old national script in their ethnic choices, friendships and associational membership, even in environments replete with new countervailing forces and offerings. These ongoing antagonisms, however, are less conspicuously held among the new metropolitan-born generations of the Trinidadian diaspora, where new environmental factors and forces have greater influence in the recasting of new transnational identities. In the cultural ambivalence of the young in the metropolitan sphere, in a life of perpetual exile, the promise of sanity and stability resides. It is one possible alternative to the ethnic bifurcation and communalism that have tended to characterise the Trinidadian state up to the present.


References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn (London: Verso). Assang, S. (1997) Pichakaaree: a mirror, Express, 28 February. Barth, F. (1969) Introduction, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: the Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co), pp. 9–38. Berger, P. and Luckman, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality (London: Penguin). Clarke, C. (1993) Social pattern and social interaction among Creoles and Indians in Trinidad and Tobago, in K. Yelvington (ed.) Trinidad Ethnicity (Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press), pp. 116–35. Cohen, A. (1974) Two-Dimensional Man (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Despres, L. (1975) Ethnicity and resource competition in Guyanese Society, in L. Despres (ed.) Ethnicity and Resource Competition in Plural Societies (The Hague: Mouton). Eriksen, T. (1993) Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Pluto Press). Ethnicity and Employment Practices in Trinidad and Tobago (1994) Trinidad: University of the West Indies, Centre for Ethnic Studies. Gardels, N. (1991) Two concepts of nationalism: an interview with Isaiah Berlin, New York Review of Books, 21 November. Gosine, S. (1997) PM lashes out at racist Calypsos, Express, 12 February. Hamid, I. (1971) Church schools accused of breeding racism, Guardian [Trinidad], 16 February. Horowitz, D. (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley CA: California University Press). Kondo, D. (1990) Crafting Selves (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). LeVine, S. and Campbell, J. (1972) Ethnocentrism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Manmohan, E. (1997) PM: Don’t use Carnival to cover up racism, Express, 20 February. Mathison, C. and Carew, S. (1994) Misperception and stereotyping among Afro-Trinidadian students, Caribbean Quarterly, September/December. Mead, G. (1934) Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Milne, R. (1972) Elections in developing countries, Parliamentary Affairs XVIII, 1, 1964–65. Misra, P. (1995) Identity formation in Trinidad, The Eastern Anthropologist 48: 3. Premdas, R. (1972) Elections and campaigns in a racially bifurcated state, Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 14, 3: 271–96. —— (1989) The political economy of ethnic strife, Ethnic Studies Report, Fall. —— (1992) Political succession in Trinidad and Tobago, in P. Sutton and A. Payne (eds) The Modern Caribbean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press). —— (1996a) Ethnic Conflict and Religion: the Christian Challenge of Reconciliation (Notre Dame: Institute of Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame). —— (1996b) Ethnic Identity in the Caribbean: Decentering a Myth, Working Paper No. 234 (Notre Dame: Kellogg Institute of International Affairs, University of Notre Dame). —— (1997a) Public policy and ethnic conflict: evaluating the strategy of multiculturalism, Caribbean Dialogue, June, 1997, 4–5.

Ralph R. Premdas 197 —— (1997b) Public Policy and Ethnic Conflict, Discussion Paper Series 12 (Paris: MOST-UNESCO). —— (ed.) (1999) Identity, Ethnicity, and Culture in the Caribbean (Trinidad: University of the West Indies). —— and Ragoonauth, B. (1998) Ethnicity, elections and democracy in Trinidad and Tobago, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 36 (3): 30–58. Reddock, R. (1996) Jahaji Bhai: the emergence of Dougla Poetics in contemporary Trinidad and Tobago (Mimeo), Paper presented to the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco, November. Rohlehr, G. (1990) Calypso and Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad (Port of Spain, Trinidad: Rohlehr). Roosens, E. (1989) Creating Ethnicity: the Process of Ethnogenesis (London: Sage). Ryan, S. (1994) Persistence and change in the ethnic labor markets of Trinidad and Tobago (Mimeo), Paper presented to the 26th Caribbean Studies Association Conference, 24–27 May. Taylor, C. (1994) The politics of recognition, in A. Gutmann (ed.) Multiculturalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 25–73. Tewarie, K. (1984) Integration and multiculturalism: a dilemma in the school system in Trinidad and Tobago, Paper presented to the Third Conference on East Indians in the Caribbean, 31 August. Trotman, D. (1991) The image of Indians in Calypsos, in S. Ryan (ed.) Social and Occupational Stratification in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago (Trinidad: ISER). Vail, L. (ed.) (1989) The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, CA: California University Press). van den Berghe, P. (1981) The Ethnic Phenomenon (New York: Elsevier Press). Warner, K. (1993) The image of Indians in Calypso, in K. Yelvington (ed.) Trinidad Ethnicity (Lexington: University of Tennessee Press). Williams, E. (1950) Education in the British West Indies (Trinidad: Guardian Commercial Printery). Young, C. (1993) The dialectics of cultural pluralism: concept and reality, in C. Young (ed.) The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: the Nation-State at Bay? (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press).

9 Ethnicity, Malay Nationalism, and the Question of Bangsa Malaysia Kntayya Mariappan

Modern Malaysia is a classic instance of a postcolonial society, that is a society whose immediate past was shaped by a colonial presence and whose multiethnic present is constituted by the creation of, and governance of a state bequeathed by the settlements achieved at the end of the colonial period. Throughout the modern period, the Malay Archipelago was competed over by Portuguese, but especially British and Dutch colonial incursions. The broad consequence has been the foundation of two large postcolonial states in the area, Malaysia and Indonesia. These states correspond neither to geographical shapes – the great island of Borneo is ‘partitioned’ between the two – nor to cultural shapes; Islam and other religions, and Malay, Chinese and other ethnicities being spread across both political boundaries. The task of post-independence Malaysia has been to solidify a new state. This has required founding and implementing constitutional and political forms which promise stability, and giving form to a ‘new’ nation which attempts to blend an overarching unity with recognition of its ethnically plural elements. The main body of this chapter traces the formation of Malaysian society through the colonial period to the present and examines the nature of ethnicity, state and nation as influenced by economic, political and cultural forms. Many of the economic forms, especially the creating of a ‘modern’ industrialising sector, depended on the importation of labour and thus laid the foundations of an ethnicised division of labour (cf. Williams, this volume). Both colonial and postcolonial political forms have recognised the ‘special position’ of Malays, with the independence constitution-building acknowledgement of Malay claims into the new state’s laws. Thus a concept of what constitutes a Malay and Malay culture is built into the definition of the nation-state. The same constitution recognises the right to citizenship – especially of Chinese and Indians – of almost half of the population who could not claim to be Malays but who could claim to be Malaysians on an equal footing with Malays. The definition of contemporary Malaysia as a nation, as we shall demonstrate below, faces a constant tension between 198

Kntayya Mariappan 199

being a pan-Malaysian civic state-nation, and a state-nation which contains within it a special place for one cultural community which can and does lay some claim to being at the heart of ‘Malaysian-ness’.

From pre- to postcolonial Malaysia Malaysia is one of several polyethnic societies that have emerged as new nations since achieving independence from British colonial rule in 1957. Prior to Western colonisation, the region had existed as a part of the ‘Malay Archipelago’. This term refers to a much wider geographical area (mainly comprising the present territories of Malaysia and Indonesia) and to a cultural world where the population was believed to belong to the same Malayo-Polynesian ‘stock’, sharing broadly the same cultural and historical background. A wider area of this region has been under the influence of the same traditional Malay political powers like Srivijaya, Majapahit and Malacca (Andaya and Andaya, 1982: 7–36). The Malay Archipelago has received Western traders since the sixteenth century. The colonisation process by Western powers, particularly the struggle between the Dutch and the British to occupy this part of the world, led to a division of the region with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 (Andaya and Andaya, 1982: 114). Under British colonial rule, Malaysia was known as Malaya. The term which refers specifically to Peninsular Malaya currently forms the West Malaysian territory where the main multiethnic population and core issues of ethnic relations in Malaysia are centred. The British initially established their presence in the region, with their principal concern the expansion of trade, by settling in Penang in 1786, Singapore in 1819 and Malacca in 1824. British colonisation eventually led in the 1920s to the creation of ‘British Malaya’, with all the states that ultimately comprised Malaysia now under British control. By this time, the states of the Straits Settlement (Singapore, Penang and Malacca), Federated Malay States, Unfederated Malay States (in Peninsular-Malaya) and the British Borneo territories of Sabah and Sarawak were all under British control, either through direct or indirect rule, or as British protectorates. This colonial rule came to an end in 1957 with the independence of Peninsular Malaya. In 1963, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak achieved their independence by joining the Federation of Malaya and this larger political entity has since been called Malaysia. In 1965, however, Singapore separated from Malaysia to set itself up as an independent state, attributing the separation to the problem of ethnic relations between the Malays and non-Malays, mainly the Chinese.

Ethnic identities in Malaysia The Malaysian polyethnic society of today primarily comprises three major ethnic groups. The Malays are the indigenous people, while the Chinese


and Indians are the immigrant groups. Although this polyethnic society of Malaysia is the result of British colonial rule (Freedman, 1960), it was, however, not the first time these peoples had come in contact with each other. Before the arrival of colonial power, the Malays had already established contact with Chinese and Indian traders, as well as with Arabs and early Europeans like the Portuguese (Andaya and Andaya, 1982). The Malaysian peninsular has historically been a major crossroads for trade in Asia. The Malays had adopted some of the cultural elements of these people with whom they came into contact, mainly in the form of Hindu religion and Indian culture, and later, Islamic religion and culture. A small number of these early Chinese, Indians, Arab and Portuguese traders had also settled in the area, married local people and assimilated into the Malay culture to a large extent (Clammer, 1986). These communities are referred to as Chitty (Indians), Baba (Chinese) and Darah Keturunan Arab or people of Arab descent, and Eurasians (Portuguese). By and large, before British colonial intervention, the establishment of these small mixed communities in the port areas of Singapore, Malacca and Penang did not change the overall homogeneous nature of the Malay population in the Malay Peninsular. But during colonial rule, the British brought in large numbers of Chinese and Indian immigrants to work in the colonial economy of Peninsular Malaya. This not only changed the nature of this society from a homogeneous to a polyethnic one, but more importantly laid the structural foundations for the development and persistence of ethnicity in Malaysia. The Malays, Chinese and Indians in Malaysia are, however, not homogeneous groups. Hirschman’s (1987) analysis of the development of ethnic classification in the census from 1871 to 1980 clearly shows the existence of internal differentiations within the Malay, Chinese and Indian groups. These differentiations are based primarily on the linguistic and regional variations within the broader form of ethnic origin and cultural similarity. The precolonial Malay society in Peninsular Malaya consisted of fragmented communities divided by separate regionally based traditional political units or states. Their social structure was typically feudal. In each state, the ruling class was headed by hereditary Sultans and a stratum of aristocratic chiefs (Gullick, 1969; Andaya and Andaya, 1982; Ali, 1991). The ruled class were the Malay peasants who were involved mainly in paddy cultivation and fishing. The traditional political system was characterised by frequent disputes, and struggles for power and territory, among regional rulers and chiefs. Before colonial intervention, as one scholar observed, ‘Malay society was thus far removed from abstract notions of nationalism and economic development. The Malay peasant only dimly perceived that he belonged to a wider world than the village community’ (Jesudason, 1990: 26). Today, the Malaysian Constitution defines a Malay as ‘a person who professes the Muslim religion, speaks Malay, conforms to Malay customs’,


(Article 162 [2]: 124). Nagata wrote, ‘The modern term Malay, used in its grossest form in opposition to non-Malays (usually Chinese and Indian), obscures a whole host of internal differentiations arising from their history. For the category of Malay has been built up by a gradual series of aggregations from a variety of other peoples who still sometimes assert their separate identity’ (1981: 103). The ‘Malay’ population in Malaysia, apart from the core group of peninsular Malays themselves, also includes various groups of people from different parts of Indonesia (Ramsay, 1956; Nagata, 1981). Among those of Indonesian origin are the Javanese, Minangkabau, Bugis, Boyanese and Banjarese. The ‘Malays’ in the different states were politically not a self-aware unified ethnic group under the traditional indigenous political system before British intervention. In fact these groups of ‘Malays’ not only tended to speak different languages, or regional dialects, and to be endogamous, but were also often hostile to each other (Gullick, 1969). This regional-based division still exists to some degree among the Malays of the different states in present-day Malaysia. However, the presence of the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia during British rule spurred a strong political allegiance between the Malays and the other subethnic groups of Indonesian origin, as well as among the Malays from the different states within the Malay Peninsular.1 The mobilisation of solidarity among the various indigenous Malay groups has become an important political strategy to differentiate themselves from the immigrant groups and, more importantly, to establish their claims of indigenous status and political economic rights. As Nagata has observed, while they may maintain the ‘local recognition of different types of “Malays”… Javanese, Bugis, and so forth do not hesitate to identify as Malays, which they justify on the basis of common bangsa (race), when certain political economic privileges are at stake’ (1981: 105). It is important to note here that the search for a common identity as a Malay among the main Malay-speaking and other linguistic groups of Indonesian origin was never a problem, since they shared the same religion (Islam) and to a large extent the same cultural values. The other factor that made the mutual acceptance of a common pan-Malay ethnic identity much easier was the fact that the local ‘Indonesian’ had played a very important role in the traditional political system of Malaya before British intervention (Gullick, 1969). As a consequence, the Malays and other small linguistic groups of Indonesian origin – mainly the Javanese, Minangkabau and Bugis – who have inhabited Peninsular Malaya for a long time, have politically been classified as Malays as well as Bumiputra (sons of the soil). In addition to this, the Malay language and Islam have also been granted the status of official language and religion of the post-independent Malaysian state in the Constitution. While the Malays (including the people of Indonesian origin) may see themselves as the original inhabitants, there are other small groups of


natives in Malaysia who are not classified or considered as Malays. These include the Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia and Dayak, Dusun Iban and Kadazan in the states of Sabah and Sarawak. They are not considered as Malays because of their cultural dissimilarities from the Malays, particularly those who are not Muslims, although politically they too have been granted the status of bumiputra. The Chinese and the Indians, too, are divided linguistically, and to some extent, culturally as well (Arasaratnam, 1970; Purcell, 1978). Among the Chinese, there are groups who come from different provinces of China, speaking different dialects – mainly Hokkein, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese and Hakka. Among the Indians there are different linguistic groups, largely Tamils, Malayalees and Punjabis, but also including Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Whereas Islam is the unifying factor for the Malays, the Chinese and Indians do not have a common religion of their own. The majority of Chinese and Indians in Malaysia are nonMuslims. However, a small proportion do profess Islam. The Chinese are mainly seen as followers of ‘Chinese religion’ which encompasses the element of beliefs and practices of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and ancestral worship (Ting, 1980: 89–90). Indians are primarily Hindus and Sikhs (Rajoo, 1975). It is also important to note that a small proportion of these non-Muslim Chinese and Indians now also share common religious beliefs and practices through Christianity, Buddhism, Baha’ism and the neo-Hindu Sai Baba spiritual movement. The Hindu religious festival, Thaipusam, has also attracted the increasing participation of some Chinese. Since the Malays are constitutionally defined, the Chinese and Indians have automatically formed the opposite political category as ‘non-Malays’. The division, which is again synonymous with the bumiputra/non-bumiputra division, runs parallel to the Muslim/non-Muslim division to a large extent. For the Malays and non-Malays, all these overlapping identities are politically important in their relations with and demands against each other. For Malays, as Means puts it: The categories ‘Malay’, ‘Bumiputra’, and ‘Muslim’ are not quite contiguous but do overlap to a very large extent…. Which of these three categories is stressed for political mobilization is a matter of shifting strategies and alliances. Each category is energized by a different set of emotive symbols of identity, as well as by different issues of public policy that highlight and make salient that constituency…. Thus there is a continuous interplay between the themes of ethnicity and culture, of indigenousness, and of religion in the discourse of politics. (1991: 123) The very political definition of ‘Malays’ and the granting of official status to the Malay language and Islam in the Malaysian Constitution have institutionalised and further reinforced the importance of a cultural-religious


definition of ethnicity between the Malays and the non-Malay groups. Cultural and religious differences between the Malays and the non-Malays have become politically significant symbols of ethnic identity in Malaysia. Regardless of their internal differences, the solidarity that exists within the Malays, Chinese and Indians, as politically distinct ethnic groups, is a wellestablished fact in Malaysian politics (Crouch, 1996). The various internal or intragroup divisions are not in any way to be seen as weakening interethnic group consciousness and identification. Indeed, internal differences may be completely ignored when these groups come to face each other on important ethnic issues. In contemporary Malaysia, issues of ethnic salience, ethnic allegiance and even ethnic conflict – most often in the form of Malays versus nonMalays – can be traced back specifically to the development of a plural society in the colonial period. In short, the colonial period first saw the instigation of opposing political demands between the Malays’ claim of ‘Malaya for the Malays’ and non-Malays’ claim of ‘Malaya for all the Malayans’ – demands which remain a central feature of contemporary Malaysia.

