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Text of Lecture delivered by Professor T.K. Oommen on 2nd April, 2006, under the auspices of Foundation for Community Transformation at Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Colombo-07

Political Federalism and Cultural Diversity

Mr. Kumar Nadesan who chaired this event introducing the speaker Prof. T.K. Oommen said that he is a specialist in multiculturalism and diversity. Formerly Dean of the faculty of Social Sciences and has been professor for 26 years, he retired from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2002. He was also President of the International Sociological Association from

Mr. Chairperson, Mr. Devaraj and the rest of my Victims! I am very happy to be here and speaking to you though I grant that Sunday evening is not the right time to listen to lectures. It is the time for one's family and/or to visit the city and friends. When Mr. Devaraj requested me to give a talk on ‘Diversity, Multiculturalism and Pluralism' I readily agreed. But later I learnt that it will be delivered towards the fag end of a workshop which is specifically discussing the third tier of government in the context of democratic decentralization in Sri Lanka. I assume that some of the participants of the workshop too will be present and hence I propose to speak on ‘Political Federalism and Cultural diversity'.

Confucius was once asked: ‘What will you do if you were requested to be the chief of China? He smiled and said: ‘I will first set the terms of reference right'. When we talk about multiculturalism, diversity and a hundred other notions, each one of us may have different connotations in our mind. Therefore, it might be useful to begin with conceptual clarifications of a few terms. As a matter of fact this is a stratagem that I adopt to escape from the real theme, which grips all of you at the moment namely, the Sri Lankan turmoil. Let me make a candid confession that I don't know much about the Sri Lankan situation. I have been listening to people occasionally about the issues involved but would not consider myself as adequately informed. However, I think I have a framework to look at problems of multicultural polities.

I stand before you with considerable trepidation as I am addressing a group of academics and activists who are well informed about the Sri Lankan situation. It is indeed outrageous on my part even to provide a framework to understand Sri Lanka. Therefore, what I will try is to provide a conceptual framework with which one can look at all South Asian countries. If so, that framework can be invoked to understand the Sri Lankan situation also.

Many people tend to dismiss a conceptual framework as academic and theoretical. But I believe that nothing is more practical than a good theory. The test of a good theory is its practicality; therefore you can judge for yourself whether my conceptual framework is of any practical value for Sri Lanka.

One of the complaints that our policy-makers make is that Social Scientists from South Asia simply borrow the conceptual kits from West Europe and North America. I will not address that controversy in this lecture but will acknowledge that many of these concepts are alien and insist that we need to contextualize them to suit our purpose. The most crucial concept in the context of my lecture today is certainly the concept of ‘nation-state' which is West European in its origin. Several of the problems we face stem from the fact that we are willing to accept the notion of nation-state uncritically. The institution of nation-state itself is very recent in human history.

Political scientists among you will know that this idea crystallized with the Treaty of Westphlia signed in 1648. That is, there is a certain historical context in which the idea of nation-state emerged. Concepts to be useful should transcend the specific context of their origin. I want to suggest that while cultural homogeneity was a fundamental aspiration of West European nation-states, cultural diversity is a necessary accompaniment of federal polities. The moment we extrapolate the notion of ‘nation-state' from the West European to the South Asian context we are walking into a trap because there is an enormous gap between the concept and the reality it refers to. Further, federal state is an institutional innovation to govern democratically polities which are culturally diverse.

In West Europe what happened was that culturally diverse polities were homogenized. I shall give just two examples. When the French Republic was constituted only18% of the people spoke what was then called high French. But over a period of time everybody was compelled to learn high French; they were frenchified. When Italy was constituted only 3% spoke sophisticated Italian. So much so the populist Massimo D'Azeglio remarked: ‘We got Italy, we have to create Italians now'! The South Asian situation is entirely different from that of West Europe on two counts. One, South Asian polities are characterized by substantial cultural diversity; some more, some less. Two, their formation occurred in mid-twentieth century when the trade off between equality and identity was rejected by the cultural minorities; they insist on individual and collective equality as well as keen on maintaining their collective identities. To grapple with our reality we must critically look at the West European version of ‘nation-state'; I would even say that we should abandon it.

