Indian sectarianism: The cultural and the political

Article by Dr Ajay Gudavarthy

July 19, 2022

Indian sectarianism: The cultural and the political

There has been considerable debate on Indian secularism but very little on Indian sectarianism. India has remained a ‘divided society’ but without sustained sectarian violence. However, in the last eight years of the current rightwing Modi government there has been sporadic and episodic violence between Hindus and Muslims, but also between caste groups, that looks organised. The question that should interest us in the current context is the equation between politically motivated and engineered violence and its sanction in everyday social beliefs and cultural practices. Is it entrenched social prejudices that produce consent for organised violence or is it politically organised violence that is constructing social consent based on how violence manages to re-signify the meaning of cultural codes?

The case of Indian sectarianism is oscillating between historically entrenched cultural practices and politically produced violence. While there are clear moments of convergence between the two, there is also observable dissonance between them. The dissonance takes shape when either the cultural practices resist violence or when violence distorts, or fails, to re-signify the cultural practices to its own imperatives.

Indian sectarianism is further fluctuating between establishing a low-intensity but a durable regime of sectarian conflicts between caste, cultural and religious communities and converting the existing sectarian conflicts into mass hysteria. Some scholars have already made a prognosis that Indian nationalism has entered a ‘genocidal phase’.[1] It also becomes pertinent to ask if the current regime has gained a cultural hegemony around sectarian strife between Hindus and Muslims, then from where does the need for using organised force and violence emerge? If violence is to establish control, then to ‘rule by exception’ seems to be a compulsion of the modern sovereign forms of governance that borders on the pathological. At such a point, sectarian conflicts look to be more political and less to do with social and cultural aspects. When do they flip from the cultural to the political? Do underlying cultural codes and narratives lend silent support or is exception about declaring autonomy from gaining legitimacy in everyday cultural codes such as memory, symbolism, myths and mythology.

Pew Research Centre, in a recent survey on tolerance in India, arrived at some intriguing findings that can potentially unlock some of the dilemmas that this essay begins with. The report argued that Indians in general (both Hindus and Muslims) valued diversity as a principle but preferred what it referred to as ‘living together, separately’.[2] The overwhelming majority of a large sample believed that religious and caste communities should live separately in segregated colonies. This, they believe, is essential to preserve their distinct culture and it is not about discrimination. Is this then a re-signified form in which cultural discrimination tends to reproduce itself in modern societies that are globalised and getting rapidly urbanised? Or could one argue that in light of faceless globalisation it is legitimate and even understandable as to why communities wish to preserve themselves as endogamous groups and pine for familiar surroundings? Could groups exist separately without it necessarily being sectarian and discriminatory?

Consider two instances that could throw some light on the underlying complexity. Well-known journalist, P. Sainath who covered rural India for well over three decades did a story that he aptly titled ‘The Glass War’. He pointed out that wayside highway dhabas (shanty restaurants) in the erstwhile undivided state of Andhra Pradesh followed the practice of offering tea in separate glasses for caste Hindus and other ‘lower’ castes.[3] After the local Dalit movement became socially and politically organised, it led protests against the ‘two glass’ policy of the dhabas. In response, the dhaba owners simply switched to disposable (paper/plastic) glasses that made discrimination invisible or rather unnamable. Sectarian practices were pushed into an intangible realm of intention, symbolism and gestures. It is a case of modern sectarian exclusion, which is easy to feel and experience, but difficult to spell and articulate. Much of modern forms of sectarianism in India are pushed into the dark alleys of silence that seem to erupt into violence of various kinds but whose causation is not easy to locate or identify.

The second instance is that of a recent advertisement in news dailies that invited applicants to buy apartments meant exclusively for the Brahmins in the Southern city of Bangalore.[4] While there was some protest against this it was defended as a way of creating familiar living conditions. In fact, food habits and vegetarianism were offered as legitimate reasons for the segregation that are not necessarily discriminatory against meat eaters. In ancient India, Brahmins lived in exclusive agraharas at the heart of the village where non-Brahmins were not allowed to enter. Vegetarianism has become the new template that is at the heart of potential sectarian conflicts in India. Vegetarianism is also being pushed through new scientific evidence on the health benefits, for example in combatting the COVID pandemic. The phenomenon of mob lynching against Dalits and Muslims has overtly to do with consuming beef and covertly with pushing a dominant narrative for vegetarianism. As part of the current Government’s Swatch Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission) public displays of meat are being prohibited in many places. In this case, sectarian conflicts are couched in deep-seated cultural practices, modern/rational justifications, and multiple significations of health, hygiene, and ecology.

