Link to Part IISelected Case Studies
INDIA: Conflicts in Centre-State and Inter-State Relations
(December, 28, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) India as a national entity in its present geographical configurations came into being for the first time in its long and lustrous history only after the withdrawal of the British from the sub-continent in 1947. In this country (as in several nation-states that originated at the termination of European dominance) the federal structure grew out of the need as perceived by those at the forefront of Swaraj campaign to preserve intact as a national entity the politically disparate areas that had been brought in stages under a single systems of colonial rule in the preceding centuries.
_____________________________________
"There is no doubt that India’s hold over its North-East is much more secure today than what it was at independence. Yet it must also be admitted that there is still a great deal of spatial variation in the effectiveness of the institutions of government in this region. Indeed, over some of its localities, government authority is either non-existence or is confined to what could be enforced by the armed forces." _____________________________________
British control over different parts of British India (from an Indian perspective, what was left of the Raj after the ‘Partition’) had by no means been uniform. The ‘Provinces’ under direct British rule accounted for no more than about 50% of India at independence. A large part of the remaining territory consisted of the so-called ‘Princely States’ over most of which British rule had been nominal. There were, in addition, the extensive Himalayan tribal tracts that had been designated ‘Excluded’ and ‘Partially Excluded’ under the constitutional dispensation of the Simon Commission of 1935. It may also be recalled here that, in the twilight of the Raj, there were several movements demanding sovereign nationhood, independent of both India as well as Pakistan.
The task of ‘national consolidation’ that confronted the leaders of emergent India (and of Pakistan) thus involved, inter alia, the resolution of territorial disputes with neighbour countries and the demarcation of international frontiers, the strengthening of national security, the absorption into the national polity of many pre-modern enclaves the rulers of which had exercised varying degrees of autonomy in earlier times, the appeasement or suppression of incipient secessionist movements in certain peripheral areas (notably in Nagaland, Kashmir and Hyderabad of India, and Balochistan and Pushtunistan of Pakistan) and, above all, facilitating due representation of the diverse groups of people (with distinctive identities in respect of language, religion, caste and tribe) that constituted the Indian nation in its affairs of government. The federal constitution designed in the early years of independent India was expected to facilitate this task.
The Republic of India is now (in 2005) a federation of 29 States and 6 Union Territories. The present number and geographical configuration of these entities is the outcome of periodic territorial cum statutory adjustments set in motion in the early 1950s under the so-called Re-Organisation of States. The ‘state reorganisation’ efforts have hitherto resulted in: (a) converting the former system of placing the constituent units of the Indian Union in several categories (each with different relations with the Centre) into a dual typology - ‘States’ and ‘Union Territories’, (b) increasing the number of fully fledged states (i.e. Part A States of the First Schedule) from 10 at the promulgation of the constitution in 1950 to 29 at present, mainly by carving out new States or elevating Union Territories to statehood, and (c) bringing about a far greater correspondence between the distribution of the larger linguistic and tribal groups, on the one hand, and the spatial delineations of government, on the other, than there was at the time of independence.
Protagonists of Federalism have argued that the federal structure of government has had the effect of diffusing the disruptive centrifugal forces of the heterogeneity of India’s population, and has, indeed, prevented the disintegration of the fragile ‘union’ which India was at the time of independence. Though this claim is certainly not without substance, one cannot ignore the fact that the exercise by the Centre of overarching authority over several key aspects of government (see below, the observations of the Sarkaria Commission on this phenomenon) and of its overwhelming military capability have also been vital to the preservation of India. Moreover, in several parts of the ‘Indian union’, the federal system and what it has entailed in respect of decentralisation of power notwithstanding, inter-group rivalry and conflict have persisted and, probably, intensified over time. In this context, we need to devote special attention to the following conflict scenarios (in addition, of course, to the more general failures of democratic governance witnessed in many parts of India):
Secessionism in Kashmir
Kashmir has remained the venue of one of the most complex and destructive conflicts in Asia since the late 1940s. The conflict here, though perceived mainly as a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, has a pronounced dimension of ethnic conflict, especially in the political turbulences witnessed in ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ (J&K, 39,600 sq. miles) - the part of the former Kingdom of Kashmir which is a State of the Indian federation. Indeed, as several scholars have shown, there has always been among the Muslims of J&K an ethno-nationalist sentiment which seeks to disengage Kashmir from the Indo-Pakistan conflict and make Kashmiriat the basis of an independent Kashmiri nation-state. From about the late 1980s several Kashmiri Muslim rebel groups, initially united under an umbrella organisation named Hurriat (Independence), have been locked in fierce confrontation with the Indian forces.
