Political Issues

Since independence in 1947, South Asian countries have had much success in peacefully resolving conflicts, smoothing potentially bloody transfers of power, and nurturing vibrant public debate over the issues of the day. However, in many cases supporters of opposing political ideologies—for instance, religious freedom versus a religious state—have tried to resolve their differences through violence. The most successful paths out of these conflicts have been those in which opposing groups managed to compete peacefully in democratic elections. Nevertheless, every South Asian country and every foreign country that has intervened in the region’s politics have missed opportunities to resolve conflicts through democratic means, resorting instead to the use of force (Figure 8.31A, B). A particularly virulent source of conflict within all South Asian countries is corruption, often linked to purposeful bureaucratic inefficiency, especially the soliciting of bribes to perform a service. A number of movements to address conflict and corruption are gaining acceptance and momentum, especially among the increasingly politically aware middle class, who, because their jobs are now more often in the private sector, have the courage to challenge government officials.

FIGURE 8.31 Photo Essay: Power and Politics in South Asia Most armed conflicts in South Asia have been sparked by governmental authoritarianism that eroded political freedoms. Supporters of political opposition groups have faced disenfranchisement, imprisonment, and sometimes execution. However, in some cases, growing respect for political freedoms has paved the way for peaceful reconciliation between former combatants. 8.31a Courtesy Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images, 8.31b Courtesy AFP/Getty Images, 8.31c Courtesy NASA, 8.31d Courtesy R. Fox Photography/Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images

Religious Nationalism

The association of a particular religion with a particular territory or political unit—be it a neighborhood, a city, or an entire country—to the exclusion of other religions, is commonly called religious nationalism. The ultimate goal of such movements is often political control over a given territory.

Although both India and Pakistan were formally created as secular states, religious nationalism has long been a reality in both countries, shaping relations between people and their governments. Rejecting the idea of multiculturalism, and referring back to the days of Partition, India is increasingly thought of as a Hindu state, while Pakistan calls itself an Islamic Republic, and Bangladesh a People’s Republic. In each country, many people in the dominant religious group strongly associate their religion with their national identity.

In India, urban men from middle- and upper-caste groups are the predominant supporters of Hindu nationalism (sometimes called Hindutva). Hindutva proponents not only promote Hinduism, they fear the erosion of their castes’ political influence and particularly resent the extension of the quota system for government jobs and admission to universities to lower-caste groups. Conflict results because politically mobilized lower castes and members of other religious groups are no longer willing to follow the dictates of the dominant castes.

Political parties based on religious nationalism have gained popularity throughout South Asia. Although their members think of these parties, such as the Bharatiya Janata Parishad (BJP) in India, as forces that will purge their country of corruption and violence, they are usually no less corrupt or violent than secular parties.

Movements Against Government Inefficiency and Corruption

In recent years, some, frustrated by government inefficiency, corruption, religious nationalism, caste politics, and the failure of governments to deliver on their promises of broad-based prosperity, have formed political blocs for reform. Bureaucrats who demand bribes have lately been the focus of such activism. Confronted by a bureaucrat who asked for nearly $200 to issue a legitimate income tax refund, one Indian couple in Bangalore launched the Web site I Paid a Bribe, aimed at collecting information about crooked officials. The idea quickly caught on and such sites are now in more than 17 countries. A more militant anticorruption crusader in India is Anna Hazare of Maharashtra, a former military man who advocates that those convicted of corruption lose a hand as punishment. Although most Indians quickly backed off such extreme measures, Hazare, despite his extremism, has attracted a following in the new middle class, especially among educated women, who are increasingly active in politics.

Two aspects of the high-tech revolution in South Asia are likely to make corruption more difficult for bureaucrats and elected officials. The first is the spread of cell phones and their use in banking and money transfers, which will now be more traceable. The second is the Aadhaar Project, an ambitious effort to provide all 1.2 billion Indians with a unique photo/digitized ID card (UID). By October of 2012, a total of 208 million had been issued, with complete coverage of India expected before 2020. The UID project is designed to facilitate the distribution of government benefits of all types, many of which currently fail to reach the poorest people because there are few formal records that can be used to identify them. Currently, much of the money intended to reach these people ends up in the hands of corrupt officials.

The Growing Influence of Women and Young Voters

In the state elections of 2012, women and young voters were particularly active, coming to the polls in large numbers, with specific issues and candidates in mind. In several of the largest states, voter turnout was 50 percent higher than in the past. The anticorruption movements, mentioned, widely covered in the press and by Web sites, apparently motivated voters. Large numbers of new voters, at least a third of whom are 18 to 19 years old, have recently registered to vote. These educated and urbanized voters, male and female, who have far more access to information than had voters in the past, could bring in a new political era.

Power and Politics

In some parts of this region, conflicts have been made worse by an unwillingness on the part of governments and warring parties to recognize the results of elections, or even to let issues come to a vote. In some cases conflicts have been defused, at least in the short run, by holding elections and letting former combatants run for office.