The interaction between the politically organised sectarian violence and culturally embedded sectarian tensions are complexly overlaid. Organised political violence is seeking to ground itself in received and historically practiced cultural motifs. Sectarian violence is seeking cultural justification through creating popular narratives, while cultural discrimination is seeking modern and rational justifications. Further, it needs to be noted that Indian sectarianism of religious discrimination and strife is closely linked to other forms of communitarian practices of caste and gender in particular but also language and ethnicity. Religious violence cannot be understood in self-referential terms. Additionally, it is insufficient to make sense of religion, caste and gender vis-s-vis each other. It is equally important to note what is happening internally to each of these identities. For instance, the category of Dalit is undergoing a change and is becoming sub-divided. It is barely a stable category that is able to hold the various sub-groups within. The mutual and common identification created around the practice of untouchability is giving way to internal diversification. This is creating both mobility and strife. It is creating socio-psychological dynamics that are being tied up in the context of religious sectarianism and also in efforts to create a monolithic order. The fear of losing existing social privileges, even if one is located way below in the pecking order seem to be the over-arching anxiety that is referred to in the author’s previous writings on ‘secular sectarianism’.[5]

The ethic of ‘fear of fall’ has been the generic sentiment of neoliberal reforms that spread across the social domain in India replacing the normative imagination in the popular politics of shared ethos. The story of Indian sectarianism is incomplete without understanding how cultural practices and political strategies of polarisation found resonance in the economic model of development. The ‘Nehruvian consensus’ for accommodation and shared ethos found in the discourses of secularism, centrism and socialism were replaced by individual responsibility and ‘Social Darwinism’ and ‘Animal Spirits’ of the market ideals of inclusive social development with exclusive growth-centric narratives. Social democratic parties, such as the Congress, that introduced the neoliberal economic reforms in the 1990s however continued with the ideals of secularism in the social domain. This strategy to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds was rejected and lost the popular mandate.

What replaced it was a ‘predatory state’ that fine-tuned social ethics to market dynamics. It transformed dormant social prejudices and everyday religious practices of the dominant community into militant self-assertion. It constructed the narratives of ‘historical injury’ and ‘appeasement’ of religious minorities. It transformed the spiritual and otherworldly pursuits of religion into an instrumentalised identity. Discourses of individual self-realisation intrinsic to religion and faith got hooked to the ‘possessive individualism’ of the market. Postcolonial arguments of an Eastern ‘way of life’ where ideals of the sacred as against the profane being central to community, ideals of ‘moral economy’ as against bare interests did not seem to resist their appropriation into an aggressive sectarian logic of the right. In fact, the rhetoric of ‘nationalism’, ‘decolonisation’ and ‘civilisation’ were deployed to counter the critique of growing ‘sectarianisation’. In a recent document on ‘India as a democracy’, prepared by the Policy Planning and Research Division of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) after the downgrade of Indian democracy by the global watchdog institutions, it reasserted the ‘Indian way’ on democracy.[6] The document invokes the idea of distinct ‘civilisational ethos’, and argues India is a deeply pluralistic society intuitively an international society. It claimed that the term ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam’ – the world as a family – is deeply entrenched in Indian thinking. Describing Indian democracy as a ‘human institution’, the MEA attempts to place its practice in the ‘civilisational context’ tracing it to ‘panchayats in Ramayana’ and ‘Shanti Parva in Mahabharata’.[7]

Indian sectarianism in its current form is riding on a high dose of symbolism, moral rhetoric and a deep cultural ‘sub-conscious’. Discourses of secularism and constitutionalism have either been appropriated or rendered ineffective. While those struggling to mobilise against the current aggressive sectarianism are not finding a foothold in everyday ethics and emotions, those mobilising sectarianism are struggling to manufacture hysteria. Whether older ideals of secularism and centrism are having an afterlife in this new uneasy equilibrium is something to wait and watch for.

Ajay Gudavarthy is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His forthcoming book is titled Politics, Ethics and Emotions in `New India` (Routledge, London, 2022).