Ever since the Maharaja of Kashmir signed the Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union in 1947, the integration of this predominantly Muslim kingdom with India has remained one of the cardinal objectives of Delhi’s Kashmir policy. The provision made through Article 370 of the Constitution of India for the state of J&K to exercise a substantially greater degree of autonomy than the other states of the Indian federation, persistence of the Centre with attempts at democratisation of the institutions of government at State-level securing the collaboration of Kashmir’s ‘moderate’ groups , and the higher per capita levels of central government funding for the development of J&K compared to other states, are among the devices that have been adopted in pursuance of this objective. Yet, it is undeniable that, in the long-run, Delhi’s control over J&K has continued to depend largely on its military capacity to combat the challenge of insurrection alongside the external security threats.
Ethnic Conflict and Secessionist Insurrection in the North-East
This has remained one of the most politically turbulent parts of South Asia featured by fierce inter-group conflicts and anti-systemic insurrections impelled, in certain instance, by secessionist forces. Among the more persistent (albeit with sharp fluctuations in the levels of violence) insurrections in the North-East are those spearheaded by the United Liberation Front of Assam and the National Socialist Council of Nāgaland.
At the promulgation of India’s constitution in 1950, the ‘North-East’ consisted of (a) the State of Assam, (b) two territorial entities placed in Part C of the ‘First Schedule’ of the constitution (Manipur and Tripura), (c) the semi-independent kingdom of Sikkhim placed in Part D of the ‘First Schedule’, and several ‘Tribal Areas’ as demarcated in the ‘Fifth Schedule’. The devolution cum power-sharing measures adopted since that time have involved, inter alia, the recognition of various areas within this region as fully-fledged ‘States’ of the Indian federation. Thus, at present, the region consists of the states of Assam, Meghālayā, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nāgaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkhim.
The valley of Assam and the adjacent mountainous areas, following their conquest by the British, attracted several waves of migrants from adjacent parts of the sub-continent from about the closing decades of the 19th century, as a result, partly, of the spill-over of population from the over-crowded Ganga-Brahmaputra delta and, partly, of the attraction of economic opportunities associated with the emerging tea industry and (to a lesser extent) the petroleum industry of the Digboi area. The expansion of the migrant population in the Northeast accelerated after India’s independence. As a result, in parts of the Northeast, the tribal people have either been displaced totally, or divested of much of their arable land by the migrants. In several areas (especially Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram, and Bodo-Kachari areas of Assam) the migrants have become economically and socially dominant, also acquiring political power over the local people.