Plural society and an ethnic division of labour British colonisation, and in particular the expansion of the colonial export economy from 1870 to 1930, brought about the massive immigration of Chinese and Indian labour into Malaya. This was the principal cause for their population increase in Malaya up to the mid-1930s (Vlieland, 1934). Consequently, this not only reduced the percentage of the Malay population overall, but at a certain stage, that is between 1921 and 1957, the population of the non-Malays actually exceeded that of the Malays (Sandhu, 1969: 41; Sidhu and Ahmad, 1978: 19). In fact, since 1921, statistical evidence shows that the indigenous Malay population was never an absolute majority. In 1921, the Malays had already been reduced to 54 per cent of the total population, and in 1931 to 49.2 per cent. In 1931, out of a population of 3 787 758, 1 575 448 were Malays, 1 281 611 Chinese, and 572 613, Indians (Morrison, 1949: 240). From that time through to 1970, the percentage of the Malay population never exceeded 54 per cent. Based on the 1991 population census of Peninsular Malaysia, out of a total population of 17 million, the percentage of Malays is circa 55 per cent, with the Chinese and Indians making up circa 44 per cent of the population. From the beginning, the colonial British labour policy in Malaya tended to create an ethnic division of labour (cf. Williams, this volume). The colonial rule also did not introduce any measures to integrate the Malays, Chinese and Indians in the newly expanding sectors of the colonial economy. Instead, the British brought in immigrant labour from South China and South India to work mainly in the tin mines and rubber plantations


(Palmer, 1960; Blythe, 1947). As a consequence three separate labour forces were established. Chinese labour was brought in mainly to work in the mining industry and the Indians mainly in the rubber plantations. The native Malays were not encouraged to participate in these newly expanding colonial economies, and as a consequence they remained primarily in the traditional subsistence agricultural sector. The emergence of new urban areas as colonial administrative centres for the development of mining and plantation industries created an even greater difference in the occupations of the Malays, Chinese and Indians. In the urban areas, the Chinese began their involvement in commercial activities, and the Indians were employed as labourers in the government departments like public works, the post and the railways. Due to their involvement in different economic functions, the Malays, Chinese and Indians also largely lived in different areas (Sidhu, 1976: 18). The development of modern economic sectors and urban centres started in the West Coast states of Peninsular Malaysia, owing to the expansion of rubber plantations and tin mining there during the period of colonial rule. Many of the Chinese and Indians who initially came as labourers to take part in these major economic activities still live in these areas. The Malays, on the other hand, continue to be the dominant group in the East Coast states and rural areas (Sidhu and Ahmad, 1978: 22–25). According to Furnivall (1948), the multiethnic society that was formed in Malaya during the colonial period is that of a typical ‘plural society’ (see also Fenton and May, this volume). The term is used by him to describe the incisive divisions among the population of the Dutch and British colonies in Southeast Asia. He and others, like Smith (1965), see plural societies like Malaya as not just consisting of ethnically and culturally identified populations, but also as having little organic link with each other except via ‘market place’ interaction. Plural societies were described as being characterised by sharp divisions and inequalities among groups that make up the society. Without shared values and a common identity among these people, the intergroup interaction in a society such as Malaysia largely relies on their mutual economic interdependence, thus holding the society together by the force of external colonial power (Eriksen, 1993: 49). While the role of the colonial masters as arbitrator (Abraham, 1983) may have kept the conflict between ethnic groups under control, at the same time, without any positive measure for integration, ethnic hostility between the Malays and non-Malays continued to develop during the colonial period. The social and occupational differences among the Malays, Chinese and Indians created unequal power and economic rewards between them. The British treated the Malays as a special group. British colonial rule did not bring many changes to the traditional social structure of the Malays. For example, when imposing colonial rule in Malaya, the British did not abolish the existing Malay rulers in the


different states in Malaya. In fact, by signing treaties with the rulers of the different states before their intervention in Malaya, the British officially agreed to recognise and provide protection to every ruler’s legitimate status in the different states. Thus, the agreements preserved the Malay rulers’ position, its importance as a traditional Malay political institution, and its link to Malay culture and community at large. By maintaining them alongside the colonial administration, the British introduced the system of indirect rule in the Malay sultanate states which was different from the system of direct rule that they introduced earlier in the Straits Settlement colonies in 1826. The traditional power of the Malay rulers on the matters related to Malay religion and culture was thus largely preserved, although the actual powers of administration in all other matters were put under the control of the British residents and advisers. By preserving the continuity of the Malay rulers and their symbolic status as paramount leaders of the Malay community, the British consciously came to follow a system of administration that was paternalistic and pro-Malay. The preservation of the Malay rulers and the pro-Malay policy in public administration became important political features, not least in enhancing the rise of Malay ethnicity, solidarity and nationalism. Indeed, the subsequent mobilisation of Malay nationalism, aimed at securing the dominance of Malay political power and culture in the region, became intense from the 1940s onwards. Besides preserving their Malay rulers, the British also committed themselves to a pro-Malay policy by recruiting more Malays into the Malayan Civil Service. In the public administration the British policy of safeguarding the interests of the Malays created a Malay administrative group, a Malay elite, second only to the British colonialists, as well as the lower rank Malay clerical group (Khasnor, 1984; Ramasamy, 1993: 218–20). But in the modern economic sectors, as one scholar puts it, the ‘British colonial “protection” [also] had the ironical effect of delaying social change and economic modernisation in Malay feudal society, while a laissez faire policy towards the immigrants allowed the latter to make rapid economic progress’ (Chee, 1991: 2). The socioeconomic divisions between ethnic groups thus also had a strong impact on the development of ethnic politics and conflict in Malaya.

Ethnic politics and communal parties It has been argued that the political sphere is the most dominant and expressive dimension of ethnicity in any modern multiethnic society (Smith, 1979, 1981). In conditions of ‘contest politics’ (i.e. where some measure of democratic openness and party competition is present), it is always possible that ethnic identities become the basis of political organisation. In Malaysia, this has been the case since the colonial period (Ratnam,


1965; Enloe, 1970; Hirschman, 1975). Each ethnic group formed its own political organisation to pursue its particular group interests. In this form of communal politics, the mobilisation of ethnic consciousness is a crucial factor in developing the salience of ethnicity and one that has influenced the way in which ethnic relations, both within and outside the narrowly political sphere, have taken shape. Ethnicity became central to political conflict between ethnic groups, primarily between the Malays on one hand and the immigrant Chinese and Indian on the other. This is mainly due to the fact that both the Malays and non-Malays have adopted contradictory claims of political rights. As Malaya moved towards independence, contestation over political rights and citizenship intensified conflict between the Malay indigenous group and the non-Malays immigrant groups (Roff, 1994; Harper,1999) Ethnic salience and ethnic allegiance with respect to political mobilisation in Malaya emerged with the separate political activities among the Malays, Chinese and Indians in the prewar period. This period witnessed the emergence of communal political organisations in the first phase of Malay, Chinese and Indian nationalism (Roff, 1994). During this period, the Malay nationalist movement, which was inspired in part by nationalism in the Middle East and Indonesia, concentrated on religious reformation as a basis for their political awakening and Malay ethnic group identity (Soenarno, 1960). On the other hand, the Chinese and Indian nationalist movements in Malaya were influenced by nationalism and reflected the events in their country of origin (Arasaratnam, 1970; Wang, 1970; Purcell, 1978). Political interests and activities in Malaya from the 1900s to the 1930s did not have much direct effect on ethnic relations among the national groups. Nonetheless, as one scholar has commented, ‘Although British intervention determined to a large extent the structure of ethnic relations, the growth of separate ethnic nationalism also contributed to the maintenance of colonial racial ideology’ (Lee, 1990: 485). Throughout the stages of nationalism before independence, the sociopolitical interests of the Malays have been mobilised via important organisations like the Kaum Muda (Young Generation Movement), Kesatuan Melayu Muda (Young Malays’ Union), Pembela Tanah Air (PETA or Defenders of the Homeland), Kesatuan Rakyat Indonesia Semenanjung (Union of Peninsular Indonesians), Partai Kebangsaan Melayu (Malay Nationalist Party), Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Bersatu (United Malay National Organisation or UMNO) and Parti Islam Sa Malaysia (PAS or PanMalayan Islamic Party/PMIP). The political activities of the Chinese were mobilised through the Chinese Kuomintang, the Malayan Communist Party and Malayan/Malaysian Chinese Association, or MCA. As for the Indians, they were mobilised through the Central Indian Association, Indian Independence League of Malaya and the Malayan/Malaysian Indian Congress or MIC.


The formation of these communal political or semi-political organisations gave very little opportunity for any sort of political cooperation among the Malays, Chinese and Indians until the early 1950s, although mutual anticolonial feelings were expressed among them. Generally there was no sense of a common political community. Part of this, no doubt, had to do with the colonial origins of Malays’ special political status and rights in the prewar period (see above). This special status was further formalised in 1953, just four years prior to independence (Means, 1976: 25n). Meanwhile, the Chinese and Indians continued to be treated as nonpermanent settlers in Malaya. The most important underlying reason for this was that the Malays felt threatened by the non-Malays, particularly by the Chinese advancement in the economy, and because of their strong support for the Communist struggle in Malaya. The Malays perceived this as a threat to their political rights and privileges as natives of Malaya. As one Malay writer puts it, there was a ‘fear of alien (Chinese and Indian) encroachment into their land, the Tanah Melayu, or the Land of the Malays’ (Hashim, 1983: 2). Ethnic relations between the Chinese and the Malays became seriously strained during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s. This was because the Japanese, in their attempt to persecute the Chinese for their moral and material support to the Chinese nationalists in the Sino-Japanese war, had used paramilitary units that were mainly composed of Malays to fight the Chinese-led Communist Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). As a consequence, there were other subsequent ethnic clashes between the Malays and Chinese just before the Japanese surrender, and the return of British forces (Wahid, 1970a; Cheah, 1979, 1981). The feeling of animosity between the Malays and Chinese again intensified during the period of emergency when the Malay armed forces clashed repeatedly with the Chinese communist guerrillas. As Means has commented, ‘Although the war was never defined in racial terms by either side, it did complicate the problems of developing communal harmony and understanding.… Inter-communal tensions increased when Malay communities responded to guerrilla terrorism by retaliatory attacks against neighbouring Chinese’ (1976: 118–19), while the historians Andaya and Andaya observed: The communal violence of the post-war years can thus be regarded as a logical outcome of divisive ethnic policies and attitudes which had developed gradually over the period of colonial rule.… The implications of the post-war violence were not lost on the people of Malaya. While Independence was a desirable goal, there were some who expressed doubts that any independent Malayan government would be able to restrain ethnic enmities once the mediating hand of the colonial power had been removed. (1982: 253).


Contestation over special rights and citizenship Matters of citizenship and political rights were the most crucial issues that evoked direct political conflict between the ethnic groups in Malaya in the 1940s and 1950s (Tadin, 1960; Allen, 1967). The solidarity of the Malays against the non-Malays was strongly expressed through their total rejection of the proposal of the Malayan Union Constitution by the British Government with the intention of returning independence to Malaya. The Malayan Union’s idea of giving equal rights to all citizens, reducing the ruler’s power to the status of chairman of religious committees, and the removal of pro-Malay policies, were clearly not acceptable to the Malays. Historically, the Malays saw themselves as the original inhabitants and the country as belonging to them. Sharing equal citizenship rights with non-Malays was seen as taking away their indigenous rights and sharing their country. Because of this historical link, the British during the colonial period had showed a commitment towards the pro-Malay policy by maintaining the traditional Malay rulers and special rights of the Malays in the politics and administration of the country. But the proposed Malayan Union Constitution would now appear set to abolish this prewar pro-Malay policy. The proposal thus, for the first time, provoked strong political solidarity among the Malays and paved the way for the realisation of their political claims of ‘Malaya for the Malays’. These claims were subsequently realised politically via the successful demand for the constitutional establishment of their special rights and privileges (see below). Meanwhile, the Malays through the UMNO expressed strong objections to the proposed Malayan Union. Dato Onn, the first UMNO leader, declared: The Malay population in this beloved country of theirs, represented by the UMNO, exercising the Malay national will, hereby declare that the Agreement made by Great Britain with the Malay rulers giving full jurisdiction to H.M. the King is null and void, and at the same time do strongly oppose and entirely reject the Malayan Union proposal as set out in the White Paper. (Quoted in Hashim, 1983: 47) The colonial rule was left without much choice but to revoke the plan. The Malayan Union was substituted with the Federation of Malaya Agreement (1948). The agreement formed a new legal basis for Malay paramountcy in politics and restored the continuation of the pro-Malay policy. While the citizenship laws were introduced to all, strict measures, however, were also imposed on the matter of giving citizenship to non-Malays (Wahid, 1970b: 115–16). The ‘bargaining’ process which brought about a compromise among the communal leaders at this stage followed the pragmatic approach to solve the Malay/non-Malay dispute by trading the special rights of the Malays for


the citizenship by jus soli of the non-Malays (cf. Horowitz, 1989). The formation of the Alliance (Perikatan), the coalition party between the UMNO, MCA and MIC, indicated in one way or the other, the acceptance by the non-Malay leaders of Malay supremacy in Malaysian politics. While the cooperation among the ethnic leaders of the major political parties led to independence, this cooperation could not be perceived as having received wider genuine consensus within the individual ethnic communities. The dispute between the principle of ‘common nationality’ and the ‘special position’ of the Malays was a difficult one to be reconciled. The controversy surrounding these two issues was reflected by Means as follows: The Reid Commission found it impossible to reconcile two principles in its terms of reference: providing for ‘a common nationality’ and ‘safeguarding the special position of the Malays’. The first principle presumed the equality of all citizens, while the second implied the creation of separate rights for two classes of citizens. The Commission expressed its preference for the principle of equality, but it also acknowledged that the Malays would suffer if special privileges were suddenly withdrawn. To resolve the contradictions, the Commission did not give Malay special rights constitutional status; rather, it allowed the system to continue by law, thus permitting termination or diminution by legislative enactment. The Commission’s most controversial proposal provides that Malay special privileges would be continued ‘for a substantial period, but that in due course the present preferences should be reduced and should ultimately cease’. Accordingly, the Commission recommended that the existing Malay privileges be reviewed fifteen years after Independence with the objective of preparing for their eventual abolition. (1976: 173–79; 1986: 101) The recommendation was adopted into the Constitution of Independent Malaya of 1957. Article 153 of the Federal Constitution on the Malays’ Special Privileges ensures the reservation of quotas for Malays in public services, granting licences or permits for business, and in scholarships. But regardless of the general agreement and assurance given by the leaders of the Alliance on the temporary nature of the Malays’ special privileges (Malaya, 1957: 183; Ratnam, 1965: 102–117; Heng, 1988: 222), a specific term limit was not included in the constitution of 1957. While this may have caused contradictory expectations between the Malays and nonMalays, the compromise or the ‘bargain’, notably the special privilege of the Malays, has since been regarded after independence by the Malays as a law, a binding contract that applies to all for all times (Nawawi, 1990; Chee, 1991). Chee has observed here that: ‘The prospects for the plural-ethnic democracy that was inaugurated on 31 August 1957 would hence hinge on the


maintenance of the ethnic security equilibrium between the inherently conflicting requirements of Malay ‘special position’ and non-Malay ‘legitimate interests’ (1991: 6). The contrasting and inherently contradictory claims of political rights have since remained a central divisive ethnic issue after independence in 1957. In fact, experience shows that it is not always easy to maintain equilibrium between these two claims without conflict, or without applying authoritarian political measures to suppress it (Crouch, 1996). Especially after the 1969 racial riots (discussed in the following section), strict measures have since been taken to suppress any form of open political conflict between ethnic groups in Malaysia. The important tool to this end is the Sedition Act. This Act prohibits public or even parliamentary questioning on constitutional matters that are regarded as ‘sensitive issues’. These issues include the sovereignty of the Malay rulers. Safeguarding the Malay rulers is politically very significant since they symbolically represent the Malays’ exclusive historical link with the country. Others are the Malays’ special privilege, the status of Malay as the sole official and national language, the status of Islam as the official religion, and the limited citizenship rights of non-Malays. As one scholar explains: ‘This amendment implies, inter alia, restriction of the democratic process and indirectly assures continued Malay political control’ (Hashim, 1983: 93). The government may also prohibit any other ethnically controversial issues if the government perceives it can directly, or indirectly challenge political stability. In 1987, when the issue of Chinese education almost threw the country into another riot, massive detentions were carried out to stop the eruption of another conflict in the country. While political confrontations of a direct kind are, under these circumstances, relatively infrequent, Malaysian life continues to be sharply ethnicised. Up to the present, ethnic interests and considerations continue to dominate the distribution of occupational and educational opportunities, as well as underpinning the ongoing symbolic contest for the rightful status and practices of ethnic languages, cultures and religions (Lee, 1990).

The 1969 riot and Malay nationalism Since the proposal of the Malayan Union, the constitutional matters of common nationality and special position that represent the conflicting aspirations of the Malays and the non-Malays have become the central issue in Malaysian ethnic politics. Different political aspirations have undoubtedly accentuated strong ethnic group consciousness and related distrust and feelings of insecurity among the Malays and non-Malays in the post-independence period. In the post-independence period, Malay nationalism, with the support of the Malay supremacy in politics, has made itself the new political force. This, in turn, has had a strong impact on the rise of ethnic salience and allegiance in Malaysian society. While the Malays had


ensured their political hegemony in independent Malaya, Malay nationalism continued to spur demands for objective realisation of their claims of special privilege as bumiputra, sons of the soil. These political demands brought about the implementation of public policies that favoured the Malays, especially to improve them economically. These policies were implemented vigorously after the ethnic riot of 1969. Malaysia had experienced ethnic clashes before independence in 1957, but in the post-independence period the year 1969 was undoubtedly a major landmark and turning point in the history of Malaysian politics and ethnic relations. Ethnic violence erupted again in this year, primarily as a result of ongoing dissatisfaction and frustration among both the Malays and non-Malays, albeit for very different reasons. Despite the special rights of the Malays, even after more than ten years of independence, the Malays had not really achieved any significant progress in the economy, in reducing the interethnic economic gap, particularly in relation to the Chinese. In a retrospective view on the frustrations of the Malays before the riots, Mahathir Mohamad, who is currently the Prime Minister of Malaysia, explained: …although the Malays have managed to enter the economic field, they have never been able to, and can never hope to catch up with the Chinese. Even as Independence brought the Malays increased opportunities, it has brought the Chinese even greater opportunities which have propelled them so far ahead as to make the entry of the Malays into business almost ridiculously insignificant. The Malay economic dilemma is still unsolved and seems likely to remain so. The Malays’ feeling of frustration continues to deepen. (1970: 51) For the non-Malays, the institutionalisation of the Malays’ special rights in the Malaysian constitution was a political blow. The political cooperation of the non-Malay leaders with the UMNO of the Malays, in forming the Alliance party and the government, could not stop the accumulation of political frustrations among the non-Malays, chiefly the Chinese. As the second largest ethnic group, the Chinese had previous experiences of ethnic clashes and political radicalism and an ongoing animosity towards the Malays. In addition to this, in the 1960s, there was also a fear among the non-Malays of losing their cultural identity, following the efforts of the Malay-dominated government to establish Malay as the sole official and national language. The Chinese and Indians, the MCA and MIC, despite being members in the ruling coalition, were not able to ensure the preservation of their ethnic cultural identity in the public realm. For the first time since independence, the non-Malays, particularly the Chinese, took the opportunity to express their political frustrations in the 1969 general elections by backing the non-Malay opposition parties. In the elections, although the Alliance held the majority of seats in the


Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives), compared to the previous elections in 1964, the number of seats had been reduced from 89 to 66, or from 58.4 per cent to 48.8 per cent in the popular vote. The non-Malay opposition parties – Gerakan, Democratic Action Party (DAP) and People’s Progressive Party (PPP) – together won a total of 22 seats, the Pan Malayan Islamic Party (PAS) won 12 seats, thus depriving the Alliance Government of a two-thirds majority. The Chinese even went to the extent of celebrating the victory of the opposition in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur with various provocative slogans like ‘Malays may return to their villages’, ‘Kuala Lumpur now belongs to the Chinese’, ‘We’ll thrash you, we are now powerful’, ‘This country does not belong to the Malays, we want to chase out the Malays’ (Malaysia, 1969; Goh, 1971). As for the Malays, Goh wrote, ‘They felt outraged that they, the natives of the soil, should have been asked to withdraw from Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Tanah Melayu (the Land of the Malays) into Red-Indian-style reservations so that the immigrant community could gain domination over it’ (1971: 21). The anger of the Malays exploded into several days of rioting. On the significance of this event for the Malays, Lee explained that it has become: …ingrained as a collective symbol of the political sanctity of Malay nationalism…the 13 May incident presaged an era of Bumiputraism in which the symbol of Malay struggle…was consolidated in the form of NEP (New Economic Policy)…the 13 May incident has transcended the actual event to become an ideological instrument of the state, being a powerful symbolic code for protecting Malay nationalism and curbing non-Malay assertiveness. (1990: 491–93) For the non-Malays, especially the Chinese, he further explains: …the 13 May incident, seemingly, spelled the end of their attempt at political self-determination. Without strong, consistent nationalist ideologies reinforced by military power, the electoral victory was a Pyrrhic one that exposed their weaknesses in political organisation. (1990: 492) The Malays could have perceived the 1969 riots as a blessing in disguise. The incident made it possible, for the first time since independence, for the Malays to reactivate and rationalise their political hegemony through the political ideology of bumiputraism, that is, derived from the special rights of the Malays as bumiputra. This became a central driving force for the Malaydominated government for formulating and implementing subsequent ethnic preferential policies that were aimed specifically at promoting Malay economy and culture.


