Life and politics in South Asia (Part 1)
This is the first part of a two-part podcast episode. Click here for part 2.
Oats for Breakfast, in collaboration with Jamhoor, hosts a discussion about South Asia. We chat about Hindutva and the closing off of space for dissent in India, some of the seemingly-parallel trends currently underway in Pakistan, the contradictions of minority nationalism, as well as a whole lot else.
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Episode Transcript
Priyansh: My name is Priyansh.
Tayyaba: I’m Tayyaba.
Umair: And I’m Umair.
Priyansh: You’re tuning into Oats for Breakfast…
Tayyaba: … which is an eco-socialist podcast…
Umair: … based in Toronto.
Priyansh: This episode is being created in collaboration with Jamhoor which is a Toronto-based media platform that covers life and politics in South Asia.
Tayyaba: And life and politics in South Asia is the theme of our discussion in this episode.
Umair: Maybe to start off with we can sort of define what South Asia is?
Priyansh: South Asia is– you can think of it in multiple ways. If you’re thinking geographically or cartographically, it has always been an amorphous category. When you speak of South Asia, it’s very difficult to define where it starts and where it begins. But I think it’s loosely understood as the Indian subcontinent. There are always certain accusations to the fact that India, especially North India, and issues around Pakistan are essentially privileged in the South Asian discourse.
But also, if you look at South Asia as an area of study it emerges in the post-World War II context. It definitely developed from the United States in the sense that many of the universities realized that the US was in this position where it could drive home its imperial advantage without the knowledge that the British Empire had already cultivated or nurtured for itself. And to understand different parts of the world, it creates this category of South Asia which is a contentious category. But now, you see “South Asia” has much relevance. To give you an example, there is a South Asian University in New Delhi even though South Asian departments haven’t really existed within universities in India. So it’s definitely a term that has much relevance. But what South Asia means still remains open to contention.
Tayyaba: But formally, it includes the countries of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan Bangladesh and the Maldives which together form the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation or SAARC. So traditionally, that’s what it’s understood as. But yeah as Priyansh said, there can be lots of meanings of the word itself.
Priyansh: And Afghanistan is interestingly – I mean Afghanistan has, for some, been considered part of South Asia politically. But to give you an example, say, from the world of sport, Afghanistan was part of the SAF which is a soccer championship. And only recently, it actually migrated to play in the Central Asian championships. So where Afghanistan sees itself has actually been pretty much – its position has been fluid and it changes – it has changed over time. And you see other regional formations come up. When I spoke of how it is seen politically in the United States, there’s obviously this regional formation of “AfPak” which is talked about. So, Afghanistan’s place – it’s not definitely fixed with how we would think of South Asia even if you’re thinking in terms of, you know, cartographically or geographically.
Tayyaba: I think AfPak itself was something that was– it became a creation really in the Obama era, right? And it was met with a lot of criticism at that time as well because Pakistan does not want to see itself lumped with Afghanistan. So, AfPak itself was quite a contentious thing.
Umair: Yeah, but for the Obama administration it was just to talk about the two neighboring countries that they were bombing simultaneously.
Tayyaba: Yes.
Priyansh: Exactly, yeah.
Tayyaba: And there is also like this drive to lump Pakistan into the Middle East as well. Like when you talk about the Middle East, they often include Pakistan in there and which is also something that Pakistanis don’t care for much.
Umair: Yeah, people do that. And it’s not cool. [Laughter] And I… you know I’m also hesitant to include Afghans in South Asia – just out of respect for them. [Laughter]
Tayyaba: But then I mean there is that– that’s again, it’s a political thing. It’s a complicated historical thing as well, right? Because there was for a long time a demand to create a wider Pashtunistan from populations that are based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And then the same with the territory of Balochistan in Pakistan. They consider themselves a part of this wider Baloch community that is present in Iran as well as Afghanistan. So again, where do you draw the boundaries?
Priyansh: That’s difficult especially even when we think of continents themselves, all of these understandings are so loose and rarely fixed and it also pretty much depends on what you’re talking about. Nobody is really able to tell where Europe ends and where Asia begins and this is– that has been another contentious question politically as well. So I guess it’s probably in the nature of region making or how we think of regions that these understandings will probably remain loose.