There are three problems inherent in the institution of nation-state all of which militate against cultural diversity. First, the manner in which the principle of national self determination is practiced. I hope you know that the first Vice-Chancellor of Peradeniya University in Sri Lanka was Sir Ivor Jennings. He said something very evocative and I quote him: ‘The people cannot decide until somebody decides who the people are'. Are the Tamils a people, that is a nation, is a very critical question for Sri Lanka. I am not saying that Tamils are a nation or they are not a nation. But somebody else will have to decide whether the Tamils constituted a nation so that the right to self-determination is conceded to them. This is the paradox. By denying the right to self-determination to various peoples within its territory the so-called nation-state endangers the principle of self-determination; the foundational principle on which it stands!

My country, namely India, has many such problems. When the Nagas or Mizos, small tribal communities in India's Northeast claim that they are nations, the Indian state does not accept it. Such a self-appellation even by the huge Tamil population of India, three times bigger than that of the total population of Sri Lanka, counting 60 million people, is also not conceded. But in terms of my conceptual framework they are all nations existing within a federal polity; in a multi-national state if you will. But why is it that South Asian states are afraid of conceding the label ‘nations' to these people? This is because they are haunted by the West European spectre wherein each nation is supposed to have its own sovereign state. But this is a false imagination; most South Asian nations are state-renouncing nations. To concede the label nation to smaller/weaker cultural entities within a federal polity is but to recognize and respect cultural diversity.

The second problem about nation-state arises when citizenship and nationality are conflated. The Chairman referred to my book: Citizenship Nationality and Ethnicity: Reconciling Competing Identities, which discusses this issue at length. Conventionally citizenship was conferred on the basis of membership in the nation. Some people were not accepted as nationals and hence denied citizenship. But this was/is not uniformly applied even in West Europe, the cradle of nation-states. Let me illustrate. If my ancestors were German and they lived outside Germany for generations, say in Peru, and if I returned, because of blood and soil I get German citizenship. But if I am a Turk and lived for generations on the soil of Germany I cannot easily get German citizenship. British citizens, in contrast, were drawn from four nations-England, Scotland, Wales and part of Ireland. The French citizenship was conferred on those who had undergone frenchification; even non-whites and non-Christians. The point of my argument is that to maintain cultural diversity within the state territory requires de-coupling of citizenship and nationality. This I consider to be inevitable in a multi-national or federal state. For example, in India it would mean conferring citizenship only to Hindi speaking Hindus and they form only 38% of the population!

How do we get out of this impasse? The rationale behind the notion of multi-cultural citizenship is precisely the decoupling of citizenship and cultural identity. The idea of multicultural citizenship did not arise in West Europe, but in the New World (particularly in Canada) because people from all over the world came to the New World and wanted to become citizens in the states to which they migrated. The conventional West European idea of fusing nationality and citizenship would not have worked there.

The idea of multicultural citizenship is fast gaining ground all over the world. But there is a crucial difference between multi-cultural and multi-national polities. We can conceive of several nationalities within federal state, the classic example is that of the erstwhile USSR. In the passport of USSR one could find two entries: Citizenship, designated as ‘Soviet' was common to all but the citizens were differentiated based on their nationalities-Russian, Uzbek and the like. It would be blasphemous in India if I say that my citizenship is Indian but nationality is that of Kerala, because we want to fuse citizenship and nationality. However, India has to learn to decouple the two notions if it has to survive as a true federal state. Cultural diversity and federal polity are two sides of the same coin.

In India we have a single citizenship regime in spite of its staggering cultural diversity. Everyday we see in the newspapers headlines such as ‘Indian national shot dead' or ‘Sri Lankan national arrested' and the like but actually the reference is to citizenship and not to nationality. The conflation of the concepts of state and nation has necessarily led to the conflation between citizenship and nationality. The moment we de-couple them we would have found solutions to several of our contentious issues.

The third problem about nation-states is their relentless pursuit of the ideal of creating culturally homogeneous societies. That is the aim but let us look at facts. Only a tiny proportion of the world's religious, cultural and linguistic groups have formed their own states. Anthony Smith, the British sociologist, in his study of Europe published in 1971 reports that there were 73 nations in Europe at that time but only 24 sovereign states. Britain is a multi-national state; I have told my British audiences several times that there were 3½ nations under the British political roof - the English, Scottish, Welsh and of course, some Irish. Similarly, the Spanish state has several nations within its territory.

