Interrogating Partitions

Interrogating Partitions

Reflections on
"A Human Rights and Peace Audit of Partitions as a Method of Conflict Resolution"

Litrature Survey & Bibilographies, Papers & Proceedings of Regional Consultation

March 2008, 12-15

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The ‘Great Partition’ 1947 was the foundational event that created the conflict scarred state system of South Asia. Our research focus is on conflicts that the international conflict literature describes as ‘ethnic’ or ‘ethno-nationalist’, ‘sub-national or nationality conflict’, ‘self determination conflict’ and ‘state formation conflict’¹. Increasingly, peoples struggles for recognition of their social and cultural rights, redistribution and parity of political participation has got articulated as a movement for a territorially defined political change, intended to accord an ethnic group/nationality autonomous control over a region in which it resides.
The south Asian states have experimented with various sequential strategies for managing and resolving these challenges to the integrationist project of the state. These have ranged from indifference to militarist suppression; and when these movements in turn got militarized resulting in protracted armed struggle, state and non state acquiesced to constitutionally guaranteed political arrangements for power sharing and protection of cultural and economic rights. A central focal point of future research to emerge from Phase I is the question-

Sixty years anon, what does an audit reveal of the success or limitations of the integration project of these states? What is the policy pattern latent in the state and non state praxis of addressing the ‘gaps’ in the integrationist project? What are the weaknesses inherent in the praxis of peace making via these ‘partition/devolution/autonomy’ based peace accords? How can the consequences for people be made more democratic, rights enabling and ensuring of peace and security?

SAFHR, earlier, had experimented with four ‘popular’ audits of the politics of peace making in Nagaland and CHT, Sri Lanka and Baluchistan, exploring some of the theoretical assumptions posited in our later partitions’ study and articulating a research methodology of a human rights and peace audit. Conceptually, the Peace Audits posited that there is a policy structure in the praxis of peace making in the region scripted around a modular framework, cast in the furnace of past accords. It was predicated on creating federal arrangements and special autonomies to accommodate newly assertive ‘ethnic’ counter elite. These division based settlements were found to be flawed in ending conflict and securing democracy, and ineffective in enabling peoples’ entitlements to rights. (See: Review of SAFHR Peace Audits, Annexure III, www.safhr.org)

SAFHR’s exercises in auditing the ongoing processes of peace making were the inspiration for undertaking a two phase research programme around the magisterial assertion that ‘Partition’ based strategies for resolving ‘ethno nationalist’² conflicts are flawed and ineffective and displace and divert the grievances at the root of the conflict and prove unstable and undemocratic. They treat conflict as a matter of ethnicity and not as rooted in a democracy deficit.

Our research showed up the absence of empirical studies on what nevertheless was a busy history of conflict management via these pragmatic division based ‘peace accords’. Also, there was under theorization of the policies latent in the practices of the armed protagonists, state and non state, as well as of civil society in dealing with these territorially focused ‘sub national’ conflicts. There was a singular lacuna in cross border studies of what were internal and external ‘border making accords’. Researching ‘cross nationally’, promised to open up new ways of understanding notions of community, state, citizenship and nation which has bedevilled our countries.

Ironically, although these ‘ethno-nationalist’ conflicts are imprinted with a ‘partition’ motif - there is the movement’s separatist demand; the troubled legacy of the history of earlier partitions (e.g.1947 Partition) and a partition based peace praxis – there was little research interest in drawing upon the meanings and understandings flowing from the huge expansion of multi-disciplinary research interest in the 1947 partition based settlement, especially the human dimension of the consequences of its violent disruptions and dislocations. Left unaddressed was the research question- what meaning and insights does the experience of the Great Partition hold for the contemporary praxis of partition based peace settlements? Implicit in this line of argument was the assumption that 1947 Partition was paradigmatic.

