subnationalism

What the Debate Around bin Qasim and Raja Dahir Tells Us About Pakistan and Nationalism

Though the debate here is about two rulers, the actual conversation that needs to happen is between the Singh government and the federal state.

The demand first came last year, when a statue honouring Maharaja Ranjit Singh was unfolded at the Lahore Fort. Despite its political motivations and other contexts, it was an extraordinary moment. An extremely rare moment when the Pakistani state was not just acknowledging but celebrating a non-Muslim ruler. This was after years of propaganda of projecting the Sikh era as being tumultuous for the Muslim population of Punjab. Facing the Lahore Fort, in the alley of Badshahi Masjid, at least till a few years ago, when I last saw them, there were pictures from the colonial era that showed the dilapidated condition of the mosque during the Sikh era, when it was used as a horse stable.

Though unveiling the statue was praiseworthy, it was just that: a symbolic moment without any accompanying structural changes. In school and college history books, the Sikh era continued to be projected as tyrannous for the Muslim population, while Muslim nationalist writers vehemently recalled Ranjit Singh’s ‘atrocities’. It, therefore should not come as a surprise that shortly after its installation, the statue was attacked and damaged. The message had larger reverberations than was acknowledged at that time: Ranjit Singh, or for that matter, no Hindu or Sikh ruler could be celebrated in Pakistan.

Statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Photo: Twitter/pid_gov

Pakistan, like every other country in the world, has used history to tell its own national story. The story, of course, is not fixed. It requires constant revisions and modifications. For example, in the early years of the country, it was acceptable to teach the story of Ramayana or Mahabharata to school children. It was acceptable to discuss the Kushan or Gupta dynasties. As relations with India deteriorated, most of these stories began slipping away, while other stories became more prominent.

Also Read: Reclaiming the Nation: Reaching the Destination

These are the stories of Muhammad Bin Qasim, Mahmud Ghazni, Muhammad of Ghor, Babur, Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali. It became the story of Muslim triumph over a pagan land, a chaotic rule replaced by a benevolent empire enlightened by religious exceptionalism. Just as the creation of Pakistan was projected as the triumph of Muslim nationalism in juxtaposition to the defeat of Indian nationalism (read Hindu nationalism), history was recast to tell this story of triumph over and over again.

The significance of bin Qasim

While all these historical characters are significant in this narrative, as can be testified by the names of our missiles, Muhammad bin Qasim acquired particular significance in this pantheon. He was the first Muslim ruler, the one who brought the ‘first light onto this dark land’, the harbinger of glorious things that were to come after him, the Ghaznis, the Baburs, the Abdalis, and of course Pakistan.

If we use the story of Ramayana, they became the Rams of the story. However, every Ram needs a Ravana, the penultimate villain, on the basis of whom his glory is projected. Thus entered the villainous Hindu rulers like Raja Dahir, Anandpala, Prithviraj Chouhan, Shivaji and others. For the true light of their rule to shine, the era preceding them needed to be darker. In order for these Muslim rulers to be just, the ones before them needed to be more atrocious.

Standing in contrast to the glorious Muhammad Bin Qasim, the 17-year-soldier, was the aging Raja Dahir, the ruler of Sindh. If Muhammad Bin Qasim had to be a symbol of Pakistani nationalism, then Raja Dahir had to be its anti-thesis. And that is what he came to represent for a long time, his name itself representing tyranny. It was on his body that the glorious statue of Muhammad bin Qasim was to be erected, holding the flag of Pakistani nationalism.

Muhammad bin Qasim. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Mohammad Adil CC BY-SA 3.0

While the nationalist project, on one hand, had its successes, exemplified by the attack on Ranjit Singh’s statue. It is never completely successful, with constant challenges being thrown at this deterministic narrative. The most recent challenge to this national story comes from Sindhi sub-nationalists, who have over the years tried inverting these symbols, casting Raja Dahir as the real hero – the Ram of the story – and Muhammad bin Qasim, as the bloodthirsty invader, Ravana.

The debate in Sindh

When Ranjit Singh’s statue was erected in Lahore, they demanded a similar tribute to be made to the “son the soil” in Sindh. A few days ago, the debate raged on social media, with Sindhi sub-nationalists calling Dahir a Sindhi hero and in the process, disowning Muhammad bin Qasim. Consequently, the Pakistani nationalists came to the defence of Muhammad bin Qasim and criticised Dahir.

