Who am I?

Oped >> Opinion

SUMIT SHARMA SAMEER

NOV 02 - My hometown Janakpur is the heartland of the Tarai. Janakpur is a town with a rich tradition, culture and literature. It is also known as Mithila. The goddess Sita is also called Mithila in Hindu scripture. Mythology suggests that Janakpur was named after Sita. The Maithili language is much used in Janakpur as a general mode of conversation. The ordinary people speaking Maithili and practicing the distinct culture of Mithili are the indigenous people of Janakpur.

Since I was born and brought up in Janakpur, I have many Madhesi friends. Unfortunately, I do not belong to Madhes as defined in today’s Nepali political discourse. My forefathers were Pahadi, people from the hills. My grandfather migrated to Janakpur. Personally, I have not been to the hills, my ancestral place, even once. But today I do not belong to Madhes either. In present-day Nepal, I have been left with no regional identity. I am a displaced person in my own country.

The revolutions that have taken place many a time in Nepal guaranteeing its citizens their identity and prosperity have left its citizens with none. If the revolutions and social movements are meant for a collective identity, where is my identity? What is my identity? Many ordinary people of hill origin have migrated from the Tarai. Thousands of Nepali people today are internal migrants in their own country.

Recollecting his childhood memoirs, Amartya Sen beautifully captures how human beings transformed themselves into monsters during the Hindu-Muslim riots that took place in India in 1940, just for the sake of their identity. That shocking experience could never escape his mind. It was difficult for him to convince himself about the madness that was displayed by both Hindus and Muslims in the name of religion. In his classic book Identity and Violence, he questions how it is possible for human beings living together for centuries to kill each other only for the sake of their religion. How could a single variable religion define a community or individual in its entirety?

The social movements must be cooperative, driven by combined strength towards collective transformation. Our social movements are neither collective initiatives nor collective transformations. The Dalits have excluded other caste groups. Madhesis have excluded non-Madhesis. Women have excluded men. Indigenous people have excluded others in their movement.

All these social movements are for inclusion and equal rights and dignity. How can a movement achieve inclusion when it begins with exclusion? How can a movement achieve respect when it shows disrespect towards others? How can a movement achieve a common purpose when its purposes are only limited to a single caste, community or ethnicity?

Is it not true that providing opportunities only to the community leaders of a deprived ethnicity means depriving other ethnic communities and leaders of the same opportunity? Are we not facilitating the creation of oppressed classes for tomorrow in our process of emancipating the oppressed classes of today? Is this not a vicious cycle? Or does the survival of our politics and business only depend on the creation of such deprived communities and classes that could prevail in any name at any point of time in history?

The identity-based movements are, therefore, both constructive and destructive in nature. They are constructive because they ensure the rights of certain individuals and communities. They are destructive because during the process of ensuring the rights of certain groups and communities, they exclude other groups and communities from the same rights and privileges. They are destructive because they confine the identity of an individual or a community within a certain limited sphere, defining them with a singular variable.

An individual does not possess a single identity but multiple identities. A Madhesi youth can be a Paswan, Yadav or Jha. He or she can speak Maithili or Awadhi. He or she can be part of any regional or national political party. He or she can either adhere to his or her belief in dowry or stand firmly against such cultural practices. An individual is not only shaped by location or looks, but also by one’s personal thoughts, languages, sex, religion and politics. The same is true with the community, caste and class.

A Muslim king Akbar was liberal compared to Aurangzeb. Akbar gave space for minority rights and ensured religious freedom for all. Aurangzeb, on the other hand, killed all those who were not Muslims. Both of them were Muslims, read the Koran and were part of the same culture, Islam. Yet, both were fundamentally different in their approaches and actions.

A Madhesi leader could be a liberator as well as a despot. An ethnic leader could be honest towards his community and also a traitor to it. A Khas Pahadi could be a hardcore nationalist suppressing other communities as well as a reformist respecting everyone. How rational and scientific would it be to hate an entire community for the injustice perpetuated by an individual or certain interest groups?

Justifying his thesis on class struggle, Marx proclaimed, “The history of human civilisation hitherto is the history of class struggle.” First, society is not categorised or partitioned along the lines of class alone. Second, the history of human civilisation is not only of class struggle, but also of class cooperation. Cooperation has never been Marx’s priority. If he would have prioritised it, one can imagine the fate of his thesis that has been built on the premise of conflict.

Marxism, therefore, is a half-lie for it ignores the half-truth. It categorised society only through the lens of “conflict” in the same fashion as Huntington categorised the world through the lens of “civilisations”. Functionalists are equally wrong to stress that only “cooperation” has been the underlying feature of society. Communitarians are wrong to only emphasise “the community” as the ultimate truth. Ethnicists and linguists are equally wrong to overemphasise “ethnicity” and “language” as a just measurement.

Civilisation, conflict, cooperation, ethnicity, language and community are the variables and determinants that exist within the larger societies in different proportions. Society operates through these determinants. All these are equally important. One overlaps and influences the other. Multiple identities are, therefore, a fundamental feature of any society. In such a context, how can those who live within the realm of the larger society claim to have a single identity?

(The author is a graduate from the London School of Economics and works as a development consultant. This article has been excerpted from his book Unfinished Journey:

Story of a Nation)

Sumit Sharma Sameer