Unit 29 Ethnic Resurgence and 'Identity' Wars
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UNIT 29 ETHNIC RESURGENCE AND ‘IDENTITY’ WARS Structure 29.1 Introduction 29.2 What is Ethnicity 29.3 Modernisation and Ethnic Upsurge and Conflict 29.4 Irrational Boundaries: Challenges to State System 29.5 Interventionist Role of the Modern State and Loss of Traditional Autonomy 29.5.1 Homogenisation and Assimilationist Approach of the Modern State 29.5.2 External Environment 29.6 Identity Wars/Conflicts 29.6.1 Causes of Identity Wars 29.7 Summary 29.8. Exercises 29.1 INTRODUCTION The recorded human history is the history of struggle for power and resources. For purposes of waging this struggle, prerequisites like group formations and establishment of political set-up became an integral part. The bases of political order kept changing, keeping in view place and time. Force, fraud, superstition, inheritance, divine right, conquest etc., provided the bases. The breakdown of the hereditary monarchical system created the crisis of legitimacy whereby race, colour, tribe, caste, religion and finally ideology provided the raison d’etre for collective political existence and its legitimacy. Democratic as well as authoritarian systems were alike in their efforts for mobilising people behind the regime on some common basis and this constituted the crucial factor in terms of stability and the legitimacy of the system. In the post-imperial and post-colonial phase, ideology of nationalism was articulated to legitimise the pre-eminence of the state as against competing loyalties. Most of the modern wars had been the result of the evolution of one kind of political organisation, the empire, into another form, the nation-state. This process had gone on for well over 300 years and it has not run its full course. But during this phase of the evolution of the nation-state, the emphasis was on territorial nation-state in preference to ethno-nationalism. The ideology of “territorial nationalism” was articulated to integrate ethnically diverse people. In this process, the post-imperialist and post- colonial territorial boundaries were the focus of legitimisation. However, the ideology of nationalism failed to integrate ethnically diverse people and legitimacy of the territorial nation-state came to be increasingly questioned. Instead, the concept of ethnically homogeneous nation-state gained wider acceptance and lies at the root of intra-national and international conflicts today. 29.2 WHAT IS ETHNICITY? The world ethnic has been derived from the Latin word ‘ethniko’ which means common identity. 9 Ethnicity is a sense of common identity consisting of the subjective, symbolic or emblematic use by a group of people in order to differentiate themselves from other groups. It is a fluid concept- contextual, situational and relational. It is the expression or assertion of cultures, voices and nationalities. It is concerned with the idea of distinctiveness. The term may be defined as an awareness of a common identity among the people/members of a particular social group. According to Anthony D. Smith, ethnicity is based on the following criteria-a distinct group name in order to be recognised as a distinct community by both group members and outsiders; a shared belief by group members in the myth of common ancestry and descent; the presence of historical memories among group members (as interpreted and diffused over generations, often verbally); a distinctive shared culture; association with a specific territory or ‘homeland’; and a sense of common solidarity; and common religion, if there, can be cementing force. 29.2.1 Decline of Ideology of Nationalism and Ethnic Resurgence The decline of the ideology of territorial nationalism, wherein diverse people were integrated through a common ideology, created a sort of vacuity wherein ethnicity is fast emerging as the most solid basis for political formation and its sustenance. Race, colour, caste, religion etc. no doubt differentiate and bind people together in separate socio-political formations but these seem to have lost to ethnicity because the former unites human beings superficially, to a limited extent and for specific purposes, the ethnicity binds them several-fold over, with characteristic entirety and wholeness. 29.2.2 Nature and Dimensions of Ethnic Resurgence The upsurge in ethno-nationalism in recent decades the world over, producing conflict and violence within the states and across the borders, is a fact which mankind can ignore at the cost of its own peril. The existing international system is composed of 190 odd territorial “sovereign states” and about 20 non-sovereign political entities, whereas there are 862 major and more than three thousand minor ethnic groups. There is hardly any ethnic group-major or minor-which is immune to some level of irredentism in its relations with other ethnic groups or the state which to they belong. Of the 190 odd “territorial sovereign states,” only 15 are ethnically homogeneous. Of these half are involved in ethnic conflict across the border involving co-ethnic spill-over into the neighbouring state/s. According