Economic policy The political economic strategy to modernise the Malays and to improve their participation in the Malaysian economy, as well as to establish the Malay national identity, has been of paramount importance to them. The robust manner in which these policies, primarily the New Economic Policy (NEP), were implemented has even overshadowed other strategies, like the Rukunegara, for national unity (Means, 1991: 23). The ideology of national unity, which was also implemented after riots, is in fact a kind of formal declaration of interethnic bargaining (Means, 1991: 13). The Ministry of Unity, established after the riots, did not seem to have a vital role to play in society, as the status of this ministry was later reduced to a board for national unity before being ‘demoted’ to just a department. Regardless of its less important status to that of the NEP, the Rukunegara nevertheless represents a symbol of Malay political hegemony through some of its principles, including loyalty to the king and upholding the constitution. The Malays’ economic nationalism has been the most significant driving force in Malay political mobilisation after independence. Uneven development and modernisation between the Malays and non-Malays were the major concerns for which the New Economic Policy was implemented immediately after the 1969 riot. The development of Malay economic power and modernisation were seen as vital in securing interethnic harmony in Malaysian society. Greater participation of the Malays in modern economic sectors, educational and training programmes, and urbanisation processes was the aim of the policy. The New Economic Policy that was introduced in 1970 stipulates that ‘within a period of twenty years [by 1990], the Malays and other indigenous people will manage and own at least 30 per cent of the total commercial and industrial activities in all categories and scales of operation’ (Malaysia, 1971: 41). This objective is central to the strategy of restructuring Malaysian society and eventually eradicating poverty in order to bring about interethnic peace and social justice. The NEP as such is not an economic policy per se, but an overall policy of socioeconomy and politics (Jomo, 1988; Jesudason, 1990; Gomez and Jomo, 1999). Its implementation has resulted in greater state intervention in exercising a favourable increase in the intake, or quotas, for Malays in government employment, in educational training programmes, and in the private sectors of the economy. To increase the Malays’ ownership of the Malaysian economy, to achieve 30 per cent of share equity by 1990, public enterprises were expected to act as Bumiputra Trust Agencies, to buy corporate shares and to acquire control of industries on behalf of the Malays. As a consequence, more public enterprises at the federal, state and regional levels were established. By 1986, there were 841 such enterprises at all levels, mostly established in the 1970s (Ibrahim, 1987). The Public


Services Commission and other public agencies have directly recruited a high proportion of Malays into the government services. According to one calculation, between 1969 and 1973, Malay intake in the government services, including the armed forces, was 99 per cent of the total intake (Means, 1991: 26). To increase the participation of Malays in the private sectors, the government rule requires all private firms to ensure that the intake of Malays is at least 32 to 45 per cent, and compels these firms to include Malays in their training and promotional schemes. In order to increase the Malays’ participation in the modern sectors of the economy, the NEP has also established favourable Malay quotas for scholarships and admissions, either to study in the local universities or overseas, including specific courses of studies. In addition to the existing University of Malaya, more universities have been opened to accommodate this policy, where Malay students form between 65 and 90 per cent of the total student population (Means, 1991: 26). Means adds: In addition, large numbers of government scholarships were made available for advanced study abroad, with over 90 per cent of these foreign study scholarships being awarded to Malays. By contrast, most non-Malays who studied abroad have to do so on their own resources. By 1982, there were 50 000 Malaysian students pursuing education abroad…with almost all the overseas Malay students fully funded by the government. All these programmes of assistance to the Malays were planned as part of the overall NEP strategy. (1991: 26) Officially the New Economic Policy came to an end in 1990. However, in drafting the succeeding National Development Policy (1991–2000), the government determinedly stated that the objective of promoting Malay economic interests is unfinished and so the objective of NEP has to be continued.

Malay as the dominant ethnicity: Bangsa Melayu and Bangsa Malaysia In addition to this economic strategy, there were also cultural strategies that were consistent with Malay nationalism. As one scholar observed, ‘For the Malays, the changes brought by colonialism had a major imprint on their psyche. The experience of external domination weakened their collective self-confidence and drove them, particularly the second generation post-Independence Malay elite and intelligentsia, to recover this loss in the symbolic, political, and economic spheres’ (Jesudason, 1990: 29). Apart from securing political hegemony and the economic policy to promote their economic development, the Malays were thus also concerned for the position of their own culture in relation to the development


of national culture and national identity. Probably what most concerned the Malays culturally was the domination of the English language, and the presence of competing Chinese and Tamil language schools. Even before 1969, the 1950 National Educational Policy and the 1967 National Language Act were already enforced to promote Malay schools and the Malay language. The concept of ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ in the 1960s as advocated by some radical non-Malay leaders was not acceptable to the Malays. The idea was based on the liberal political approach, and it saw Malaysia as a country with equal rights for all its citizens. This idea was rejected by to the Malays, as it contradicted their view of the special rights of the indigenous people and their culture. It was this that led eventually to the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. In 1971, the National Cultural Policy was announced. The aim was to create a national culture and national identity which was expected to promote unity and a sense of belonging to the country among the ethnic groups. However, not surprisingly, the National Cultural Policy was based on the views of the Malays, who basically see Malaysia as the Malays’ country. This assimilationist policy maintains that the national culture has to be based on Malay culture and religion (Islam). To complement this policy, from 1981, the policy of ‘Islamisation’ was introduced to intensify the emphasis on Islamic symbols and ideals in administration, as well as in economics and education. The Islamic Bank of Malaysia, Islamic Insurance Schemes, the Islamic University and the teaching of Islamic civilisation courses for all Malaysian students, as well as the importance of Islamic law, have already been implemented (Means, 1991: 99–105}.

Micro, meso and macro ethnicity Malaysia is a country in which ethnic processes operate intensively at every level, from the micro level in terms of everyday social interactions to the macro level in terms of state policy. Some scholars have in fact directly or indirectly, albeit using different terms, recognised the importance of these levels, especially the micro and macro levels, in exploring the way in which ethnic identities, loyalties and conflicts may be articulated in multiethnic societies, including Malaysia (Despres, 1977: 87–118; Nash, 1989: 30; Eriksen, 1993: 46–48; Jenkins, 1994: 197–223; Mariappan, 1996: 311–16; Fenton, 1999: 13–17). Their observations suggest that in a society like Malaysia, we need to make a distinction between the levels of social structure at which ethnicity may take on relevance, in order to understand the ways in which people express their ethnic identity and the importance of ethnicity. This means that we need to understand the very nature of social contexts that constitute the different levels of social structure. We may refer, in fact, to three levels


that encompass the whole ethnic structure in a society as micro-, mesoand macro-ethnicity, respectively. For example, as Nash puts it: Cooperation, accommodation, and confrontation among the communal groups and individuals who compose these categories take place at three analytically distinct levels: political, the economic, and the world of ordinary, daily interaction. These are analytical levels, and the separation is a construct of the observer or the analyst, for political symbols and acts may suffuse daily life, and economic considerations and activities deeply involve the flow of daily life and often form the stuff of politics and other kinds of social and cultural activities. Ethnicity…in Malaysia comes near to…a total social fact, in that its strands lead into all of social life. (1989: 30) Micro-ethnicity In Malaysia, under the highly ethnicised political and economic setting, the maintenance of ethnic boundaries is continuously reinforced through cultural and religious practices, and the existence of parallel ethnic social institutions among ethnic groups. Cultural and religious factors play a very important part in the manifestation of micro-level ethnicity that, in turn, gives a kind of ‘natural’ or primordial sense of ethnic group solidarity and spontaneous ethnic consciousness among the Malays, Chinese, Indians and other ethnic groups. The manipulation of ‘cultural and religious stuff’ as markers in the maintenance of ethnic groups boundaries has been stressed in many sociological writings (see, for example, Barth, 1969; Nagata 1974). These markers of ethnic boundaries are expressed in highly visible ways in the day-to-day cultural and religious practices, and languages spoken in Malaysia. Religious sensibilities become the principal boundary-maintaining mechanisms in Malaysia, especially between the all-Muslim Malays and the majority of the Chinese and the Indians who form the non-Muslims population in Malaysia. For example, as Nash has observed, ‘The Muslim code of “halal-haram” separate Chinese from Malay, and sometimes Hindu Indians…this code prohibits so many of the ordinary foods of Chinese that Malays cannot dine in a Chinese home or restaurant’ (1989: 36). Another important influence of micro-ethnicity is the practice of endogamy. Mixed marriages across ethnic barriers rarely happen. The compulsory conversion of non-Muslims to the Islamic faith in order to marry a Malay-Muslim entails, according to Nash, ‘high social and cultural costs and dislocations’ among the non-Malays (1989: 36). While it may appear that this kind of impediment is absent, which to some extent is true, in allowing for mixed marriages between Chinese and Indians, ethnic cultural and religious biases and prejudices continue to persist, and thus deny any easy inclusion of members of other ethnic


groups through marriage into a family kinship network. These practices of micro-ethnicity, operating at the primary level of social relationships, are bound to generate a strong and continuous sense of ethnic identity among individuals, while also influencing them to act in accordance with the cultural and social values and practices of their particular ethnic group. Meso-ethnicity While people of different ethnic origins may attach importance to their ethnicity within their family circles, it does not in any way restrain them from forming interethnic interpersonal relations, or carrying out transactions with others in various other simple social matters outside the immediate realm of family, culture and religion. In the urban environment, where the social contacts and transactions between the Malays, Chinese, Indians and others are unavoidable, universal democratic values of equality and personal freedom, liberalism and economic individualism, by and large, are able to enhance individualistic and pragmatic considerations in their everyday interpersonal interactions (Mansor, 1992; Mariappan, 1996). Despite this, areas of face-to-face social contact, mainly through neighbourhood and friendship circles, are still limited for the majority of people in Malaysia. Some may see this as due to the fact that the distribution of the Malaysian ethnic population in urban and rural areas, and in occupational and economic sectors, has not sufficiently broken down the ‘traditional’ form of spatial-geographical and occupational divisions among the major ethnic groups. One may argue that most of the Malay population still lives in the rural areas, although there has been a rapid and increasing movement into the urban areas and new sectors since the 1970s (Malaysia 1996). However, this argument cannot at any rate undermine the role of effectively ethnicised political and economic decisions, policies and processes which have given centrality to ethnicity in Malaysia (Mariappan, 1996; Fenton, 1999). The development of meso-level ethnicity in Malaysia is also closely related to the processes of industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation in society in post-independence period. These processes have expanded social relations of a secondary kind, in public organisations where the members of different ethnic groups share sets of interactions that are relatively impersonal and formal. In Malaysia this mainly happens as a direct consequence of the government’s objective of ‘restructuring society’, as stated in the New Economic Policy. The participation of the Malays at all levels in business organisations is supported by the policy. This policy has since then continuously increased the Malays’ participation in the formal sectors of modern occupations and educational institutions (Goh, 1991; Ramasamy, 1993). As a consequence, interethnic contact in


these formal occupational sectors has increased. However, at this meso-level of formal interactions, overt expressions of ethnic prejudice would be considered highly sensitive. Non-Malays are particularly aware, for example, of the sensitivity of the government’s New Economic Policy, which was introduced for the sole purpose of correcting the non-Malays’ domination in modern urban sectors by openly pro-Malay strategies. At meso-level activities, most people in a society would be directly involved in competition for economic resources, or in plain language, for a job, promotion, better pay, education and training. This is, in short, the marketplace, and these are matters of ‘bread and butter’. Chinese and Indians would not risk expressing their ethnic chauvinism at this level because of the constraints of wider government policy, but it causes frustration and resentment among non-Malays, towards both Malays and the government’s economic policy, nonetheless. The recent politically controversial demands in the year 2000 by the Malaysian Chinese Organisations Election Appeals, also known as Malaysian Elections Appeals Committee or popularly as Suqiu, for the government to review the special privileges of the Malays (see also below), shows that the matter of special privilege, mainly in the economic sector, is still an ongoing source of ethnic resentment and conflict in Malaysia. This demand has caused anger and strong opposition from the Malays. The Malays compellingly maintain that the constitutional special privilege is a permanent feature that they will safeguard at any cost, besides consistently maintaining that their struggle for advancement in the modern sectors of the economy is far from being over yet. Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister, who is also the president of UMNO, reiterated in the recent UMNO 55th General Assembly on 21 June 2001, that the Malays are still falling behind in the NEP’s target of achieving 30 per cent equity in the Malaysian economy. Ethnic inequalities and competition in this economic sphere will continue to harden ethnic sentiments, identity and resentment between ethnic groups. As Osman Rani, comments: …if the National Economic Policy’s [NEP] assumption can be accepted, i.e. ethnic relations can be improved through interaction and cooperation between Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra via participation in the same and equal economic activities, then any change towards achieving the goals of the NEP should reinforce this process of integration. Unfortunately, this did not happen. On the contrary, ethnic relations in Malaysia seem to have become more serious, more so…after the economic depression in the mid-1980s, and towards the end of the 20-year period of the implementation of the NEP. (1989: 12–13)


Macro-ethnicity Macro-level ethnicity refers to the higher abstract level where national political decisions are made and where the political mobilisation of ethnic allegiance is created through ethnic political organisations, or built into the political institutions of the state itself. It is frequently beyond the immediate purview of the individual – he or she knows of this world (more or less perfectly, more or less dimly) but does not live in it in the face-to-face sense, despite the fact that his or her life is profoundly shaped by the tendencies of this macro-world (Mariappan, 1996; Fenton, 1999). These political processes and decisions, as far as the Malaysian case is concerned, are ingrained in the Constitution. Malaysians’ ethnicity is reinforced and supported by rules and the law of the Constitution. At the highest level exists the legalised ingredient for such a political administrative strategy of ethnic classification and this is the very constitutional definition of ‘a Malay’. This definition cannot be understood in isolation from the other constitutional principle that defines the ‘special rights’ or privileges for the Malays as bumiputra of the country. By implication, these constitutional definitions are a very important categorisation of political status for the non-Malays as well. In pointing out this implication, Stephen Chee notes: ‘Non-Malay’, however, is a social category, a negative referent of not being a member of the Malay race, socially defined, without any imputation that non-Malays form a solidary group. ‘Non-bumiputra’ has a specifically political connotation and, indeed, might have acquired a quasi-legal status because of its frequent incorporation in government documents as well as social communication. (1991: 10, fn.2) Since 1969, the salience of macro-ethnicity has taken different routes, principally in the form of the new Malay nationalism. This Malay nationalism has not only become a vehicle for their greater economic rationalisation2 but also includes the efforts to reinforce the cultural and religious identities of Malays as the pre-eminent national identity. These efforts are consistent with Malay aspirations to reconstruct new dignified images of themselves, and to strengthen the claim to their being indigenous. This period indicates the second stage in which macro-ethnicity is expressed in the formulation of public policies which carry with them the institutionalised notion of ethnic differences, identity and political rights’ status. Among such policies are a national (Malay) language and education, national culture, and most importantly, the New Economic Policy, and later, Islamisation. These policies are aimed at correcting the Malays’ disadvantage in the economy, and promoting Malay-Muslim national culture and identity over all other ethnic groups within Malaysia.


