8
A Shared Destiny
The problem with glorious history is that it makes the miseries of the present more difficult to endure, and the future looks even more frightening than it is, when compared to the grandeur of the past. As Southasians grapple through several crises all at the same time, there is a sense of desperation in the air. Agonies seem to prolong, hopes appear dimmer and trials and tribulations seem never-ending. It’s during such periods of history of any civilization that vision, along with fortitude, becomes essential ingredients of survival.
Southasians are endowed with enough stamina, some would say that the ability of common Southasians to patiently suffer exploitation and pain is more than necessary, but visionary leadership to steer the region safely into the future has always been found wanting. It was the military leadership that failed in the Battle of Plassey in 1757; the failure of the political class threw away the initial gains of the Rebellion of 1857; and Westernized Oriental Gentlemen (WOGs) at the helm of affairs in 1947 failed miserably to handle the consequences of independence responsibly. For the last 60 years, the subcontinent has suffered the hubris of its leaders of all kinds.
There were several other factors at play in moments of historical crisis, but a thread common to all historic debacles has been the absence of a clearly outlined vision that was widely understood and commonly shared. The necessity of vision, mission, goals, objectives and outcomes for Southasian unity is widely accepted across the region. However, the aims and aspirations of constituent societies of Southasian civilization vary over processes and procedures of realizing shared objectives. This situation is likely to change, mainly due to reasons beyond the control of Southasians. A common survival strategy will have to be formulated to deal with emerging conflicts created by the forces of globalization, unilateralism and identity politics. The governance structure will have to be built with values and principles of democracy and human rights to withstand external and internal forces at play to weaken Southasian societies.
Inescapability of globalization has entered the realm of conventional wisdom; to question it is to invite ridicule. But the trade-based process of globalization excludes subsistence farmers, unskilled labour, the sick, the children, the aged, the differentlyabled, the weak, the marginalized and all other non-economic persons almost by definition. Inspired by Thomas L. Friedman and his The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century eulogy to globalization, a new Flat Earth Society has sprung up that sings hosannas in praise of global capital, a long-distance workforce and wireless communications. Some members of the privileged intelligentsia in Southasia drive in their luxurious Lexus and Jeep Cherokees pretending that everyone in the subcontinent will be eating McDonalds, sipping colas and living off wages from call centres. Globalization, however, is just a fancy new name for capitalism1—the process that creates endless conflicts between interest groups. The accompanying review of the book Bound Together shows some of the stresses that may break to unleash instability in the region.
Enthusiasm Unbound: The Untrammelled Gusto of Globalization’s Adherents
by
C. K. Lal
For millennia, Aryabharta encompassed the world for the elite of India. The area was big enough to accommodate the ambitions of the Mauryan rulers. Its astounding diversity kept the best of Brahmin brains perpetually engaged with the mystery of the before—and afterlife. Farmers ploughed, and hunters or herders went about their daily tasks, without bothering much about the world beyond the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal. Some contact with the rest of the world was maintained through land routes. But frontiers were dangerous places to live: marauders from abroad frequently plundered these regions.
For a very long time, only merchants or fisher folk dared sail across the seas. The rest feared the pollution of the black waters. As late as the mid-19th century, Jang Bahadur Kunwar Rana, the Maharaja of Lamjung and Kaski from Nepal, was still able to become the first ‘Eastern potentate’ to set foot inside Birmingham Palace. That, of course, suddenly changed with the departure of the British from Southasia. With the colonialists gone and brown sahibs in power, there was no risk of being ridiculed as ‘imperial agents’ after coming back home from the land of the firangis.
‘Go West’ has become the anthem of the middle class in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, especially for the offspring of those professionals who have benefited so immensely from their association with the colonial establishment. These are the illustrious Macaulay’s Children, who have shone in every profession in each of their adopted countries. Bongs, Gujjus, Punjus, K’digas, Mallus and Tam-Brams, having slogged throughout their coursework at various IITs just to get the chance to slog even more in Europe and the United States, now form a veritable universe of the English-speaking global elite. Add to that the ever-burgeoning number of ABDs (American-Born Desis), DVDs (Diversity Visa Dependents) and NRIs, and it becomes clear that the size of the global Southasian community is now large enough to deserve its own icons.
There are cosmopolitan Indians in trade and industry, with Laxmi Niwas Mittal and Swaraj Paul among the better known for their wealth and chutzpah, respectively. But more than the rich and famous, it is the knowledgeable who are the favourites of the fawning middle class back home in Southasia. Jagdish N. Bhagwati of Columbia University, Lord Meghnad Desai of England and Amartya Kumar Sen of Harvard University may not be household names in Dharavi, but their works are hotly debated at university campuses in Colombo, Dhaka, Islamabad and New Delhi. Now Nayan Chanda wishes to join their rank with Bound Together, his new book about globalization.