The most intense armed conflicts in South Asia today are regional conflicts, in which nations dispute territorial boundaries or a minority actively resists the authority of a national or state government. Most of these hostilities represent failed opportunities to resolve problems through the democratic processes.

Conflict in Kashmir

Since 1947 and the post-independence dividing of India and Pakistan, between 60,000 and 100,000 people have been killed in violence in Kashmir. At the root of the violence is a struggle for territory between India and Pakistan, neither of which are willing to let the people of Kashmir resolve the dispute democratically (see the Figure 8.31 map).

Kashmir has long been a Muslim-dominated area, and in 1947, some Kashmiris believed that for this reason it should be turned over to Pakistan. Although the Hindu maharaja (king) of Kashmir at the time wanted Kashmir to remain independent, the most popular Kashmiri political leader and significant portions of the populace favored joining India. They preferred India’s stated ideals of having a nonreligiously based government to Pakistan’s less robust safeguards for secularism. When Pakistan-sponsored raiders invaded western Kashmir in 1947, the maharaja quickly agreed to join India. A brief war between Pakistan and India resulted in a cease-fire line that became a tenuous boundary that is still being debated.

Pakistan attempted to invade Kashmir again in 1965 but was defeated by India. India and Pakistan are technically still waiting for a UN decision about the final location of the border (see Figure 8.31C). The Ladakh region of Kashmir (see the Figure 8.1 map) is the object of a more limited border dispute between India and China.

After years of military occupation, most Kashmiris now support independence from both India and Pakistan. However, neither country is willing to hold a vote on the matter. Anti-Indian Kashmiri guerrilla groups equipped with weapons and training from Pakistan have carried out many bombings and assassinations. Blunt counterattacks launched by the Indian government have killed large numbers of civilians and alienated many Kashmiris.

Another complication in the Kashmir dispute is the fact that both India and Pakistan—which came close to war against each other in 1999 and again in 2002—have nuclear weapons. Because of the nationalistic fervor of the protagonists, many see the conflict in Kashmir as more likely to result in the use of nuclear weapons than any other conflict in the world. Analysts agree that any use at all of nuclear weapons would have severe repercussions for all on Earth.

War and Reconstruction in Afghanistan

In the 1970s, political debate in Afghanistan became polarized. On one side were several factions of urban elites, who favored modernization and varying types of democratic reforms. Opposing them were rural, conservative religious leaders, whose positions as landholders and ethnic leaders were threatened by the proposed reforms. Divisions intensified as successive governments, all of which came to power through military coups, became more and more authoritarian. Political opponents were imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the thousands, resulting in a growing insurgency outside the major cities.

In 1979, fearing that a civil war in Afghanistan would destabilize neighboring Soviet republics in Central Asia, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Rural conservative leaders (often erroneously called “warlords”) and their followers formed an anti-Soviet resistance group, the mujahedeen. As Afghan resistance to Soviet domination increased, the mujahedeen became ever more strongly influenced by militant Islamist thought and by Persian Gulf Arab activists who provided funding and arms. At the time, the United States, still searching for Cold War allies against the Soviet Union, joined with Pakistan in supporting the mujahedeen. Moderate, educated Afghans who favored democratic reforms fled the country during this turbulent time, hoping to go back eventually when peace returned.

In 1989, the Soviets, after heavy losses—14,000 Soviet soldiers killed and billions of dollars wasted—gave up and left Afghanistan. Anarchy prevailed for a time as mujahedeen factions fought one another, adding to the 1.5 million civilians and combatants killed in the war with the Soviets.

In the early 1990s, a radical religious, political, and military movement called the Taliban emerged from among the mujahedeen. The Taliban wanted to control corruption and crime and minimize Western ways—especially those related to the role, status, and dress of women—introduced in earlier decades by the urban elites and reinforced or made more extreme by the Russian occupation. The Taliban wanted to strictly enforce shari‘a, the Islamic social and penal code (see Chapter 6). Efforts by the Taliban to purge Afghan society of non-Muslim influences included greatly restricting women (see pages 441–442), promoting only fundamentalist Islamic education, and publicly banning the production of opium, to which many Afghan men had become addicted, all the while privately promoting its sale to raise funds for their side. By 2001, the Taliban controlled 95 percent of the country, including the capital, Kabul. 198. TALIBAN INSURGENCY FUELED BY POPPY CULTIVATION

Following the events of September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies focused on removing the Taliban, who were giving shelter to Osama bin Laden and his international Al Qaeda network. By late 2001, the Taliban were overpowered by an alliance of Afghans, supported heavily by the United States and the United Kingdom and eventually by NATO (see the Figure 8.31 map).

In 2003, the United States launched the war in Iraq that diverted national attention, troops, and financial resources away from Afghanistan. Almost immediately the Taliban were back again, effectively thwarting the ability of Afghanistan’s new government to ensure security and to meet the needs of people outside Kabul. Based in rural areas in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Taliban are now aided by widespread distrust of the government in Kabul, which is seen as corrupt (see Figure 8.31A). It appears that most people in Afghanistan favor democratic government based on Muslim principles, but functionally flawed elections beginning in 2004 have resulted in an ever-lower voter turnout, diminishing from 7.4 million in 2004 to 3.2 million in 2010. The next presidential elections will be held in 2014.