Thus, most of the ‘autonomy’ movements of the Northeast have accorded prominence in both mobilisation efforts as well as their demands to the theme of ‘alien encroachment’ of their homelands. For example, the main demand of the All Assam Student Union (AASU – the strongest Assamese militant group since the early the 1980s) was the immediate deportation of Bangladeshis residing in Assam whose numbers, according to the AASU, exceed four million. The fierce attacks on immigrants orchestrated by the AASU in February 1983 are said to have been carried out mainly by those of the Lalung tribe who had lost much of their land to Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. In Tripura, where the indigenous people had been transformed from a dominant majority (93% of the total population of 600,000 in 1947) to a subjugated minority (29% of the total population of 2.1 million in 1981), many Bengali migrants are said to have perished in attacks led by the guerrilla group ‘Tripura National Volunteer Force’. In Manipur, the ‘People's Liberation Army’, the Maoist revolutionary group that provides leadership to an insurgency among the Meitei tribals of the Imphal valley, launched a campaign against the mayang (“outsiders”, mainly Assamese and Bengalis) as a part of their efforts at enhancing popular support. The prolonged and bloody campaign for the creation of a semi-autonomous Bodoland embracing an area that stretches along the northern banks of Brahmaputra river, has drawn strength from two sources – the resentment of the Bodo/Kachari tribes against Assamese domination, and their traditional animosity towards the so-called ādivasi (now outnumbering the Bodo/Kachari) who are believed to have migrated into this area in the 19th century at the behest of Christian missionaries and later became workers in British tea plantations. Likewise, the Assamese residing in Mizoram engaged in administrative and other tertiary sector services, and forming the upper strata of society, constitute one of the principal targets of attack by the ‘Mizo National Army’ at its insurrection of 1966. Finally, there are the frequent outbursts of violence between the Naga and the Kuki in Manipur, each regarding the other as intruder. The Naga insurgents, meanwhile, have embarked upon a campaign for the creation of a “Greater Nagaland” that would extend well beyond the frontiers of the State of Nagaland as demarcated at present.
There is no doubt that India’s hold over its North-East is much more secure today than what it was at independence. Yet it must also be admitted that there is still a great deal of spatial variation in the effectiveness of the institutions of government in this region. Indeed, over some of its localities, government authority is either non-existence or is confined to what could be enforced by the armed forces.
Khālistan Movement in the Punjab
In Punjab, religion furnished the key dimension of a process of estrangement of Centre-State relations which culminated in a secessionist ‘war’ that raged throughout the 1980s, and became what was perhaps the most serious challenge ever to India’s national integrity.
Secessionism in Punjab, with its goal of creating an independent Sikh nation-state – Khālistan – was spearheaded by several militant groups some of which received massive backing from the Sikh diaspora and, allegedly, from Pakistan as well. The Khālistan ideal found qualified support from certain factions/leaders of the Akāli Dāl – the political party of the Sikhs operating within the democratic mainstreams, the declared policy of which up to 1984 was “maximum autonomy within the federal structure of India”. Sikh militants engaged in many terrorist attacks (which included the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) within and outside India. Confrontations between the militants and the security forces of the government also entailed extensive losses of life and property, with retaliatory atrocities committed by those on both sides of the conflict. Violence in parts of the Punjab reached a peak in the early 1990s. From about late 1992, however, there was a reversal of earlier trends, and a fairly rapid restoration of peace and stability.
The principal causes for the emergence of Sikh separatism, as identified in most writings were in “failures of governance” – mainly, Centre-State relations. In many of these writings, Indira Gandhi has been portrayed (caricatured?) as the arch villain. Certain economic causes – (a) the widening of income disparities between the land-owning Jat Sikhs and other segments of the peasantry in the wake of agricultural advances of the ‘green revolution’, (b) the non-fulfilment of the rising expectations generated among the youth during the early stages of the ‘green revolution’, and (c) the spatial diversities within the State of Punjab in the rates of economic development – are also believed to have contributed to the sustained capacity which the militant groups had in mobilising support (and, in the later stages of their revolt, commanding obedience) from large segments of the Sikh population.
In what could be considered a major contribution to the understanding of the political dimensions of the ‘Punjab Crisis’, Paul Brass reached the conclusion that “… relentless centralisation and ruthless, unprincipled intervention by the Centre in State politics have been the primary cause of the troubles in the Punjab and elsewhere in India since Mrs (Indira) Gandhi’s rise to power.” He noted however, that the “bold and constructive initiatives” adopted by her successors, Rajiv Gandhi and V. P. Singh also failed to quell the rebellion. From the viewpoint of the present study what the Punjab crisis illustrates more than all else is the inadequacy of facilitating self-government within a federal system as a strategy of diffusing secessionist tendencies, especially where the spatial unit to which statehood was granted (in 1966) was one of mixed ethnicity where the majority group, the Sikhs, constituted only about 62% of the population. What seems clear is that the trail of destruction and anarchy caused by the Khālistan Movement ended only when it was crushed through an all out military effort.