Both these narratives are quite problematic. A critical analysis of history debunks myths on both sides. The point here is not to talk about “true” history. Historians have done that quite convincingly and effectively. For example, Romila Thapar has done a fantastic job in deflating these myths around Mahmud Ghazni, while historian Manan Ahmed Asif has done a brilliant job doing that for Muhammad bin Qasim and Raja Dahir.

The question here is not about Raja Dahir or Muhammad bin Qasim, but rather what the debate tells us about how Pakistani nationalism defines itself, and how Sindhi sub-nationalism actively seeks to define itself in opposition to that. In many ways, the process is quite similar to what happened in pre-Partition India, when Hindu nationalism picked up these symbols of “local” resistance in opposition to “foreign” Muslim invaders, as its hero. This was followed by a reversing of these symbols by Muslim nationalism, as is shown by another impressive historian, Ali Usman Qasmi. These symbols were then inherited by India and Pakistan.

In the Sindhi context, the appropriation of these symbols represents a sense of marginalisation at the hands of the Pakistani State. This defiance to Pakistan’s national historical symbols needs to be seen in the context of a long relationship between the Sindh and the federal state, where a sense of marginalisation was experienced in several ways: with the arrival of muhajir and the “loss” of Karachi to the non-Sindhis, with the purchase of large tracts of lands by Punjabi landlords in Sindh, with the low representation of Sindhis in the bureaucracy, with the drying of Indus as it enters Sindh, with the assassinations of Sindhi prime ministers Z.A. Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. Most recently, this was experienced during the tussle between the Sindh government, led by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the federal government, led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), over strategies of how to handle the COVID-19 lockdown and the debate around the 18th Amendment, which assures autonomy to the provinces, hailed by Sindh, but has been increasingly criticised by the PTI.

Also Read: After Partition, Trust was the Biggest Loss in Sindh

Raja Dahir. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/INDIAN SCHOOL, Public Domain

Thus, while keyboard warriors engage in a debate on Muhammad bin Qasim and Raja Dahir, the real debate that needs to happen is about the relationship between the Sindh provincial government and the federal state. Unfortunately, when this debate is held through these symbols, the real issues are often forgotten and never addressed.

Haroon Khalid is the author of several books including Imagining Lahore and Walking with Nanak.

The Economics and Politics Behind Dravida Nadu or South Indian Subnationalism

In India, the levers of political power are skewing towards the demographic might of north India. That makes the south fear economic and cultural hegemony.

The last month or so has seen politicians across parties from southern India coalescing around subnationalism. One after the other, they have made compelling arguments against the way in which India’s current federal structure erodes states’ rights and punishes south India for its progress. They have buttressed their economic arguments against the central government using data, which is a pleasant deviation for a polity that can often come across as innumerate.

Pawan Kalyan and MK Stalin started this latest avalanche by pointing to how unfair the allocation ratio of the 15^th Finance Commission is likely to be for southern India, given Census 2011 will be used as the baseline. Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, spoke in the state assembly and criticised the central government for taxing the south to spend in the north.

Siddaramiah, Karnataka’s chief minister, wrote what is likely the most cogent summation of the case for subnationalism: the current policies incentivise population growth in north India while delegitimising his Kannada identity.

MK Stalin, sensing momentum, said the DMK would support a demand for ‘Dravida Nadu’ if such a request came about from all other southern states. Dravida Nadu is an old and enduring demand of the Dravidian movement. At various time periods, it has meant various things. Sometimes it has meant greater devolution of powers to the states, at others it’s meant full sovereignty and complete secession.

The ambiguous nature and long history of the demand makes it a potent but empty vessel into which people can project their own ideas.

To understand the landscape that these voices are coming from, one needs to look at how the finances of the states intersect. For example, Tamil Nadu’s GSDP is 15.9 lakh crore. Uttar Pradesh’s is 14.8 lakh crore. That is, if these were two states were independent entities, Tamil Nadu’s economic output would be higher than that of Uttar Pradesh’s despite the latter being three times more populous than the former.

However, the total budget expenditure of Tamil Nadu for 2018-19 is 1.1 lakh crores while that of Uttar Pradesh is 1.5 lakh crores. In other words, Uttar Pradesh has a budget outlay that’s 36% higher than Tamil Nadu despite having an economy that’s 7% smaller. And this is true of other southern and western states like Kerala, Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra – all of which have smaller budgets than what their economies would otherwise warrant.

Another important aspect, which makes chief ministers like Siddaramiah speak out, is, the share of states’ own revenue in the total budget expenditure. Karnataka for instance has the highest ratio in this regard.