In the awakening of this new Malay nationalism, ethnic conflict in Malaysia, as pointed out by Raymond Lee (1986), has been inclined to take a form of ‘status politics conflict’. Every so often, important issues arise and create a kind of ‘big event’ impact on ethnic relations. Among the earlier ones after independence was the issue concerning the rights of the Chinese in establishing a Chinese University, which is more popularly known as the Merdeka University controversy (Lee, 1980). In another instance, the issue was who founded Kuala Lumpur, Yap Ah Loy (a Chinese) or Raja Abdullah (a Malay)? But in 1987, the question of the promotion of non-Mandarin speaking teachers in the Chinese (Mandarin) schools was a serious one. It caused friction between the Malays and Chinese and almost created another major riot in Malaysia. Lee describes these issues as political conflicts manifested in the form of a status conflict where symbolic events, or issues, serve to heighten the cognisance of status differences between ethnic groups. He explains: There is an implicit understanding between the Malays and non-Malays on the avoidance of publicly discussing sensitive matters, particularly matters dealing with power relations between ethnic groups, such as Malay special privileges…. Given the restricted conditions under which power issues can be discussed, it is not surprising that many political and non-political groups select status issues as an outlet for ethnic grievances. (1986: 43) According to Lee, conflict over status issues like the Merdeka University requiring Malay attire for official functions, and the question of who founded Kuala Lumpur (Raja Abdullah Jaafar or Yap Ah Loy), has taken centrestage, instead of more overt power issues in contemporary Malaysian politics. This is due to the tight control over the discussion of sensitive matters and ethnic politics, discussed above. Contrary to this, however, one could argue that the Suqiu’s (Malaysian Chinese Organisation) demands, are quite open and overt on the sensitive issue of special privilege.

Management of ethnicity in Malaysia There is no doubt that compared to some other multiethnic societies, ethnic conflict in Malaysia has been relatively contained. In comparison to Sri Lanka, for example, Donald Horowitz (1989) has rightly pointed out some of the key features of the Malaysian political system that have enabled Malaysia to avoid the kind of violence witnessed in Sri Lanka. These include the heterogeneous parliamentary constituencies, the early formation of the multiethnic coalition Alliance Party, the basic political compromises between Malays and non-Malays (over constitution rights, for example) before independence, and the committed leadership of the multiethnic Alliance subsequent to independence.


Malaysia, as Horowitz argues, would seem to have made a good early start for ‘multiethnicity to become a habit’ in society. But it has also, at the same time, institutionalised political divisions and ethnic antipathy between the various ethnic groups involved. What one needs to question here is whether Malaysia can sustain ethnically balanced power-sharing and mutual respect between different groups, as exemplified by the political aims of the Alliance/National Front? Donald Horowitz has noted that ‘had a militantly pro-Malay competitor party existed, UMNO would surely have hesitated to make a lasting arrangement with the MCA’ (1989: 29). In the post-independence period, especially since the 1969 riot, elements of radical Malay nationalism within the UMNO leadership have determinedly ensured the implementation of public policies that openly protect and promote Malays’ political, economic, cultural and religious interests. This, by and large, has forced non-Malay alienation from the Malaysian polity. The unequal power relations between Malays and non-Malays have reduced the relationship between them to one very much like majority-minority relations, rather than the earlier notion of political power bargaining or sharing. Since 1969, Malay nationalism was clearly geared towards further strengthening the political hegemony of the Malays as an unquestionable right (Nawawi, 1990), while also establishing their cultural dominance in society. Malaysian national identity has thus been increasingly defined in terms of Malay-Muslim ethnoreligious identity. The Malaysian political system may still reward the Chinese and Indians – it permits social mobility, some cultural recognition and some political representation. Yet, for non-Malays, it is not the kind of experience that they may have expected from initial power bargaining, or the sharing in a consociational3 politics. ‘Malaysian Malaysia’, the slogan which represented the political aspirations of non-Malays, was never voiced openly again after it had caused the separation of Singapore from Malaysia. But the issue in the form of Malays’ Malaysia versus Malaysian Malaysia persists in the process by which each broad grouping tries to realise their politicocultural aspirations. Without giving consideration to the cause of non-Malays’ political frustration and the marginalisation of their ethnic identity and rights in the process of Malayan and subsequently Malaysian nationbuilding, one cannot ensure that the post-1969 period has found a solution to ethnic conflict in Malaysia, or has undermined the importance of ethnicity in contemporary Malaysian society. In Malaysia, political issues of macro-ethnicity and Malay nationalism have perpetuated the resentments of the Malays and non-Malays toward each other. However, this does not interrupt their daily interethnic interactions, nor are such resentments always openly expressed. Everyday interactions would usually be influenced by pragmatic attitudes that bridge and accommodate ethnic differences at the personal level. In any modern society, people understand that showing overtly bigoted ethnic prejudice, attitudes


and hatred are simply not polite or consistent with the democratic principles of modern democratic society. In addition, since 1969, the ‘sensitive issues’ amendments and the Sedition Act have also suppressed open expressions of ethnic prejudice and animosity among the people of Malaysia. But the political issues that articulate and represent macro-ethnicity have always been present in Malaysia politics and in the minds of people. As Fenton has observed: Malaysians of all identities cannot escape the effect and the meaning of this macro-social and macro-cultural fact, whether they wish to or not. They cannot escape ethnicity because it is written into the Constitution …People simply treat micro-social interactions and macro-social loyalties as different games which are played by different rules, even while each ‘level’ significantly informs the others. (1999: 190–91) It is thus merely a question of provoking or manipulating circumstances to bring out into open violence the underlying conflicts between people of different ethnic backgrounds. The processes of economic individualism, accommodation, acculturation or assimilation might have brought pragmatic workable interactions in daily life (micro-ethnicity) among people of different ethnic origin in Malaysia. But these processes may not have any significant effect on the ongoing social, cultural and political imperatives at the meso- and, especially, macro-ethnic levels.

Conclusion The historical sociology of Malaysia in the colonial period shows how the social location of different groups, ethnically defined, was formed by their position at entry and their subsequent destinies in a regional economy with an ethnicised division of labour. The economic underprivilege facing most Malays, coupled with their claim to indigenousness and special status at the point of independence, and their numerical preponderance, meant that an ethnically neutral citizenship was scarcely possible. The New Economic Policy, an economic solution to a political crisis, has had the effect of softening Malay economic underprivilege, whilst sustaining an ethnic definition of access to rights and resources. The need for a ‘harmonising’ Malaysian citizenship which is ethnically neutral is thus always tempered by the continuing demand to recognise the special place of ‘Malay-ness’ within ‘Malaysian-ness’. A purely civic definition of the nation is moderated by the degree to which ethnicity is built into the constitution and the conventional political consciousness. But this often tense balance of ‘ethnicity’, ‘nation’ and ‘state’ may also be disturbed by divisions within the Malay population itself, along lines of social class and of orientation to Islam, as well as by the continuing possibility that a


non-ethnic politics – about economic questions, democratic rights and postures towards ‘modernity’ – may come to supersede a politics which, for most of the period of postcolonial Malaysia, has been largely noted for its ethnic conformity.

Notes 1. On the mobilisation of Malays politically, see Roff (1994), Harper (1999). 2. Economic rationalisation in the case of Malay nationalism, as Lee explains, involves ‘nationalist policies [that] dictate the direction of economic planning, which is assumed to be conducted under a “scientific” programme to eliminate poverty and to rise Malay standards of living’ (1990: 499–500). 3. Consociationalism refers to interethnic power-sharing, rather than winner-takes-all political confrontation, by compromise or accommodation of conflictual claims through elite transactions on behalf of their communities (Chee, 1991). In Malaysia, as Chee puts it, ‘An organizational strategy to win political power became a consociational mechanism for inter-ethnic elite bargaining and accommodation to forge constitutional solutions to many ethnically salient issues’ (1991: 5).

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224 Ethnonational Identities Eriksen, T. (1993) Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Pluto Press). Fenton, S. (1999) Ethnicity: Racism, Class and Culture (London: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave). Freedman, M. (1960) The growth of a plural society, Pacific Affairs 33, 158–68. Furnivall, J. (1948) Colonial Policy and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Goh, B. (1991) Restructuring society in Malaysia: its impacts on employment and investment, in S. W. R. de A. Samarasinghe and R. Coughlan (eds), Economic Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict (London: Printer). Goh, C. (1971) The May Thirteenth Incident (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press). Gomez, E. and Jomo, K. (1999) Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gullick, J. (1969) Indigenous Political System of Western Malaya (London: Athlone Press). Harper, T. (1999) The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hashim, W. (1983) Race Relations in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann). Heng, P. (1988) Chinese Politics in Malaysia: A History of Malaysian Chinese Association (Singapore: Oxford University Press). Hirschman, C. (1975) Ethnic and Social Stratification in Peninsular Malaysia (Washington: American Sociological Association). —— (1987) The meaning and measurement of ethnicity in Malaysia: an analysis of census classifications, Journal of Asian Studies 46, 555–82. Horowitz, D. (1989) Incentives and behaviour in the ethnic politics of Sri Lanka and Malaysia, Third World Quarterly 10 (4): 18–35. Ibrahim, K. (1987) Monitoring government companies: Central Information Collection Unit findings, Ilmu Masyarakat 13. Jenkins, R. (1994) Rethinking ethnicity: identity, categorization and power, Ethnic and Racial Studies 17, 197–223. Jesudason, J. (1990) Ethnicity and the Economy: the State, Chinese Business, and Multinationals in Malaysia (Singapore: Oxford University Press). Jomo, K. (1988) A Question of Class: Capital, the State, and Uneven Development in Malaya (New York: Monthly Review Press). Khasnor, J. (1984) The Emergence of the Modern Malay Administrative Elite (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press). Lee, R. (1980) Ethnic relations in interactionist perspective: a case of ethnic conflict in West Malaysia, Symbolic Interaction 3, 89–104. —— (1986) Social networks and ethnic interaction in urban Malaysia: an exploratory survey, Sojourn 1, 109–24. —— (1988) Patterns of religious tension in Malaysia, Asian Survey 28, 400–18. —— (1990) The state, religious nationalism, and ethnic rationalization in Malaysia, Ethnic and Racial Studies 13, 482–502. Malaya (1957) Report of Federation of Malaya Constitutional Commission (Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer). Malaysia (1969) The May 13th Tragedy: A Report (Kuala Lumpur: The National Operational Council). —— (1971) Second Malaysia Plan (Kuala Lumpur: Government Printers). —— (1996) Seventh Malaysia Plan (Kuala Lumpur: Government Printers). Mariappan, K. (1996) Micro and macro ethnicity: ethnic preferences and structures in Malaysia, Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Bristol.

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226 Ethnonational Identities Tadin, I. (1960) Dato Onn and Malay nationalism, 1941–1951, Journal of Southeast Asian History 1, 56–88. Ting, C. (1980) Komunity China di Semenanjung Malaysia: kepelbagaian, pertubuhan dan strstifikasi (Chinese community in Peninsular Malaysia: diversity, association and stratification), Jernal Antropologi and Sosiologi 8, 87–104. Vlieland, C. (1934) The population of Malay Peninsular, Geographical Review 24, 61–78. Wang, G. (1970) Chinese politics in Malaya, China Quarterly 43, 1–30. Wahid, Z. (1970a) The emergency and its consequences, in Z. Wahid (ed.) Glimpses of Malaysian History (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa Pustaka). —— (1970b) The Malayan Union: its abolition, in Z. Wahid (ed.) Glimpses of Malaysian History (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa Pustaka).

10 Terms of Inclusion: Citizenship and the Shaping of Ethnonational Identities Judith Squires

Introduction Questions concerning whether and how cultural groups should be recognised in politics are among the most salient and vexing on the political agenda of many democratic and democratising societies today. (Gutmann, 1994: 5) This chapter examines the interplay between the concepts of ethnicity and nation with those of citizenship and ‘cultural difference’ within contemporary political theory. Despite the epistemological and ontological variance manifest in the work of the proponents of liberalism, communitarianism, critical theory and postmodernism, we nonetheless witness an increasingly ubiquitous shared concern to ‘recognise group difference’ – to respond politically to the fact of cultural diversity and positively structure a pluralistic celebration of group difference into models of democratic citizenship. The chapter will survey current debates regarding citizenship and consider the tension within multicultural citizenship debates regarding the commitments to universalism and to inclusivity. It will argue that different forms of a ‘politics of recognition’ entail distinct forms of resolution of this tension: from Will Kymlicka’s (1995) attempts to develop a liberal defence of group rights, to Charles Taylor’s (1994) Hegelian reflections on a multicultural politics of recognition, and Iris Young’s (1990) politics of difference which develops procedural mechanisms for representing group rights from a postmodern framework, to Chantal Mouffe’s (1992) ‘radical’ recuperation of a form of liberal transcendency of difference. A critical evaluation of these theoretical perspectives allows one to perceive the diversity of opinion regarding the appropriate manner in which to accommodate ethnic identities within static political and institutional frameworks linked to territorial boundaries. It also highlights the extent to which cultural identity has come to occupy a central place in contemporary political debate and struggle – as exemplified in the previous chapters in this volume. 227


Multilayered citizenship debates The weight of historical tradition, the impact of contemporary political events and the preoccupations of current normative debates have all conspired to make citizenship an ubiquitous presence in most political debates. There are widespread but contradictory appeals to the concept. Citizenship is presented as both an undesirable anachronism and as a yet-to-be-realised ideal of immense political value: it has been most things to most people. The malleability of the concept arises from its complexity, straddling many different axes of tension. There is the rights/responsibility axis, involving dispute not only about the relative importance of rights and responsibilities but also the appropriate form of each; there is the territorial/cosmopolitan axis, which explores the centrality of the sovereign nation-state and the territorial dimensions of the concept; and there is the universal/particular axis, focusing on the merits of and foundations for universal norms of evaluation. The debates revolving around each of these three axes frequently develop their own internal dynamics and external constraints such that they seem to be largely unconnected in theory. Whilst mainstream Western political theory has tended to focus upon the rights/responsibility axis in the form of a debate between the liberal and civic republican models of citizenship, theoretical reflections upon nations and nationalism have focused on the territorial/cosmopolitan axis, and recent considerations of ethnicity and cultural difference have subjected the universal/particular axis to particular scrutiny. Given the concerns addressed within this volume, I propose to focus on the universalistic aspect of citizenship, and consider the need for, and possibility of, a differentiated citizenship model. But in questioning whether the concept of citizenship can respond to the challenge of pluralism posed by the demand to recognise ethnic difference, I hope also to place this debate within a context sensitive to the concerns raised in these other two sorts of citizenship debate, which I shall first briefly survey. Liberal and republican citizenship The mainstream social and political theory approach to citizenship operates around the rights/responsibilities axis in the form of a liberal/civic republican dichotomy. There is a long-standing debate about how best to define citizenship arising from whether one understands membership of a community as a status or an activity: whether one possesses citizenship rights (the liberal perspective) or participates in citizenship responsibilities (the civic republican perspective). This debate is cross-cut by the civil, political, social distinction. Citizenship conceived as status is realised through the acquisition of rights, which can be civil, political or social rights as classically argued by T. H. Marshall (1950). Citizenship conceived as obligation is realised through activity within the community, usually characterised as

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either social or political (some conservative forms of contemporary communitarianism stressing social obligation, more radical appeals to civic republicanism stressing political participation). The liberal model of citizenship, conceived as a set of rights enjoyed equally by every member of the society in question, embodies an idea of social justice. Everyone has a common set of political entitlements whatever their social, cultural and economic status. Marshall (1950), who provided perhaps the classic articulation of this position, presumed that the precise substance of these rights would be a matter of common agreement. The primary focus of concern here tends to be the relation between citizenship and economic inequality, requiring a minimum level of redistribution to overcome the pressures of social exclusion. Citizenship is conceived as a political identity working to mitigate other (primarily economic) identities. In his later writings, Rawls offers a related conception of citizenship as a public political status taking precedence over private personal identities in the sense that the pursuit of the latter can only take place within the boundaries set by the former. This is a cerebral citizenship comprising subscription to a certain set of principles of justice that all can potentially accept, whatever their personal identity. Whilst people’s personal identities may be deeply entrenched or ‘encumbered’, as citizens they ‘claim the right to view their persons as independent from and as not identified with any particular conception of the good, or scheme of private ends’ (Rawls, 1993: 241). Citizenship is here formal, individualistic and transcendent of particularity. The republican model of citizenship, in contrast, ‘conceives the citizen as someone who plays an active role in shaping the future direction of his or her society through political debate and decision-making’ (Miller, 2000: 53). It augments the liberal conception of citizenship as rights with a correlative stress on responsibilities, specifically a responsibility to promote the common good of the political community through active participation in its political life. Reacting against the perceived atomism and passivity of the liberal model, the republican tradition emphasises an active, collective politics as the essence of citizenship. Where the liberal conception of citizenship is overtly based upon the fact of pluralism, the republican one more directly presumes the common traditions and heritage of a culturally homogeneous society. It aspires to a substantive rather than a formal conception of citizenship, jettisoning the liberal attempt to distinguish the right from the good. There are clearly problems attendant upon adopting either the liberal or the republican conception of citizenship: if one defines citizenship narrowly in relation to formal rights, one is open to the charge of failing to understand the embedded nature of identity (Sandel, 1982; Taylor, 1994), of omitting discussion of civil society (Hirst, 1994; Keane, 1998), and of remaining too firmly wedded to the institutions of the state (Linklater,


1997; Held, 1991, 1995). If extensively defined, citizenship becomes open to the charge that it is overly assimilatory, demanding too high a degree of conformity of its citizens, presenting a single model of the active citizen which is actual partial and therefore substantively exclusionary (Parekh, 2000). The more fully fleshed out one’s conception of the citizenship, the more likely it is that many will feel themselves to be ‘second-class citizens’, granted formal rights of residence, but not meeting the more extensive criteria of inclusion, as demonstrated in many of the chapters in this volume. Citizenship can become an overly moralised discourse used to discipline a recalcitrant population into cultural conformity. ‘Despite the grandiose title,’ Phillips comments, ‘the “active citizen” then becomes a bit of a busybody keeping the neighbours in line…’ (Phillips, 1991: 77). Whilst these two positions are, in their extreme forms, oppositional, many have worked to produce a critical synthesis (see Lister (1997) for a recent attempt). Such a resolution usually focuses on the fact that whilst the formal civil and political rights clearly inscribe the liberal conception of citizenship, the more substantive social and economic rights actually help realise the civic republican conception of citizenship by creating the conditions for full social and political participation. Whilst deriving from theoretically distinct traditions, the rights and participatory approaches could then be viewed as mutually supportive. Territorial and cosmopolitan citizenship Although the pursuit of a critical synthesis between these two traditions of citizenship theory is hugely valuable, one should retain a continued sense of the partiality of the debate itself. In focusing on the differences between these two perspectives, the discourse of political theory has tended to occlude their similarities. Notably, both assume citizenship to exist within a territorially bounded nation-state and both aspire to a form of universalism within its boundaries (cf. Fenton and May, this volume). Sceptics argue that citizenship has accordingly involved both exclusion and assimilation: exclusion of those outside the nation-state and assimilation of those within. Contemplation of the former exclusion requires that one turns one’s attention to the nature and power of the nation-state and to an explicit consideration of whether the nation-state need be, or indeed can continue to be, the only community in which we invest the power to grant or deny citizenship status. The territorial/cosmopolitan axis of the citizenship debate refocuses attention upon two related issues not highlighted by the rights/responsibilities axis: globalisation and nationalism. Since T. H. Marshall wrote his classic account of citizenship in 1950, the volume of migration has increased and the numbers of countries affected have risen. The forces of globalisation and economic disparity propel an ever-growing number of people to move in search of work, which in turn generates increasingly strict immigration controls. As Lister notes, ‘in an