British control over different parts of British India (from an Indian perspective, what was left of the Raj after the ‘Partition’) had by no means been uniform. The ‘Provinces’ under direct British rule accounted for no more than about 50% of India at independence. A large part of the remaining territory consisted of the so-called ‘Princely States’ over most of which British rule had been nominal. There were, in addition, the extensive Himalayan tribal tracts that had been designated ‘Excluded’ and ‘Partially Excluded’ under the constitutional dispensation of the Simon Commission of 1935. It may also be recalled here that, in the twilight of the Raj, there were several movements demanding sovereign nationhood, independent of both India as well as Pakistan.
The task of ‘national consolidation’ that confronted the leaders of emergent India (and of Pakistan) thus involved, inter alia, the resolution of territorial disputes with neighbour countries and the demarcation of international frontiers, the strengthening of national security, the absorption into the national polity of many pre-modern enclaves the rulers of which had exercised varying degrees of autonomy in earlier times, the appeasement or suppression of incipient secessionist movements in certain peripheral areas (notably in Nagaland, Kashmir and Hyderabad of India, and Balochistan and Pushtunistan of Pakistan) and, above all, facilitating due representation of the diverse groups of people (with distinctive identities in respect of language, religion, caste and tribe) that constituted the Indian nation in its affairs of government. The federal constitution designed in the early years of independent India was expected to facilitate this task.
The Republic of India is now (in 2005) a federation of 29 States and 6 Union Territories. The present number and geographical configuration of these entities is the outcome of periodic territorial cum statutory adjustments set in motion in the early 1950s under the so-called Re-Organisation of States. The ‘state reorganisation’ efforts have hitherto resulted in: (a) converting the former system of placing the constituent units of the Indian Union in several categories (each with different relations with the Centre) into a dual typology - ‘States’ and ‘Union Territories’, (b) increasing the number of fully fledged states (i.e. Part A States of the First Schedule) from 10 at the promulgation of the constitution in 1950 to 29 at present, mainly by carving out new States or elevating Union Territories to statehood, and (c) bringing about a far greater correspondence between the distribution of the larger linguistic and tribal groups, on the one hand, and the spatial delineations of government, on the other, than there was at the time of independence.
Protagonists of Federalism have argued that the federal structure of government has had the effect of diffusing the disruptive centrifugal forces of the heterogeneity of India’s population, and has, indeed, prevented the disintegration of the fragile ‘union’ which India was at the time of independence. Though this claim is certainly not without substance, one cannot ignore the fact that the exercise by the Centre of overarching authority over several key aspects of government (see below, the observations of the Sarkaria Commission on this phenomenon) and of its overwhelming military capability have also been vital to the preservation of India. Moreover, in several parts of the ‘Indian union’, the federal system and what it has entailed in respect of decentralisation of power notwithstanding, inter-group rivalry and conflict have persisted and, probably, intensified over time. In this context, we need to devote special attention to the following conflict scenarios (in addition, of course, to the more general failures of democratic governance witnessed in many parts of India):
Secessionism in Kashmir
Kashmir has remained the venue of one of the most complex and destructive conflicts in Asia since the late 1940s. The conflict here, though perceived mainly as a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, has a pronounced dimension of ethnic conflict, especially in the political turbulences witnessed in ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ (J&K, 39,600 sq. miles) - the part of the former Kingdom of Kashmir which is a State of the Indian federation. Indeed, as several scholars have shown, there has always been among the Muslims of J&K an ethno-nationalist sentiment which seeks to disengage Kashmir from the Indo-Pakistan conflict and make Kashmiriat the basis of an independent Kashmiri nation-state. From about the late 1980s several Kashmiri Muslim rebel groups, initially united under an umbrella organisation named Hurriat (Independence), have been locked in fierce confrontation with the Indian forces.