Like Sen, Chanda too went to school in Bengal. But unlike the lifelong academic Sen, Chanda chose to focus on journalism. It is too early to say whether this decision was a loss for academia or not, but Chanda’s career choice has definitely been a gain for journalism. Although he had a relatively uneventful stint at the Far Eastern Economic Review, he still manages to write with the felicity of a magazine reporter. Every chapter of Bound Together abounds with intriguing snippets, gripping tales and delightful turns of phrases. The book is such an engrossing read that its main theory—that there is no escaping the globalization process; that it has been going on for 60,000 years and will continue to do so into the infinite future—tends to disappear in the maze of anecdotes, asides and stories.
Every book has a beginning, middle and end; but a magazine can be flipped open and read from almost everywhere. Somehow, it makes more sense to read the last chapter of Chanda’s book, ‘The Road Ahead’, and then come back to the beginning. Indeed, the epilogue provides a better context for Chanda’s work than what the author says in the introduction. ‘The big differences that mark the globalization of the early years with the present are in the velocity with which products and ideas are transferred, the very growing volume of consumers and products and their variety, and the resultant increase in the visibility of the process’, gushes Chanda in a single breath, italicizing all the v-words—the allusion to victory unmistakable—for effect rather than emphasis. At the same time, he seems to have intentionally ignored the arguably more important corollary: the vulnerability of the marginalized in the globalization process.
Tina
Bound Together begins with ‘The African Beginning’, which attempts to confirm the ‘Out of Africa’ theory of human origin on the basis of results of the author’s own DNA. The very widely dispersed M168 marker can be traced to an African man, who lived some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago, and is the common ancestor of every non-African person living today. His descendents migrated out of Africa and became the only lineage to survive away from humanity’s home continent.
So, does that make George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden distant cousins? But, more to the point, how does this knowledge help to reduce the hegemony of the West over the rest?
The author tells his readers that traders opened land and sea routes that were later used by preachers, adventurers and warriors to weave financiers, producers, transporters, distributors and consumers into a unified garland of globalization. In a way, transformation of the wide-world web into the World Wide Web was a natural phenomenon, and one that is now largely unstoppable. There is nothing new in this TINA (There Is No Alternative) worldview. Ever since Margaret Thatcher propounded this viewpoint for political objectives back in the 1980s, it has become the default position of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives alike.
At the same time, there has to be an alternative to a system that makes this world so unequal. India has the largest number of absolute poor in the world, but it is also home to the largest number of (dollar) billionaires outside the US and Russia. Clearly, the values of the idea of vasudhaiva kutumbkam (the whole world is a family) are very different from the bourgeois belief of the world as your oyster. Globalization is a fundamentally flawed world order of winners and losers—and, hence, inherently instable. A dose of universalism— of human rights, democracy and governance—is necessary to make it slightly less tyrannical.
Globalization has succeeded in establishing its primacy through a complex mix of legends, laws, language and literature. For the globalizers of the world, laws are what the rich decide. That is how the Bretton Woods Sisters and their development associates work: International Monetary Fund conditionalities and World Bank consultants at times supersede the constitutional provisions of recipient countries. The language of globalization is also invariably English: the lingua franca of an empire established by British merchants, micro-managed by Afro-Asian agents, institutionalized by Orientalists, protected by imperial gunships, and made acceptable by the words and actions of what have been referred to as WOGs—Westernized Oriental Gentlemen—who willingly shoulder the white man’s burden for him.
Edward Said has said more about the role and function of literature in ensuring colonial hegemony than was perhaps necessary. The late professor failed to fully appreciate the fact that the new Orientalists were often escapees from the Third World, who propagated the values of their masters with a vengeance. For all its scholarship, Bound Together is essentially a polemical tract that seeks to promote the agenda of globalization by manufacturing legends— the final tool of hegemony.
Self-destruction Mode
Despite the ritual opposition of tattooed protestors at Davos and World Trade Organization jamborees, the grip of globalization continues to tighten. Nonetheless, slowly, but unmistakably, a parallel movement for the promotion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the covenants on economic and social rights, and democratic governance has begun to take shape. That is where hope lies for the destitute, the marginalized and the weak of the world. Globalization and universalism are twins of a process that began millennia ago in Africa. The bad guy (the choice of the masculine is intentional) has maintained his primacy, but ultimately it is the good that will prevail. The real TINA is, in fact, universalism, not globalization.