The state meets 72% of its expenses from state’s own taxes; this is over and above the central taxes that citizens of the state pay which typically form a much larger portion of an individual’s tax burden. Conversely, Karnataka also receives the least in terms of central transfers as a ratio to its total expenditure. Bihar, meanwhile, meets 77% of its expenditure through revenue from central transfers.

In fact Narendra Modi – as chief minister of Gujarat in 2013 – told Y.V. Reddy, chairman of the 14^th Finance Commission, that states’ allocation ratios should be decided based on their contribution to GDP. It’s anybody’s guess what Modi’s position, as an MP from Uttar Pradesh, is in 2018.

In federal unions, the idea of richer regions subsidising poorer ones is common.

New York and California, in the US, subsidise states in Appalachia and the deep South for example. The Flemish speaking parts of Belgium subsidise the French and German speaking parts. Or, even more infamously, Catalans do that for rest of Spain.

The one important difference between these unions elsewhere in the word and that of India is: correlation between demography and economic growth works in the reverse direction in India. In US, the state with the lowest growth rate in population is also among its poorest: West Virginia. The states with the biggest and fastest growing economies are also among those whose population growth is highest. And that’s because economy drives the population growth via migration in the USA. In India, unlike other federal unions, citizens having no access to education drive population growth with high rates of fertility in states that are already poor.

The southern states, which are complaining about getting the short shrift in terms of finances, are really making a point about being rendered unequal partners in an India that’s tilting towards the North’s demographic might.

Consider the ratio of population that’s under 15 years of age in conjunction with the fertility rate of each state.

Let’s do a quick back of the envelope calculation: in 2011 Census, Uttar Pradesh (UP) had a population of ~203 million. According to NFHS-4 data, about 42.3% of UP’s population is under 15 years of age.

That is, there were 85 million children under 15 years of age in UP in 2011. In 2011 UP’s TFR was 3.4. And in 2016 it was 3.1. Let’s assume a mean TFR of 2.5 over the period 2011 to 2031. Sex ratio for UP is 912/1000. Therefore, of these 85 million children, it’s likely that 39 million are girls. If they have a TFR of 2.5, that results in 97.5 million children. In other words, the children who’re under 15 years of age in Census 2011 will likely have 97.5 million children of their own in the next decade and a half.

Tamil Nadu’s children under 15 years of age from 2011 Census, making only 26% of its population, meanwhile, would have had 14 million children if we calculate the same way. That’s roughly equal to the number of people who are likely to naturally die in those years; or the state has achieved a relative equilibrium in population.

Take into account this is over and above the population growth divergence in the last 40 years in which Kerala and Tamil Nadu had the lowest rates of population growth among all states. The additional children that Uttar Pradesh’s children of today are likely to have in the next two decades roughly equals the total population of Tamil Nadu and Kerala combined.

It is in this context of demographic divergence that one needs to situate the sub-nationalism of Siddaramaiah and M.K. Stalin.

If the tax collection ratios are skewed this way or that, they can be corrected with policy tweaks. That’d not be an issue that warrants a ‘Dravida Nadu’ demand from serious politicians. Every other large federal union faces and resolves such problems.

The problem is that, in India’s case, the levers of political power are irreversibly skewing towards the demographic might of north India. That makes the south fear economic and cultural hegemony; and it’s not an irrational fear.

The reason this is problematic isn’t merely because of where we are currently and how the future looks from this vantage point. It’s because the impending skew is a slap on the face of democratic progress that the southern states made in the past 70 years.

Uttar Pradesh, or United Provinces before Independence, was one of the better-administered provinces in British India. Its status as a laggard state is a recent one.

By the same token, Kerala was a caste-ridden backward society in the late 19^th century. It was constantly under threat of being annexed and merged with Madras Presidency because of its backwardness. It is the state’s local politics and a sense of subnationalism, as Prerna Singh argues in her book How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India, that moved Kerala forward to become India’s most advanced state in terms of social development.

And conversely, Singh suggests, the absence of such subnationalism in Uttar Pradesh’s case is what resulted in government programs being seen as zero-sum games between caste and religious groups. The former results in greater social expenditure while the latter in the exact opposite.

What the skew of political power to states in north India will result in is: punish and nullify the miraculous improvements achieved by progressive political movements like Aikya Kerala movement while rewarding the politics of nationalism sans a strong regional identity. That is neither democratic nor is it good policy.

And this is why it is natural that many in the south want to re-examine the structure of India’s federal union.

Nilakantan R.S. works as a data scientist for a tech start-up and looks at politics from that vantage point.