[1] Arjun Appadurai, Modi’s India Has Now Entered Genocidalism, the Most Advanced State of Nationalism, The Wire, January 2022, https://thewire.in/politics/narendra-modi-india-genocidalism

[2] Neha Sahgal, Jonathan Evans, Ariana Monique Salazar, Kelsey Jo Starr and Maolo Corichi, Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation, Pew Research Center, June 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/; Ajay Gudavarthy, Understanding the Role of Religion in Indian Public Life, The Leaflet, July 2021, https://theleaflet.in/understanding-the-role-of-religion-in-indian-public-life/

[3] Shyama Venkateswar, Dalits in India 2000, Asia Society, https://asiasociety.org/dalits-india-2000?fbclid=IwAR25tsYLivkwMwuTPVzGJ1Y_wNIheRNdYbDxMa8l-njT-JDlKyijWNpxtzY; Also, refer, Palagummi Sainath, The borderline of caste, The Hindu, April 1999, and Palagummi Sainath, The Hindu, November 1998.

[4] Shankara Agraharam, The Vedic Village, https://www.vedicagraharam.com/township/plots/?fbclid=IwAR0PW6yZVnlBu8KOL9srAR7zrT9aDfhThyHKHe2x2_3lZCQBFYQS-RAQCow; N. Bhanutej, Housing apartheid in Indian city, Al Jazeera, February 2014, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/2/28/housing-apartheid-in-indian-city?fbclid=IwAR0fD6tFgDTj9ns3rd_cw7H-OD3pAFt-IEPVtUnhxLZoT8KbMuLWFyUvn2g

[5] Professor Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, Subaltern and its Fragments: Aporias of Identity of Politics, Review of Dr Ajay Gudavarthy’s book Secular Sectarianism, Live Encounters, March 2020, https://liveencounters.net/2020-le-mag/03-march-2020/professor-anindya-sekhar-purakayastha-subaltern-and-its-fragments-aporias-of-identity-politicsreview-of-dr-ajay-gudavarthys-book-secular-sectarianism/

[6] Ministry of External Affairs, India: A Dynamic Democracy http://www.mea.gov.in/Uploads/PublicationDocs/184_india-dynamic-democracy.pdf

[7] Anisha Dutta, New India leaders less from English-speaking world, so judged harshly: MEA paper, The Indian Express, February 2022, https://indianexpress.com/article/express-exclusive/new-india-leaders-less-from-english-speaking-world-so-judged-harshly-mea-paper-7784564/

Topics

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India

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Un-Thai lives matter! Thai identity politics as a race war?

Article by Dr Tim Rackett

Spoiler alert: this chapter argues that the royal Buddhist kingdom of Thailand is not a ‘land of smiles’, peaceful and harmonious, but a deeply divided nation. A violent racist society riven with social, political, inequalities, divisions and sectarian ethno-religious conflicts. My hypothesis is the predominant cause of social division and political conflict in modern Thailand lies in a post-colonial racist formation of Thai identity fashioned by an elite Bangkok minority and imposed upon the majority and other ethno-religious and regional populations. What is meant to unify – an imagined community of the Thai race and society – actually divides. Thai national identity, goodness, as we shall see, seems to need a bad enemy-other within or without. From the state point of view there is only one way of being Thai and behaving Thai. Peoples deemed to be un-Thai can, and have been, ‘cancelled’; treated as lives unworthy of living.

In Thailand citizens must be polite, servile and submissive to manifest a true authentic civilised Thai identity.[1] To be Thai is to: worship and unconditionally love the King; love and serve the nation and Thai race; and be a Buddhist. This is “kwam pen Thai”: Thai-ness. A person is born Thai and is a Buddhist subject of a king of ‘pure race from pure blood’ who rules in the name of truth, goodness, purity and virtue. Above politics and the law, a supposed ‘god-king’ descended from the heavens, the King is seen as a sacred incarnation of the nation, drawing on the mystical-magical authority of Indian Brahmanism and Buddhism. Thailand is held together as a nation: “based on ethnic and cultural homogeneity organised around the monarchy. Its nationalism organised around race as spiritually led by the King”.[2] The Thai social and political order is a royal theological one with the King at the apex and its center in Bangkok.