Ironically, after marshalling the flow of facts retrieved from selective amnesia to establish the inevitability of globalization, Chanda is constrained to recognize, in his concluding chapter,
As we move further into the twenty-first century, global connections forged by history’s warriors have emerged as globalization’s most problematic legacy. The world’s sole superpower, the United States, which many view as the new Rome, has enormous, near imperial power without an obvious empire.
This empire seems to have gone into self-destruction mode—aiding global conflicts, abetting mindless exploitation of the earth’s resources and augmenting greenhouse gases.
If the world is currently under a level of stress never before seen in human history, the credit for creating such a situation must go to the unrestrained forces of globalization. The elite have tremendously benefited from their ability to access the Internet freely and from the pressurized comfort of executive-class seats in long-haul aircrafts, while sipping complementary champagne. But all of the planes in the world are not enough to give a single joyride to the poor of Africa, the continent where our collective history began.
(This book review by C. K. Lal first appeared in the October–November 2007 issue of Himal Southasian, available at http://www.himalmag.com/2007/october_november/bound_together_review.html. Accessed 27 October 2007.)
Commenting upon reasons that made The Age of Capital a period of conflicts and war, Marxist historian E. J. Hobsbawm asks, ‘What made this period of history relatively so bloody?’ He himself proposes a likely answer, ‘In the first place, it was the very process of global capitalist expansion which multiplied tensions within the overseas world, the ambitions of the industrial world, the direct and indirect conflicts arising out of it.’2 Even within societies, unbridled capitalism pits desperate have-nots with fearful haves against each other in different forms of conflicts that invariably end in violence. The insecurity of isles of prosperity floating in the sea of poverty is even more intense among the newly rich who embrace fundamentalism with fervour. Observes Khalish Badaulvi, ‘Jis jagah aaee hai, tanha naheen aiee daulat, Buzdili aaee hai, aish aaye hain, dar aaye hain’. (In the translation of Khushwant Singh, ‘Wherever wealth has come, / it has never come alone / With it comes cowardice, desires to indulge in pleasures and insecurity’.3 This insecurity drives the newly rich into irrational aggression.
The extension of hyperpower hegemony in Southasia dates back at least to the 1950s when power elites of the region found that USA’s convivial policies were somehow more comfortable than the haughty demeanour of colonial masters in Europe or the patronizing tone of the ruling class in USSR. Globalization accelerated the process. In the wake of 9/11, Americans are now significant players in the subcontinent. Its unilateralism has been on display in South America for a long time; now Southasia is its new playground.
Tragically, unilateralism—the very term has ‘USA’ inherent to it—isn’t going to go away. As Robert Kagan wrote recently in Hoover Institution’s Policy Review,
When people talk about a Bush Doctrine, they generally refer to three sets of principles—the idea of preemptive or preventive military action; the promotion of democracy and “regime change”; and a diplomacy tending toward “unilateralism”, a willingness to act without the sanction of international bodies such as the United Nations Security Council or the unanimous approval of its allies.
It is worth asking not only whether past administrations acted differently but also which of these any future administrations, regardless of party, would promise to abjure in its conduct of foreign policy. As scholars from Melvyn P. Leffler to John Lewis Gaddis have shown, the idea of preemptive or preventive action is hardly a novel concept in American foreign policy. And as policymakers and philosophers from Henry Kissinger to Michael Walzer have agreed, it is impossible in the present era to renounce such actions a priori. As for “regime change,” there is not a single administration in the past half-century that has not attempted to engineer changes of regime in various parts of the world, from Eisenhower’s CIA-inspired coups in Iran and Guatemala and his planned overthrow of Fidel Castro, which John F. Kennedy attempted to carry out, to George Herbert Walker Bush’s invasion of Panama to Bill Clinton’s actions in Haiti and Bosnia. And if by unilateralism we mean an unwillingness to be constrained by the disapproval of the UN Security Council, by some of the NATO allies, by the OAS, or by any other international body, which presidents of the past allowed themselves to be so constrained?