Subnationalism Might be the Key to Social Development in India

Prerna Singh’s book, ‘How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India’, establishes a connection between subnationalism and social indices.

Prerna Singh’s book, How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India, establishes a connection between subnationalism and social indices.

Representational image. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

India has a number of large states, the populations of which are equivalent to mid-sized countries. But their size is often their only similarity. There are stark differences between Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan – the social development indices of which are worse than those of sub-Saharan African countries – and states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu that have these very indices comparable to OECD countries. Unfortunately, our focus on the country as a unit obscures these differences and limits our understanding of how development has taken place in India.

Consider a parameter as important as female youth literacy. It measures the literacy rate of girls and young women between the ages 15-24. It is important for obvious reasons: these young women must have been in school in the last decade and they are entering the reproductive phase of their lives. In Bihar, female youth literacy levels are at 64%. That is, about 36% of all young women in the age group 15-24 are illiterate in Bihar. In Rajasthan, 28% of women of that age group are illiterate. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, 24% of young women are illiterate. These numbers are comparable to countries like Malawi and Tanzania.

It is one thing if the older population is illiterate; no government can have that much of an impact on adult illiteracy. But these are children who should have been in school in the recent past. As a point of comparison, the female youth literacy rates of Kerala and Tamil Nadu are 99% and 97% respectively. Or, conversely, less than 1% of Kerala’s female youth population is illiterate, and less than 3% of Tamil Nadu’s. This story repeats itself in infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, enrollment ratios and most other social development indices across these states.

The huge disparity between states in the same country should make us ask: why are some states doing so much better than others? Or, conversely, why are some states doing so poorly? They operate in the same political and legal systems, have the same institutions and had similar starting points. What could explain this divergence?

Prerna Singh, in her book How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India, looks at this question from an entirely new and refreshing perspective. She suggests that subnationalism is a possible cause for achieving greater development. The book looks at the historical rise of subnationalism in various states since the late 19th century and the corresponding improvement in their respective social development indices. The most important and possibly unique aspect of this analysis is the blending of a chronological documentation of subnationalism and its quantification – this has allowed the author to study the effect of subnationalism on development parameters.

Prerna Singh
How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India
Cambridge University Press, 2015

Kerala is a fascinating study. The state is now a leader in almost every parameter. Its social development indices are comparable to Western Europe. In the late 19th century when a large part of it was the princely state of Travancore, it had one of the worst records in social development. Travancore was constantly under threat of being annexed by the Madras presidency for its poor performance. It had a very rigid caste system and the state was not very responsive to the state’s population at large. Its elite were Brahmins who were not originally from the state, causing further complications. The footnotes Singh provides are carefully built upon to inform us and throw significant light on the larger narrative. One of them tells us that there was no construct of a Malayali identity then; in fact, until the 1870s, only people of the Nair caste were referred to as Malayalis.

Late in the 19th century and early 20th century, the Aikya Kerala movement began as a protest against the dominant influence of Brahmins who were not from the state. Singh traces what started as a demand for representation by the native population in jobs among elites morphing into a strong movement that created a sense of Malayali identity. For the first time, Singh points out, Kerala was imagined as a single state; a state for the Malayali people. Until then the people of Travancore, Cochin and what’s now northern Kerala did not think of themselves as one Malayali people. This subnationalism, Singh argues, transformed the way the population sought public services. The identity markers of caste, religion and other sub-groups became secondary to the primary marker of a linguistic group. The investments in education in the 1910s shot up in Kerala for the first time in recorded history. From 1920 to 1947, Travancore spent about 20% its total expenditure on education. But even as late as the 1950s, Kerala was thought of as administratively weak and backwards. Nehru’s advisors warned him the state would not progress. The results of the past 70 years though, tell a different story.

Tamil Nadu had a trajectory that is similar to Kerala’s, except it was delayed by some 20 years. The non-Brahmin movement and the Justice Party have an analogous origin story to the Aikya Kerala movement. Their petitioning against the Brahmin representation in positions of power in the colonial administration started among the non-Brahmin elites. The percolation of this into the masses, however, was relatively swift. In a couple of decades, the emergence of Dravidian movement from the Justice Party championed the Tamil cause that transcended caste by some measures. This, Singh argues, proved to be the most critical reason for the transformation of Tamil Nadu. It helped increase the state’s emphasis on health, education and general welfare of the Tamil people. A feeling of “my state” among the people of a state with respect to their linguistic in-group seems to make that state view public goods, such as health and education, as something that’s beyond a zero-sum game between competing communities.