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era of extensive migration across an economically polarised world, the boundary-staking functions of citizenship as a legal status have become more prominent’ (1997: 43). In this context, the right to enter or remain in a country is a critical issue for citizenship which, as Nira Yuval-Davis notes, is completely outside the agenda of Marshallian theories of citizenship but crucial to contemporary citizenship debates (1991: 61). As a result some argue that, given that it is a territorial-based conception, citizenship is rendered anachronistic by the globalisation process. Others counter that globalisation has had not one but two effects on the state in relation to citizenship to date: the first erodes its autonomy and reduces the nationstate to ‘simply one class of powers and political agencies in a complex system of power’ (Hirst and Thompson, 1999: 190); the second intensifies the stress on gate-keeping and the role of the state as regulator of access to territory. Citizenship debates, though internally complex, do nonetheless tend to presume a shared territorial boundary. They focus primarily upon the relation between people and the state, where these people have basic legal citizenship. The focus of dispute concerns the various means of realising the potential that this legal status imbues. Once one has citizenship status one can use this, even as an oppressed or marginalised citizen, to argue for fuller inclusion within the state in the form of greater social, civil or political rights (and perhaps responsibilities). However, given the increasing number of people who are not able to issue entitlement claims against any state, many theorists are increasingly drawn to an exploration of the potential for a conception of citizenship that transcends national boundaries, usually located in the notion of international human rights. Critics of this move counter that citizenship is a paradigmatically territorially bound notion which simply doesn’t have any role when disembedded from the nation-state. The central question here is whether one could or should disentangle citizenship status from the state. There are pressing practical reasons which propel many to consider the possibility of formulating a discourse of ‘global citizenship’ which might prefigure the establishment of an institutional framework to secure such global citizenship rights. As Narayan points out, ‘many countries have substantial numbers of immigrants who are legally part of its ongoing workforce but who are not eligible for citizenship and lack political, social and civil rights as non-citizens’ (Shanley and Narayan, 1997: 61). If one is to attend to the immigrants, refugees, exiles, guestworkers and other moving groups that constitute an essential feature of the contemporary world, it is possible that the state-based conception of citizenship stands in need of either reformulation or augmentation. At issue here is whether one needs to reformulate citizenship beyond its territorial conception, or whether one ought rather to maintain the distinction between human being and citizen and rearticulate the rights of the


former vis-à-vis those of the latter. The distinction is a historical legacy, forcefully maintained by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It is a legacy that many have questioned: what happens to people without nations, without territories (such as the Roma; see Guy, this volume)? Are they human beings if they are not citizens? But, despite its moral dangers and historical limitations, many choose to defend the appositeness of the distinction. As Julia Kristeva argues, ‘to uphold a universal, transnational principle of Humanity that is distinct from the historical realities of nation and citizenship constitutes…a rampart against a nationalist, regionalist, and religious fragmentation whose integrative contractions are only too visible today’ (1993: 26–27). This leads us to the second severe limitation on conceptualising citizenship too narrowly in terms of the nation-state, which is that many of the most pressing issues relating to citizenship are currently generated in the context of multinational states. The challenge to the universalism of traditional citizenship discourse comes, as Kymlicka (1995) has argued, not only from the polyethnic nature of states, but also from the existence of multinational states (see also Fenton and May, this volume). Within multinational states, where cultural diversity arises from the incorporation of previously self-governing, territorially concentrated cultures into a larger state, citizenship may be bifurcated between social participation enacted vis-à-vis a nation and political rights claimed vis-à-vis a state. The particular issues generated by multinational as opposed to polyethnic forms of cultural diversity are of course paradigmatically territorial (the demand for self-determination, for example, challenges the state’s right to claim the legitimate monopoly of power within a given territory; cf. Hewitt; May; Williams, this volume). Whereas the forces of globalisation would seem to require that citizenship becomes deterritorialised, the forces of nationalism would seem to require that it becomes reterritorialised. The nature of the relationship between nationalism and globalisation is of course extremely complex, but minimally one should note that, whilst they pose radically different challenges to traditional citizenship discourses, they both work to undermine the fixity of the territorial boundaries in which citizenship might operate. Complex citizenships Although mapped out schematically above as distinct aspects of citizenship debates, the issues of the nature and scope, or form and location, of citizenship are of course inseparable in practice. A brief consideration of the cross-cutting interrelation between the rights/responsibility and territorial/cosmopolitan axes of the citizenship debates reveals a number of significant connections. For instance, the globalisation process relates directly to the rights/ responsibility concerns of citizenship in the form of the reprivatisation of

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various responsibilities previously accepted by the state. Marshall (1950) argued that citizenship had incrementally come to include not only civil and political rights but also social rights. This brought about an active conception of citizenship where citizenship required not only formal access but also material conditions to enable substantive participation. The transformations in the global economy are such that states are now increasingly reprivatising these responsibilities, re-emphasising the civil aspects of citizenship and downplaying the social aspects. This reversal is usually justified in terms of the need to manage the operation of the global market. Whilst signalling that the state is reducing its control over social rights issues it certainly does not imply that the state is withering away or its control over civil and political rights dissipating. The state is a complex, not unitary, body, and the relations between citizens and the state will therefore always be variegated and complex, if not contradictory. Given the changing form of the state, the current concern is whether one can take seriously the rights of non-citizens whilst using citizenship as a strategy for improving the rights of existing citizens. It could be that confronting issues of civil, political and social rights is best done directly without invoking the notion of citizenship, which carries with it the close association with the territorial state and therefore presumes exclusion. Certainly, the particular focus of many citizenship debates within political theory discourses has worked to exclude the question of the rights of noncitizens from the political agenda. It would appear that, in this respect at least, the rights/responsibility and the territorial/cosmopolitan axes of current citizenship debates are crosscutting rather than overlapping. Without offering a resolution to this dilemma, it is worth noting that this discussion of citizenship as tied to a territorially bound state focuses on the liberal rights-based conception. The participatory approach emerging from the civic republican tradition is perhaps not so tightly bound to the state. Emphasis on political participation as a civic duty shifts the emphasis to an obligation to one’s community. Whilst usually also a territorially bound notion, with community frequently assumed to be equivalent to the nation, it is perhaps easier to conceive of communities operating at more multiple and cross-cutting levels than states. It is possible that as the notion of communities is less closely tied to a notion of sovereignty it is therefore better able to provide a basis for citizenship in an era of fluidity and deterritorialisation. Developing this insight further, there is a significant literature which argues that to concentrate citizenship debates too closely on the state is to overlook that the community to which people struggle for membership is not only the state but civil society. Arguments that the acquisition of full citizenship requires the ability to act in both political and social life, lead some to contemplate civil society and demands for social inclusion (see Yuval-Davis, 1997). But the shift to including the demand for substantive


rather than simply formal inclusion in citizenship debates has been a double-edged sword for many minority groups. Whilst radical democrats make appeal to civic republicanism, stressing the importance of political participation and substantive social and economic inclusion (see Lister, 1997) more conservative forms of contemporary communitarianism adopt similar discourses of social exclusion to focus instead upon social obligation and the importance of cultural assimilation (see Levitas, 1998). In the face of these assimilatory tendencies within republican citizenship discourses, many ethnic minority groups have found the liberal citizenship discourse rather more appealing. To conclude this initial survey of two of the three key axes central to contemporary discussions of citizenship, I simply note at this stage that the rights/responsibilities and the territorial/cosmopolitan axes of the citizenship debate are both internally complex and variously interrelated. Both address central concerns pertinent to the formulation of a multicultural (and here I mean polyethnic rather than multinational) citizenship. The cultural particularity of the liberal tradition, the importance of the nation to the republican tradition, the impact of globalisation on immigration and the tensions within multinational states are all highly pertinent to the ways in which ethnicity shapes and is shaped by citizenship discourses. It has become increasingly clear that to contemplate citizenship from the standpoint of ethnic group identity is to confront the presumed universality of traditional citizenship rhetorics. The very factors that propel such a wide range of theorists to make appeals to ‘citizenship’ as a common status which might provide a framework for a just and peaceful coexistence, also seem to expose citizenship as an impossible, even oppressive discourse. The simultaneous desirability and impossibility of the neutral state and universal citizenship becomes the increasingly pronounced paradox that haunts these debates.

The universalism of citizenship To contemplate citizenship from the perspective of ethnonational identities is to focus on the universality of citizenship discourses and so to engage most directly with the universal/particular axis outlined above. Critics of the universalistic pretensions of citizenship discourse argue that citizenship has been conceived such that it claims to be inclusionary and universalist whilst actually and inevitably working in an exclusionary and particularist manner with respect to ethnic and national identity. The universalism of traditional citizenship theory (and here proponents of a multicultural citizenship tend to mean both the liberal and republican forms of citizenship discussed thus far, shifting the focus from the differences between them to their shared single characteristic) has been ‘false’ not because it excluded subordinate ethnic group identities as an aberra-

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tion, but because this exclusion was integral to the theory and practice of citizenship in both the republican and liberal traditions. Both traditions of citizenship are criticised for being ‘falsely universalistic’ in their portrayal of the citizen: the liberal tradition, it is argued, transcends particularity and the republican one suppresses it. Despite the long history of dispute between these two camps, the recent ‘politics of difference’ perspective challenges both (sometimes interchangeably) as failing to recognise the cultural particularity of ethnonational identities. Within this modish desire to criticise universality and ‘recognise difference’ there are a wide range of distinct positions: from the sweeping rejection of all manifestations of the Enlightenment ideal of impartiality and the correlative celebration of ‘difference’ per se (Young, 1990), to the more measured critique of particular manifestations of either liberalism or republicanism in the name of a very precise form of polyethnic cultural pluralism (Kymlicka, 1995). The more sweeping critique of universalism is articulated by Young in her discussion of ‘the ideal of impartiality’ (1990: 96–121). Young’s claim is that this ‘modern’ or ‘Enlightenment’ ideal seeks to reduce differences to unity ‘by abstracting from the particularities of situation, feeling, affiliation, and point of view’ (1990: 97). The ideal entails a vision of the public realm as attaining the universality of a general will by jettisoning all particularity to the private sphere. In practice, this was achieved by the exclusion from the public realm of those groups perceived to embody particularity ‘especially women, Blacks, American Indians, and Jews’ (1990: 97). Such exclusions should not, however, be understood as contingent distortions of the ideal of impartiality, but rather its necessary requirement. In the pursuit of a single, universal set of principles to govern the public realm, complex difference is necessarily repressed, paradoxically creating dichotomy instead of unity: ‘the logic of identity shoves difference into dichotomous hierarchical oppositions’ (1990: 99). If the citizen is understood to be a ‘universal reasoner’, detached and impartial, he or she must abstract from the ‘partiality of affiliation, of social or group perspective, that constitutes concrete subjects’ (1990: 100). The result, with respect to particular ethnic group identities, is that members of minority ethnic groups are either excluded from citizenship or included only to the extent to which they are able to repress the particularity of their ethnic identity. Given that a universalist ideal ‘continues to threaten the exclusion of some,’ argues Young, ‘the meaning of “public” should be transformed to exhibit the positivity of group difference, passion and play’ (1990: 97). This type of critique of universalism, though articulated in several different forms, is increasingly widespread and has come to be the defining characteristic of what is often called a ‘politics of difference’ literature. Whilst it is compelling, I want to propose that this critique of impartiality occludes an important distinction in its sweeping challenge to the entirety of


‘modern normative political theory’ (Young, 1990: 107). In failing to distinguish between different conceptions of citizenship within political theory, this critique confuses two broad areas of concern about universalism. Young tends to characterise Kantian universalism (1990: 118), Lockean impartiality (1990: 133), the Hegelian general will (1990: 113) and Rousseau’s civic public (1990: 108) as simply various manifestations of a common ideal of impartiality. In contrast, I find it more helpful to distinguish between distinct manifestations of universalism, which I shall call integrationist and assimilationist (following Parekh, 1991: 189–90). As Charles Taylor argues, there are two models of the ‘politics of equal dignity’ which might be charged with ‘imposing a false homogeneity’, of which Kant and Rousseau are prominent exponents (1994: 44). Universalism as assimilation The assimilationist approach to citizenship requires that citizens think and behave in certain ways; that they positively identify with the political community to which they formally belong and that they are actively committed to promoting its common good through participation in its political life. Its theoretical roots lie with Rousseau for whom ‘the sovereign people embodies the universal point of view of the collective interest and equal citizenship’ (Young, 1990: 109). The universalism of citizenship here takes the form of a commitment to unity and cultivation of a shared notion of the common good or general will. Here the public realm is conceived of as unified and homogeneous, and stress is placed on the importance of education, shared civic traditions and celebrations to foster such unity. The critics of this assimilatory form of universalism argue that the attainment of such unification has always been, and always will be, bought at the price of the exclusion of the actual heterogeneity of society and the public denial of cultural pluralism. Universalism as integration In contrast, and specifically claiming to take differences seriously, the integrationist approach to citizenship requires that all citizens are formally but not substantively equal. It explicitly welcomes cultural differences and recognises the fact of pluralism. It has in practice involved equal opportunities, coupled with cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance (Parekh, 1991: 190). Its theoretical roots lie with the Kantian categorical imperative, and take the more recent form of the Rawlsian reflective equilibrium. Here the citizen pursues an ideal of impartiality by abstracting from all the particularities which characterise individual persons and reasoning from an Archimedian point, a transcendental ‘view from nowhere’. In order to engage in such reasoning, the citizen must regard his or her private aims and attachments as contingent and open to revision, he or she must be able to distinguish between personal commit-

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ments and political principles and to give priority to the latter. In other words, the citizen must adopt a form of moral reasoning and a language of liberal citizenship which, whilst claiming to be formal rather than substantive, actually render certain substantive positions ineligible because they are deemed to be non-universalisable. The critics of this integrationist form of universalism argue that there is a fundamental instability in this position, rendering it non-neutral despite its self-proclaimed impartiality. To be more precise there are two sources of instability, two distinct levels of consideration relating to liberalism’s universalism. The first pertains to the type of justification given for adopting liberal principles. The second pertains to the type of policies adopted as a manifestation of these liberal principles. In other words, there is one concern regarding the status of the injunction that we should ‘treat all people as free and equal beings’ and another regarding the interpretation of the statement. The question of status leads to a debate as to whether universalism is an a priori commitment or a product of democratic deliberation. The question of interpretation leads to a debate as to whether universalism requires formal or substantive equality. The issue concerning the universalism of status is basically this: why should someone who holds a conception of the good which does not entail a distinction between the political and the personal be compelled to accept the liberal injunction to impartiality? There are two sorts of response to this challenge, offering two different foundations for the position, one empirical, the other transcendental. The empirical claim, as made by Rawls in his latter restatement of his position, invokes the ideals and conventions of the society in which such impartial reason is required. In other words, it falls back on the notion of a common shared heritage as presumed by Marshall or a pragmatic defence of liberal institutions. This is clearly a cultural and historically specific defence that empirically undermines the claim to universalism. The transcendental foundation for the claim offers a perfectionist defence of universalism, admitting that liberal citizenship is a substantive rather than a purely formal status. But this defence undermines the claim that the liberal conception of citizenship is actually universal in the sense of equally accessible to all, whatever their personal identities. As Taylor argues, this form of liberalism cannot and should not claim cultural neutrality because it is actually a ‘fighting creed’ (Taylor 1994: 62). The issue concerning the universalism of interpretation is captured by Taylor’s reflection that there are two different forms of liberal universalism, each issuing a distinct form of ‘false homogeneity’ (1994: 44). The distinction, made by Taylor, is developed by Walzer, who distinguishes between two universalistic perspectives which he calls ‘Liberalism 1’ and ‘Liberalism 2’. Walzer argues that the basic universal principle – ‘treat all people as free and equal beings’ – has been subjected to two distinct interpretations (Walzer, 1994: 99–105). The first requires political neutrality (usually


justificatory as opposed to consequential neutrality) and asserts the importance of distinguishing clearly and institutionally between the right and the good (hence the significance of the separation of church and state). The second does not insist on neutrality (of either justification or consequences) but allows the institutions of the state to embody that particular conception of the good, or a set of cultural values, that is the product of democratic decision-making (with the caveat that basic rights must be respected). It is this debate concerning universalism, rather than that concerning justification, that I intend to pursue next. To summarise the argument regarding universalism then, the concept of citizenship is, in all its conceptualisations, wedded to a notion of universalism. It is because of this commitment to universalism that its critics fear it has been falsely homogenising and unable to recognise positively ethnic differences. This universalism should, however, be understood as taking many distinct forms which respond to difference in distinct ways. Any attempt to formulate a more inclusive, multicultural citizenship will inevitably need to make appeal to some form of universalism. This demands the development of a ‘differentiated universalism’ which will provide for the possibility of rejecting ‘a certain sort of high-minded moral absolutism’ without falling into a ‘certain sort of low-minded subjectivism’ (Walzer, 1994: 99). Despite the severity of the critiques of universalism, most ‘difference theorists’ are still wedded to a reformulation of citizenship, reluctant to forego the political and moral power of appeal to the ideals of equality and universality. Here then is the central paradox: those who would replace traditional citizenship theory with a more multicultural vision of social and political inclusion want to critique universalism whilst recognising that it is precisely in the universality of citizenship that it gains its political force for subordinate ethnic groups. Current attempts to develop a multicultural citizenship are premised not on a rejection of universalism per se, but upon a differentiated universalism as opposed to the false universalism of ‘traditional citizenship theory’ (Lister, 1997).