Umair: Mm-hmm. And not to just keep talking about geography here but another country that could be a candidate for inclusion into South Asia is Burma. I feel like they’re closer than Afghanistan in just the cultural/civilizational kind of way, if that’s not too offensive a thing to say.
Tayyaba: They were part of the British Empire.
Umair: Yeah. I think the reason why it’s important to define South Asia is because in the North American context – I don’t know how it is for you guys but whenever I talk to people and the term “South Asia” is used there is a very easy slippage from using “South Asia” to instead using “Southeast Asia.” Because people are much more comfortable with that term – and every time it happens it has happened more times than I can count – I never correct the person I’m speaking to because I don’t know if it’s a linguistic slippage or if they don’t know that South Asia is a thing, that instead they just know that Southeast Asia is a thing. But South Asia is very different from Southeast Asia. It’s not anywhere near Vietnam or Cambodia or the Philippines.
Priyansh: Yeah. No, not at all and also again within Asia I guess those demarcations are really important because the way Asian context, it’s two different things. Asian could mean somebody from the continent but also it means somebody from the Far East. And so, it’s I guess in that sense, it is a useful term, as you’re saying, to be able to carve out an identity for oneself.
Umair: Yeah I don’t think of myself as Asian though. That’s South Asian people in Britain, right?
Priyansh: Yeah.
Umair: They call themselves Asians.
Priyansh: Yeah. Yeah.
Umair: But here, if you say Asian, that’s East Asian.
Priyansh: Yeah. That means yeah, it’s something completely – I guess it is spatially specific as well in which part of the world you’re in. But, interestingly enough, I guess if you were to speak to someone in India or in Pakistan, do they think of themselves as South Asians? Probably not.
Umair: No, do they? I don’t know.
Tayyaba: I would think that they do.
Umair: Oh.
Tayyaba: I don’t know, speaking as a Pakistani, they– yeah, I think the South Asian identity is something that they claim. But is Burma part of Southeast Asia or South Asia?
Umair: I think the Buddhism sort of tips them over the edge… [Laughter] into Southeast Asia, I don’t know.
Tayyaba: But Sri Lanka is Buddhist.
Umair: That’s true. But it’s too far from Southeast Asia.
Priyansh: This is why it’s – the region is such a contentious issue. Where do you draw the lines?
Umair: But OK, so, moving beyond drawing lines. Part of the reason we wanted to have this discussion is because I’m sure that a lot of our audience is hearing about recent developments in South Asia – particularly in India. There’s a lot of news coming out about this guy named Modi, a lot is being said. And given that North Americans – especially anglophone North Americans we’re not very cosmopolitan – we don’t know anything about the rest of the world.
I guess the point of today’s discussion would be for people like me – I will take on the identity of the anglophone North American here – to learn a little bit about the historical, political, cultural context of these recent developments that are taking place and then of course we can also talk about those developments. But maybe that’s a good place to start is the rise of the far-right in India.
Priyansh: Well, the interesting thing about it is that essentially there is very way little to separate between what you’d say the far-right and the right within Indian politics. And that has been– I mean we were speaking of categories earlier themselves and there’s always been this contention about the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the party that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi represents. Its ideological basis has always come from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS, which is a Hindu nationalist organization. It identifies itself as a cultural organization. Although that term is in itself contentious but it derives its heft – its ideological heft and its ideas really comes from this belief in Hindu supremacy. And that has been – so it’s now an organization which is very close to its centennial anniversary. In 2025, it will complete 100 years. So it has existed even before Partition happened and India and Pakistan and what is known as Bangladesh got independence.
But the question about the RSS is that – and archival historical records prove this – it took much of its inspiration from what was happening in the late 1920s and ‘30s Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. There have been documented meetings between the founding members of the RSS and those who were part of the Fascist regime in Italy. K.B. Hedgewar who was one of the founding members of the RSS, he went and met Mussolini in person.
Umair: Sorry, what was his name?
Priyansh: K.B. Hedgewar.
Umair: OK.
Priyansh: And he and his followers were really– they were much impressed with what they saw in ‘30s Italy, which should give us a moment to pause and ponder and to understand what’s been happening in India. But obviously, after the independence, the RSS then loses its legitimacy primarily because it was a member of the RSS, Nathuram Godse, who assassinated M.K. Gandhi. And for a while, they obviously struggled to make any breakthroughs on the ground or even electorally but now is their moment. And some of these things can be explained by the electoral breakthroughs that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s earlier iteration called the Jana Sangh made in the ‘70s. And that’s really its entry into electoral politics.