Student and street protests of the last two years reveal an open contestation of Thai culture and the role played by the military and monarchy in Thai society. This can be seen as a rebirth of a subaltern “slow-burn civil war” started by the Red shirts.[3] The ongoing war in ‘Deep South’ of Thailand is a symptom of royal racist rule upon Muslims. Conflict in the southern border provinces from 2004 to April 2022 has claimed 7,356 deaths and 20,898 casualties.[4]

Divisions of skin ethnicity and religion

Elite Bangkokians, mostly wealthier lighter skinned Sino-Thais, consider people with dark skins as low class, ugly and dirty. Rural ethnic Khmer Lao and Southern Thais tend to have darker skins read as a manifestation of ‘inner badness’. Skin colour signifies a person’s social status and moral worth; this comes from Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and ideals. Beauty and complexion reflect merit, moral purity and goodness. Thais call Southern Thais and Muslims “kaek” – a term that subsumes Southern Asians, Malays and Arabs-as they all have darker skins. Keyes shows historically how “kaek” is associated with the Buddhist figure of Evil: ‘Mara’ and dark bearded demons.[5] Thai Muslims and ethnic Malay Muslims are ‘othered’ by religion and skin colour: un-Thai dark non-Buddhists. Skin colour and religion are racialised. In Thai state racism they do not belong and are treated as lesser Thais or non-authentic Thais.

Likewise, in the body-politic person’s origin in Bangkok, the royal centre and sacred ‘head’ of Thai civilisation, or far away in the rural provinces, the dirty ‘feet’, badges them being uncivilised. Coming from the countryside: the North, the Northeast, or Thailand’s ‘Deep South’ signifies low status. Dark skinned country people, people who do not speak Central Thai, especially Northeasterners, are seen by Bangkok elites as morally inferior, uneducated, ignorant and vulgar: “kon bannok” or ‘rednecks’. Predominantly ethnic Lao and Khmer, they are called derogatory names signifying that they are not Thai and not fully human: “aii Lao” and “kwai” – meaning water buffalo. Rural people (Burmese and Cambodian guest workers too) are seen as only fit to be domestic helpers, sex workers, food vendors and taxi drivers. Everyone in Thailand must conform to one uniform way to be Thai in a ‘hierarchical and essentialist model of nationalism marginalising most of the country’s population as inferior, whilst Bangkokians see themselves as superior racially’.[6]

Thai politics works by both assimilating everyone and dividing people against others. People are either: good or bad people, friend or foe. Are you one of us or one of them? An un-Thai enemy-other? Dissent from Thai-ness is not tolerated and can be met with murder in the name of defending the monarchy and Thai society against dangerous and ungovernable others. Others within national borders but outside the boundaries of Thai-ness. Thai national identity relationally needs an enemy – other to fight in order to be itself.[7] The ‘enemy’ can be inside or outside the nation’s body politic, or, can even be an in ‘inner enemy’ nesting in the very heart of the self. What is specific about Thai nationalism is its reactive negative identification placing Thai’s ‘over and above’ and ‘set apart’ from others. The chief determination of what is Thai identity is negative difference: it is not Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Burmese, Malay, Farang, or Khaek. These signify negative attributes, so that only Thai-ness can possesses a full, positive identity and attributes.[8]

Historically, after anti-monarchists, it was communists who were seen as the number one enemy of Thai-ness undermining ‘national security, the institutions of religion and monarchy’. The state passed a law in 1969 making it a crime “to encourage any other person to lose their faith in religion, or any act that destroys the customs and traditions of the Thai race”.[9] People in Thailand are offered the choice: ‘Turn Thai or disappear!’ Many have been disappeared. Political refugee Red shirt activists and government critics; Lese majeste fugitive Surachai ‘Sae Dan’ is feared to have been murdered along with two other men whose bodies were washed up from the Mekong River on 29^th December 2019. Prominent Muslim lawyer, Somchai Neelapaijit, critic of martial law in Thailand’s southern provinces, was disappeared in Bangkok on the evening of 12^th March 2004. Wanchalearm, a pro-democracy activist, fled to Cambodia after the May 2014 military coup in Thailand. He was abducted by unidentified armed men in Phnom Penh on 4^th June 2020.