This came under robust scrutiny at the Regional Consultation with powerful counter arguments critical of an a-historical approach and a reductionist rejection of the possibility of partition as a ‘rational choice’ policy instrument. (See: Final Report and Partitions in Conflict Studies: Annexure II www.safhr.org) The emphasis was on historical context and contingent factors as determinants.
The ‘Core Group’ endorsed the need for robust empirical research to be the basis for speaking to a larger theoretical discourse on partition based settlements of ‘ethnic’ conflicts. Also, consolidated was the consensus that popular accountability should animate the research audit of these peace accords.

1.2 Research Problem
The study’s contention was that the paradigm of ‘partition’ within the overall conflict resolution discourse is a flawed and ineffective method of ending violent conflict. Partition based peace settlements may stop immediate violence, but are likely to produce endemic violence if not revert back to full-scale war, for the root causes of the grievances – the democracy deficit, not ethnicity - remains un-addressed or displaced. These peace accords in devolving power to federal/autonomous and even independent state units, transfer power and rights from the domain of peoples’ struggles and achievements, towards new elite power arrangements. However, there is no change in the nature of politics in control or in the democratization of institutions. The study posits that while partitions’ ideological impulse may be democratic, its processual dynamics and consequences are undemocratic.

1.3 Objectives
For Phase I of the Two Phase programme the objectives were i) To develop a conceptual paradigm for theorizing partition as a method of conflict resolution. ii) To explore a research methodology of auditing partitions from an interlinked peace, democracy and human rights perspective that draws upon SAFHR’s four peace audits. iii) To provide a substantive and conceptually oriented desk based literature survey of Partition Studies resources in the region focusing on partitions as a method of conflict resolution from a human rights and peace perspective. iv) To convene a Regional Consultation to concretize the Research Agenda to be undertaken in Phase II.

1.4 Principal Findings

i) ‘Conceptualizing Partitions as a form of Conflict Resolution’:
Fundamentalism in the Partitions Debate: Our research proposition of auditing what partition’s do to peoples’ entitlements, reinforced by our analytical review of the SAFHR peace audits, and our survey of partitions in scholarly and policy discourses - had posited the 1947 Great Partition as paradigmatic and un-problematically accepted the negative consensus on partition’s consequences. In South Asia, both by design and default, the Great Partition gets invoked as one, paradigmatic of partition as a deeply flawed method of conflict resolution, two, as paradigmatic to South Asian memory of the failure of the project of different communities living together. The Great Partition is imprinted as universal rather than as a unique and contingent event.

Participants felt that the Great Partition of the British Indian Empire tended to over determine the imagining of a particular kind of violent and malignant partition predicating an extremely negative legacy. Attention was directed to a form of ‘peaceful’ partitions predicating a different aftermath. The scholar of federalism, Balveer Arora. refracting on the many aspects in which partition could be conceptualized as a rational policy instrument, pointed to India’s national leaders acquiescing to partition in the name of enabling centralized planned development. Arguably, partition could be a means to ‘right sizing’ the state, as in 1971 secession of East Pakistan. Pritam Singh drew attention to ‘peaceful’ partitions, while Sumanasiri Liyanage challenged the prejudice against partitioning sovereignty with the poser – where is the evidence that federal frameworks work better? (Session: ‘Critical Perspectives on Partition Debate’ in Final Report)

What was desirable was greater intellectual openness to capture the paradoxes inherent in partitions as a policy instrument. For example, Bose citing the example of specific moments in Kashmir and Baluchistan’s peace politics, argued that the ruling elite of some of the states, driven by the desire to create strong integrated states out of a centrifugal multi-national reality, incorporated the paradox of the policy instrument of a kind of partition strategy where a collectivity would have a degree of self rule in a defined territory, i.e.Baluchistan 1977; Kashmir 1952. (Session: Kashmir: From Separatist to Irredentist Politics: Final Report & Literature Survey Annexure III)