Ever since the Maharaja of Kashmir signed the Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union in 1947, the integration of this predominantly Muslim kingdom with India has remained one of the cardinal objectives of Delhi’s Kashmir policy. The provision made through Article 370 of the Constitution of India for the state of J&K to exercise a substantially greater degree of autonomy than the other states of the Indian federation, persistence of the Centre with attempts at democratisation of the institutions of government at State-level securing the collaboration of Kashmir’s ‘moderate’ groups , and the higher per capita levels of central government funding for the development of J&K compared to other states, are among the devices that have been adopted in pursuance of this objective. Yet, it is undeniable that, in the long-run, Delhi’s control over J&K has continued to depend largely on its military capacity to combat the challenge of insurrection alongside the external security threats.
Ethnic Conflict and Secessionist Insurrection in the North-East
This has remained one of the most politically turbulent parts of South Asia featured by fierce inter-group conflicts and anti-systemic insurrections impelled, in certain instance, by secessionist forces. Among the more persistent (albeit with sharp fluctuations in the levels of violence) insurrections in the North-East are those spearheaded by the United Liberation Front of Assam and the National Socialist Council of Nāgaland.
At the promulgation of India’s constitution in 1950, the ‘North-East’ consisted of (a) the State of Assam, (b) two territorial entities placed in Part C of the ‘First Schedule’ of the constitution (Manipur and Tripura), (c) the semi-independent kingdom of Sikkhim placed in Part D of the ‘First Schedule’, and several ‘Tribal Areas’ as demarcated in the ‘Fifth Schedule’. The devolution cum power-sharing measures adopted since that time have involved, inter alia, the recognition of various areas within this region as fully-fledged ‘States’ of the Indian federation. Thus, at present, the region consists of the states of Assam, Meghālayā, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nāgaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkhim.
The valley of Assam and the adjacent mountainous areas, following their conquest by the British, attracted several waves of migrants from adjacent parts of the sub-continent from about the closing decades of the 19th century, as a result, partly, of the spill-over of population from the over-crowded Ganga-Brahmaputra delta and, partly, of the attraction of economic opportunities associated with the emerging tea industry and (to a lesser extent) the petroleum industry of the Digboi area. The expansion of the migrant population in the Northeast accelerated after India’s independence. As a result, in parts of the Northeast, the tribal people have either been displaced totally, or divested of much of their arable land by the migrants. In several areas (especially Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram, and Bodo-Kachari areas of Assam) the migrants have become economically and socially dominant, also acquiring political power over the local people.
Thus, most of the ‘autonomy’ movements of the Northeast have accorded prominence in both mobilisation efforts as well as their demands to the theme of ‘alien encroachment’ of their homelands. For example, the main demand of the All Assam Student Union (AASU – the strongest Assamese militant group since the early the 1980s) was the immediate deportation of Bangladeshis residing in Assam whose numbers, according to the AASU, exceed four million. The fierce attacks on immigrants orchestrated by the AASU in February 1983 are said to have been carried out mainly by those of the Lalung tribe who had lost much of their land to Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. In Tripura, where the indigenous people had been transformed from a dominant majority (93% of the total population of 600,000 in 1947) to a subjugated minority (29% of the total population of 2.1 million in 1981), many Bengali migrants are said to have perished in attacks led by the guerrilla group ‘Tripura National Volunteer Force’. In Manipur, the ‘People's Liberation Army’, the Maoist revolutionary group that provides leadership to an insurgency among the Meitei tribals of the Imphal valley, launched a campaign against the mayang (“outsiders”, mainly Assamese and Bengalis) as a part of their efforts at enhancing popular support. The prolonged and bloody campaign for the creation of a semi-autonomous Bodoland embracing an area that stretches along the northern banks of Brahmaputra river, has drawn strength from two sources – the resentment of the Bodo/Kachari tribes against Assamese domination, and their traditional animosity towards the so-called ādivasi (now outnumbering the Bodo/Kachari) who are believed to have migrated into this area in the 19th century at the behest of Christian missionaries and later became workers in British tea plantations. Likewise, the Assamese residing in Mizoram engaged in administrative and other tertiary sector services, and forming the upper strata of society, constitute one of the principal targets of attack by the ‘Mizo National Army’ at its insurrection of 1966. Finally, there are the frequent outbursts of violence between the Naga and the Kuki in Manipur, each regarding the other as intruder. The Naga insurgents, meanwhile, have embarked upon a campaign for the creation of a “Greater Nagaland” that would extend well beyond the frontiers of the State of Nagaland as demarcated at present.