Some states are uni-national but several states even in West Europe are multi-national. Indeed, only a precious few of the world's existing states approximated the cultural homogeneity conjured up by the label of nation-state. Jurgen Habermas the famous social theorist, although from Germany, interestingly observed: ‘Citizenship was never conceptually tied to national identity' and hence the feasibility of de-coupling citizenship and nationality. To get out of the present disjuncture between conceptualization and empirical reality I propose the concept of national state. What is the difference between a nation-state and a national state? A nation-state, as I said earlier, relentlessly pursues the goal of cultural homogeneity but a national state by definition is a state which celebrates cultural diversity.

The second conceptual clarification I want to make relates to multiculturality and multiculturalism. Multiculturality always existed. Think of empires, the Ottoman empire for example. But in the Imperial regime everybody did not have the same status or equality. If multiculturality is social fact, multiculturalism is a value orientation to that social fact. If all the cultural groups within a polity are treated equally and are provided with dignity and respect, that is cultural pluralism. Multiculturalism is patently against cultural homogenization, the unique selling point of nation-state. A truly multicultural/multinational society should not only accept diversity but should celebrate it.

Let me also remind you that cultural diversity in itself is not a problem but cultural diversity coupled with inequality is a real issue. If the Sinhalese people and Tamil people in Sri Lanka were equals in all respects, at all times, there would not have been any problem in their co-existence in one polity. Earlier the British colonizers for various reasons favoured the Tamils and they were better off during the colonial era; that is history. But when the national state was installed, the Sinhalese tried to reverse the situation. Therefore, the real issue is not that of cultural diversity as such but inter-nation inequality in a culturally diverse polity. I am fond of saying that cultural diversity plus equality equals cultural pluralism but cultural diversity minus equality leads to hegemony. Therefore, we have to negotiate between cultural pluralism and cultural hegemony in a federal polity.

If we think through it would be absolutely clear that a number of problems in many polities in the world, including yours and mine, emanate from cultural hegemony. How do we tackle these problems is a very pertinent question. Intercultural group inequalities often manifest in differentiation between the majority; the cultural mainstream and minorities. Minorities could be religious, linguistic or tribal. In India 8% of the people are tribal counting 80 million which is as big as the population of united Germany. Marx said famously: ‘quantity makes quality'. It is one thing to deal with a few dozen individuals but another to deal with millions of them. Cultural minorities be they religious, linguistic or tribal are found in federal polities.

I distinguish between two types of minorities - national and ethnic - which is also a crucial distinction like nation-state and national state. National minorities have historically legitimate claims to a homeland. Some of you may concede that the Sri Lankan Tamils constitute a national minority but may ask, how about the ‘Indian Tamils'? I am afraid you rushed into an unwarranted conclusion because a homeland could be ancestral or adopted. When the Americans claim that USA is their homeland we accept it even though they were immigrants. Similarly when Indian Tamils assert that they have adopted Sri Lanka as their homeland how can we deny it? Is it not true that both the Sinhalese and Tamils (Sri Lankan or Indian) came from India, although at different points in time and from different locations? Incidentally, what is the predicament of Veddas, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka today?

Not only homeland but also language can be adopted and rendered national; this is the case of Bhasa Indonesia. National minorities, then are minorities, who have a distinct homeland and language, ancestral or adopted. Viewed thus, ‘nation-ness' is always in process; a group can gradually intensify it and/or abandon it. Both ‘nationalization' and ‘ethnification' are perennial possibilities.

National minorities are minorities only when viewed in terms of the total population of the country. In India at present there are 24 officially recognized languages which are included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The actual number of mother tongues count in hundreds and the biggest language is Hindi. But only 38% Indians speak Hindi which is a minority! That is, national minorities are majorities in their homeland. This fact is very crucial for promulgating proper policies. Because through a process of redrawing the political/administrative boundaries minorities can be transformed into majorities in their homelands. Conversely by dividing communities they can be ethnified. Thus both nationalization and ethnification of minorities are possible through re-drawing political/administrative boundaries.