Partition theory hypothesis –
Challenging partition theory, our study showed that the logic of partition is the reinforcement of insider-outsider politics, thus leading to more conflicts, as evinced in North East (India), Chittagong Hill Tracts, Sri Lanka, Sind and Baluchistan. This resonated with the Core Group’s analysis, especially regarding the North East and the relentless reproduction of identarian assertions (inspired by the contagion of the ‘dividends’ of ethnic politics). As Monirul Hussain elaborated, the logic of these ethnically determined territorial settlements in the NE, predicated exclusion and the permanent uprooting of non dominant ‘other’ communities and the creation of the permanently displaced. (Session: North East & “Partition and Moving Peoples” )
The cross border discussions at the Regional Consultation enabled a consolidation of our research proposition that partitions tend to homogenize state and society. While, there was need for further research on partition disabling pluralism, there was the flip side- the need to explore the sites of resistance to hegemonic ideologies and homogenizing identities as practically manifest in the lived space of the borderlands highlighted by Imtiaz Ahmed; and in the historic resistance of communities like the Meos studied by Shail Mayaram.(Session ‘Partition and Moving Borders, Borderlands, Citizenship")

ii) Audits of Peace Accords:
From the discussion on Peace Accords emerged clarity in developing a central conceptual framework for organising the proposed empirical research of peace accords, that is, auditing the Integration Project of the States. The conflicts are symptomatic of the ‘gaps’ in the Integration Project and these territorially focused federal-autonomy settlements evinces state and non state praxis in addressing these gaps.
The audit exercises enabled us to pick out a pattern in the praxis of peace making in contemporary ‘sub-national’ conflicts and substantiate the argument that these partition based settlements’ are flawed because they treat conflict as a matter of ethnicity rather than democracy deficit. Moreover, the audits prompted us to reflect that the key element was not the weak civil and political institutions created by the constraining limits of constitutionalism but the nature of the state and politics that are in control. Federal structures and autonomies do not necessarily change the nature of the politics in control.

The audits highlighted that in these asymmetric peace accords where there is no parity of status, civil society plays a critical role in providing balance and strategic depth to the peace constituency and keeps up the pressure in injecting a radical content of accountability, social justice and human rights to the peace agenda. However a caveat was entered about the problematic assumption of the ‘autonomy’ of civil society actors.
The Research Methodology of the audits was structured around – i) history as an entry point, ii) the long gaze into the genealogy of the praxis of peace making via accords and iii) a working framework or set of markers for auditing public accountability of peace making

State praxis as evinced in the genealogy of ‘peace accords’, is in line with the subtle shift in the international partitions discourse of delegitimizing the moral content of partition’s roots in self determination and state formation, and emphasising partition as ‘a last resort’ to end a humanitarian crisis. However, as Darini Rajasingham pointed out, the crisis itself, can be driven by ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’. (Session: Partitions in Conflict Studies, Annexure II)

The SAFHR audits showed up the limits in our theoretical understanding of the political meaning of the simultaneity of the twin dialectics of the demand for separation (self determination) and the irredentist demand in the struggles of the peoples of Naga hills, Baluchistan and Kashmir for unification –e.g. Greater Kashmir and Nagalim. (Session:Kashmir From Separatism to Irredentism)

iii) Literature Survey:
It revealed a surge in multi-disciplinary research that has redefined and reinvigorated the field of Partition Studies, once largely focused on 1947 Partition ‘Causes’ and now, its ‘Consequences’. The emphasis has shifted from grand narratives to the writing regional and micro histories; from ‘high politics’ to ‘history from below’; to using the lens of anthropology and cultural studies to overturn conventional taxonomies of fixed identities; of feminist studies to recover their invisiblized traumatic experiences and competing narratives of state an community; of migration studies to examine the experiences of being refugees or of host societies in accommodating them.

The case by case literature reviews of select ‘partitioned lands’, as in the case of Kashmir showed up a strikingly original and exciting research question on separatism and irredentist politics in Jammu and Kashmir. The Literature Review on Sri Lanka’s ‘ethno-political’ conflict is significant for being amongst the first to seriously put partition on the peace table and indicate directions in research and analysis. The (West) Punjab review provided insights into legacy of a supposedly unending impact of partition on Punjabi psyche producing a politics of violent unrest and raised questions about exclusionary identity politics and the Hindu becoming an ‘outsider’ in Punjab. Discursive essays on the partition theme in Bangladesh provided insights into the process of not one but two partitions and state making or rather the flawed ethno-nationalist project of forcibly making a people congruent with borders. (Afsan Chowdhury paper: “Forced Identities and Forced Migrations” Annexure IV).

