Identity Politics in Post-Independence South Asia: A Comparative Study

Introduction

Identity alludes to how we understand and define ourselves. We at some point question ourselves as to who we are and where we belong. This is because our sense of identity or who we think we are, tells about our morals, guides our decisions, and gives our lives a sense of direction and clarity. But how we see identity today is now how it originally was. These identities greatly transformed and evolved with time.

Identity formation

In pre-modern times the people identified themselves by the customs, traditions, and the historically inherited self-understanding that was being passed onto them generation after generation. The identities used to be localized in the neighborhood or the village. But with the pioneering of the printing press in the 1450s there was a proliferation of knowledge which was mostly religious. This became a catalyst in the way people started to identify themselves with a particular religion much of which was not very rigid. Modernity led to standardization. Print capitalism lead to a standardized language, the modern state system lead to bureaucracy, judiciary, laws, and schooling, and urbanization, modernization, and industrialization lead to the standardization of markets, communication of ideas, and modern means of transportation. From here the boundaries between small groups turned into boundaries between very large groups who were connected to each other on the basis of religious identity. The roots of identity formation root from the British Raj.

It was after the 1700s when the British established their rule in India that the identities started to get hardened and distinct. It was the 1868 census that was conducted by the British which used religion as a fundamental category and as a basis for organizing data and as an attempt to understand the Indians. The colonial interpretation of India and Indian diversity was purely based on caste and religion and that got institutionalized by the census. The difficulty in the Indian census sprang from two sources namely the diversity of the material that was available and was supposed to be dealt with and the second was ignorance of the diversity of material that was present to them. One elucidation of the difficulty arising from the census can be seen in that of the Punjab census that was conducted. “On reading the reports on the census of Punjab, the first thing that strikes one is the fact “the infinite diversity of the material.” ”Clearly Punjab was an area of diversity unsurpassed in the remainder of the subcontinent: three main religious traditions, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam, infinite local saints and shrines, three languages, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi, each with its own script, and then the infinite local groupings of community and kinship.” The Raj created all Indian religious identities which were solid and were viewed as a united whole. Moreover, the census officials considered Hinduism to be the native religion of India and Islam as foreign. This led to them viewing Islam and Hinduism as being antitheses to each other. The census recorded data but denied the logic of a “tripartite” division of society in Punjab as eventually, the point was to simplify the complex structure of the society and at the same time to make it knowable. This led to the creation of separate identity groups as each person was forced to identify himself or herself with a particular religion and reject the intermixing of any two religions so that there is a clear demarcation between all the religious groups. The Raj also created a divide between the classes and castes in society by establishing various laws for eg. , “the Punjab Alienation of Land Act (1901) which divided the population into what it called ‘agriculturalist’ and ‘non-agriculturist’ tribes.'

This identity formation, therefore, became the basis for the distribution of political power and patronage. The religious communities, therefore, were measured in terms of number and it all became a play of majority and minority. In 1909 separate electorates were established where the individuals who stood us as a person belonging to a particular community and spoke on behalf and for the interest of their entire community. This was also a major factor that led to the divide specifically amongst the Hindus and the Muslims. The British did not create the categories of being from a different religion but changed their definition and at the same time made it the basis of political power. It was this that intertwined with the census that led to the partition of India and Pakistan on the basis of religious identities in 1945. Bangladesh and Pakistan, despite initially being secular states eventually they became Islamic states. Pakistan had no other way to unite the country therefore, they used Islamic propaganda to get power. Similarly, Bangladesh also emphasizes Islam as a core part of their identity and this is how it propagates territorial nationalism.

Identity politics has become a much more wider concept as it not only includes the use of religion in politics but also the use of caste, occupation, class, region, and linguistics in politics. Various political parties have tried to gain power by using the above-mentioned ways in order to get voted to power. The rise of state-based parties has led to regionalization of politics. A pattern of people from a particular caste being elected from a particular area can be observed. For eg, “ the Maratha-kunai caste cluster, which is spread almost all over the state, manages to send the latest number of MLAs to the State Legislature irrespective of political upheavals. In 51 constituencies, the elected candidate has always been a Maratha, consecutively for six elections.” Similarity linguistic politics can be seen when the Oriya-speaking territory in Bengal opposed the Bengali domination and got made into a separate state and also since then the power has just been with the upper caste. India has also seen a rise of various political parties which have been specifically been created for the people belonging to a particular caste like the BSP, JD, etc.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that after independence South Asian countries (India specifically) opted for liberal democracy, there have been struggles for power which have been fought on the lines of identity. For more than 20 years now identity politics has made considerable headway. The nationalism in India has more or less become a play of ethnic nationalism. Since identity has already been engraved in the minds and hearts of the people the elite has started to use it as a political agenda to increase their vote bank and get validation and come to power. Identity politics has therefore become an important phenomenon in the modern day and will continue to evolve and transform itself the days to come.