North and East of Sri Lanka, if I understood the situation correctly, are homelands of the Tamils. By linking the two regions a Tamil majority political unit could be created. Through the state-sponsored Weli-Oya scheme the cultural contiguity of North and East has been blurred; by caging the Tamils into two geographical areas the Tamils have been ethinified. This diminished their political legitimacy for demanding a separate politico-administrative unit within or outside the territory of Sri Lanka.

Let me now turn to the distinction between a national minority and an ethnic minority. An ethnic minority is spatially dispersed in the territory of the national state. Therefore, it cannot make a legitimate claim to any part of the national territory as its homeland. I will give an example from India. I am sure you have heard about the Sindhis; Sindh is in Pakistan. At the time of partition Sindhi Hindus of Pakistan migrated to India and being a business community they are dispersed all over India. Today they count little over two million but to date there is no claim made by the Sindhis of India, even for a district as their homeland, because they are distributed all over Urban India. Please note that Sindhi is a recognized language in India and is included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

In the process of migration, both in-migration and out-migration, a community may get ethnified. It is also possible that because of state sponsored migration or colonization a national minority may be rendered into an ethnic minority. This happened in many states including the New World, when the territories of the natives were occupied by the European colonizers. Ethnic minorities are spatially dispersed minorities which are products of migration and/or state sponsored colonization. Now it should be clear that a national minority may become an ethnic minority through the process I designate as ethnification.

Nationalization and ethnification are two diametrically different processes. One can nationalize a minority by facilitating them to be in their native place and/or by transforming a territory into theirs through transplantation. One can also ethnify a national minority, as I have noted above. But what is important to note is that nationalization is an enabling and ethnification is a disabling process. The state can do both but to the extent it represents mainly the interests of the cultural mainstream it tends to indulge in ethnification. I remember somebody once telling me in Europe: ‘India is such a huge country, there is so much of population and you can easily colonize the Kashmir valley with Hindus and solve the problem'. Yes, India can easily do this and turn the Muslims in Kashmir valley into a minority. But fortunately Indian state has not yet done it. And please remember that India has a single citizenship regime which permits free spatial movement of its citizens to all parts of the country. But this free movement is restricted in the case of some parts of the country - Kashmir valley, Northeast India and tribal areas in Central India. This enables the peoples of these areas to sustain their geographical and cultural integrity and remain as national minorities.

The third point I want to make relates to the difficulty faced by ethnic minorities in sustaining their cultural identity. The possibility of ethnic minorities maintaining their cultural identity, particularly linguistic identity, becomes precarious even if official recognition to their language is given. I told you about Sindhis in India. Studies show that the third generation Indian Sindhis do not speak their language, not even at home, although it is an officially recognized language. Similarly, one can argue that even as Tamil is a recognized second language in Sri Lanka, if it is not used in everyday life, if it is not used in local administration, if it is not made available for school education what good is done by simply recognizing it as a second language? Herein lies the importance of creating a provincial state or a district for a linguistic national minority. The distinction that I make between national and ethnic minorities is crucial in a federal polity. Ethnic minorities cannot pose any serious threat to the federal state as it is dispersed all over. Its striking power is very limited. And yet, the voice of ethnic minorities should be heard and they should be incorporated into the process of governance in democratic polities. Ethnic minorities like Burghers and Muslims of Sri Lanka should find place in relevant and appropriate levels and contexts of decision making.

The example of Urdu speaking people from India is a fit case to illustrate the point I am making. Urdu is the sixth major language of India and spoken by 56 million people according to the 2001 census of India and it is officially recognized. But given its spatial distribution Urdu is not the first language in any of the provincial states. In three or four states it is the second language and the perennial complaint is that Urdu is not make available as a medium of instruction to school going children who opt for it.

On the other hand, Tripura the homeland of tribes is colonized by Hindu Bengalis, largely from Bangladesh. Today Tripura is a Bengali majority state and the Bengalis in Tripura are not perceived as outsiders by anybody although they are immigrants. Bengalis in Tripura have become a national minority. Bengalis are also a huge diasporic community; for example, they are two million in Delhi. However, they cannot claim Delhi as their homeland. This makes clear the importance of distinguishing an ethnic minority from a national minority. Perhaps there are similar cases in Sri Lanka also. Both ‘ethnification' and ‘nationalization' of minorities can occur due to population movements which have implications for their acquiring or losing political power and sustaining cultural identity in a federal state.