Kagan further rubs it in,
So long as Americans elect leaders who believe it is the role of the United States to improve the world and bring about the “ultimate good,” and so long as American power in all its forms is sufficient to shape the behavior of others, the broad direction of American foreign policy is unlikely to change, absent some dramatic—indeed, genuinely revolutionary—effort by a future administration.4
Due to the influence of mercantilist globalization and military unilateralism, the western media has begun to add fuel to the fire of destruct between states in Southasia. With one billion possible consumers, India is the current favourite. It helps that India can be projected as a democratic counter-poise to authoritarian China.5 So, unabashed glorification of India in the western media is matched only by the relentless vilification of Pakistan.6 An anguished op-ed writer notes that
The reality of our own multi-dimensional causes of internal security dovetails into both genuine fears and strong prejudices of the Americans. Aided by the mainstream media, the dominant western wisdom identifies Muslim behavioural patterns and religiosity largely as root causes of terrorism.7
The treatment meted out to other Southasian states is no better. Henry Kissinger’s infamous dismissal of Bangladesh as ‘a basket case’ has been revised as a lost cause while Sri Lanka is derided as strife torn. The Maoists of Nepal are presented larger than life to create a spectre of extremist takeover while Bhutan is patted on the back for benevolent dictatorship creating ‘gross happiness’ through ethnic cleansing of its minority Lhotsampa community.
In short, Southasia is a region under siege and only through united action can it extricate itself out of its present predicament. Unfortunately, the third dimension of current crisis—identity and nationalism—makes its challenges much more complex. Nationalism, whether cultural or political, is essentially an artefact, a construct; and when the two come together in the form of linguistic nationalism based on territory, state nationalism in other words, it tends to become exclusionary.8
For state nationalism, real or (as in the case of monarchs) invented for convenience, was a double-edged strategy. As it mobilized some inhabitants, it alienated others—those who did not belong, or wish to belong, to the nation identified with the state. In short, it helped to define the nationalities excluded from the official nationality by separating out those communities which, for whatever reason, resisted the official public language and ideology,
wrote E. J. Hobsbawm about ‘Waving Flags: Nations and Nationalism’ in The Age of Empire 1875–1914.9
Due to these intricacies of various nationalisms, two kinds of forces—centrifugal cultural-linguistic nationalism and centripetal political-economic nationalism working against each other—are tearing the region apart. The blame game Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka play against each other of harbouring terrorists springs from fear of the ‘other’ that each one of them have created.10 Conventional wisdom tells us that politics divide while cultures unite, but apparently culture and politics implicate each other. Solutions will probably have to be sought in a way that Rabindranath Tagore put: ‘Where there is genuine difference, it is only by expressing and restraining the difference in its proper place that it is possible to fashion unity. Unity cannot be achieved by issuing legal fiats that everybody is one.’11
The Southasian vision of plural unity is thus a necessity but not an immediate possibility. However, a balance between what is desirable—one Southasia under one flag, one currency, one defence force and one people of an ancient civilization dedicated to the values of universalism; and what is possible in the short-term—a confederation of sovereign states staying together to face the triangular challenges of globalization, unilateralism and eruption of long-suppressed identities all over the region; need to be maintained and sequenced carefully.
Agenda for Change
A normative agenda for change in Southasia has to aim for the enhancement in the quality of life of the last Southasian living at the margins of society wherever he is resident. Such a plan will have cultural components that encompass dialogue between religions, assembly of languages, inter-faith forums and a congregation of ethnicities. Some work in that direction has been done.12
Issues of politics, famously framed by Harold Lasswell as ‘who gets what, when and how’, are being explored at various levels. From the role of women in decisionmaking13 to reconstructing Southasia, attempts have been made to conceptualize Southasian integration from various angles. Perhaps due to lessons learnt from the erstwhile EEC and present ASEAN, ‘South Asian Economic Integration and Unity’14 has already been imagined with civil society’s concerns on ‘Poverty in South Asia’15 and ‘South Asian People’s Development Agenda’16 complementing the picture. The Delhi Policy Group has compiled seminar proceedings that deal with issues of security.17 Each of these volumes, as indeed several others that keep appearing all the time, is a useful building block of the Southasian confederation. But governance architecture has to be kept in mind to visualize the unified picture.
The institutional structure for governance architecture will have to think of civil society initiatives, alliance between political parties, intergovernmental forums, bureaucratic and security exchanges, interaction between economic society enterprises and actors, engagement of judicial institutions and intellectual input to make all such efforts productive.
Civil society initiatives are perhaps the most evolved forums of Southasian interactions. From accountants, business persons, civil aviation professionals, doctors, engineers and journalists to human rights activists, trade unionists and writers, all kinds of pan-Southasian alliances have come up with the promise of a better a more accommodative region. A generalized measure of civil society functioning that sets standards of decency, participation, fairness,18 efficiency and accountability is necessary to bring greater compatibility between such initiatives across Southasia.