Three different forms of differentiated citizenship Whilst there is a widespread move to contrast an orthodox universal citizenship model with a multicultural differentiated citizenship model, the field of debate is evidently more complex than such a simple dichotomy implies. Universal citizenship has taken many forms, and its various critics also form a disparate collectivity. I want to suggest that there are three distinct theoretical frameworks from which to argue for a ‘differentiated universalism’ and a politics of recognition: the impartial, the interpretative and the genealogical. Theorists of three quite distinct theoretical persuasions are all currently advocating

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multicultural citizenship, each manifesting a distinct understanding of ethnicity. Each is concerned to recognise the political claims of those who are marginalised. Each attends to both difference and identity, but in distinct ways. Although I use the terms impartiality, interpretation and genealogy, terminology is confusing here. One of the most notable advocates of what I term the ‘interpretative framework’ is Charles Taylor (1994), who names his own position ‘the politics of difference’, which is a subset of a ‘politics of recognition’. He distinguishes two types of politics of recognition: the politics of equal dignity and the politics of difference. He associates these respectively with the ideals of autonomy and authenticity, and offers a forceful statement in favour of the politics of difference version of a politics of recognition. Whilst accepting this distinction, I want to highlight a third further type of politics of recognition, summarily dismissed by Taylor. It seems helpful to me to acknowledge that within what is commonly referred to as ‘a politics of difference’ are two distinct schools of thought which I label interpretative and genealogical. In the former, ethnicity is regarded primarily as a material reality to be discovered, articulated and recognised. In the latter, ethnicity is regarded primarily as a discursive fiction, constituted by rather than articulated through linguistic and social practices. The impartial form of a politics of recognition, or what Taylor calls the politics of equal dignity, focuses on the centrality of autonomy, or ‘rational revisability’: the ability of the individual to rationally assess and revise his or her current ends. What distinguishes this impartiality perspective from more directly universalist forms of liberalism is the claim that a theory of culture is needed in order to consider adequately the context of choice. People’s capacity to make meaningful choices depends on access to cultural structures which require ‘institutional cement’ if they are to survive (Kymlicka, 1995: 49–74). Group-differentiated rights provide such cement and are thus seen as a requirement of citizenship. The interpretative form of difference politics focuses on the centrality of authenticity: the capacity of the individual to be in touch with his or her moral feelings. Our moral salvation, as Taylor, one of the key advocates of this position argues, comes from recovering authentic moral contact with ourselves (1994: 29). The interpretative politics of recognition is concerned with authenticity as distinct from dignity, self-realisation as opposed to rational revisability. Where autonomy requires cultural structures, authenticity requires dialogical interaction. The discovery of one’s true identity is not a monological process, it cannot take place in isolation, but rather needs to be negotiated with others and therefore depends upon one’s dialogical relation with others. Citizenship is understood as that mechanism which guarantees universal recognition and so ensures that the fundamental human need for authenticity is equally realised. Recognising the unique identity of everyone requires not an identical set of rights for all, but public


acknowledgement of the particular worth of each. Whereas the impartial defence of recognition emphasises rationality as the potentiality that people universally have in common, the interpretative defence of recognition emphasises the identity that is original to each. In contrast to each of the above, the genealogical form of a politics of difference focuses on the centrality of transgression. It entails the questioning of the relation between reality and linguistic representation. Rather than seeking to discover true identities, the genealogical politics of difference aims to explode such expressions of ‘identity’, viewing all claims to coherence and unity as produced rather than uncovered, ‘as artefacts of analysis rather than its finds’ (Ferguson, 1993: 12). Ethnicity is not only socially constructed, it is here understood to be constituted through a disparate and shifting network of interrelated discourses, with no single causal or determining factor (cf. Fenton and May, this volume). In the words of ‘genealogical’ theorist William Connolly: ‘Identity is thus a slippery, insecure experience, dependent on its ability to define difference and vulnerable to the tendency of entities it would so define to counter, resist, overturn, or subvert definitions applied to them. Identity stands in a complex, political relation to the difference it seeks to fix’ (Connolly, 1991: 64). From this perspective, the subject turns out to be discursively constituted by the very political system that is supposed to facilitate its emancipation. Politics is here made to question group loyalty and subvert group identities. Current genealogical approaches to identity turn attention away from the material to the linguistic, viewing identities as the products of pluralised discourse regimes. This perspective offers a non-material, linguistic yet social constructivist account of identity. As such it is not different in kind from the earlier social constructivist theories in that it merely makes more heterogeneous and less universal the structures deemed to construct identity. Its real distinctiveness is in the claim that the political project is to question rather than to express one’s identity. It provides the basis not for a communitarian vision of inclusive democracy, but for an ‘agonistic democracy’ which ‘disturbs the dogmatization of identity’ (Connolly, 1991: x). Where the impartiality of equality politics generates the political minimalism of democratic individualism and the interpretivist politics of difference generates the political expansiveness of democratic consensus, the genealogical politics of difference generates a concern to question each, to challenge the confinement of democracy to the governmental institutions of the territorial state (Connolly, 1991: xi). It seeks to overflow state boundaries in a manner that leaves it little concerned with questions of territorially bound citizenship. Critiques of both the impartial and the interpretative perspectives from the genealogical position include claims that the former frequently conflate or ignore intragroup differences and that this can lead to a politics of ressentement. Identity is reified and politics constrained, discursively

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entrenching the injury-identity connection apparently denounced. Rights claims are deployed to protect historically and contextually contingent identities, such that the former operates inadvertently to resubordinate by renaturalising that which it was intended to emancipate by articulating. Legal recognition becomes an instrument of regulation and political recognition becomes an instrument of subordination. Critiques of the genealogical approach from an interpretative perspective (advocates of the impartial perspective rarely engage with the genealogical at all) include the claim that the former offers no ethical apparatus with which to acknowledge social injustice or to negotiate relations of dominance. It precludes thinking about political action in solidarity. The celebration of heterogeneity and the proliferation of identities combined with the assertion that one need never accept the limits of identity have the effect of negating birth, history, privilege and social responsibility. Politics is not the mere effect of discourse and, at this point in history, a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it. Despite the substantial theoretical differences between these various articulations of a politics of recognition, the pragmatist might argue that one can endorse the genealogical project in order to trace the heterogeneous and changing discursive regimes that constitute any particular subject position, thereby enabling one effectively to transgress their operation. Yet one might also endorse the interpretative project in order to perceive structural discrepancies in power accruing to distinct identifications; to discern commonalities of experience across subject positions, and map affinities as the basis for collective action. One can endorse the genealogical insight that subjects are not only positioned by power but are also the effects of power (Brown, 1995: 119), whilst accepting that ‘mobile subjectivities appear not just in discourse but in institutions as well; they are material as well as semiotic actors’ (Ferguson, 1993: 162). Refusing to acknowledge the reified as well as the performative moments of identity has profound political implications, and may itself be motivated by political considerations. Nonetheless, the genealogical perspective usefully alerts us to two significant factors: that the commonalities asserted may themselves be the effects of power; and that recognition of the commonalities may itself become an instrument of regulation and subordination. Multicultural citizenship theorists retain a commitment to universalism, but seek to differentiate it in some way. What advocates of a politics of recognition share, despite the distinct theoretical foundations from which they argue, is a common commitment to reconceptualise the universalism of citizenship as inclusion rather than generality. This has the effect of centring citizenship debates on questions of participatory democracy and the terms of inclusion.


Inclusive participation and group representation Despite the radically different theoretical justifications of a differentiated universalism surveyed above, all advocates of a multicultural citizenship have nonetheless endorsed the use of state-based constitutional mechanisms for the realisation of a more fully inclusive participatory democracy. Whilst I fully support this move, I want to signal the limitations of using group representation as the central strategy for realising a more inclusive participatory democracy. There are significant problems attached to endorsing group representation as a model of differentiated citizenship which can be avoided by focusing upon other constitutional mechanisms of inclusion. The interpretative perspective offers a clear endorsement of the strategy of advocating a citizenship differentiated by means of group representation. And, whilst both the impartial and genealogical forms of a politics of recognition offer important arguments for being sceptical about group representation, theorists within each of these camps have increasingly moved towards an endorsement rather than a critique of this strategy. It is clear that whilst most equality theorists have traditionally used the principle of impartiality to argue against group representation, some have recently adopted the very same principle to argue for special representation rights (Kymlicka being the most influential here). It is less obvious what practical arrangements the genealogical perspective generates in this regard, given that its aim has primarily been to ‘ventilate and supplement’ the institutional politics of territorial democracy rather than engage directly with them (Connolly, 1991: xi). When those theorists claiming a commitment to a genealogical theoretical perspective have considered the practical form of the institutional politics of territorial democracy they have used their ontological and epistemological principles to very different effect: most refuse to engage directly with the debate at all (Connolly, 1991), others directly reject group representation (Mouffe, 1992: 369–85) and still others specifically endorse group representation (Young, 1990). This is, as Taylor rightly points out in a slightly different context, a distinction between the ontology and the advocacy projects being invoked (Taylor in Rosenblum, 1991: 159–82). Attempts to recognise ethnic group identity and develop a multicultural citizenship involve an endorsement of proceduralism and a modified form of constitutionalism often thought to be too closely dependent upon a form of liberal universalism to be disentangled from its assimilatory or overly integrationist form. Constitutionalism comprises two key elements: rights provisions and structural provisions. Rights provisions (safeguarding political rights, including the right to free speech, to vote, to associate and so on) are designed to fence off certain areas from majoritarian control. They operate as legal constraints upon the political process, limiting the dangers of democracy by expelling certain issues from the political agenda.

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The structural provisions of constitutionalism (such as the separation of powers, the representative system and so on) might be viewed as ensuring that government will act in the interests of the public at large, rather than those of self-interested representatives, limiting potential threats to democracy through the political process itself. In other words, the rights and structural provisions of traditional constitutionalism have worked to safeguard the interests of the individual and of the public respectively. The pursuit of a multicultural citizenship, on the other hand, leads theorists to consider reformulating both the rights and structural provisions of constitutionalism in order that they recognise the identities of ethnic groups. This entails the development of a notion of group rights in addition to individual rights, and the representation of cultural identity in addition to individual interests or opinions. Kymlicka refers to these as multicultural rights and special representation rights respectively (1995: 10–33). The concern is that the structural and rights provisions of liberal constitutionalism remove certain subjects (both issues and people) from public scrutiny and review, thereby working to exclude rather than recognise difference. Many theorists have begun to challenge those rights provisions that are premised upon universalist assumptions whereby citizens are conceived of in abstract fashion, disembodied and transcendent of their particularities. They doubt a theory of rights that is so individualistically constructed can deal adequately with struggles for recognition, where it is the assertion of collective identities that seems to be at stake. As Habermas asks: ‘Does not the recognition of cultural forms of life and traditions that have been marginalized, require…some kind of collective rights that shatter the outmoded self-understanding of the democratic constitutional state, which is tailored to individual rights and in that sense is “liberal”?’ (1994: 109). Whilst there are problems involved in endorsing collective rights generally (see Kymlicka, 1995: 34–48) it is the issue of special representation rights that I want to consider here. One of the most frequently made arguments for the recognition of ethnic group identities within a differentiated citizenship proposes special representation rights as a means of ensuring due recognition. It is frequently argued that current liberal constitutionalism does not, despite its rhetoric, allow for equal participation for all within the political body. Based in a long-admired liberal commitment to tolerance, the claim is that differences of identity are transcended in the political: firmly jettisoned from the public-political arena into the sphere of civil society. Given that collective identities that are not amenable to erasure have not been ‘recognised’ and therefore validated, it is frequently argued that we now need to endorse group representation as a mechanism of inclusion. I want to explore this proposal with a view to elucidating the nature of the relation between citizenship and ethnonational identity implicit within


it. In order to do this, it is worth reflecting on the nature of representation itself, in particular what is presumed to be represented and how. There are currently four different conceptions of what political representatives are representing – identities, beliefs, constituencies and interests – giving rise to four forms of representation – social, ideological, geographic and functional, respectively (Squires, 1998). The ideological form of representation involves collective representation via parties. It is the ‘responsible party government’ model which requires disciplined parties with alternative programmes on major issues facing the country, voter choice on the basis of evaluations of government record or policy platforms, and free and fair elections. This is ‘representation from above’ in that there is a highly centralised, party-led decision-making structure. The geographic form of representation involves district-based delegates with representatives acting in ways consistent with the opinions of citizens from areas which elect them. This is ‘representation from below’ with low levels of party discipline and minimal ideological manifestos. The functional form involves representatives acting as spokespeople for interest groups and new social movements, or acting on behalf of individual constituents. And finally, and most importantly in the context of our concern with special representation rights, the social form of representation involves representatives reflecting the social composition of the electorate in terms of presence as secured by quotas policies or reserved places. Such social representation usually entails a microcosmic or mirror indicator of ‘representativeness’ as opposed to the agent-based indicator used with reference to ideological and functional representation. The key difference here is whether one looks at the composition of parliament to determine its representativeness, or whether one looks at its decisions. Many politics of recognition theorists have argued that the current structuring of representative mechanisms around ideological differences emphasises the social inequality aspect of politics, but fails to address the ‘misrecognition of difference’ aspects. Notably, Young (1990) claims that existing electoral and legislative processes are ‘unrepresentative’ in the sense that they fail to reflect the diversity of the population in terms of presence, leading her to demand that a certain number of seats in the legislature be reserved for the members of marginalised groups. This call is made on the assumption that under-representation can be overcome only by resorting to guaranteed representation and that representing difference requires constitutional guarantees of group participation within the parliamentary system. Groups who have suffered oppression or disadvantage need guaranteed representation in order that their distinct voices can be heard. A politics of difference, she argues, requires the participation and inclusion of all groups via different treatment for oppressed or disadvantaged groups. This rejection of the assimilationist ideal is based in a belief that

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‘attachment to specific traditions, practices, language and other culturally specific forms is a crucial aspect of social existence’. Young argues that a democratic public should provide mechanisms for the effective recognition and representation of the distinct voices and perspectives of those of its constituent groups that are oppressed or disadvantaged. But, intriguingly, she does not endorse a simple microcosm vision of representation, in the sense that representatives would be proportional to their numbers in the polity. She notes that: ‘proportional representation of group members may sometimes be too little or too much to accomplish that aim’ (1990: 187). It would appear that Young is advocating neither the principle/agent conception of representation that is endorsed in liberal constitutionalism nor a microcosm conception of representation that one might expect from a difference theorist, but a symbolic conception. In this context it is worth reflecting that, as Hanna Pitkin argues: ‘since the connection between symbol and referent seems arbitrary and exists only where it is believed in, symbolic representation seems to rest on emotional, affective, irrational psychological responses rather than on rationally justifiable criteria’ (1967: 100) Any attempt to answer the question of whether political structures were ‘representative’, on this symbolic conception of representation, would be highly subjective, offering little basis for constitutional guarantees. Who might constitute the group whose subjective assessment of representativeness is to count politically? What would constitute ‘recognition’ in this symbolic sense and who would determine its fulfilment? Given Young’s critique of impartiality one must question whether there remains any basis for believing that a polity might secure mechanisms of (symbolic) representation that everyone, in all their diversity, feels to truly recognise their particularity. It is not clear whether recognition of difference requires that a group should be represented in proportion to its numbers in the population at large, or that there should be a threshold number of representatives, or whether representatives belong to one’s group, or are merely elected by one’s group. The problems facing Young’s attempt to constitutionally guarantee the representation of difference within political structures is that when formalised into the structures of state-based representation, such a group-based representation can rigidify what are actually very fluid identities. It is for this reason that Young has been criticised for not being sufficiently attuned to the contingency of identity and thereby problematically conceiving politics as a process of dealing with already constituted interests and identities (Mouffe, 1992). More generally, critics of group representation claim that the replacement of current ideological forms of representation with one that only emphasises identity differences by privileging social representation immediately runs into problems associated with essentialism, ghettoisation and a politics of ressentiment. Mainstream equality theorists argue that whilst the


old ideological notion of representation may indeed no longer be adequate, a simple replacement of it with social representation will not suffice. As Anne Phillips has argued: while the politics of ideas is an inadequate vehicle for dealing with political exclusion, there is little to be gained by simply switching to a politics of presence. Taken in isolation, the weaknesses of the one are as dramatic as the failings of the other.… It is in the relationship between ideas and presence that we can best hope to find a fairer system of representation, not in a false opposition between one or the other. (1995: 24–25) Kymlicka likewise argues that the general idea of mirror representation is untenable: it allows for the possibility of replacing electoral politics with sampling, it discourages people to empathise across lines of difference and focuses on difference between groups at the expense of recognising difference within them (see 1995: 107–130). Interestingly, the genealogical and the impartial perspectives are here largely at one. The genealogical qualm about the endorsement of special representation rights and the move towards social representation arises from the fear that demanding political recognition for ethnic group identities may be an entrenchment of subordination rather a mechanism of liberation. As Wendy Brown asks: ‘When does legal recognition become an instrument of regulation, and political recognition become an instrument of subordination?’ (1995: 99). Given the severity of these problems, it is worth recalling that increased political inclusiveness can also be attained via two other strategies: reducing the barriers to entry, and proportional representation. Why then have most difference theorists concentrated on group representation, quotas and the reservation of seats and positions for members of subordinate ethnic groups? Increased political inclusiveness need not take the form of group representation. Political inclusion is actually a three-stage process of self-selection, external selection and voter selection. The selection criteria developed by the existing political parties systematically marginalise all subordinate identities. Political recruitment is competitive and hierarchical: the system is designed precisely to exclude differences not to recognise them (Chapman, 1993). The selection criteria is not itself neutral, it overtly converts socioeconomic and cultural resources into political status. Thus external selection criteria need not be explicitly racist in order to effectively exclude subordinate ethnic groups, so long as the criteria of selection and the attributes commonly manifest by the groups are not synonymous. Current mechanisms of political recruitment operate on the assumption that they select candidates on the basis of merit. But, as Young has argued (making, I would argue, a more useful contribution than the more frequently cited argument for group representation), for the merit principle to apply ‘it

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must be possible to identify, measure, compare, and rank individual performance of job-related tasks using criteria that are normatively and culturally neutral’ (1990: 193). Since such impartial, culturally neutral criteria clearly do not operate in relation to political selection, a central feature of any attempt to realise a multicultural citizenship should involve the politicising of the question of who decides what are the appropriate qualifications for political representatives. Such a debate would allow for the inclusion of multicultural values, beliefs and interests and avoid the problematic ontologisation of politics involved in the group representation proposals. One might also usefully advocate the adoption of multi-member constituencies and a ‘party lists’ system as a vital mechanism for achieving greater recognition of difference within one’s political structures. Proportional representation allows a greater inclusiveness of candidates for election by making under-representation in the nomination process both more visible and more accountable. Party-lists systems make a more balanced line-up of candidates more determinable and its absence more overt. Under this system political parties have an incentive to broaden their appeal whereas in single-member districts where only one person is elected, political elites have a disincentive to back any candidate perceived to be a risk. Systems that allow for diversification and fragmentation generally are able to address the relative absence of subordinate ethnic groups within the political system, without resorting to the entrenchment of such identities within existing party selection procedures. In addition to these various mechanisms for representing difference, we might also reflect more specifically on the sites of representation. For it is interesting to note that most of these proposals for altering our representative structures, to allow for new and more diverse differences to be taken into account, remain firmly wedded to the nation-state as the site of representation. Yet, we might usefully ponder the benefits of subsidiarity to this discussion. The pluralisation of the sites of political representation would itself allow for a significant diversification of the characteristics deemed politically pertinent. Multiple sites of representation would allow for multiple criteria of political difference to be accommodated. This, I argue, would ensure a more flexible negotiation of universalism and particularity than proposals for group representation allow.