Specific gaps and limitations in the scholarly and policy writings were identified in the two part Literature Survey (Annexure II & III). Especially under explored were theoretical studies and comparative analysis as evident in the dearth of research and policy studies which transcended the barriers to ‘moving spatial’ boundaries (transcending national perspectives and narratives) and ‘moving temporal boundaries’ (transcending the closures of 1947 the foundational event, recovering the continuum in socio-economic and political histories that ‘cross over’ from pre partition to partitioned times). Also, researching ‘cross-nationally’ held out the possibility of redefining in another idiom - nation, community and citizenship and coming to terms with the long shadow of 1947 and 1971. More crucially, the partition motif in contemporary ‘ethno-nationalist’ or sub-national conflict discourses remained an under researched area.

Research Propositions & Questions:
Partition in the Discourses of ‘contemporary ‘national’ struggles: There was need to analytically explore the continuum between the foundational event of 1947 Partition and the legacy of its ‘unfinished agenda, to make visible the imbrication of partition anxieties in the intolerant and militarized response of ruling elite to group struggles for self assertion.
Homogenizing Identities, exclusionary and non democratic politics: “ Do partition discourses create a homogenisation of social and political identities, a denial of diversity and the movement towards a form of ‘ethnocratic’ politics?” The logic of partition is rejection or disabling of pluralism which gets translated into exclusionary hierarchies of insiders – outsiders. Do division based peace strategies disable pluralism? Who gains from the ‘shrinking’ and separation? Do they lead to recurring identity conflicts?

“Partition and Moving Peoples: Belonging: Making of Community and State”
Among the more dynamic new research tributaries in Partition Studies is the focus on refugee-muhajirs , which Ritu Menon styles as the dominant motif of sub-continent. It represents a new wave in scripting Partition and the ‘homeland’ narrative of community, nation and state by foregrounding the experience of the refugees.

“Partition and Moving Borders/ Borderlands, Citizenship” calls for a transcendence of national imaginations and invites thinking cross nationally about community, nation, state and citizenship in the grey areas of partitioned ‘borderlands and their subculture of subversion of settled borders.

From Separatism to Irredentism: Tapan Bose in framing the Kashmir literature survey, specifically interrogated the state's lead in constructing a contemporary Kashmir discourse premised on homogenizing the plural culture and politics of the erstwhile unified princely state, i.e. the myth of the universality of kashmiriyat, that privileges the socio-political culture of the valley and silences the other regions. It was part of the Indian's state's paradoxical strategy of integrating Kashmir by affirming its historic uniqueness and autonomy.
However, while the 1948 de-facto partition of Jammu and Kashmir, reflected the socio-political reality of the princely state's divide, sixty years anon, mention a de jure partition across the dividing Line of Control, and the popular response is “we do not want a partition based solution to Kashmir”. The twin dialectics of the separatist demand and the irredentist impulse towards realizing a Greater Kashmir is based on the construction of a Kashmir nationalist consciousness that encompasses the whole of the erstwhile princely state, which is being suppressed. (Session: Kashmir; See Final Report)

1.5 Peer review & Regional Consultation:
Peer Review was held in November 2007in collaboration with Academy of Third World Studies at Jamia Millia University, Delhi to provide mid term correction. The Regional Consultation, Kathmandu, March 12-15, marked the culmination of Phase I of the research programme and consolidated the parameters of the Research Agenda for Phase II.

¹ To borrow from Peter Wallensteen's conceptual phrase, “state formation conflicts” in Understanding Conflicts (2002) - which put a government against an identity based territorially focused opposition where the key issue is the security of a particular group (2002).

²The term draws attention to the alleged ‘fiction’ or illusion of a hard ethnic identity and its politicization in ethno-nationalism. The primordial element in ‘ethnic’ factor is denied or rejected. See Christine Scherer "2003)