Alliances across borders between political parties are the weakest. This may be so because of rampant ideological confusion. With the exception of Maoists who have formed a grandiose but barely functional Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organization of South Asia (CCOMPOSA),19 moderate parties seldom go beyond inviting their fraternal organizations at some formal conventions. Fundamentalists of the Hindu20 or Muslim21 variety maintain close links. But despite the legend of the Muslim ummah, perhaps there are more Islamic parties in South Asia than anywhere else in the world; Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) of Pakistan alone is an alliance of six opposition Islamic parties. Moderate political parties will have to formulate standards of accessibility, openness, competitiveness, representation, effectiveness, influence and accountability and build alliances across borders.
Intergovernmental forums too have evolved since the establishment of SAARC, but proactive measures are conspicuous by their absence. There is an urgent need to have a forum of National Planning Commissions where common issues can be debated in an environment of understanding. Bureaucratic and military exchanges are yet to begin in right earnest. Southasian countries are some of the largest contributors to UN Peacekeeping Forces, and yet they seldom train together in the region.
Works on several fronts have to be simultaneously initiated, but some pan- Southasian institutions need to be created—mandated by the SAARC Summit and ratified by legislatures of member countries to make them really effective—where people think and work like Southasians rather than representatives of their home countries.
THE SOUTHASIAN INSTITUTE OF GOVERNANCE: To train Southasian administrators to think above narrow nationalistic boundaries and improve their effectiveness, perhaps there is a place for such an institution to be based, say, in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. The colonial administrative practices inherited from the British have proved to be unsuitable for the changed context. But what will really work needs to be investigated and practiced in an informed manner.
THE SOUTHASIAN CENTRE FOR DEMOCRACY: There is no ‘ideal’ form of democracy. That’s the reason constant innovation is necessary. It would require research, dissemination of findings and constant monitoring. It is exceedingly difficult to build up democratic traditions in an authoritarian manner.
The essence of democracy is constant probing and responsible criticism on the part of social groups enjoying genuine independence from the state. How can social independence develop when a state asserts the right to undisputed primacy? Yet how can society be modernized except through state leadership? As in the case of most great issues of political philosophy, there is no specific solution. All depends upon choices made and the traditions which evolve in a given historical situation,22
wrote a perceptive observer for the Indian situation in early sixties. The perplexity is still the same. Scholars from all over Southasia will have to work together to find out what really works in this region. Due to its vibrant political society, Calcutta will perhaps be best suited for such an institution.
THE SOUTHASIAN COUNCIL OF CULTURES: Perhaps this would be the least controversial common forum, but also one of the most influential in the long run to rediscover cultures of Southasian civilization. Bhopal—the self-proclaimed heart of Hindustan will perhaps be the proper location for this ambitious venture.
THE SOUTHASIAN ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS: Where else but in Poona can the centre of excellence in Southasian performing arts function at its best?
INSTITUTE OF SOUTHASIAN FUTURES: Let thinkers and literatures of the subcontinent gather somewhere in Kashmir or Mizoram to contemplate over our common futures and consult with specialists in genetic engineering, biotechnology, oceanic and polar studies or practitioners of occult exchange notes with explorers of outer space. A society can make progress by traversing the path beaten by others, but it needs the courage to explore to break new grounds.
THE SOUTHASIAN COMMISSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: The dream of such an institution appears tantalizingly near, but if its commissioners were to act as nationals of member states working together, there is no way it will be possible to keep international agencies out of the picture.23 Every member of the Southasian organization will have to be groomed to think and act like a Southasian, at least when on regional call of duty.
THE SOUTHASIAN UNIVERSITY: This is yet another programme agreed in principle but not going anywhere due to state-centric formulation of the concept. With the government of India taking its responsibility, the university is proposed to be located in New Delhi, a place bristling with chauvinists like in Islamabad, and will frighten away most regional scholars. A more suitable location for the Southasian University would undoubtedly be Dhaka.
THE SOUTHASIAN MONETARY COMMISSION: As a precursor to the central bank of Southasia, a monetary commission is needed to do the groundwork for common currency, compatible trade policies, complementary fiscal regime and other such matters that advisors of IMF currently set for Southasian countries. The most appropriate place for such an institution will naturally be either Mumbai or Karachi.
REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT FUND: Rather than the least developed countries, the least development areas of Southasia have to be the focus of the Southasian Fund for Sustainable Development and Livelihood. Such an organization will have to be based in Kabul or Colombo to be able to consider entire Southasia as one undivided unit.
Institutions create instruments, beget organizations and acquire a momentum of their own in due course. That’s the reason integrative institutions have to be designed despite the current animosity and climate of distrust between Southasian countries.