Christopher L. Bennett

Twentieth-Century South Asia

DEFINITION BY OPPOSITION:

Factors Underlying Nationalism in South Asia

Since the end of British colonial rule in 1947, the Indian subcontinent has experienced repeated instances of violent conflict between segments of its population. These conflicts arise from shifting definitions of what constitutes the Indian nation and what should be excluded from it. Groups that were once included in the national identity have been excluded one by one; allies and neighbors have become mortal foes. What is the basis of the sense of group identity that demands such violent defense of that identity? Can it be as simple as belonging to a specific nation, given that the conceptual boundaries of one's nation are subject to such constant redefinition? Does it arise from religious identity, or is religion a tool used in its support? Is it somehow an expression of economic class conflict? Or are all these ways of subdividing humanity merely facets of a more fundamental human impulse?

Arguably, the Indian sense of national identity emerged during India's long occupation by the British. Since the Indian people suffered from the British policy that they were not a sovereign nation, they sought to better their lot by becoming a nation, first in spirit and then in fact. This factor of opposition is crucial; as Menon and Bhasin assert, "[m]ost theorists of nationalism have posited that nations are haunted by their definitional others" and that a nation is "shaped by what it opposes" (M & B, p. 110).

But the distinction of one's own group from what anthropologists call "the Other" does not occur purely on the national level. In fact, it informs many distinct points of view on the conflicts that rack India.

There are, of course, the obvious levels. The Partition movement of 1946-7 "derived a large part of its emotional appeal from a fear of political oblivion for Muslims once the British quit India" (M & B, p. 4) and left the Hindu majority in power. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, the people's rage was directed not at the individuals, but "against the community of her killers, the Sikhs" (Srinivasan, p. 308; italics added). As seen in Anand Patwardhan's 1990 film In the Name of God, the BJP political party gained its following by stirring up Hindu animosity toward Muslims based on the legend that "they" had destroyed a temple of Ram in order to build the Babri Masjid.

But even those individuals critical of the violence and strife still think in terms of the "Self vs. Other" dynamic. Social worker Krishna Thapar insisted to Menon and Bhasin that the Hindus and Muslims of her community coexisted peacefully, saying that "a large percentage of Muslims did not want the Hindus to leave," and blames only "those who were mischievous, the Muslim League types" (M & B, p. 175), that is, those who were affiliated with an outside political party. A Sikh survivor of Partition, Bibi Inder Kaur, blamed Partition on the fact that "[i]n their hearts Hindus actually hated [Muslims]," insisting that "[w]e Sikhs did not do such things" (M & B, p. 210-211). When Hindus rioted against Muslims in Bhagalpur in 1989, many denied the community's responsibility, alleging "that criminal gangs [and] `outside' elements were largely responsible for the violence" (Pandey, p. 14). Meanwhile, as seen in In the Name of God, local peasants in Ayodhya were blaming the sectarian strife there on the "outsiders" of the BJP, denying any responsibility on their own community's part. It seems a routine practice to attribute anything one disapproves of to some outside party, rather than to one's own community.

But this alone cannot explain the violence with which national identity and honor are defended against the Other. What is the source of it, then? Is it deliberately incited by political leaders? It hardly seems credible that Muhammad Ali Jinnah wanted or expected the mass murder, rape and cruelty of Partition; and yet it happened anyway. As seen in Patwardhan's film, BJP leader L. K. Advani explicitly said during his pilgrimage to Ayodhya that he was not promoting violence; yet riots and killings occurred nonetheless. Political leaders cannot be assumed to be solely responsible for the events of history, or entirely in control of their followers.

But does the incentive to violence against the Other therefore reside within the mass of the people? Over and over, individuals have argued just the opposite about their own communities. While acknowledging a level of division and discomfort between members of different religions, they still describe a peaceful coexistence. "We all lived so peacefully," (M & B, p. 140), says Gyan Deyi, an expatriate from West Punjab. A Partition survivor named Somavanti says, "...we always had good relations with Muslims. We did not eat with them," she adds casually, "but everything else we did" (ibid, p. 218). Social worker Kamlaben Patel reports that in Punjab "[a]t the time of Partition... there was a lot of socialising and warmth between the two communities.... If they were alone together they would embrace, but in public they would shout slogans against each other. [Later,] this antagonism became much sharper. Of course, it was an issue between two countries, then" (ibid, p. 76).