So, Narendra Modi is a member of the same organization. He is a proud member of the RSS. He swears by its values. I mean we’re speaking of how people in North America understand what’s happening with Modi and India: Modi wasn’t allowed to enter US on a visa because he was accused of carrying out a state sponsored genocide in the state of Gujarat in 2002. He has only been able to– he was granted a visa only after he became the Prime Minister of India in 2014. And ever since he’s been the Prime Minister, you find that dissidents, students and the media, free media has come under attack. There has been a series of violent incidents which have been carried out by the state.
But really, the driving ambition behind this movement is to see India as a Hindu majority nation and not as a secular sovereign socialist republic which was enshrined in the constitution of India. Some of the recent protests that we see now are actually in support of– or rather in defense of the constitutional values which are now seen as under threat in India. The most recent flashpoint obviously has been the change in the basis of the citizenship. So there has been a constitutional amendment which has changed the basis of citizenship which threatens to make nearly 200 million, to render 200 million Indian citizens stateless which obviously would be a calamity, to say the least. So that’s what brought people out on the streets and that’s what essentially explains the reports that we’ve seen lately.
But what I’m also trying to think is if you’re speaking of rise of the far-right – but Tayyaba, what would you say? Do you see any parallels with what’s happening in India and maybe in the Pakistani context?
Tayyaba: Of course, I think a lot of strands that you are mentioning from India can also be seen in Pakistan, especially when you start talking about restricting space in society for any kind of dissenting voices against the sort of majoritarian view of Pakistan. I think the way that I see it is that a lot of historical tensions that have been there since Pakistan’s birth in 1947 are now coming to a head.
And so, for example, when Pakistan was formed, it was formed out of this desire for Muslims to have a separate homeland because they saw themselves as under threat from Hindu dominance after the British left the country, and that demand slowly coalesced into this demand for a separate state. And the state was then created out of a very rushed process and maybe we can get into that as we go on.
But when the state was formed there was then this entire effort for much of its history to create a Muslim nationalism or nationalism based out of their shared identity as Muslims across the country and that involved erasing a lot of regional differences, a lot of nationalist aspirations or a lot of nationalist elements as well as other kinds of differences between people and welding the entire country under this banner of Islam.
And of course, that had to be done through coercion and consent and so the elites or the ruling class at the center started to gain a lot of dominance. And by the center I mean the heart of the country, in many senses, the economic generator of the country which is the province of Punjab. The people who were ruling Punjab started to gain dominance over other nationalities within Pakistan– or other nations within Pakistan.
Umair: So, wait a minute, there’s a Punjab– I thought Punjab was in India?
Tayyaba: Yes. So during partition, this is one of the legacies of Partition that when there was a demand for Muslim nationalism, the demand was based out of areas that had Muslim majorities and areas that had Hindu majorities. And the demand was the areas which had Muslim majorities would constitute a separate region either within the federation of India or a separate state as the demand grew on. And so, when the British partitioned India, they actually drew a line right in the middle of Punjab separating east and west Punjab. And East Punjab went to India and West Punjab went to Pakistan, which actually resulted in the bloodshed of Partition as people migrated across these different borders.
Umair: Right. So, we did an episode on the podcast on Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP...
Priyansh: Right.
Umair: …who’s from Punjab. But he’s from the Indian side.
Priyansh: Yes.
Umair: And you guys are saying that there is another side.
Tayyaba: Yes.
Priyansh: Yeah.
Tayyaba: There is a West Punjab, which is now Pakistani Punjab.
Umair: Right. That’s the side I am from actually.
Tayyaba: Are you?
Umair: And actually, one interesting piece of trivia there is that there are more Pakistani Punjabis that there are Indian Punjabis. There are more Muslim Punjabis than there are Sikh or Hindu Punjabis, which is also interesting from the standpoint of identity creation because most Muslim and Pakistani Punjabis don’t really care that much for their Punjabi identity. Whereas, if you talk to someone who’s Sikh, for them their Sikh identity is inherently interwoven with their Punjabi identity.