Thai ‘internal racism of permanent purification’[10]

For a Buddhist nation, Thailand has a tragic history of violence. Rather than non-violent peace making and reconciliation, Thailand’s tradition is of ‘serial massacres’ of individuals and populations and their erasure from social memory. A ‘Thanato-politics’ of extermination of un-Thai others within: in 1972 3,000 communist suspects are believed to have been killed by being burned alive in 200-litre oil drums (while the bodies were burning, truck engines were revved to mask the screams of those who were being murdered;[11] ‘hill tribes’ in the North of Thailand napalmed for alleged communist sympathies and drug-related activities; anti-military dictator demonstrators in Black May 1992 murdered by right wing paramilitary group; Buddhist soldiers killed more than a 100 ethnic Malay Thai Muslims in the siege of the ‘Kru Ze’ mosque in Patani Southern Thailand; and at Tak Bai, Narathiwat on 25^th October 2004, over 78 unarmed protestors died, mainly from suffocation in the back of army trucks.³⁵Or, as a high ranking ex-Thaksin government official I interviewed claimed, their execution was ordered. In April-May 2010, over 90 ‘Red Shirt’ anti-coup unarmed demonstrators were killed by soldiers on the streets of Bangkok in a ‘live fire zone’.

The Thai state protects the superiority and purity of the Thai race by killing in the defence of society and race against impure inhuman, animal, and others.[12] Killing, with impunity, in the name of Thai-ness, those badged with being un-Thai are seen as impurities in need of cleansing. In the modern Thai Buddhist state it is racial purity that justifies murder: “the death of the other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior race…is something that will make life heathier: healthier and purer”.[13] Below we shall see a non-Western form of ‘colonising genocide’ of others within.[14]

To make sense of the notion of a Thai race and Thai racism we have to visit a myth concerning the colonial encounter in 19^th Century Siam royal absolutism, Bangkok elites, and state hierarchical racial formations of identity, which deny ethnic diversity and erase differences.

Thai race and racism in a nationalist myth

The myth is that Siam was a global unique exception in never being colonised by the West due to its special civilisational characteristics: a superior ‘master race’ presided over by semi-divine monarch who outwitted the French and British in the 19^th Century. This is a fiction. Not only that, it is a dangerous illusion as it creates a ‘theology of Thai exceptionalism’, which renders Thais ‘ignorant and narcissistic’.[15] The myth of non-colonisation incites racist views towards other Southeast Asian countries seen as being colonised because they were inferior to Siam.

The colonial encounter and the invention of a Thai race

Absolute power was gained by Siamese ruling elites’ ‘self-colonisation’ to meet the bourgeois standards norms, moral and values of Western civilisation. This was ‘achieved by developing an intense form of internal tyranny, namely, racism subjugating the local populations’.[16] The belief in the Thai as superior race, with other races as inferior, masks Siamese Imperialism and its violent ‘internal colonisation’ of ethno-religious populations who were not Thai. Rama V visited colonies of Singapore, Malaya, Burma, India and Java in 1871-2 with a vision ‘to turn his kingdom into a miniature European colony without the Europeans, making it a modern ‘civilised’ Asian state’.[17] Populations were enslaved by the Siamese elites’ self-colonisation as they felt inferior to the west but superior to local ‘barbarians’ ethno-religious subalterns who they needed to make Siam civilised.

King Chulalongkorn adopted the French’s 1893 conquest of the Siamese royal palace by gunboat, by sending a navy warship to the Patani River in Southern Thailand and imprisoned its last Malay Sultan. Siam’s rule over ‘Malay states became a showcase to demonstrate Siam’s ability to modernise/colonise’ because they are a superior race and civilisation that could modernise itself.[18] Siam wished to compete as an equal with the British colonies. It did this by using law to efficiently rule the native populations-displacing Islamic authority in the South. The Malay savages needed Thai-ifying by Bangkok civility. Siam conducted a racialising ‘inner-colonisation’ of ‘savage jungle others’ outside Bangkok. The Thai race to be civilised needs uncivilised bad and inferior enemy-others in order to be good and superior in the name of the ‘protection of the security of the whole from internal dangers’.[19]