to analysts, less than 4 per cent of the world’s population lives in states whose boundaries correspond to the ethnic boundaries. Conversely speaking, more than 96 per cent of the world’s population living in political conditions which do not conform to their natural choice or self-determination; as such are haunted by irredentism at various levels and in various forms and manifestations. Significantly, no particular classification of state has proven immune to this phenomenon. Afflicted countries are old (the United Kingdom) as well as new (Bangladesh), large (Indonesia), as well as small (Fiji), rich (Canada) as well as poor (Pakistan), authoritarian (Sudan), as well as democratic (Belgium), Marxist-Leninist (China), as well as militantly anti-Marxist (Turkey), predominantly Buddhist (Burma), Christian (Spain), Moslem (Iran), Hindu (India), and Judaic (Israel). The magnitude of the problem can be gauged from the fact that since the end of the Second World War till date, many people lost their lives in intra-state and inter-state conflicts and violence and more than 75 per cent of them in ethnic conflict and violence. Of the ongoing major conflicts in the world, over 75 per cent are on ethnic lines. Ethnic conflict and violence, thus, is not only the most serious but also the most complex problem confronting mankind. Ethnicity is at the centre of politics-national as well as international-and is a potent source of challenge to the cohesion of states and of international tension. Ethnic diversity has affected the life in many ways. According to one expert: “Ethnic conflict strains the bonds that sustain civility and 10 is often at the root of violence that results in looting, death, homelessness, and the flight of large numbers of people.” 29.3 MODERNISATION AND ETHNIC UPSURGE AND CONFLICT The problems of ethnic upsurge, conflict and violence on an unprecedented scale in so short a period since the Second World War is, perhaps, partly due to the accelerated process of modernisation which mankind has undergone since then. The ethnic violence is only an expression of disapproval and is an armed recourse to change the state of things as desirable from the point of view of the perpetrator of violence. It is some deep-rooted malaise which creates conditions of ethnic upsurge and conflict. It is imperative to understand the malaise in its depth only so as to grasp its manifestations properly. In the operational sense, modernisation means the attainment of relatively higher levels of the variables, such as education, per capita income, urbanisation, political participation, industrial employment and media participation. As the process of modernisation unfolds itself it creates conditions of ethnic social mobilisation-both territorial as well as non-territorial. However, this contention is in direct opposition to sociological theories of modernisation and the Marxist theories. There was a kind of consensus amongst the sociological theorists of modernisation and the Marxists that ethnic competition belongs to the pre-modern era; in so far as it persists, it is an irrational form of behaviour or a form of false consciousness. The political theorists of nation-building also view ethnic ties as transitory in nature and argued that forces of modernisation and social mobilisation would lead to assimilation of distinct identities in the process of nation-building. Even liberal thinking in political science hinges upon the argument that as mankind moved from a primitive, tribal stage of social organisation to a complex industrial and post-industrial structure, the primordial ties of religion, language, ethnicity and race would gradually but inexorably lose their hold and disappear. Scholars like Anthony D. Smith gave a different line of reasoning that the modern scientific state will lead to frequent ethnic revivals. The modern means of audio-visual mass media and communications have created parochial political consciousness on ethnic lines which is far ahead of forces of trade, commerce and industry. Modernisation and social mobilisation have not led to a transfer to primary allegiance from the ethnic group to the state. Can we go beyond this to posit an inverse correlation between modernisation and the level of ethnic dissonance within multi-ethnic states ? The available evidence about the pattern of ethnic dissonance in the world, at various levels of modernisation, is indicative of the fact that material increases in social communication and mobilisation tend to increase cultural awareness and to exacerbate inter-ethnic conflict. According to Walter S. Jones, the available empirical evidence has borne out that “ethnic consciousness is definitely in the ascendancy as a political force, and that state borders, as presently delimited, is being increasingly challenged by this trend. And what is of greater significance, multi-ethnic states at all levels of modernity have been afflicted. Particularly instructive in this regard is the large proportion of states within the technologically and economically advanced region of Western Europe that have recently been troubled by ethnic conflict”.