There is much to learn from India’s experiment with federalism but Nepal shouldn’t imitate the Indian model blindly because its history is different from India’s, because Indian states do not have uniform centre-state relationship, and also because India’s federalism is still a work in progress.

When the British arrived in India, they imposed English after the Education Act of 1935, a change of policy from the Orientalists’ emphasis on continuing the native languages, including Persian and Sanskrit, to the Anglicisits’ emphasis that it was only by imposing English that the British could both “civilise” the Indians and perpetuate their rule over India forever by creating a class of English-knowing Babus as intermediaries between the Indian masses and their British masters.

After Lord Curzon, the megalomaniac, ambitious Viceroy, divided Bengal into East and West in 1905, linguistic and religious consciousness emerged as a gradual but powerful force of territorial identity. While Bombay and Madras Presidencies remained intact until after Independence, Bengal split again in 1912 when Bihar and Orissa separated from it for administrative convenience as powerful Bihari leaders emerged to convince the British of Bihar’s separation. Then Orissa split from Bihar in 1935, which the Oriyas still celebrate as their Independence Day to the consternation of Biharis who live in Orissa.

Leading up to 1947, the gradual emergence of linguistic, cultural and ethnic consciousness as markers of territorial identity received a severe shock when Muslim League under Jinnah demanded separate nation-state in the form of Pakistan. The Indian leaders like Nehru and Ambedkar didn’t have, for various reasons, any specific ethnic attachment to any specific state. Nehru was a third or fourth generation migrant in UP from Kashmir and Ambedkar, despite his home in Maharashtra, was a Dalit and so invested more in his all-India Dalit identity than in his Mahashtrian identity unlike the Marathi Manoos in Shiv Sena these days. Even though Sardar Patel was rooted in Gujarat, he didn’t care about ethnicity-based state identities for three reasons: a) he had the urgent task of diluting or merging over 500 principalities into the Indian Union; b) the trauma of Partition was too fresh and too scary for the integrity of India; and c) Gandhi came from Gujarat and had always loomed over India as a national figure, advocating Hindi and national identity over provincial partisanship despite writing his public statements in Gujarati.

All these reasons made the central leaders sceptical and weary of splitting India into provinces based on ethnicity, religion and language. But there were strong centrifugal forces at work at the same time in the South, in the West and in the North-West and the North-East. Andhra split from Tamil Nadu in 1953 only after the death of Telugu activist Potti Sreeramulu on hunger-strike and became a full state in 1956. In the North-East, prolonged insurgencies and struggles carved out Nagaland (1963), Meghalaya (1972), Mizoram (1987) and other states from Greater Assam.

But this fissiparous tendency and parochial violence in the name of ethnicity continues to this day. That’s why, you see Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and his nephew Raj Thackray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena at one time or another campaign against South Indians, North Indians and Muslims who they think have overwhelmed Maharashtra (actually Mumbai) and deprived the native Marathi-speakers of jobs and political power. In Punjab in the 1980s, the Sikh separatists waged a violent campaign for several years to have a separate Khalistan only for Sikhs at the expense of Hindu Punjabis, complicating the earlier formation of Punjab based on language. In certain parts of Assam and the North-East, the Bodos and the Nagas, Mizos and other militant groups, such as the ULFA, kill and maim non-Assamese, such as Biharis, Nepalis and Bengalis, in the name of safeguarding the rights of the sons of the soil. And the violence in Kashmir remains a subject of great debate among India’s intellectuals and a concern for the Indian government.

What all this tells us about India’s management of multiplicity through federalism is that it has been a painful learning process. It has seldom been free from violence, ethnocentrism and xenophobia. Nepal, therefore, cannot copy the Indian model of allocating states in the name of ethnicity, language, culture and so on but learn from it in order to do it better. Why? There are several reasons: one, it took almost a century for India to come to terms with diversity in the form of federalism. Nepal can do without the prolonged toil, blood, and tears by planning and envisioning well ethnicity-based multiethnic federalism.

Two, in India, the British manipulated state formation and ethnicity for domination and, after Independence, the central level leaders conceded the federal structure based on cultural identity as giving in, under duress, after much violence, agitation, hunger-strike and threat. The process of state formation in India was seldom amicable, always laced with bitterness, blood, tears and sacrifice for those who got the states and loss for those who had profited from the status quo. Even the upper-caste majority Uttarakhand had to agitate for years, but the adivasis of Jharkhand struggled for decades before they were granted the status of a state.

Three, there was little vision or foresight at the time of framing the Indian constitution in imagining a decentralised India because of the historical reasons of Partition, the need to integrate quasi-independent principalities, including the recalcitrant Hyderabad, resistant Goa, Daman and Diu, and militant Kashmir. Or, the Indian leaders like Nehru and Gandhi were too embedded in the European idea of unitary nation-state and viewed decentralisation with suspicion as a result of their colonial experience. Four, Indian model of federalism is still a work in progress.

The fringe states, such as Sikkim, Kashmir and many North-Eastern states have restrictions on outsiders to buy property or start business. In one sense, it’s to protect the threatened local groups but it becomes a problem when an Indian from outside who lives in the state for decades serving the local population still remains an outsider in legal status. Such a provision violates a person’s right to live and make life where he or she has worked for decades or one’s entire life. There has to be a fine balance between protecting the local population’s rights and recognising the human rights of the outsiders to work and prosper wherever one finds work or wants to live.

But such complications don’t exist in Nepal. Nepal had no direct British rule. Its dominant population of hill high castes is only 30 percent of the population. And there has been no history of Partition or any ethnic group that has had an international historical memory like the Muslims to insist on separate nation-state like Pakistan. Nor does Nepal have big ego majority leaders like Nehru who tower over everybody else and eye for the top post no matter the cost to the nation. And there is the Constituent Assembly that represents many castes and ethnicities without any party commanding an overwhelming majority.  

In a situation like this, there is room for much debate and discussion over various aspects of federalism. There is much space for listening to marginalised groups’ grievances and examining the historical injustice. And also, there is much space for the majority marginalised groups to listen to the now dominant hill high castes about their fears and concerns about a future Nepal in which they will not only be minority but also become no longer dominant. Based on this reciprocal dialogue, the CA can come up with a constitution of federalism that addresses Nepal’s complex ethnic, caste and gender mosaic with complex solutions.

At least, Nepal hasn’t witnessed a major trauma in the name of ethnic justice even though the unitary rule of the Shah dynasty and its champions, such as Jung Bahadur and King Mahendra, have caused much damage to interethnic harmony by marginalising many ethnic groups. And this moment needs to be capitalised before widespread ethnic discontent and bloodshed ensues. But if there is foul play, trying to hoodwink the marginalised, then the ensuing mess will engulf both the dominant minority group and the marginalised majority. But before that, there is time to act and take control of the situation through negotiation and dialogue to carve out a federal structure suitable to Nepal’s history, geography and demography.

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