This last statement is a clue as to why the delineation of group identities can flare up into violence which neither the leadership nor the populace actually wants. These two levels define identity in different ways, and the difference can lead to unexpected results.

Religious identity appears to serve a different purpose to politicians than it does to common people. For political leaders, it is a mechanism for defining and managing a group, and a source of motivation and justification for their desired actions. The whole nation of Pakistan, of course, is a political entity defined along religious lines; its creators used the people's religious identity in order to secure a political future for themselves and their community. After Partition, many in India's Parliament invoked Hindu tradition to support the effort to recover abducted Hindu women: "As descendants of Ram we have to bring back every Sita that is alive" (M & B, p. 68). Decades later, the BJP used a religious issue (the Babri Masjid) to stir up popular support for their party (In the Name of God). For these leaders, religion is an abstract entity which they reify into a cause to support or contest.

But for individual people, religious identity is defined on a more individual level. Instead of Hinduism or Islam, they see Hindus or Muslims -- their neighbors, their kinfolk, their servants, their rivals. Religion is not the reified belief, but the practices and heritage of specific people. Nirmal Anand, another Partition-era social worker, expresses the belief that "[b]eef-eating went a long way in dividing the community.... Other prejudices would all have been forgotten by the Hindus if the beef issue wasn't there." Yet she adds that "[w]e had very close Muslim friends... [t]hey treated me very well" (M & B, pp. 187-8). This reinforces Kamlaben Patel's observations on the coexistence of political conflict and social harmony between the religious communities.

Evidently, the members of a community can perceive the members of other religions as somewhat separate yet still part of their community. Faith is a factor in identity, but not the exclusive factor. Yet when politicians bring in their more abstract, impersonal definitions, the identity of individuals is subsumed into the simpler, reified concept of the religion. (For example, in discussing the state's campaign to recover abducted Hindu women after Partition, Das asserts "that once the recovery of women was defined as a state responsibility, the identity of a woman was firmly fixed as either Muslim or Hindu" [Das, p. 79] -- ignoring any other aspects of their lives such as family or community ties.) Thus, priorities are shifted, and cracks in community relations become impassable chasms.

This difference between the collective paradigm of leaders and the individual paradigm of the populace may help explain the unexpected, unwanted mass migration which occurred upon Partition. The division of the subcontinent into "Muslim" and "Hindu" (or "secular" -- the two terms are disingenuously treated as interchangeable) territories was based on giving power to the majority communities of the regions; "transfer of power was what had been agreed to, not transfer of populations" (M & B, p. 34). To the politicians, a Hindu-majority region (for instance) could be treated as a Hindu region. The Muslims who lived in that region would be mere statistics subsumed into the abstract whole. But those individual Muslims would have seen things differently, defining religious identity on an individual level. If there were to be a Hindu nation (however unofficially) and a Muslim nation, they wanted to be in the one which matched their own identity.

But more than this, the tranfer of populations was a response to the post-Partition "violence against minority communities on either side of the redrawn borders" (M & B, p. 33-4). Once the paradigm had been established defining identity predominantly in terms of the difference between religious communities, a concern with the distinction between Self and Other became primary in the psychology of the people. The human consequences of this proved devastating, particularly to women and children. The connection is, perhaps, to be found not in human history or sociology, but in our very genetics.

Evolution is driven purely by reproductive success; it is essentially a statistical process wherein those genes which increase reproductive success are thus (tautologically) reproduced more successfully, and gradually become numerically dominant. Thus, organisms evolve to maximize their reproductive success. Sociobiology contends that an organism's "social behavior, like its body, is ultimately designed... to get its own genes duplicated as much as possible" (Zimmer, p. 74).