The universalism of citizenship revisited Having explored the universalism/particularity axis of the citizenship debate with reference to ethnicity and nation, I want to briefly reflect again upon the rights/responsibility and cosmopolitan/territorial axes as a basis for mapping out the relation between the three. It seems to me that, when considered in any detail, the claims to universality within citizenship debates are always compromised and delimited by


other commitments. Despite the rhetoric, citizenship always entails particularism of some form. The issue is not whether it should be particularistic, but what forms of particularism seem acceptable and just in any given society. When citizenship is considered in the context of a state based upon representative as opposed to participatory democracy, it is the representative system that reflects and shapes the particular particularities deemed politically pertinent and therefore an acceptable aspect of citizenship (notwithstanding its formal commitment to universality). The citizenship model which has emerged within current liberal democratic political structures has entailed a very specific, and I believe internally contradictory, series of negotiations of the three axes considered. To indicate the issues I have in mind, let us consider the relation between the cosmopolitan/territorial and the universal/particular axes in the light of the above discussion of representation. Arguments for group representation as a form of recognition of polyethnicity within a state are often rejected on the basis that they undermine the liberal commitment to universality as impartiality. However, liberal citizenship has always, to date, been conceived of and realised within territorially bound nation-states. As Kymlicka argues, ‘most liberal theorists accept without question that the world is, and will remain, composed of separate states, each of which is assumed to have the right to determine who can enter its borders and acquire citizenship’ (1995: 79). Citizenship, within this literature, has never been understood to apply to all persons equally, but rather specifically to those people with rights of residence within a given territory. Kymlicka rightly points out that the set of values that underpin this delimitation of citizenship (relying on the claim that citizenship is an inherently group-differentiated notion) lead logically to the justification of group-differentiated representation within the state. The fact that liberal theorists have largely been happy to assume the former whilst denying the latter represents a significant contradiction within their lexicon. There are two responses to this state of affairs. The first is taken by Kymlicka who accepts the territorially bound nature of citizenship and uses this to argue for a multicultural citizenship which entails special representation rights. The second pursues the cosmopolitan option of conceptualising citizenship on a global scale as a truer manifestation of the pure liberal commitment to universality, and is central to current international relations debates (see O’Neill, 1991; Beitz, 1994) – though not, as Kymlicka notes, political theory debates. The coherent pursuit of either resolution of this internal contradiction would require a radical reappraisal of current mechanisms of representation. The former route would entail shifting from the ideological and functional forms of representation to the social and geographic. The universalism of citizenship becomes differentiated according to cultural (ethnic and national) identity. The latter route, on the other

Judith Squires 249

hand, would entail jettisoning all geographic and social representation and shifting more unambiguously to the ideological and functional. The universalism of citizenship then becomes differentiated according to individual interests and ideas. Phillips (1995) has helpfully labelled these two approaches a politics of presence and a politics of ideas. The former bases political representation upon, and the latter disentangles it from, ethnonational identity. Both strategies have positive and negative aspects, productive and disciplinary possibilities. The territorial, culturally differentiated model challenges the rationalism and formalism of the cosmopolitan model and recognises the embeddedness of subjectivity, but could work to entrench identities and ontologise the political. The deterritorialised, abstract model avoids the reification of contingent identities but could work to privilege a culturally specific stress on rationality which disembodies the political. Both are also ideal types, rarely endorsed in their pure form. The really significant question is what sort of negotiation of the two one wishes to realise.

Conclusion A critical reading of the ‘politics of recognition’ and multicultural citizenship literature uncovers a recurrent tension at the heart of the various attempts to theorise cultural identity and difference within the context of institutional political structures. The construction of a legal-democratic space in which ‘the people’ might be represented requires stable identities, yet it is increasingly accepted that neither ethnic nor national identities are stable or ‘given’ prior to their recognition in the political. Rather they are both constituted by, and constitutive of, the political process itself. The recurrent paradox involved in all the competing formulations of the political commitment to recognise cultural difference arises then from the attempt to develop a politics which both recognises the precariousness of group identity and its necessity. There is a tension between constituting political procedures (which inevitably posit some stability of identity and require exclusions of certain differences) and celebrating the fluidity of heterogeneous difference. It is a tension which is currently exercising the thoughts of most contemporary political theorists, be they liberal, communitarian, critical or postmodern. In short, what we find in the contemporary political theory literature is a highly varied series of attempts to negotiate two political dilemmas: how to balance the twin commitments to universal citizenship rights and to a recognition of cultural difference within institutional political structures (universal versus particular); and how to do so without allowing recognition to become an instrument of regulation (fluidity versus fixity).


My claim is that successful negotiation of these dilemmas will minimally require two fundamental shifts within political theorising: that the universalism of citizenship be reconceptualised as inclusivity rather than generality, and that the nature and location of political structures be recognised as more plural than the territorial focus on the nation-state conception of citizenship has previously allowed.

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Judith Squires 251 Parekh, B. (1991) British citizenship and cultural difference, in G. Andrews (ed.) Citizenship (London: Lawrence and Wishart), pp. 183–206. —— (2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave). Phillips, A. (1991) Citizenship and feminist politics, in G. Andrews (ed.) Citizenship (London: Lawrence and Wishart), pp. 76–88. —— (1995) The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Pitkin, H. (1967) The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Rawls, J. (1993) Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press). Rosenblum, N. (1991) Liberalism and Moral Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Sandel, M. (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shanley, M. and Narayan, U. (1997) Reconstructing Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press). Squires, J. (1998) Reconstructing the boundaries of political representation, in S. Walby (ed.) New Agendas for Women (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave). Taylor, C. (1994) The politics of recognition, in A. Gutmann (ed.) Multiculturalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 25–73. Walzer, M. (1994) Comment, in A. Gutmann (ed.) Multiculturalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 99–103. Young, I. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Yuval-Davis, N. (1991) The citizenship debate: women, the state and ethnic processes, Feminist Review 39, 58–68. —— (1997) Gender and Nation (London: Sage).

Index Abdullah, Farooq, 146–47, 149–52, 155–56 Abdullah, Sheikh, 138–43, 147–49 Aboriginal peoples, 33, 41, 85, 92–93, 103–04 see also Indigenous peoples Abyssinia, 53 Affirmative Action, 132, 134 Afghanistan, 142, 155 Africa, 53, 161–62, 173, 193 see also South Africa Africans, 8, 12, 16–17, 178–190, 192–93 Albania, 55, 78 Alienation, 85, 153, 185, 189, 221 Ancestry, 2–3, 11, 14, 16, 102, 104 Anderson, B., 4, 7, 159, 177, 180 Anglicisation, 24, 39 Anthropology, 1, 3, 17 Aotearoa/New Zealand, 8, 15, 84, 90, 93–104 Arya Samaj, 113–115, 119 Asia, 15, 104, 114, 129, 131–32, 134, 140–42, 157, 159, 162, 171–72, 193, 200, 204 South, 15, 129, 130–32, 134, 138, 140–42, 157, 159–60, 171–72 Southeast, 204 Assimilation, 25, 54–61, 85, 87, 91, 99, 139, 188, 215, 222, 231, 235, 237, 245 see also Integration Asylum-seekers, 67–68, 77 Australia, 8, 85–86, 89, 92–93, 103 Austria, 14, 57, 78 Authenticity, 26–27, 94–95, 130, 140, 157, 239 Autonomy, 4–5, 22–23, 32, 35, 40, 54–55, 60, 85–86, 89–92, 95, 100, 133, 142–45, 147, 149, 151, 153–55, 157, 166, 173, 231, 239 Baha’ism, 202 Balkans, 50, 52, 79 Baltic states, 6

Bangladesh, 87, 162 Barbados, 1 Barth, F., 2, 51, 178, 216 Basques, 7, 9 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 132, 133–34, 155, 156 Bhutto, Benazir, 154 Biculturalism, 25, 100–02 Bilingualism, 25–26, 29–31, 33, 36–37, 39 Bourassa, Robert, 34–35 Brazil, 12, 13, 91 Britain, 3, 5, 10–11, 16, 21, 33, 41, 67–68, 157, 159, 160, 163–69, 171–73, 191, 193, 208 British Columbia, 21, 91–92 Buddhism, 140, 202 Buddhists, 137, 140, 156 Bulgaria, 52–55, 77 Burma, 87, 162 Canada, 8, 21–26, 29, 32–44, 67–68, 91–92, 160, 166, 172 French, 23, 25 Capitalism, 24, 51, 191 Caribbean, 162, 177, 181, 191–94 Caste, 109, 111, 122, 125, 130–31 Centralisation, 147–48, 156 see also Decentralisation Catalonia, 1 Catholic Church, 23–24 Chand, Lal, 119–123, 135 Charlottetown Accord, 35–36, 43 China, 1, 139, 178, 202–03 Chinese, 1, 10, 13, 130, 179, 198–204, 206–07, 210–12, 215–18, 220–21 Christianity, 183, 202 Citizenship, 6, 11, 14, 16, 27, 41, 66–67, 79, 85, 92, 134–35, 189, 192, 198, 206, 208–210, 222, 227–31, 234, 238–39, 247–49 liberal, 234, 237, 248 multicultural, 227, 234, 238–39, 241–43, 247–49 Civic Republicanism, 228–30, 233–34 252

Index 253 Civil rights; see Rights, civil Civil society, 22 Class, 9, 24, 29, 44, 110, 112–15, 117–19, 124, 161, 164, 171, 177, 200, 222, 231 Classificatory systems, 2–3, 8 Clinton, President, 154 Cohesion, 31, 41, 131, 167, 183, 195 Colonialism, 15, 95–96, 102, 114–16, 125, 163, 214 Colonisation, 85–86, 88, 92–94, 96, 98–100, 199, 203 see also Decolonisation Common good, 44, 229, 236 see also Public good Communalism, 15, 109–15, 125 Communitarian(ism), 227, 229, 234, 240, 249 Communism, 64, 75 Communist Party, 53, 58–60, 63, 66, 72, 77–78 Community, 42, 170–71 Competition, 16, 39, 130, 134, 161, 177, 182, 186, 218 Conflict, 11, 16, 29, 39, 41, 44, 96, 157, 160, 172–73, 178, 182, 188, 193, 195, 203–06, 208, 210, 215, 218, 220–22 Connor, W., 6, 7, 11 Conquest, 22–24, 86, 94, 161 Consensus, 71, 90, 123, 184, 209, 240 Consociationalism, 221, 223 Constitutionalism, 242 Constitutional reform, 34–37, 90, 117, 119, 124, Constitutional rights, 52, 72 Cosmopolitan(ism), 228, 230, 232–34, 247–49 Council of Europe, 48–49, 65, 67, 71 Creoles, 179, 181, 188, 191 Critical theory, 227 Croatia, 14 Cuba, 192 Cultural difference(s), 50, 165, 227, 228, 236, 249 see also Diversity, cultural Culture, 2–3, 5, 7–11, 14, 16–17, 22–23, 25–28, 37, 42, 49–50, 55–56, 65, 71, 73, 87, 89, 91, 95–96, 99, 101–02, 110–15, 118, 120, 125, 131–34, 140,

157, 171–72, 177, 181, 184, 186–90, 194, 198, 200, 202, 205, 210, 212, 214–15, 217, 219, 232, 239 common, 2, 16, 111 majority, 25–6, 28 minority, 37, 101 national, 27–28, 219 Custom(s), 2–3, 50, 86, 89, 91, 163, 200 Czech Republic, 15, 58, 66–70, 72, 75–76, 78–79 Czechoslovakia, 15, 48, 53–57, 59, 60, 63, 65, 77–78 Decentralisation, 36, 134 Decolonisation, 159, 171, 182 Delgamuukw Decision, 91 Democracy, 42, 72, 76, 103, 132–33, 209, 240–43, 248 participatory, 241–2, 248 Diaspora, 15–16, 49–50, 73, 76, 159–60, 181, 193, 195 Disadvantage(d), 15, 27, 29, 31, 48, 50, 73, 85, 94, 98–99, 103, 219, 244–45 Discourse(s), 2–4, 8, 13, 17, 71, 101, 115–16, 118–19, 121, 124–26, 132, 177, 185, 202, 230–34, 240–41 Discrimination, 15, 41, 56, 66, 68, 79, 87, 180, 185, 194 Diversity, 3, 42, 54, 95, 102, 116, 123, 131, 134, 139–40, 156, 227, 232, 236, 244–45 cultural, 42, 156, 227, 232, 236 Division of labour, 23–24, 98, 198, 203, 222 Domination, 23, 33, 98, 188, 194, 212, 214–15, 218 Dutch, 12, 103, 161, 191–92, 198–99, 204 Economy, 24, 34, 40, 42, 51, 55, 62–64, 77, 98, 179, 200, 203, 207, 211–14, 218–19, 222, 233 Education, 23–24, 31, 37, 40, 42–43, 64–65, 71, 77, 98–99, 116, 132, 147, 161, 163, 183, 185, 191–192, 210, 213–15, 218–19, 236 Egypt, 162 Employment, 24, 29, 38, 43, 55, 58–59, 64, 66, 98, 146, 184, 186–87, 189, 193, 213 see also Unemployment

254 Index Endogamy, 201, 216 England, 11, 24, 159, 163 Equality, 33, 36, 40–42, 54–55, 71–72, 101, 111, 209, 217, 237–38, 240, 242, 245 see also Inequality Eriksen, T., 2, 6, 7–9, 129, 178, 204, 215 Essentialism, 94, 100, 245 Ethnic cleansing, 57, 66, 131 Ethnic group(s), 1–2, 4–5, 8–10, 13, 17, 26–27, 33, 48, 50, 61, 76, 101, 136, 153, 177–79, 187, 193, 199, 201, 203–06, 208, 210–11, 215–21, 234–35, 238, 242–43, 246–47 Ethnicity, 1– 4, 6, 8, 10–11, 13, 15–17, 22, 78, 96, 102–03, 110, 113, 120, 129–131, 133, 156–57, 165, 177, 180, 186, 198, 200, 202–03, 205–07, 214–22, 227–28, 234, 239–40, 247 macro-, 216, 219–23 majority, 10–11, 13, 15 meso-, 217–18 micro–, 216–17, 222 see also Multiethnicity Ethnie(s), 1, 3–10, 13–16, 27, 85, 94, 101–02 Ethnogenesis, 51, 71–72 Ethnonationalism, 6, 8 Ethnonations, 6, 8, 9 see also Identity, ethnonational Europe, 7, 15, 48–55, 64–65, 67, 70–71, 75–79, 160, 178, 192 Central and Eastern, 7, 15, 48–55, 64–65, 71, 76–79 Western, 50–51, 77 European Union (EU), 11, 67–70, 72, 75–76 Exclusion, 64, 170, 194, 229–30, 233–36, 246, 249 Federalism, 32–33, 35, 38–39, 43, 132, 134 Fiji, 8, 162 France, 21, 22, 89, 159, 192 Francisation, 29–31 Fragmentation, 42, 51, 66, 232, 247 Freedom, 30–31, 37, 66, 163–65, 189, 217 of expression, 30, 37

Gandhi, Indira, 70, 134, 145, 148, 166, 168–69, 172 Gandhi, Mahatma, 161, 163–64, 173 Gandhi, Rajiv, 134, 148–49, 151 Geertz, C., 114, 115, 126, 159 Gellner, E., 4, 7, 13, 129, 159 Gender, 102 Genocide, 71, 104 Germany, 52, 54, 68, 78, 159 Ghettos, 50, 58, 70 Ghettoisation, 245 Globalisation, 17, 230–32, 234 see also Localisation Gokhale, Gopal, 117–18, 124 Groups, 1–2, 4–6, 8–11, 13–15, 17, 22, 24, 26–27, 33, 42–44, 48, 50, 60, 66, 68–69, 71, 76–79, 85–90, 94, 101–02, 114–15, 132, 137, 146–47, 150, 152–54, 167–69, 173, 177–79, 182, 184, 188, 193–94, 199, 200–06, 208, 210, 215–22, 227, 231, 234–35, 238, 241, 243–44, 248 ethnic; see Ethnic groups immigrant, 6, 101, 200–01, 206 see also Immigrants majority, 10–11, 86 see also Ethnicity, majority minority, 44, 48, 85, 87–88, 94, 101–02, 234 Groupness, 3, 7, 17 Guestworkers, 231 Gujarat, 162, 164–65 Guyana, 162 Haiti, 192 Hanson, Pauline, 86, 93 Health, 23, 75, 98–99 Hegemony, 111, 113–15, 117, 121, 187–89, 211–14, 221 counter-, 117, 121 Heterogeneity, 86, 236, 241 Hindu Sabha movement, 110, 116, 118–20, 122–25, 127, 141, 168, 189 Hinduism, 112–14, 123, 125, 127, 133, 140, 173 Hindus, 116, 119, 120–23, 125, 135–37, 140–41, 147, 163, 166, 168–73, 182–83, 202 Hobsbawm, E., 2, 4, 7, 126, 159

