Argument against secession: Why Arundhati Roy is wrong

The arrest in the US of Ghulam Nabi Fai, boss of the Pakistani-funded Kashmir American Council (KAC), has thrown the spotlight on our pusillanimous liberals. They seem to be willing to mortgage their souls either for a free junket, alleged liberal values, or both. As one has noted before, they are allowing themselves to be used by vested interests who want to sharpen the communal cleavage in Kashmir - and India. From the point of view of those who want to promote bigotry and balkanisation, they are “useful idiots”. It is time someone challenged our liberals on their own fundamental values. And this includes the right for a people to secede. One should also be clear on what is not a liberal value: cowardice. To be unwilling to tell a Fai seminar or a Kashmiri azaadi vendor why he is wrong is the ultimate form of cowardice. Without in anyway sanctifying the human rights violations of the security forces, how can a movement that sends half a million of its own people out of the state, be anyone’s idea of a freedom struggle? The most fundamental liberal value is the right to free expression of speech – within the limits set either by one’s own sense of decency or by law to ensure that our exercise of freedom does not curtail someone else’s. Even if the Pandits are merely seen as quislings of Hindu India, there is strong evidence that the secessionist movement is smothering rights within its own fold. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the bigoted leader of the separatists in Kashmir, has made no secret of the fact that he wants Kashmir to be run as an Islamic state – if it gets its azaadi. So, he is no liberal by any stretch of imagination. Early this month, he was railing against a rap group led by MC Kash, who caught the imagination of Kashmir’s stone-throwing youth last summer when he sang: “When freedom of speech is subjected to strangulation, I protest”. Now, he can sing only under police guard. Geelani & Co think singing is un-Islamic. Liberals, please speak up. We can’t hear you.  Now let’s look closely at the idea of secession itself. Where does it come from? It comes from the fundamental declaration of human rights. The logic underpinning secession is this: every individual is free to be what he wants to be, subject only to the limitation that he does not transgress other people’s rights. What an individual is entitled to, groups of similarly committed individuals are also entitled to. This is where the right to secession comes from. But if individual freedom is circumscribed by other people’s right to the same freedom, there are clearly limits to secession too. In fact, the right to secede exists only for those who will protect the rights of those who disagree with them, those who do not want to secede. It is not for those who will curtail this freedom. We are not talking here merely of the ethnic cleansing of Pandits from the Valley, but also the limitations imposed on other Muslims by the secessionists themselves. It is customary to view secession in uni-dimensional terms – it is either based on race, or religion or language or some single point of differentiation between groups. But secession leads not only to ethnic separation, but the creation of new minorities of several kinds. It follows that those who want to secede must guarantee and demonstrate not only that they are willing to let their current minorities be, but also give the same demonstrable guarantees for minorities that may emerge in future. The Kashmiri rap singer is a minority not by religion, but by cultural and other values. Why was his freedom circumscribed? Are only religious minorities entitled to secede, or also other kinds of minorities? This brings me to the third argument – that minorities are contextual and circumstantial. They keep changing. In Kashmir’s current topography, Hindus and Sikhs may be minorities (by religion), but in a hypothetical Azad Kashmir, it is people with different views or inclinations who will become minorities. Tomorrow, illiberal demagogues may turn on women, or gays, or Communists, or anybody. Liberals, please note. Racist, communal and authoritarian ideas are not about freedom. Only true democrats are entitled to secede. But look closer, and even this logic is worrisome. The whole point of secession is to say that I am different from you, and so I need to have my own country. By stating this, we have already demonstrated our narrow view of ourselves, our xenophobia, our potential for bigotry. The Norwegian extremist who killed scores in Oslo on Friday was essentially seceding from his country’s liberal ideology by saying “I don’t want immigrants here. I am against minorities.” Secessionist thinking is essentially driven by fear and bigotry. It diminishes us as human beings when we say “I can’t tolerate you” to someone else. Coming back to the practical argument, if  today’s minorities can become tomorrow’s majorities after “azaadi”, they will again have to grant the same right to secede to their new minorities – and we are not merely talking religious minorities here. Where does the process end? With each man setting up his own island republic, all by himself? The idea of secession is clearly deeply flawed, and the more logical thing is to demand human rights within an existing political dispensation, with widespread devolution of political and economic power. The history of the world shows that whenever people have separated themselves claiming the right to secede there is always more violence. Our own partition showed us that – and we are still bleeding from it. When Yugoslavia broke up, it created an ethnic tinder-box and endless tensions. The same happened with the Soviet Union. New nations and new race- and religion-based countries are relics of the past. They happened during the cold war, when it suited the US and the Soviet Union to carve up their spheres of influence. But look what the Americans themselves did when confronted with secession within? Abraham Lincoln went to war with the American south - his own conservative minorities. He fought for the idea of freedom – which is about living together and sorting out our issues through dialogue and compromise. The reverse example, of unity reducing violence, is provided by the European Union – the first international experiment in a coming together of nationalities voluntarily, without conquest or force. It is also worth recalling how Europe created so many nations historically. In the age of unreason and tribal and ethnic loyalties, Europe’s geography facilitated the creation of separate power centres. Distinct cultural nationalities emerged from this god-given physical separation. But the minute geography became history in the age of globalisation, Europe has come together. In India, geography wills us to be together. Whether we like it or not, we have to make it work. Secession is not an option for us, or the Kashmiris. Secession is a dead end. DEAD-END. So when Arundhati Roy says azaadi is the only thing Kashmir wants, she needs to be a true liberal and ask: what azaadi, whose azaadi? The idea of India is true azaadi. Not the idea of a Muslim-majority or Hindu-majority state.