But this results in competition. In particular, the males of many species seek to regulate the reproductive activities of females in order to ensure that their own genes are reproduced more than other males'. (For instance, dolphin males will form alliances in order to "herd" females and prevent their mating with other males.) In many species, including lions and various primates, males will even kill the infants of other males. There is even evidence of this in humans. According to a study by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, "a preschool American stepchild is 60 times more likely than a biological child to be the victim of infanticide" (Zimmer, p. 76).

The "Self vs. Other" paradigm of Partition seems to have resonated with this primal drive for reproductive control, resulting in the massive sexual violence and subjugation of women. As Das says, "national honor was strongly tied to... control over the sexual and reproductive functions of women" (Das, p. 69). Many men pursued this control by abducting and raping women of the other community, and by absorbing (indoctrinating?) these women into their own families. Many men chose the ultimate sanction to control their own mates' reproductive behavior; "[t]hey felt it was better to kill their women" (M & B, p. 47) than to let them fall to the Other. The impassioned drive to recover the abductees, whether they wished it or not, reflected the need for control over female sexuality. Those recovered women who were pregnant were given mandatory abortions en masse, in violation of the law and moral values of the time; this is evidence that a more fundamental drive was overriding those concerns.

The fear of the Other's reproductive success is also reflected in the propaganda and imagery used to stir up dislike for an outside group. "Several pamphlets and leaflets distributed by militant Hindu organizations" use imagery designed to promote fear of Muslim men out-reproducing Hindus, and "relating... the marital and sexual practices of `the Muslims'... to their perverse character and their violent temperament" (Pandey, pp 20-1). An American parallel is found in the racist stereotype of ethnic Africans being sexually prolific and unrestrained.

The sociobiological factor may even help explain why religion is so important to the definition of group identity. On a societal level, religion functions as a structuring and regulatory mechanism, and one area it almost invariably seeks to regulate is that of sexuality and reproduction. The marital customs and sexual mores of a faith are usually strongly defined, and central to its definition of its identity and its contrast with other belief systems. The "Self vs. Other" dynamic is driven by reproductive competition, and religion seeks to regulate reproduction; thus, religion is a mechanism for promoting the sense of Self in opposition to the Other.

The preceding is not meant to imply that human behavior is nothing more than blind genetic instinct. What distinguishes humans from most other animals is that our behavior is shaped by choice and experience, not purely by inborn drives and impulses. But what we usually overlook is that our powers of thought, learning and choice exist alongside our animal drives, not in exclusion of them. These drives can influence our behavior without our realizing it. This is particularly true in times of great emotion and confusion such as the transformation of India's political structure, or in acts of collective impulse such as rioting. At least the sociobiological theory offers hope of understanding the sources of the most extreme and irrational aspects of nationalist identity and conflict. And the recognition that our confrontational impulses come from atavistic drives rather than from any real reason might perhaps make it easier to grow beyond them.

But one thing remains unexplained. Why is nationalist pride and divisiveness so intense and violent in South Asia? Why is the situation so extreme, and growing continually more extreme, in that particular part of the world?

Perhaps it is a legacy of colonialism. Over generations, Indians came to define themselves in opposition to the British government and culture. Once the British left, the oppositional basis of identity remained, and thus new opponents had to be found to fill the void.

Or perhaps oppressed populations are like abused children. If one is told throughout one's life that one is inferior, unworthy and immoral, one is likely to grow up subconsciously believing it. Having been raised to believe that one has nothing positive in one's nature, one may feel incapable of anything but negatives. Certainly the abuse damages the psyche, disrupting the healthy functioning of emotional and social impulses. Thus one pursues selfish, contentious or destructive goals rather than positive or constructive ones.

Perhaps the legacy of empire has scarred the psyche of the South Asian people, and of other decolonized cultures around the world, leading to ongoing, petty savagery instead of the peace and democracy that were once envisioned. Such psychological trauma can be profoundly difficult to outgrow, and the world will probably be facing its consequences for some time to come. But understanding the roots of the problem is a vital first step in solving it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Veena Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Amrit Srinivasan, "The Survivor in the Study of Violence" in Das, Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Gyanendra Pandey, "In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today" in Ranajit Guha, ed., A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Carl Zimmer, "First, Kill the Babies" in Discover: The World of Science, Vol. 17, No. 9 (Sept. 1996), pp. 72-78.

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