Index 255 Homeland, 14, 17, 48, 68, 70, 129, 160, 172, 181, 193, 206 Homogeneity, 11, 13–14, 236–37 Housing, 58, 61–62, 73, 75 Human rights; see Rights, human Hungary, 50, 52, 54–56, 58, 72, 77 Identity, 2–5, 7–11, 13–16, 22–23, 25–27, 29, 36, 39, 41–42, 49–51, 54–55, 59, 71, 73–74, 77–78, 88–89, 93, 95–96, 102–03, 109–11, 113, 118, 120, 125–26, 129–37, 140–41, 145–47, 150, 153–54, 156–57, 159, 165, 170–73, 176–181, 183–85, 187–88, 190–95, 199, 201–06, 211, 213, 215, 217–19, 221–22, 227, 229, 234–35, 237, 239, 240–49 collective, 177, 191, 213 communal, 184, 187 cultural, 49, 133, 156, 211, 227, 243, 248–49 ethnic, 2, 4, 8, 14, 22, 50–51, 54, 71, 73, 102, 129–30, 133, 157, 177–79, 183, 185, 199, 201, 203, 205–06, 215, 217, 221, 227, 234–35, 242–43, 246 ethnonational, 41, 180, 227, 234–35, 243, 249 national, see National identity regional, 165, 181, 191–92 religious, 109–11, 133, 135–36, 140, 146, 172, 219, 221 transnational, 181, 193, 195 Identity politics, 109–110, 118, 126 Ideology, 14, 42, 48, 109, 111–15, 124–26, 159, 161, 206, 212–13 Immigrants, 42, 193, 200, 205, 231 see also Migrants Immigration, 24, 34–35, 42–43, 75, 193, 203, 230, 234 see also Migration Impartiality, 235–40, 242, 245, 248 Inclusion, 22, 129. 216, 227, 230–31, 233–34, 238, 241–44, 246–47 Independence, 12, 21, 26–27, 32, 62, 131–33, 136, 142–43, 145, 147, 150, 152–53, 159–61, 164–65, 171, 173, 182–83, 186–87, 198–99, 206, 207–14, 217, 220–22

India, 5, 12–13, 15–16, 53, 71, 76, 87, 109–11, 113, 123, 126–27, 129–40, 142–51, 153–57, 159–66, 168–73, 178, 203 Indian National Congress, 110, 116–22, 124–27, 131–32, 134, 136, 143–45, 148–52, 160–61, 164–66, 172 Indigenous peoples, 5, 8–9, 15, 17, 49, 70, 84–95, 98–99, 102–03, 199, 213, 215 see also Aboriginal peoples Indigenousness, 8, 87, 94–95, 202, 222 Indigenous rights; see Rights, indigenous Individualism, 102, 217, 222, 240 Individual rights; see Rights, individual Indonesia, 12, 198, 199, 201, 206 Industrialisation, 24, 182, 217 Inequality, 44, 141, 204, 218, 229, 244 Injustice, 15, 96, 100, 170, 241 Instrumental(ism), 113–14, 177 Integration, 13, 55, 59, 65, 73, 94, 96, 110, 136, 142–44, 192, 194, 204 International Labour Organisation, 86–88 Inuit, 22, 91–92 Ireland, 11, 38, 41, 160 see also Northern Ireland Islam, 131–32, 134, 140, 146–47, 149–50, 153, 198, 201–02, 206, 210, 215, 222 Islamisation, 135, 146, 154, 215, 219 Jammu, 129, 134, 137, 142, 144–45, 147–56 Japan, 17, 89 Japanese, 207 Jewish Zionist Movement, 52 Jews, 49, 53, 57–58, 71, 77, 235 Jinnah, Mohammad, 131–32, 137–38, 161 Justice, 21, 41, 45, 76, 103, 116, 213, 229 social, 41, 213, 229 Kashmir, 16, 129–57, 161 Khalistan, 165–67, 169–70, 172–73 Kinship, 102, 177, 181, 190, 217 Kosovo, 78 Kurds, 9

256 Index Kymlicka, W., 4, 6, 8–9, 36–37, 43, 49, 84–86, 90, 94–95, 227, 232, 235, 239, 242–43, 246, 248 Labour, 8, 23–24, 44, 51, 53–56, 58–59, 62–64, 77–78, 86, 98–99, 104, 162, 165, 178, 189, 198, 203–04, 222 see also Division of labour Language, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13–15, 22–33, 36–40, 42–44, 50, 55–56, 61, 65, 74, 76, 89, 91–92, 96, 100–01, 115, 131–32, 140–42, 161, 165, 170–72, 177, 179–81, 191, 195, 201–02, 210–11, 215–16, 219, 245 Law, 15, 17, 22, 24, 29–31, 33, 35, 37, 40–41, 55, 59, 66–67, 73, 84–94, 97–98, 101, 138, 163, 166, 195, 198, 208–09, 215, 219 constitutional, 35, 88, 219 international, 15, 40–41, 84–91 League of Nations, 53 Liberalism, 217, 227, 235, 237, 239 Localism, 17, 180 Mabo Decision, 92–93 Macedonia, 78 Malaya, 199–201, 203–09, 211, 214 Malays, 13, 16, 198–223 Malaysia, 8, 12–13, 16, 87, 162, 198–206, 210–23 New Economic Policy, 212–14, 217–19, 222 Mäori, 15, 84, 95–104 Marginalisation, 15, 85–86, 98, 184, 189, 221 Meech Lake Accord, 34–35, 43 Migrants, 8, 11, 58, 101, 104, 160 see also Immigrants Migration, 49, 58–59, 68, 77, 132, 150, 162, 165, 167, 181, 230–31 see also Immigration Minorities, 5, 6, 9–14, 25, 31, 33, 44, 56–58, 67, 70–71, 75, 84, 88, 93, 110, 134–35 ethnic, 10, 14 linguistic, 31, 33 national, 5–6, 56, 71, 84, 88 religious, 13, 134 visible, 11 Miscegenation, 96

Mobilisation, 15, 22, 48–52, 54, 56–57, 64, 69–70, 73, 75, 103, 113, 129–31, 133–35, 141, 143, 146, 150, 154, 167, 185, 201–02, 205–06, 213, 219, 223 ethnic, 22, 48, 51, 73, 75, 129–30, 134–35, 143, 154 political, 15, 49–50, 113, 133, 141, 202, 206, 213, 219 Mobility, 24, 29, 43–44, 49, 221 Modernisation, 23, 85, 87, 182, 205, 213, 217 Modernity, 7, 11, 111, 126, 159, 161, 163, 171, 223 Morley–Minto Reforms, 117, 120, 125 Mountbatten, Lord, 138, 144, 157 Mozambique, 13 Mulroney, Brian, 34 Multiculturalism, 13, 37, 41–44, 101–02, 188 Multiethnicity, 11–14, 221 Muslim Conference, 137, 141–46, 150 Muslim League, 131, 141, 143, 161 Muslim United Front, 150–52, 156–57 Muslims, 112, 131–34, 136–37, 140–42, 146–47, 153, 182–83, 202 Shi’ite, 137, 141–42 156 Sunni, 131, 136, 140–42, 146, 156 Nation(s), 1–11, 13–15, 17, 21–24, 27–28, 32–33, 36, 38, 45, 48–49, 53–54, 74–75, 79, 85–87, 92–93, 95, 101–02, 109, 111–13, 116–19, 121, 125–27, 134, 159–60, 171, 173, 188, 198–99, 222, 227–28, 232–34, 247 National identity, 2–3, 11, 13, 26, 36, 71, 110–11, 134, 159, 171, 180, 184, 191, 213, 215, 219, 221, 234, 249 Nationality, 21, 56, 61, 66, 123, 171 Nationalism, 1, 4, 6–7, 13–15, 23, 28, 35–36, 43, 44, 52, 64, 66, 71, 73, 99, 109–18, 121–22, 124–26, 129–32, 135, 139, 142, 144, 150, 153–54, 157, 159–61, 163–65, 171, 198, 200, 205–06, 210–14, 219–21, 223, 228, 230, 232 civic, 7, 15 economic, 213 ethnic, 7, 28, 99, 113–14, 125, 206 political, 113, 125

Index 257 National unity, 29, 185, 191, 213 Nation-building, 32, 43, 73, 188, 221 Nationhood, 14–15, 44, 120, 126, 163 Nation-state(s), 1, 4–6, 9–11, 13–17, 21, 48–49, 71, 75, 84–88, 90–94, 96, 100, 103, 134, 198, 228, 230–31, 247–48, 250 Nazis, 53, 54 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 110, 133, 137–38, 140, 142–44, 163 Netherlands, 192 New Zealand; see Aotearoa/New Zealand Nicaragua, 89 Nigeria, 2, 12 Nisga’a Agreement, 91–92 Nomadism, 49–50, 53, 55, 59, 77 Non-government organisations (NGOs), 42, 66–67, 69, 79, 89 North America, 17, 21, 23, 25, 27, 33, 192–93 Northern Ireland, 11, 38, 41, 160 Norway, 8, 91 Nunavut, 22, 91 Ontario, 21, 25, 29, 32–33, 38–40 Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 70, 79 Oppression, 55, 75, 96, 168, 187, 189, 244 Pakistan, 12, 16, 129–33, 135–40, 142–44, 146, 150–56, 161–62, 171 Palestinians, 9 Particularism/particularity, 16, 102, 195, 229, 234–6, 243, 245, 247–48 Paramountcy, 135–36, 195, 208 Parti Québécois, 25–29, 32, 34, 36 Partition, 40–41, 66, 116, 131, 134, 137, 144, 154, 161, 198 Patriation, 33 Patriotism, 6, 120 Persecution, 50, 173 Plebiscite, 144–45, 152, 157 Pluralism, 111, 132, 139, 141, 180, 182, 188, 228–29, 235–36 cultural, 111, 182, 188, 235–36 religious, 141 social, 132, 139 Plural societies, 8, 16, 179, 188, 203–04

Pogroms, 54, 64 Poland, 50, 52–53, 55, 73 Political theory, 16, 84, 227–28, 230, 233, 236, 248–49 Politics, 1, 12–13, 23–24, 39, 71–74, 84, 101, 103, 109–10, 112, 114, 116–26, 132–34, 141, 147–50, 152–53, 155–57, 159–61, 171, 179, 184, 187, 202–03, 205–06, 208–11, 213, 216, 220–23, 227, 229, 235–36, 238–42, 244–47, 249 of difference, 227, 235, 239–40, 244 of equal dignity, 236, 239 of presence, 246, 249 of recognition, 227, 238–39, 241–42, 244, 249 Portugal, 12 Portuguese, 11–13, 161, 198, 200 Postcolonial; 2, 8, 11, 13, 16, 84, 88, 111–12, 114, 145, 160, 165, 171, 189, 198–99, 223 Prejudice(s), 181–83, 188, 216, 218, 221–22 Primordial(ism), 44, 110–11, 113–14, 126, 130, 177, 216 Proletariat, 178 Public good, 42 see also Common good Puerto Rico, 192 Québec, 9, 15, 21–45, 92 Bill 101, 27, 29–31, 36–37, 39 ‘Distinct society’, 21–25, 32, 34–35 Québécois, 7, 15, 21–29, 32–34, 36–40, 44 Racialisation, 3 ‘Race’, 1, 2, 122 Racism, 1, 3, 17, 41, 43, 183, 191, 193–94 Rationalisation, 219, 223 Rationalism/rationality, 163, 240, 249 Refugees, 49, 67–68, 70, 74, 79, 152, 156, 231 Regionalism/regionalisation, 38, 43, 192 Religion, 3, 7, 15–16, 22, 24, 28, 111–12, 118, 120, 122, 131–34, 140, 157, 165, 170–72, 179, 183, 186, 198, 200–02, 205, 210, 215, 217

258 Index Representation, 4, 48, 51, 62, 64–65, 68–70, 73–74, 79, 94, 115–25, 129, 179, 221, 240, 242–48 group, 242–43, 245–48 political, 4, 64–65, 129, 221, 247, 249 social, 245–46, 249 symbolic, 117–25, 245 Rights, 4–5, 8, 16–7, 23, 25, 27–28, 31–37, 40–41, 43–44, 52, 54, 56, 60–61, 65–66, 68–69, 71–74, 76, 84–86, 88–104, 110, 131, 133, 135, 144, 146, 154–55, 182, 189, 198, 201, 206–08, 212, 215, 219–223, 227–34, 247–49 civil, 52, 71, 74, 231 collective, 33, 242 group, 16, 33, 36–37, 227, 239, 243 human, 5, 17, 65, 69, 76, 79, 88–89, 154–55, 231 indigenous, 41, 84–86, 88–95, 99–103, 208 individual, 33, 36, 41, 86, 243 language, 25, 31, 36, 44 national minority, 60, 72–73, 88 special representation, 243–44, 246, 248 Roma, 15, 48–79, 232 Romani Congress (International), 15, 48, 62–63, 70–71, 74 Romani Union (International), 48–49, 63, 70, 74–75, 77–79 Romania, 51–53, 55, 71, 77–78 Russia, 52, 159 Sámi, 91 Scotland, 1, 11 Secession, 5, 31, 88–90, 94, 130–31, 134–35, 153 Secularism/secularity, 110–11, 133–34, 141, 150 Self-determination, 4–5, 17, 27, 52, 84, 86–91, 93–95, 99, 103, 173, 212, 232 Separatism, 25–26, 29, 134, 166, 172, 183 Settler societies, 8, 96 Sharif, Nazir, 154 Sikhs, 9, 160, 165–73, 202 Singapore, 162, 199–200, 215, 221 Slovakia/Slovak Republic, 15, 48, 50, 53, 57–60, 62, 64–69, 72, 75, 77–79

Slovenia, 1, 14 Smith, A., 1, 4, 7, 16, 102, 205 Social action, 3, 7 Social change, 3, 11, 205 Social class, 24, 117, 222 see also Class Social cohesion, 41 see also Cohesion Social constructivism, 3, 240 Social exclusion; 229, 234 see also Exclusion Social fact, 3, 216 Socialism, 57, 60, 141 Social justice, 41, 213, 229 see also Justice Social location, 222, 241 Social mobility, 24, 43, 221 see also Mobility Social movement(s), 3, 150, 152, 244 Social order, 55, 85, 114, 183 Social structure(s), 53, 176, 179, 195, 200, 204, 215 Social theory, 84, 228 Sociology, 1–3, 11, 159, 222 Solidarity, 17, 42, 102, 168, 171, 173, 194–85, 189, 193–94, 201, 203, 205, 208, 216, 241 South Africa, 53, 161, 162, 173 Sovereignty, 26, 32–33, 36, 94–95, 97, 136, 150, 155, 210, 233 Soviet Union, 5, 14, 52, 53, 55 see also USSR Spain, 5, 183 Sri Lanka, 9, 162, 202, 220 State(s), 1–9, 11–17, 21–23, 25–28, 33, 40, 42–44, 48, 51–58, 60, 65, 68–69, 71–75, 77, 84, 87–90, 96, 109–10, 115–18, 121–22, 124, 129–39, 142–45, 147–53, 155–57, 159–61, 165–67, 172–73, 176, 178–81, 184, 186–89, 191, 193, 195, 198–202, 204–05, 212–13, 215, 219, 229, 231–34, 238, 240, 243, 248 colonial, 115, 118, 135 multiethnic, 57, 176, 184 multinational, 5–7, 11, 14, 232, 234 polyethnic, 6, 232 postcolonial, 11, 13, 88, 160, 189, 198 sovereign, 27–28, 96, 129

Index 259 Statehood, 4–5, 7, 21, 147 State-nation, 199 Status, 5, 9–11, 21, 36, 40, 49, 51–52, 56, 60, 49, 51–52, 56, 60–61, 63, 66, 68–69, 71, 86–88, 94, 99–101, 120, 123, 142, 150, 161, 184, 201–02, 205, 207, 209–10, 219–20, 222, 228–31, 234, 246 Stereotype(s), 50, 58, 181–84, 186, 193 Subordination, 241, 246 Subsidiarity, 247 Sudan, 162 Supranational, 5, 8, 15, 17, 54, 73, 84, 86, 103 organisations, 5, 17, 54, 73, 86 Symbolism, 118, 134, 185, 192 Tamils, 9, 202 Tanzania, 13 Taylor, C., 42, 188, 227, 229, 236–37, 239, 242 Tilak, Bal, 114, 116–17, 124 Torres Strait Islanders, 85 see also Aboriginal peoples Tradition(s), 23, 28, 77, 86, 89, 91, 95, 111, 113, 120, 126–27, 132, 138, 163, 170, 228–29, 236, 243, 245 Transnational(ism), 16, 48–49, 68, 73, 79, 159–61, 166, 172–73, 181, 193, 195, 232 Treaty of Waitangi, 96–97, 99–101 Trinidad and Tobago, 16, 162, 176–85, 187–89, 191–95 Trudeau, Pierre, 25, 29, 32–34, 44 Tuvalu, 1

Ukraine, 50, 58 Unemployment, 64, 72–73, 75, 98 United Nations, 4, 5, 15, 17, 63, 70, 73, 87–90, 139, 144, 148 Charter, 88 Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), 5, 17, 88–90 Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 5, 8, 17, 88–90 High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 67 Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), 87–90 United States, 2, 8, 17, 25, 89, 160, 192 Unity, 29, 41, 69, 89, 102, 119, 122–23, 165, 167–68, 185, 188, 191, 198, 213, 215, 235–36, 240 Universalism, 234, 236, 247 Urbanisation, 98, 104, 213, 217 USSR, 14, 58 see also Soviet Union Velvet Revolution, 48, 65 Virgin Islands, 192 Waitangi Tribunal, 96, 100, 101 Wales, 11 Walzer, M., 237–38 Wik Decision, 93 World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), 87 Young, I., 84, 94, 177, 227, 235–36, 242, 244–46 Yugoslavia, 5, 14, 52, 55, 63

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