The national minorities in turn can be categorized into tow, state-seeking and state-renouncing minorities. The Sri Lankan case is very interesting in this context. In India with the solitary exception of the Tamils no big national group ever asked for its sovereign state. But the Tamil demand is contained now through a process of incorporation into the federal polity. In South Asia most national minorities are ‘state renouncing' minorities. This is a very interesting feature of South Asia and an utter contrast to West Europe. South Asian national minorities in spite of their huge numbers, their own homeland and distinct language rarely demand exclusive sovereign states but they want some level of political autonomy within a federal polity. However, there are a few national minorities which have been state (i.e. sovereign state) seeking. But as compared with West Europe, South Asia is quite different. Napoleon prescribed: ‘For each nation its own state' which led to the proliferatin of nation-states in West Europe. But that has not happened in South Asia. I am from Kerala and a Malayali; we have a distinct culture and language, we have a homeland but Malayalis never demanded a sovereign state. I would say Malayalis are a state-renouncing nation. In fact, many national minorities are happy to be within a federal state.

Just as in South Asia there are a few national minorities which demand sovereign states, in West Europe a few of them renounced sovereign states. The trade off was between sovereignty and autonomy. When the Scottish and Welsh people were incorporated into Great Britain some level of autonomy was conceded but sovereignty was suspended. Whether or not a national minority demands sovereignty depends upon the depth of deprivation it experiences and the quantity and quality of autonomy the federal framework concedes. How much autonomy the federal polity is willing to concede to its national minorities is a very important issue in containing secessionist tendencies.

If the trade off does not work secessionist demand will persist and if the national minority has enough striking power the redrawing of the political boundary is a distinct possibility. If both the federal state and the national minority are accommodative of each others compulsions and aspirations a solution within the federal framework is possible resulting in the formation of a multinational federal polity.

While discussing the cases of national and ethnic minorities I have emphasized mainly the case of linguistic communities. The discussion is as much relevant for tribal communities because they also have accredited homelands and identifiable languages. The main problem of tribal communities is that some of them are too tiny and hence very difficult to have viable provincial states.

In such cases the structures below the provincial states such as Autonomous Regions, Districts or Panchayats are feasible. I once wrote a newspaper article suggesting that if there is a group of 10,000 people speaking a common dialect and occupying an identifiable territory a Panchayat should be granted to them. The idea here is that of creating co-terminality between political and cultural boundaries. And, language is so crucial in this context because communication is a pre-requisite for participative governance. In my understanding the number of tiers in a federal polity should depend upon the number of cultural layers. One can postulate at least four levels - provincial, autonomous regional, district and panchayat - below the federal level. That is, the number of political tiers will depend on the cultural complexity and layers the society has.

My plea is: Do not predetermine the number of political tiers, let the empirical reality dictate the direction in which we will go to determine them. The point is that the federal polity should be conceptualized as a layered political system. And, we must keep in mind the size factor because it is important for financial viability. Having said this let me recall the wise words of W.S. Livingstone, the Canadian social scientist. He writes: ‘The essence of federalism lies not in the constitutional or institutional structure, but in society itself. Federal Government is a device by which the federal qualities of the society are articulated and practiced'.

We in South Asia have to grapple with the most complex empirical reality but we have not yet dared to think of out of box solutions. We are habituated to blame the West and western social science for our failures. It is time that we re-invent western concepts to suit our needs. I have made a modest attempt in that direction.

Let me conclude by noting that a federal polity is not required for a culturally homogenous society; it requires simple administrative divisions depending upon the size factor. Sri Lanka would not need a federal polity if there were only Sinhala Buddhists here. That is, there is an inextricable inter-linkage between the nature of society and the kind of polity or state. Now you can apply my conceptual framework to Sri Lanka and point out the pitfalls, which will help me to eradicate my ignorance about Sri Lanka and improve my framework.

Thank you for your attention.