Streckfuss’ analysis shows the birth of the notion of a Thai race.[20] The Siamese royal ruling class in resisting the French used and creatively adapted a Western anthropological not biological concept of race against the French to create a new identity of being Thai, and a territorial state, which would become Thailand.[21] French colonialists saw the Siamese as a lesser race, a ‘mixed and tainted’ minority within Siam vis-à-vis others Chinese, Malay, Lao, Cambodians, Vietnamese, and tribal peoples.[22] For French Indo-Chinese rule the non-Siamese should be under the protection of the French as they were racially oppressed by a “Siamese Lilliputian oligarchy”.[23] The Siamese could only rule the lands with Siamese subjects, but this limited Siam to the Chaopraya River basin. The French 1893 treaty laid claim to their ethnic protégés in an ‘annexation by stealth’ of what used to be Lao and Khmer zones in Siam. The French counted Lao and Cambodians as theirs, entitled to French protection. For the ruling Siamese elite the Lao were seen as the same Thai race, but not the Khmer race who the Siamese ruled. The French using race tried to ‘define the racial Siamese minority out of Siam’, whilst the Siamese responded by inventing a Thai race.[24] The kingdom of Siam became the nation-race or Empire of Thai-land. Race – “chaat” was used to form national identity and belonging as Thai, replacing a Siamese identity.[25] Thai royalty extended racial boundaries to existing territorial limits so that the entire population of the country became Thai subjects. Prince Damrong, Minister of the Interior, stated his aim to “make all the people Thais, not Lao, nor Malay at all”. Others were absorbed and assimilated into the Thai race: a Thai-ification. No more Lao provinces and people, as the Bangkok ruling elite “began to erase the Lao-ethnically, historically, and demographically-from Siam”.[26] A myth of a great Thai race was born. Thai as the same race, but different from: Shans, Lao, Peguans, Annamese, Chinese, and “especially Burmese, Malay and Cambodians originally prisoners of war”. Race and nationality fused together ‘subsumed all the people of Thailand into an imagined “Thai-ness”.[27]

The Thai-ification of the Lao population was a key part of a racist process of assimilating and negating differences, changing Siamese heterogeneous multi-ethnic populations into Thai mono-ethnicity and mono-culture.[28] In the early 20^th Century in Siam one fifth of the population spoke non- Thai languages and over 50 per cent were ethnic Lao. Government administrators were not allowed to call people in North and Northeastern Thailand Lao, these regions were to be integrated and must speak central Thai. Regional identities and ethnic affiliations were erased in an unequal hierarchy. The Lao-Northeasterners have been ‘ethnically negated and socially marginalised’ in an ethnic cleansing of Thai history: erasing the Lao, as if only the Thai race ever existed.[29]

Faith becomes fate: Race and primordial religiosity

Southern Thailand with its Muslim majority population has a long history of resistance to Bangkok’s rule amidst a struggle for autonomy. The provinces of Patanni, Yala and Narathiwat, were a sultanate subjected to internal colonisation into Siam in 1905. The Thai state violently suppressed the Dusun-Nyor revolt by Malay Muslims in 1948 and the Islamic teacher Haji Sulong was disappeared in 1954. Since the massacres of 2004, it appears as a clash of Thai/Buddhist and Muslim groups is occurring in the Deep South.

The work of Michael K. Jerryson and McCargo shows that people learn how to be a Buddhist or a Muslim in southern Thailand in particular ways.[30] Individuals’ ethno-religious identifications and displays of loyalty and affiliation have been constructed as a national security issue by the Thai state and as a means of righteous insurrection by Muslim militants. Mobilising religion transforms security forces into “moral guardians, sacred avengers of the nation, not mere State servants, whose sacred duty is to uphold and protect the integrity of Thai Buddhism.”[31]

Buddhist nationalism incites fury and violence in the South.[32] Malay Muslim insurgents incite hatred and murderous violence against Thais constructed as ‘kafir’ unbelievers, mirroring Thai racism against (Malay) Muslims. Both Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims construct Manichean worlds, each other as incarnations of goodness and badness, in constant negation of a tradition of amicable inter-faith and inter-ethnic community relations. Malay Muslims racist marginalisation and ethno-religious exclusion from Thai-ness drives militants to turn amity into enmity. Islamic religion, like Buddhism, has been politicised to justify killing both Malays, as traitors and collaborators, as well as Thais-as Buddhist oppressors. Southern insurgents resist and rebel as Muslims, their religion is an ethnic marker.[33] Insurgents fight a ‘Patani jihad’ to impose only one way to be Malay-Muslim. Ironically, this is an inversion of the state enforced version of Thai-ness.

McCargo argues that the significance of the southern violent insurgency challenges the legitimacy of the Thai state and “the microcosm of a potentially wide ranging civil conflict in the country”.[34] Solving the conflict, Jerryson argues, will require the “reworking of Thailand’s concept of racial formations,” which act to “displace minority identities by measuring their ethnic and religious identities against the norm of Thai Buddhism.”[35]

Happy endings?

Violence in Southern Thailand: Tolerance and truce making?

