How long could an unhappy India remain united?

“How long you can keep this unhappy nation together”, asked one of my friends during a passionate discussion over the recent events of Telangana. As I argued that we are a mature democracy and there was little threat to India’s unity, he snapped again: “That is head in the sand attitude. Put your hand on heart and tell me one thing that we have done in recent years to unite the divided people of India.”

With his anguished words still ringing in my ears, I returned home and opened Google India news. The headline in the Telegraph said, ‘Telangana leader issues grim warning’. As Andhra people protested against the proposed break up of their state, K Chandrashekhar Rao had warned: “in case New Delhi went back on its word the (Telangana) movement would turn so violent that no police or military force would be able to contain it.”

After the promise of Telangana, the demand for new states came from all directions – Gorkhaland, Vidharbha, Poorvanchal, Harit Pradesh, Bundelkhand, and Bodoland. And the latest is the demand of Coochbihar to be carved out of the state of West Bengal.

All these demands are based on one and clearly undemocratic principle that a section of people in a particular state cannot live with the rest of the people of that state. Therefore, they needed a separate state.

These leaders have now invented a new basis for their separatist ambitions – discrimination and under development. In a country like India where resources are scanty and governments inefficient, one could always complain being subjected to discrimination and underdevelopment. This was one of the most prominent complaints during the Punjab movement in the 1980s that the Punjab had suffered discrimination in India, even though it had the had the highest per capita income.

Until now the basis of such separatism used to be linguistic or regional culture but now the people speaking same language and sharing same culture want to move apart. And leaders like KCR are quite prepared to foment hostility and intolerance to achieve their separatist goals. It would not be inappropriate to describe this as internal separatism.

But the lines between interanal and external separatism are fairly blurred. For example, in the united Punjab first they asked for a Punjabi suba (province), then it became a demand for separate Sikh state and then some extremist groups began to demand the sovereign state of Khalistan. Ten years and 25,000 deaths later we managed to calm Punjab. We might not always be so lucky.

Another example could be the Muslim League’s demand of Pakistan. It began with separate electorates. Then the League began to demand communal weightage in legislative representation, exclusive rights to represent all the Muslims, internal separation of Hindu and Muslim affairs and finally the demand of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

We have an influential and powerful class of regional political leaders who don’t seem to be batting for India. Does anyone remember leaders like Karunanidhi, Mayawati, Chandra Babu Naidu, Navin Patnaik talking about a strong and powerful India.

They often put forward exaggerated demands before the central government and have perfected the art of arm-twisting the centre. We know how Chandra Babu Naidu pressurised the NDA government. Thanks to the pressures of regional chieftains, today an Indian prime minister cannot freely appoint his own cabinet and has to accommodate seemingly corrupt ministers of questionable integrity. Does anyone know what Karunanidhi’s vision of India is? But we know how he compelled Manmohan Singh to appoint his son and nephew as cabinet ministers.

With democratic values such as tolerance, reciprocal trust, mutual respect and inter-faith dialogue deteriorating fast, we have a growing desire to be small. With such an inept political leadership it is becoming difficult to construct a coherent and comfortable national identity. Finally our failure to accommodate and resolve competing regional diversities might come to haunt us one day.

Meanwhile, our rivals are keenly watching our fratricidal wars. Recently, the Chinese International Institute for Strategic Studies drew a roadmap for breaking up India. The plan began with pronouncement that India “as a nation never really existed in history”.

The article said, “China in its own interest and the progress of whole Asia, should join forces with different nationalities like Assamese, Tamils, and Kashmiris and support the latter in establishing independent nation-states of their own…Only after India has been broken up into 20-30 pieces will there be any real reform or social change in the country.”

India’s warring politicians need to sit together to discuss these conflicting regional aspirations in a sensible and enlightened environment. We cannot continue to play political games of setting people against people, caste against caste and religion against the religion. The process of internal separatism must be discouraged. Leaders like KCR might temporarily rejoice at their success, in the long term it would be the Chinese laughing at us.

Author: Dr Vijay Rana from London, is the editor of www.nrifm.com, web’s first talk radio for the NRIs.