Scotland Referendum Entails Implications For India
By Jaspal Singh Sidhu
23 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org
The BBC has monitored the world media to know the impact of the 18 September Scotland referendum ‘beyond the British Isles’. It shows that the Scotland development has emboldened separatism in the Europe but cast a ‘worrying spell’ on ‘nations’ in other parts of the world. Like India, other Asian ‘nations’ deliberately sought to keep mum over the referendum so that it should pass off as a ‘non-issue’.
The BBC report says “Most newspapers (in India) fear the referendum will fuel calls for similar exercise in Indian-administered Kashmir and the country’s north-eastern region.” On the eve of referendum, The Telegraph noted, “India is quietly hoping Scotland does not breakaway from the UK, but it has not only articulated its stance on the referendum but It worries about a separation rooted in the implications for Kashmir and the country’s east.”
The Scotland episode has challenged the political concept of ‘Nation-state’, hitherto hailed as the best model of governance which the West had bequeathed to the world. Scotland is seeking its separation form United Kingdom (UK) after remaining together for 307 years. Though, the Scottish lost their separation bid last week, but it exposed the underbelly of a nation-state that ran a largest British empire in the history and colonized the best parts of the world. Now, the UK has officially admitted that it is a multi-nation state, with four distinct nations--not a single nation-state as touted to the world for three centuries. The political discourse in the UK has changed for all the time to come with Scotland promised more powers through a constitutional exercise which must follow a concomitant restructuring of the London Establishment to accommodate other three nations.
Similarly, other European ‘nations’, earlier known as ‘monolithic entities’ are, too, undergoing a process of disintegration with their separate and distinct identities asserting for independence. Scotland shows living TOGETHER for over 300 years as a NATION governed by a single State has not dissolved the distinctive cultural identities. That is why, Yugoslavia has broken into separate unit countries, Check salvia dissolved into Check and Salvia without a murmur, Catalonia and Basque are opting for separation from Spain and Italy and Belgium too facing separatist demands from their constituents. Outside Europe, Quebec in Canada has been inching for separation even after the former had lost two referendums, the last one only by a fraction (point five) in 1995. The erstwhile Soviet Union, emerged as a bigger ‘united country’ after the October 1917 revolution, got dissolved into 15 different countries after seven decades. And, Lenin who died soon after the October revolution , did not subscribe to the ‘melting-pot’ theory of America for assimilation of distinct identities and had observed in a debate on nationalities that ‘identities tend to take much more time to disappear than the classes’. In all, since 1980, as many as 39 new ‘nations’ have joined the United Nations.
The way Scotland referendum was conducted has shown that unlike India the separatism there was neither taken as “anti-national’’ activity by the London Establishment nor the latter used force to thwart it . Neither did the Establishment go in for any pre-emptive Indian-type move branding pro-independence campaigners as ‘disgruntled and foreign-agents’. The remarkable maturity and sobriety shown by the both sides—the unionists and pro-independence campaigners- have sent a strong message to other countries, particularly to India claiming to be a ‘largest democracy’ that the most complex and critical issues like ‘separatism’ could be tackled without shedding a drop of blood.
During a debate for Scotland independence, its ace campaigner, first minister Alex Salmond said, “Scotland is not oppressed and have no need to be liberated. Independence matters because we do not have powers to reach our potential.” On the other hand, neither the London ruling party leaders rushed to Scotland to check ‘hyper nationalism’—respected the opinion of the Scottish people--- nor there were riots in the name of ‘UK nationalism’. Another Scotland independence leader summed his sentiments as: “Independence is not anti-national …. in every Scottish brain there has been a tiny ‘blue-and-white’ cell which secretes an awareness…… ‘my country was independent once’……. would it be grand , if one day….. we achieve that …..”.
In the modern times, the democracies hail the cultural and religious independence of the peoples as their ‘birth right’ at par with their other fundamental rights in the political sphere. And, yearning for and seeking the fulfillment of such rights are, no longer, treated as ‘crime’ in the civilized world. One wonders, when Sri Lanka wages three decade old bloody war to contain separatism of Tamil Tigers and still under the delusion that the Tamil dissidence has been wiped out permanently. Even now, Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa, goes for a ‘tight-rope-political- walking’ after he, with help of other countries, had succeeded in establishing the Sinhalese racist regime as consequent to cold-blooded killings of thousands of Tamil civilians.
Ironically, India is still engaged in shaping the country’s political governance on the 19th century Western model of ‘nation-state’ based on the principle of “one people-one nation-one state” even as the model seemed to have exhausted its long-run in the UK where it had originated. Even after seven decades, the ‘political class’ has no agility to review the state structure freedom movement leaders had bequeathed to the Indians. Most of the pre-independence Congress leaders with their education in England had adopted the ‘model of democracy’ taken up from the British textbooks and were hell- bent for imposing that model even at the cost of the Partition of the country. The Indian constitution was too framed on the Westminster model without caring for ground realities of the country. As the problems began flowing from that model, India rulers adopted a strategy of proclaiming the constitution and Indian ‘territorial unity’ as ‘sanctimonious and holy’ and gradually loaded them with religious-level sentimentality. As corollary to that benchmark, political dissensions of every sorts were dubbed as ‘anti-national’ and ‘criminal activities’. And, Indian ‘nationalism’ has been equated and based on the majority’s religious ethos and culture, which, in turn, rendered the minorities as ‘unpatriotic’ and a ‘threat’ to the country’s unity.
It was the ‘nation-state’ building process, taken up by Nehru-Patel after the Partition which saw the Sikhs as peoples branded ‘anti-national’ and their demands as ‘secessionist’ ones required to be suppressed by the army attacking the Golden Temple, Amritsar to be followed by the November Sikh pogrom in 1984 and a decade-long bloodshed in Punjab. And, the north-east has, too, remained a ‘boiling pot’ throughout the post-1947 era.
Eminent sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan says: “Nationalism could not be a substitute, merely replacing the White men with Indians with the same mentality, was not independence ….. 40 millions people displaced by dams and 10 million by riots. Over a million troops outside the army are deployed for internal order and control”.
While Scotland referendum is coming with a whiff of a fresh thinking on governance issues, the Sangh Parivar has been crusading against what they called ‘Love-Jihad’ and pressing for ‘uniform civil code’ and scrapping of ‘article 370’ , thereby treating Kashmir valley as mere a ‘real-estate’ ignoring that inhabitants there are having their own history and culture. Interpreting the county’s ‘territorial integrity’ through religious symbols and Hindu deities like ‘Bharat Mata’ tends to further deprive millions of ‘voiceless and hapless’ peoples of their ‘feeble voice’. The Sangh’s crusades are eating away the diversity of every sort which is indicative from the fact, recently thrown up by a national survey, that as many 1500 oral languages have already been reduced to silence in free India.
Jaspal Singh Sidhu retired as a Special Correspondent with United News of India (UNI) at its New Delhi Headquarters in 2008. Since then, have been working as free-lance journalist and writing on Agriculture, Human rights and political affairs. He can be reached at [email protected]
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