In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, subnationalism in the post-independence era partly swapped out Brahmins for New Delhi for their out-group. Further, as Singh argues, the elite who started these subnationalism movements for their own sake seem to evolve into a position of having an even greater stake in improving conditions for the masses. Subnationalism transforms the identity of the most downtrodden sections of society in the minds of the elite as “our people.” The evidence that Singh cites to support her case are editorials from Malayala Manorama in the 1890s. Their call for the education of untouchables is impactful and eye-opening.

The contrast with Uttar Pradesh in terms of the absolute absence of subnationalism from its politics is striking. That the state simply could not come up with a name for itself and instead settled on the generic Uttar Pradesh retaining the shortened version UP, is illuminating. This short form had earlier stood for United Provinces, a name the British had used. The linguistic struggle in Uttar Pradesh was not to establish an identity for people across the state was the case in Tamil Nadu or Kerala. Instead, it was a struggle between Hindi and Urdu, which was a proxy for conflict between Hindus and Muslims.

The fact that Uttar Pradesh, then the United Provinces, was one of the better-administered provinces in British India is a reminder that its status as a laggard state is a recent one. The absolute absence of an identity at the state level, Singh argues, has resulted in most government programs being seen as preferential treatments to some groups. This continues to the present day when governments of Mayawati are seen to provide Dalits with special assistance while SP governments are seen to provide Yadavs with advantages. In Tamil Nadu and Kerala, by contrast, most government services are universal in nature and are seen as such.

Prerna Singh. Credit: prernasingh.net

Rajasthan and Bihar are the two other states Prerna Singh considers in some detail. These two fall somewhere between the two extremes discussed. Rajasthan had a Rajput elite against whom there has been some consolidation in the late 20th century. Similarly, there has been a slow movement towards an identification with Rajasthan and not the erstwhile princely states that made up the state. These small factors have added up and correlate with greater spending on education in Rajasthan in recent times. However, the deep feudal background and the place of Rajputs has not been fully overcome. Similarly, Bihar under Nitish Kumar, has made some strides towards subnationalism. But those are far too little and too late. It would be interesting to watch these two states if and how they pull away from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in terms of social development.

To quantitatively support her theory, Prerna Singh uses an interesting technique. A seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) that she runs reveals that subnationalism has a positive impact on social spending in general. States with greater degrees of subnationalism have a greater portion of their expenditure directed towards health and education. Further, subnationalism seems to correlate to lower infant mortality rate and other health outcomes. The regression technique, used cleverly and carefully, separates out chronology into 5 year time intervals to track this. The one criticism that a very interested reader may have about this book though is that the data with which Singh performed the analysis is not available for recreating the results. The reader is also left wanting more discussion in greater detail on the mathematical model adopted.

This use of subnationalism as it relates to welfare is new and interesting for several reasons. It punctures the nationalist argument of ‘India first’ that has gained currency recently. If anything, we now have evidence to explicitly suggest this approach is likely to make any given state significantly worse off. The BJP, which has at times been the most vocal proponent of a nationalistic approach, is strong exactly in those states where there’s no strong linguistic identity and there’s an absence of subnationalism. Those are also the states that lag behind in social development. It makes one wonder about the cause and effect relationship between the politics and development. The other aspect this book helps us understand is why Dalit parties don’t do well in states with a high degree of subnationalism. In both Kerala and Tamil Nadu, they are minor players, for instance. Perhaps this can be explained by subnationalism tapering over the fissures of Dalit identity at the ballot box. The political rhetoric of Dalit parties in Tamil Nadu, for example, are often indistinguishable from the Dravidian rhetoric of Tamil nationalism.

The implications for policy from this book are many. The most important of them is that the central government should not involve itself in the daily administrative business of a state. Or formulate national level policy for local problems. For instance, the idea of a national ‘Swach Bharat’ campaign is bound to fail if we view it through this prism. The empirical evidence of subnationalism also suggests a relaxed attitude to nationalism may help improve the lives of people while a homogenous idea and an aggressive approach may only make for a more illiterate and unhealthy society. Allowing for greater association with units of linguistic and regional diversity with lower association with nationalism may end up achieving greater cohesion, counter-intuitively. India viewed thus is a useful coming together of states rather than a nation state with constituent non-negotiable parts. In terms of electoral politics, it would have been a useful data point had the National Front or United Front governments lasted longer than they did. Perhaps their approach to nationalism would have been more relaxed than either national party and thus would have allowed for better outcomes in social development.

Nilakantan R.S. works as a data scientist for a tech start-up and looks at politics from that vantage point.