Tayyaba: Yeah, I think that’s a huge reflection of the fact that the Muslim nationalism project in Pakistan was so centered in Punjab that it actually erased the regional identity of Punjab in favor of this broader Pakistani nationalist identity. And so, Punjab– a lot of Punjabi households would prefer not to speak Punjabi at home when they get more established or upwardly mobile and they would rather speak Urdu which is part of this Pakistani nationalist project of favoring Urdu over regional languages, favoring national– other national and cultural symbols over regional symbols. And I think just going back to my point to complete that point is to– is the fact that a lot of movements, a lot political mobilizations that are happening now in the country are actively resisting this idea of this wider Pakistani nationalism and asserting their own identity and demanding rights based on those identities.
Umair: But just– I mean just in defense of my people, if I may. So, Punjabis make up about half of the population of Pakistan today, or a little bit less than half. And they are the dominant ethnic group. Punjab ends up being the economic engine of the country, in large part because of historical reasons and because of the kind of favor that it has gained, or retained, since independence. But prior to independence, of course, the Muslim majority areas of India didn’t really want independence. The heartland or the center of Muslim separatism was in the Muslim minority areas in central India, in Uttar Pradesh or UP, which as we were saying – or as Priyansh you were saying before we started recording – is today where much of the Hindu nationalist movement is centered.
Priyansh: Yeah. And I mean the situation in UP currently is, as some are saying, is actually a repetition of what people saw in Gujarat when Narendra Modi was a Chief Minister of that state. So now, in UP, the Chief Minister is a man by the name of Ajay Singh Bisht, who actually goes by the name of Yogi Adityanath. And he’s taken on this identity to present himself as a Hindu savior. And you find that in the state of UP, multiple reports of state-sponsored violence – essentially a pogrom being carried out against Muslims. And in recent weeks we’ve seen an escalation in those attacks on Muslims in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
And Uttar Pradesh is an interesting state because it is obviously India’s most populous state. And you find that there are many diverse identities at play, linguistic or religious predominantly. But on the question of religion itself, it has been almost the preoccupation of the BJP, the Bharatiya Janata Party, because it sees– electorally, first of all, it sends 80 MPs to the Indian legislature out of out of 550. So it is also electorally very important. And you know the City of Ayodhya in the state of UP where we obviously had the destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992 behind that movement were essentially prominent leaders of the BJP and the RSS. So there are cultural reasons, essentially ideas of cultural supremacy which guide BJP’s preoccupation with UP and you see this continuing to this day.
But also just to pick up the point about how we understand the Punjabi identity and Tayyaba obviously was speaking in the Pakistani context. But the example that you’re giving Umair about Sikhs and how they– how it is in tune with the question of being Punjabi. You just have to look at mainstream Hindi cinema, otherwise known as Bollywood cinema, in which you find that really the equation of Punjabi and Sikh is never really complicated. It’s almost understood that a Punjabi figure is Sikh and without really trying to – you might see the question of being Punjabi maybe in some recent films which are centered in and around Delhi because Delhi obviously has significant Punjabi population. But again, this memory of the Partition is almost sort of brushed aside. People don’t want to talk about it as much. I went to a school in New Delhi where many of my classmates were Punjabi but they would never really be…
Umair: Sorry about that.
Priyansh: [Laughter] It was also a school which was run by the Arya Samaj which has strong links to the RSS so they’re…
Tayyaba: Sorry about that as well.
Priyansh: Yeah, many challenges there! But you know the conversations about Partition even in Indian text books of history, Partition isn’t really talked about much as you know as a seismic event at all. It’s something that lives on.
Tayyaba: It’s almost an inevitability.
Priyansh: Yeah.
Tayyaba: It had to happen based on how you know because India– Hindus and Muslims were of course always two different nations.
Priyansh: And this reality is not complicated at all. And when people talk about something that is problematic in itself: Islamic culture – without problematizing it at all or which without complicating that – only the question of the Sufis would come up which is obviously an easy thing to talk about. But you wouldn’t find in schools particularly any question of how Partition is remembered. I mean just to draw a parallel with it and from another South Asian context, how ‘71 is remembered in Bangladesh is very different in how it’s taught in schools and its front and center that topic. But that’s not the case in Indian schools about how ‘47 is remembered. And ‘71 is remembered as an India-Pakistan war but not really as a war for say Bangladeshi Independence, to give you an example.
Umair: Right. So just a clarification, 1971 is the year that Bangladesh gained independence.
Priyansh: Yes.
