Against Southasia

Southasia is a term that is now in vogue. There are histories of Southasia, there are journalists' associations that style themselves Southasian, there's SAARC, and every time a Test cricket match between India and Pakistan goes well we're all (temporarily) Southasian. As a region in a physical-geography textbook, Southasia makes sense. There's the monsoon that waters most of it, the great dust cloud that pollutes all of it, the mountains and seas that give it plausible boundaries. But if you trade in the physical map, all greens and browns, for a political map filled in with bright primary colours, if you consider Southasia as the idea that underwrites SAARC, it is hard to know what it really means.

Southasia consists of India and a bunch of countries that share a boundary (land or sea) with India, but not with each other (except for the late entrant to SAARC, Afghanistan). India defines Southasia, not only because it is by far the largest country, but also because the others are connected to one another at one remove, via India. Southasia feels unified when Punjabis cross the border and exclaim at similarities, or when Bengalis from either side of India's eastern borders do the same, or when Sri Lankan Tamils like Muralidharan come to find brides in Madras. It is India's diversity that gives Southasia meaning. Otherwise, Nepalis don't feel a special kinship for Tamilians, nor do Sindhis feel intimately linked with Sri Lankans.

The irony is that this Southasian identity, this idea of a regional family of nations that would have no meaning without the connections supplied by India, is made up of countries established on principles diametrically opposed to the idea and reality of India. India was founded as a pluralist democracy, and it has remained one for more than fifty years. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, on the other hand, are sporadically democratic, avowedly majoritarian states, owned by dominant religious communities. Pakistan and Bangladesh style themselves as Islamic republics; until recently Nepal was famously the only Hindu state in the world; and Sri Lanka altered its Constitution to give Buddhism the 'foremost' place in the life of the nation. The ruler of Bhutan, rightly or wrongly, is committed to cultural homogeneity, and spends his time policing his 'Nepali' subjects or expelling them. The one non-Indian attempt at pluralism was undivided Pakistan, and the reflexive chauvinism of Southasian identity (always excepting India) put paid to that.

Pluralist versus the rest
To put this difference in terms of nationalism, India's neighbours believe that nations are built to house particular communities, or that the deeds to the nation are properly owned by its majority community. Think of an India where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power for decades, where Hindutva is formally enshrined in law and the Constitution, where victorious cricket teams take their trophies to be blessed by Sankaracharyas, and you have some idea of where the best of these Southasian states, Sri Lanka, is today. One way of understanding the BJP is to see it as the archetypal Southasian political party, committed to that great Southasian project, the sectarian state. Thus, India would become a properly 'Southasian country', and SAARC would become a 'family of nations'.

The other problem with the idea of Southasia (apart from the sterile 'area studies' ring to it) is that an important part of the identity of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka is an anxiety regarding India. Some of this is the understandable wariness of (relatively) small countries bordered by a huge neighbour, and India has not been averse to throwing its weight around. But the kernel of this anxiety and resentment is India's diversity, as well as its commitment to framing this diversity in democratic pluralism. Sri Lanka dislikes India because Tamil politics spills over the Palk Straits. Bangladesh, unable to differentiate itself sufficiently in terms of language, chooses to do so in terms of Muslim identity. Pakistan, already compromised as a national project by the birth of Bangladesh, is daily confronted by the fact that its citizenry, despite being homogenously Muslim, is ruled as a matter of course by a military junta; while India, home to more Muslims than Pakistan, remains, despite bouts of barbarism (such as the pogroms in Gujarat), a functioning pluralist democracy. And the late, unlamented Hindu monarchy of Nepal used to lie uneasily adjacent to an ocean of Hindus who chose to live in a secular democracy.

From an Indian point of view, Southasia is a well-meant fiction. So long as its neighbours remain majoritarian states defined by religious identity and threatened by diversity, India's relationship with them can at best be prudential, designed to forestall conflict and encourage economic cooperation. Neither ASEAN nor the EU provides us with an appropriate model of association, but they do supply some historical lessons. ASEAN was made up of a group of countries with a shared geopolitical vision and a common security strategy. They were also mainly authoritarian states, which dealt with diversity without the challenge of democracy. The European Union began as a common market made up of rich Western European states. Its transition to quasi-confederalism has been underwritten by a commitment to secular democracy. Countries such as Spain purged themselves of authoritarian, clerical histories before they were admitted, and Turkey is being held (almost unfairly) to even higher standards as a condition of membership.

Southasia shares neither a political system nor a common strategic vision. For 'Southasia' to be more than a geographical expression or a sentimental aspiration, India's neighbours will have to re-invent themselves as democratic states. This isn't to argue against détente with Pakistan, or against 'people-to-people' contacts; it is wonderful to have cricket matches act as catalysts for crossborder travel, and buses carrying people from one country to another can only be a good thing. But goodwill and bonhomie don't add up to fellowship. It is not unreasonable for Indians to expect neighbouring civil societies to demonstrate their commitment to non-sectarian politics. Liberals in these countries have for too long argued that Islam sanctions democracy, or that Buddhism is the embodiment of tolerance. In the interests of meaningful fellowship, Indians should insist that these arguments, however useful rhetorically, are beside the point if you are trying to build a plural, secular polity. India has a stake in the future of pluralist democracy in its neighbourhood: it's hard enough opposing majoritarianism within India without bigotry in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka giving chauvinists fuel for their fires.

Self-determinism
It goes without saying that India could do better on the matter of pluralism and democracy. You only need to look at Gujarat or Kashmir or Nagaland to know that. But this is not the same as saying that azadi for Kashmir or an independent Nagalim are the solutions. India's adventures in democracy and diversity have taught us that to oppose majoritarianism is also to oppose the cruel simplicities of self-determination. Today's self-determinists are nearly always tomorrow's majoritarians; a quick glance round India's neighbourhood should illustrate this graphically. Complicated nations that learn to deal with diversity are better than simplified ones that try to draw borders around a People. Democratic Indians can, with perfect consistency, at once oppose the Sinhala Buddhist primacy in Sri Lanka and the project of a Tamil Eelam.

Meanwhile, as Indians settle down to wait for their neighbourhood to improve, they would do well to remember that the best thing India can do for 'Southasia' is to be ever more itself, to be the best advertisement possible for pluralist democracy. Southasia will begin to make collective sense when India's neighbours, like the newly secular Republic of Nepal, are remade by the ideas that made India.

~ Mukul Kesavan is a Delhi-based writer.

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