We146;re like this and that only

In each of these instances 8212; barring the incidents involving the ULFA which has a separatist agenda 8212; there is an important point that needs to be flagged: the apparent failure of the concept of a common 8220;Indian citizenship8221; to serve as a mediating ground in resolving regional differences. In all these instances, what are perceived as regional identities clearly subsumed the larger national one. Why does this happen? Is it a flawed/inadequate comprehension of citizenship? Could it be a legacy of competitive politics 8212; practiced both at the central and state levels 8212; that work towards consolidating differences to capture power?

To take the first point, everyone is a citizen by virtue of being a member of a nation, each enjoying equal rights and each expected to be conscious of the duties entailed. This is that great big plural pronoun that binds us as 8220;We8221; 8212; the people of India. Among the rights conferred on every citizen, let us remember, are the rights to equality of opportunity, to move freely throughout India and to reside and settle in any part of India.

However, within the formal collectivity of national citizenship, there exist numerous other collective identities based on caste, religion, ethnicity and region. Recent history has demonstrated how politics has conspired to sharpen these various identities through the conscious highlighting of shared cultural practices, interests and selectively constructed history. The discourse is articulated in terms of Us versus Them. Take three fairly recent examples: Narendra Modi wins himself a decisive mandate in last December8217;s Gujarat elections by effectively painting Muslims as the Other, who could threaten the security and well-being of the state. The All Assam Students8217; Union in its recent bandh consciously plays on a very live fear that the state is being swamped by Outsider. The Shiv Sena in Maharashtra 8212; with tacit support from a supposedly national party like the BJP 8212; hopes to come to power on its 8220;Me Mumbaikar8221; campaign that considers those who have migrated into Mumbai after 1995 unwelcome.

The Shiv Sena supremo, Bal Thackeray, sees this as a perfectly justified campaign given the fact that there has been the linguistic reorganisation of states. So let us revisit that moment. Reorganising states along linguistic lines was, in fact, one of the most fractious initiatives undertaken by a newly independent India. When the States Reorganisation Bill came before Parliament in December 1955, Union Home Minister Govind Vallabh Pant was acutely conscious of the complexity of the task. He pointed out at the outset that the key objective of the initiative was 8220;to leave for posterity a great, stronger, smoother, more advanced and prosperous India than what it is today8221;; that the 8220;first and foremost8221; consideration was the 8220;unity and security of India8221; and the 8220;the unity of the people8221;. It is 8220;their pursuit of common ideals8221; that give a country the strength it needs. He did, of course, recognise 8220;other considerations8221; like those relating to language, culture, financial viability, economic self-sufficiency, administrative convenience, and the like. He averred that his party has 8220;faith in the cultural redistribution of the states so that people and the administration might come closer, and facilities in the matter of education might be rationalised8230; so that people living within a state might have full facilities so as to be able to transact their business in as simple and straightforward a manner as might be possible8221;. But addressing these must not lead to 8220;fissiparous8221; tendencies, he said. He returned time and again, in his address to the House, to the unity question: 8220;Anything that tends to disturb that unity will do greater harm than any advantages that might accrue from the rational reorganisation of the states.8221;

Perhaps it8217;s time to consider how successful India has been in meeting this test of achieving national unity while fulfilling regional aspirations, which as we saw could encapsulate caste and religion-based articulations. If we are to go by the fact that India has not broken up into a hundred pieces in these five decades and more after partition, we could claim that we have indeed managed to do so. Imperfectly, yes, but we are still together. If, however, we consider the innumerable centrifugal forces that are exerting themselves on the nation, the claim appears incredibly brittle.

In fact, it would be naive to expect the tension between national unity and regional aspirations to be perfectly reconciled, just as there cannot be the perfect reconciliation of national identity and regional identities. On the one hand, there is the modern nation state recognised as the main carrier of social and political development, with its matrix of laws, bureaucracy, markets, communication networks, all of which can also create their own asymmetries and inequalities. On the other, there are these often competing ethnic, religious and regional identities that continue to be potent sources of political mobilisation. The best we can hope for then is that the second entity does not destroy the first, and that the first doesn8217;t destroy the one principle on which it rests: the equality of every citizen.