Tayyaba: From Pakistan.
Umair: Yeah. Because initially it was– this is kind of complicated… is it that complicated?
Tayyaba: It is quite complicated.
Umair: But yeah initially, in 1947 it just so happened that the Muslim majority areas of British India happened to be on the very east and very western ends of the Subcontinent and so those areas became part of the country of Pakistan. So there was a western wing and eastern wing. And eventually the eastern wing broke off in a very bloody conflict.
Priyansh: Yeah, with the support of the Indian military obviously. Yeah.
Tayyaba: But coming back to your point about the demand for Pakistan not being very strongly rooted in the majority areas, I think East Pakistan which now became Bangladesh would be an exception there. But speaking about West Pakistan, yes, it wasn’t very strongly rooted. It wasn’t a huge desire for the people there. Even if you see the last elections that were held within British India the Muslim League, which was the largest Muslim party, it actually did not win in two of the provinces that later became Pakistan. And these elections were held a year before, approximately a year before Pakistan was formed.
And so, in many ways the desire for Pakistan was actually driven by the Muslim elites from the heartland of India. And those elites were based in Uttar Pradesh, UP, where in fact the Congress won. And so, it was these elites that started to feel really in very material terms – when you know the cow protection orders for example were passed, because the cow is a sacred symbol in Hinduism, or when Hindi was gaining a lot of dominance in that province after the Congress won – and it was these elites that started to feel the anxiety of “when the British leave what will become of us?”
And so, in many ways the demand for Pakistan or a separate region was driven by these people and you know as a very famous poet in Urdu remarked, Jaun Elia, he said, “Pakistan Aligarh ke laundo ki shararat thi” which is – Aligarh is a university for the Muslim elites – and he said it was a sort of prank that was played on us by these elites, these Muslim elites from Aligarh.
Umair: And I think that’s– I mean as a comparative for us here to look at is really interesting. This minority nationalism that didn’t really have a base among the minority that it was supposed to be fighting for or on behalf of– it was really an elite-driven project. And even to the extent that it had a base, it had a base in those areas where it couldn’t have gained a separatist victory because you can’t– in the middle of India you can’t create a separate country for the Muslim minority that was there.
So yeah, I mean just in terms of thinking about minority nationalisms more generally, so for me personally, whenever I hear a demand for separatism – and this is not to offend anybody – but whether this is in, you know, Quebec or what’s been happening recently in Spain or Scotland, you name it. My first thought is, “Wait, you guys want a partition? We tried that. It doesn’t lead to anything good.”
Priyansh: Yeah.
Umair: So yeah, I don’t know.
Tayyaba: I mean I think it’s no– not to diminish the number of people who would turn out to these rallies, right? To Muslim League rallies towards the end, there were a lot of people and not everyone was elite and there was this certain aspiration for something that the Muslims would get protection from—because they were anxious of what they began to see as Hindu dominance because there were more Hindus than them. So they did begin to see– to get anxious. At the same time, I think it’s important to understand that this desire for protection and this desire for having some kind of space or some right to self-determination would not necessarily have translated into an independent state. It could also have translated into some kind of, you know, more protection within a federation. I just didn’t want to diminish the fact that there were people coming out to these rallies in huge numbers. It wasn’t just a trick.
Umair: Yeah and they were mobs going around.
Tayyaba: Yeah, people did give their lives to go over to the separate state.
Umair: Yeah, and they gave other people’s lives…
Tayyaba: Yeah.
Umair: …the young men who rallied together and murdered people from the rival community.
Priyansh: It is also a well-found, a well-founded anxiety, I should say. And in fact, now, you see in the current discourse around India say in Muslim communities and also especially leaders who have, who are involved in politics, you find some of them saying that whatever we were feeling in ‘47 wasn’t illegitimate. This is exactly what we feared would happen in India. And right now, it’s actually difficult to dispute that because in the current moment, those anxieties aren’t just anxieties. They’re existential fears now, where you can lose your citizenship, you are now in a much– it’s much likelier that you might actually be attacked by a mob and there have obviously been many reported incidents of mob lynching.