In May of 2011, bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in the town of Abbottabad, Pakistan. Another raid killed the next-highest Al Qaeda commander, and sporadic drone attacks killed both combatants and civilians. Because the United States took these actions without the knowledge or consent of Pakistani authorities, they suggest a weakening of the U.S.–Pakistani alliance in the so-called War on Terror. With the threat from Al Qaeda seemingly diminished, calls within the United States for a faster withdrawal from Afghanistan increased; withdrawal is now underway and scheduled to be completed in 2014 (see Chapter 2), though the withdrawal is unlikely to be total.

Sri Lanka’s Civil War

The Singhalese have dominated Sri Lanka since their migration from Northern India several thousand years ago. Today they make up about 74 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 20.5 million. Most Singhalese are Buddhist. Tamils, a Hindu ethnic group from South India, make up about 18 percent of the total population of Sri Lanka. About half of these Tamils have been in Sri Lanka since the thirteenth century, when a Tamil Hindu kingdom was established in the northeastern part of the island. The other half were brought over by the British in the nineteenth century to work on tea, coffee, and rubber plantations. Some Tamils have done well, especially in urban areas, where they dominate the commercial sectors of the economy. However, many others have remained poor laborers isolated on rural plantations.

Upon its independence in 1948, Sri Lanka had a thriving economy, led by a vibrant agricultural sector and a government that made significant investments in health care and education. It was poised to become one of Asia’s most developed economies. But, driven by nationalism, Singhalese was made the only official language and Tamil plantation workers were denied the right to vote. Efforts were also made to deport hundreds of thousands of Tamils to India. In the 1960s, the government shifted investment away from agricultural development and toward urban manufacturing and textile industries, which were dominated by Singhalese. By 1983, the Tamil minority, lacking political power and influence, chose guerilla warfare against the Singhalese, mounting an army known as the Tamil Tigers.

For more than 30 years, the entire island was subjected to repeated terrorist bombings and kidnappings. Peace agreements were attempted several times, but in the end it was an overwhelming military victory by the government, combined with an effective crackdown on international funding for the Tamils, that forced the Tamil surrender in May of 2009. However, dissatisfaction with the peace process has resulted in an ongoing flow of Tamil and other refugees from Sri Lanka (see Figure 8.31B).

Despite long years of violence that severely curtailed the tourist industry, economic growth in other sectors has been surprisingly robust in Sri Lanka. Driven by strong growth in food processing, textiles, and garment making, Sri Lanka is today one of the wealthiest nations in South Asia on a per capita GDP basis and provides for the human well-being of its citizens.

Nepal’s Rebels

After a civil war that ended generations of monarchy, Nepal has endured political turmoil. An elected legislature and multiparty democracy were introduced into Nepal in 1990, but until 2008 a royal family governed with little respect for the political freedoms of the Nepalese people.

In 1996, Maoist revolutionaries, inspired by the ideals of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong (but with no apparent support from China), took advantage of public discontent and waged a “people’s war” against the Nepalese monarchy. After a decade of civil war, during which 13,000 Nepalese died, the Maoists had both military control of much of the countryside and strong political support from most Nepalese. Persistent poverty and lack of the most basic development under the dictatorial rule of the latest monarch, King Gyanendra (see Figure 8.31D), led to massive protests that forced Gyanendra to step down in 2006. Soon thereafter, the Maoists declared a cease-fire with the government. In 2008, the Maoists won sweeping electoral victories that gave them a majority in parliament and made their former rebel leader prime minister. Then, in May of 2009, when his many conditions for reforming Nepalese society remained unmet, the Maoist prime minister, in a tactical parliamentary move, resigned and took his party into opposition against a new prime minister and his weak 22-party coalition. Although the Maoist opposition agreed to participate in writing a new constitution, divisive issues relating to power sharing and dividing the country into ethnic states have obstructed the creation of a broadly acceptable constitution. Observers concur, however, that if the various factions can see that peaceful democratic processes will give them a voice, Nepal will probably not return to civil war. 200. FUTURE OF NEPAL’S KING GYANENDRA IN QUESTION

Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai in 2008

A 3-day series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 left 160 dead in luxury hotels, a Jewish center, and a railroad station. The attacks continue to muddy Indian relations with Pakistan, where the plot was hatched. The attacks apparently are only distantly linked to religious nationalism as it has played out since 1947. They appear, on the one hand, to be related to Islamic militancy centered in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the other hand, investigations have revealed that the terrorists were impoverished young men from Punjab recruited by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group, with origins based in the Kashmir dispute that is suspected of links with Al Qaeda. There is little doubt, however, that unchecked religious nationalism in the region helps create the antagonistic context for such violence.