The challenge of coexistence is how well people can they live with ‘otherness’ instead of seeking to convert or integrate the ‘others’? Tolerance of different faiths, histories, cultures and identities is needed in Thailand. Grahame Thompson’s audacious argument is that truce seeking is more important than truth seeking in the pursuit of peace.[36] A fixation on justice will lead to an attitude of attributing blame, whereas a truce situation moderates two parties where there is no winner or loser. Thus, political conflict can be moderated by cultivating a style of conduct “that embodies a studied indifference towards difference.”[37] Buddhist or Muslim absolute and cosmic differences become insignificant: de-escalating violent conflict and depolarising identities among social combatants to attempt to secure social peace. Enduring peace is possible if people can relate to each other in shared common humanity, not as symbols of ethnic and religious communities badged with un-Thai otherness. The Thai state would have to govern through equanimity: ceasing to support royal Buddhist nationalism, the King as God, which excludes Muslims and Malays from being ‘true’ Thais and citizens.

The meaning of Thaksin and the Red Shirt Movement for inclusion

Following Ferrara’s astute analysis PM Thaksin and the Red Shirt movement populism arose from addressing social divisions in the North and Northeast embracing those marginalised by the state.[38] Thaksin was deposed by a military coup in 2006 for becoming more charismatic and popular than King Bhumibol (the King already tried to assassinate Thaksin). The subaltern rebellion by the anti-military populist Red shirts against royalist conservative Yellow shirts threatened a ‘slow burn civil war’ because Thaksin’s policies championed diversity and inclusion. Thaksin’s pro-poor rural policies lifted people out being fixed in their place as racially unequal. His power came from below, by popular mandate of the people not an elite imposed from above. Unlike the royal Bangkok elite, Thaksin asked for people’s loyalty not by stressing the virtues of hierarchy, or their duty to accept their station in life, but rather by promising greater equality and opportunity for social and economic mobility. Thaksin’s support was not bound or defined by ethnicity, racist exclusion of ‘less than perfectly Thai’ ethno-regional local identities marginalised by the state. What Thaksin offered was “an affirmation of their ethno-regional pride and yearning for recognition” as equal Thai citizens, not racially inferior subjects.[39] What remains to be delineated is the spiritual modality of Thai racism and purification politics to exit being governed in the name of Thai culture.

Tim Rackett read Sociology at Essex University and studied under Ernesto Laclau, and Paul Hirst at Birkbeck College. His doctorate “Transcultural Psychiatry and the Truth of Racism” is an investigation into the relations between reason, power and truth-telling concerning culture and madness in colonial and post-colonial metropolitan racist situations. Tim, for the last 26 years in Southeast Asia, has explored non-Western politics of purification and truth; the rights of ethno-religious minorities-Malay Muslims in Southern Thailand, Kachin refugees in Malaysia; Thai Buddhist nationalism and racism. Tim’s publications include: ‘No ‘Me’’, Mine’, or Religion: Buddhdasa’s Cosmopolitan Planetary Life’ “in ‘Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogue on Culture of Peace and Human Dignity’ UNESCO Bangkok 2011; ‘States of Mind and Exception: Enactments of Buddhist ontological Truth and purification in Thai religious nationalism in the mid-20th and early 21st centuries’, Journal of Religion and Violence 2014, and ‘Thailand: Exception to the rule or rule by exception?’ Constellations of Southeast Asia ed. Jan Nederveen Pieterse et al. 2017). Currently Tim is working on mapping Khmer Studies.

[1] Jory, Patrick. 2021. A History of Manners and Civility in Thailand. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

[2] Streckfuss, David. An ‘ethnic’ reading of ‘Thai’ history in the twilight of the century-old official ‘Thai’ national model. South East Asia Research 20, no. 3, (2012): 419–441.

[3] Montesano, Michael J., Chachavalpongpun, Pavin and Chongvilaivan, Aekapol. 2012. Bangkok, May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

[4] Srisompop Jitpiromsri, Southern Border/Patani 2004-2021: Stepping into the Nineteenth Year Where will peace go in 2022?, DeepSouthWatch, January 2022, https://deepsouthwatch.org/th/node/12816

[5] Keyes, Charles. Muslim ‘Others’ in Buddhist Thailand. Thammasat Review 13, no. 1, (2009).

[6] Streckfuss, David. An ‘ethnic’ reading of ‘Thai’ history in the twilight of the century-old official ‘Thai’ national model. South East Asia Research 20, no. 3, (2012): 419–441.