So, some of the fears that had been raised about India around the time of independence that this would have– that the country might collapse into internecine warfare or a civil war like situation. It’s not really a civil war at the moment but some of those fears don’t seem as farfetched as they might have seemed maybe a couple of decades ago or so– or maybe three decades ago. And it points to a direction of the failed promises of nationhood – because it was very much, it was probably the definition of aspirational nationhood. It aspired to many of the values of the modern nation-states. It wasn’t only a project of imitation but it was also a creative project which we saw in India. And many of those truths or assumptions that you heard about in this idea have pretty much been flipped over in– especially in the last six years.
But it’s obviously been a long time coming after the collapse of Babri Masjid which is the moment in which much of what is happening now, its origins are really traced to. And you have to say that it’s not going away anytime soon especially since the BJP continues to enjoy a huge electoral majority.
Umair: Well, yeah, we should talk about this Babri Masjid thing which you’ve mentioned before as well. It’s important. But in terms of the point about the fears that the Muslim minority had pre-independence about being dominated by Hindu majority -- that those are coming to fruition. I feel like the Partition actually helped with that. The fact of the existence of separate Muslim countries made it harder for the Muslims who stayed in India. And there are of course tens of millions of people who are Muslims in India. So then the Hindu nationalists could undermine the secular nationhood that the Indian National Congress was trying to build by saying, “Well, these Muslims that are here, why don’t they just go to the neighboring countries, whether it’s Pakistan or Bangladesh?” And so, I would say that had the Partition not taken place perhaps these fears would not have been realized.
Priyansh: Yeah maybe– I mean also the other thing about telling people to go to Pakistan has become such a powerful political statement that anybody– it’s no longer, even in the Indian popular imagination, it’s no longer a question of even religion anymore. If you’re a dissident you’re asked to go to Pakistan, even if you, let’s say, if you’re not a dissident, if you just put out a critical tweet or a Facebook post you are told to go to Pakistan. It is considered as the Other because obviously it’s considered as a country for Muslims.
But now, especially in the last six, seven years it has been transformed into a place where it’s connotation is not merely religious but almost it stands against any political conception – anybody who stands against the political conception of India as a Hindu state should just go to Pakistan no matter, you could be a Hindu but you would still– you should still go to Pakistan. And I think because of…
Umair: Because you’re sympathetic to minorities?
Priyansh: Because you’re sympathetic to minorities or because you merely just don’t support the government. And I think the role of the state is important to see here because essentially the state’s direct involvement in people’s lives has collapsed but it keeps that illusion alive. And you see this in how the BJP operates or you know how Prime Minister Narendra Modi communicates with Indian citizens. There is this idea that through his podcast which he conducts every Sunday.
Umair: He has a podcast?
Priyansh: Yeah, it’s called Mann Ki Baat. He’s speaking from the heart there. So he’s sharing his thoughts, apparently his deepest desires for the country every Saturday, every Sunday, sorry. And the idea is that he’s actually ever-present in everyone’s lives. Some schools, in fact in India now, that’s the homework that the children have to do in schools. They have to listen to it and then report on Monday what the Prime Minister talked about.
Umair: Wow. The great leader!
Tayyaba: That’s very interesting because the way you’re saying, I mean Pakistani nationalism or the conception of a dissident in Pakistan is then diametrically the opposite of what you’re saying. So, anyone who is critical of the state of Pakistan is automatically an agent of RAW, which is the intelligence agency in India. So, we often joke that, you know, RAW is the biggest party in the country because anyone who talks against the state is automatically a functionary of RAW. And so this– it’s very interesting that the two countries then have formed their nationalisms in opposition to each other.
Priyansh: Yeah, but on different terms than religion which would have been maybe the case that of how it was understood in ’47.
Tayyaba: But I think, Umair when you said partition almost exaggerated those fears, I think it could also be seen the other way because when partition happened and when Pakistan was created there was actually a greater number of Muslims that were in India than in Pakistan even after partition. And so, you could then argue that more Muslims– because more Muslims were present in India that almost defeated the fact that Muslims needed another country.
And then further when Bangladesh formed, that was another sort of challenge to the idea that all Muslims need a separate homeland and they will be happier with each other, right? The fact that this entire Muslim country could not live together because of other reasons – because the demand for Bangladesh or the aspiration for Bangladesh was rooted in linguistic reasons, the Bengalis were not agreeing with this project of Urdu dominance or this entire wider Pakistani nationalism that was created, that was based on Islam. That was another challenge to this entire idea that Muslims needed a separate homeland within united India.