There is no doubt that India’s hold over its North-East is much more secure today than what it was at independence. Yet it must also be admitted that there is still a great deal of spatial variation in the effectiveness of the institutions of government in this region. Indeed, over some of its localities, government authority is either non-existence or is confined to what could be enforced by the armed forces.
Khālistan Movement in the Punjab
In Punjab, religion furnished the key dimension of a process of estrangement of Centre-State relations which culminated in a secessionist ‘war’ that raged throughout the 1980s, and became what was perhaps the most serious challenge ever to India’s national integrity.
Secessionism in Punjab, with its goal of creating an independent Sikh nation-state – Khālistan – was spearheaded by several militant groups some of which received massive backing from the Sikh diaspora and, allegedly, from Pakistan as well. The Khālistan ideal found qualified support from certain factions/leaders of the Akāli Dāl – the political party of the Sikhs operating within the democratic mainstreams, the declared policy of which up to 1984 was “maximum autonomy within the federal structure of India”. Sikh militants engaged in many terrorist attacks (which included the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) within and outside India. Confrontations between the militants and the security forces of the government also entailed extensive losses of life and property, with retaliatory atrocities committed by those on both sides of the conflict. Violence in parts of the Punjab reached a peak in the early 1990s. From about late 1992, however, there was a reversal of earlier trends, and a fairly rapid restoration of peace and stability.
The principal causes for the emergence of Sikh separatism, as identified in most writings were in “failures of governance” – mainly, Centre-State relations. In many of these writings, Indira Gandhi has been portrayed (caricatured?) as the arch villain. Certain economic causes – (a) the widening of income disparities between the land-owning Jat Sikhs and other segments of the peasantry in the wake of agricultural advances of the ‘green revolution’, (b) the non-fulfilment of the rising expectations generated among the youth during the early stages of the ‘green revolution’, and (c) the spatial diversities within the State of Punjab in the rates of economic development – are also believed to have contributed to the sustained capacity which the militant groups had in mobilising support (and, in the later stages of their revolt, commanding obedience) from large segments of the Sikh population.
In what could be considered a major contribution to the understanding of the political dimensions of the ‘Punjab Crisis’, Paul Brass reached the conclusion that “… relentless centralisation and ruthless, unprincipled intervention by the Centre in State politics have been the primary cause of the troubles in the Punjab and elsewhere in India since Mrs (Indira) Gandhi’s rise to power.” He noted however, that the “bold and constructive initiatives” adopted by her successors, Rajiv Gandhi and V. P. Singh also failed to quell the rebellion. From the viewpoint of the present study what the Punjab crisis illustrates more than all else is the inadequacy of facilitating self-government within a federal system as a strategy of diffusing secessionist tendencies, especially where the spatial unit to which statehood was granted (in 1966) was one of mixed ethnicity where the majority group, the Sikhs, constituted only about 62% of the population. What seems clear is that the trail of destruction and anarchy caused by the Khālistan Movement ended only when it was crushed through an all out military effort.
To be continued
(G. H. Peiris, Professor Emeritus, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka)
 ...){kind=link}
Post a Comment