Umair: Yeah and I’m just– I guess what I’m trying to also do is get something that’s generalizable out of this to the extent that’s possible. And the idea that because one’s culture or religion or ethnicity is slightly different from someone else that therefore they need a separate political home can’t inherently be seen as a progressive demand, right? And so, I think as socialists, despite the fact that we are concerned about the rights of minorities, we’re in this difficult position. And this is where a lot of progressive-left Muslims found themselves in pre-independence India is that they were like “Well, shit! We don’t want a separate state but we’re being pushed out.”
Priyansh: And especially I guess the political stance you take is pretty much dictated by that very moment like with the examples you had brought up of say Catalonia, say what’s happening in Scotland. Those histories – I mean Catalonia has pretty much always seen itself as different which– or which I’m not very sure is the case say in the case of the Partition that happened in ‘47 whether people… I mean Catalan people have at no point even before Franco– they always saw themselves as a separate if not nation but as a separate group of people.
But in the context of the ‘47 partition, I’m not really sure that was the case because people really sure that was the case. People were really astonished, “What, we live in two different countries now?” So yeah, I guess it is hard. I also say speaking as socialist and with a commitment to internationalism particularly, it always will run into– it’s almost by design when you live in a world divided by nation states that you will run into this problem of if you are committed to collapsing the project of the nation-state is that actually helped by an increase in the number of nation-states themselves. Because most of the minority nationalisms are actually not merely speaking of their rights but they’re also seeing themselves as separate nation-states at a point.
Umair: Mm-hmm.
Tayyaba: But it’s also– again the demand is being put forward under various identities but at the end of the day it was a demand for a greater access to resources, greater material control over your own resources and so on, right? Even for Bangladesh, the demand came out in the form of the Bengali language but it was rooted in the desire for equal participation in the country. And they felt that they were– East Pakistan was being sidelined by the elites that were located in West Pakistan and that had a long history. The country was relying on resources from East Pakistan, all the materials that East Pakistan was producing but the wealth was all being transitioned into West Pakistan. And so, it came out in the form of a linguistic demand but it did have– again, as socialists, we need to look at to the material roots of that demand as well.
Umair: Mm-hmm. Though even the movement that led to a separate state in East Pakistan wasn’t calling for a separate state. It was just calling for greater autonomy, greater access to resources and respect for the Bengali language. And so, yeah, and even there – it was just the inability of the Pakistani state elites to allow those demands to happen that led to that that very gruesome second partition. Yeah, and I guess you guys are right. These are all contingent things. One can’t generalize so easily as I’m maybe trying to do. But I– just in the Catalonia case too, in all of these cases, look, all of these identities are constructed. They are imagined, right? That’s not to say that they are fake, they have a very real power.
Priyansh: Also, I guess looking at the current moment in India it’s interesting that much of the protest or the demonstration is actually being cast in terms of how people actually see themselves as Indians. And speaking of say Toronto, specifically, there have been a few recent demonstrations here. And some of the people who have come out and who I got to speak with during the protest, and I wanted to learn what were their motivations for turning out. They said that they don’t recognize India as they used to, which is interesting to me because these protests have also seen not just of course in Toronto but in India of reading of the Preamble, of the singing of the national anthem and they have become, you know, permanent fixtures no matter where the protest is taking place.
So, actually, the articulation of opposition is being done in terms of claiming Indian citizenship, of claiming a certain nationhood because the anti-Modi voice is essentially trying to say that actually what being Indian means is a secular, diverse republic and not a Hindu supremacist republic. But the tension there is and why, say, Modi is so popular is that the Indian nation which has also been constructed in terms of a Hindu citizen actually being above the rest. Of the Hindu citizen enjoying privileges, especially a Hindu upper-caste citizen enjoying privileges, which not the rest enjoy. So, it’s almost this competing visions of nationhood and both have certain legitimacy but one has more legitimacy in this point which is why Modi is popular in the current moment.
[Outro music plays]
Priyansh: We’re going to continue chatting about life and politics in South Asia and we’ll make the next segment of our discussion available next week.
Tayyaba: While you’re waiting for the next part of our discussion to be published, you can read about life and politics in South Asia but checking out Jamhoor’s coverage at j-a-m-h-o-o-r.org.
Umair: Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you again soon.
Oats for Breakfast is an independent eco-socialist podcast based in Toronto.