[7] Winichakul, Thongchai. 1994. Siam Mapped. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Streckfuss, David. 2011. Truth on Trial in Thailand. London, UK :Routledge.

[10] Foucault, Michel. 2020. Society Must Be Defended. Penguin Classics.

[11] Haberkorn, Tyrell. 2013. Getting Away with Murder in Thailand: State Violence and Impunity in Phatthalung. In State Violence in East Asia, eds. N. Ganesan and Sung Chull Kim. Lexington, US: University Press of Kentucky, 185-208.

[12] Foucault, Michel. 2020. Society Must Be Defended. Penguin Classics; Thongchai Winichakul. The “germs”: The reds’ infection of the Thai political body, New Mandala, May 2010, http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2010/05/03/thongchai-winichakul-on-the-red-germs/#more-9382

[13] Foucault, Michel. 2020. Society Must Be Defended. Penguin Classics.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Thongchai Winichakul, 2011 “Siam’s Colonial Conditions and the Birth of Thai History”,

[16] Jackson, Peter A. The Performative State: Semi-coloniality and the Tyranny of Images in Modern Thailand. Sojourn 19, no. 2, (2004): 219-53

[17] Jackson, Peter A. The Performative State: Semi-coloniality and the Tyranny of Images in Modern Thailand. Sojourn 19, no. 2, (2004): 219-53

[18] Loos, Tamara. 2002. Subject Siam: Family Law and Colonial Modernity in Thailand. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books Cornell University.

[19] Foucault, Michel. 2020. Society Must Be Defended. Penguin Classics.

[20] Streckfuss, David. 1993. The mixed colonial legacy in Siam: origins of Thai racialist thought, in Sears, L. J. (ed.), Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in Honor of John R. W. Smail. Madison, US: University of Wisconsin

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Jerryson, Michael K. 2011. Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. New York, US: Oxford University Press; McCargo, Duncan. 2009. Tearing Apart the Land. Singapore: NUS Press; McCargo, Duncan. 2012. Mapping National Anxieties. Denmark: NIAS.

[31] Jerryson, Michael K. 2011. Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. New York, US: Oxford University Press.

[32] Ibid.; Rackett, Tim. States of Mind and Exception: Enactments of Buddhist ontological Truth and purification in Thai religious nationalism in the mid-20th and early 21st Centuries. .Journal of Religion and Violence 2, no. 1, (2014 a.); Rackett, Tim. Review of Buddhist Fury M. K. Jerryson. Journal of Religion and Violence 2, no. 3, (2014 b).

[33] Askew, Marc. Fighting with Ghosts: Querying Thailand’s “Southern Fire”. Contemporary Southeast Asia 32, no. 2, (2010): 117-155

[34] McCargo, Duncan. 2012. Mapping National Anxieties. Denmark: NIAS.

[35] Jerryson, Michael K. 2011. Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. New York, US: Oxford University Press.

[36] Thompson, Grahame F. 2005. Toleration and the Art of International Governance: How is it Possible to ‘Live Together’ in a Fragmenting International System?, in Habitus: A Sense of Place. Milton Park, UK: Routledge.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ferrara, Frederico. 2015. The Political Developoment of Modern Thailand. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

[39] Ibid.

Topics

Civil Society

Conflict Resolution and Security

Human Rights

International Relations and Geopolitics

Regions

Asia

Thailand

The convergence of racial politics and sectarianism in Malaysia

Article by Saleena Saleem

The Muslim-majority countries of Southeast Asia – Indonesia and Malaysia – are known for its ethnically plural societies. This is in part an outcome of Chinese and Indian labour migration to meet the needs of capitalist production in the region during the colonial period. These plural Southeast Asian societies today are shaped by legacies of colonial racial categories and state-led racialisation practices that have effectively essentialised ethnic groups in the region. Central in this is the prevailing colonial-inspired worldview forwarded by ruling elites that racial and religious differences are intrinsic, unstable and divisive in plural societies. Hence, it is common for these Southeast Asian states to implement interventionist and illiberal governance approaches to manage matters of race and religion. This is done on the pretext that inter-ethnic differences can easily result in outbreaks of violence in the absence of such approaches.

This same argument for managing racial and religious pluralism is used by the Indonesian and Malaysian states to adopt interventionist and illiberal approaches to homogenise Islam and strengthen Sunni Muslim groups. Political and religious elites attempt to dilute intra-Muslim group differences, be it through the overt criminalisation of Muslim minority groups and/or through divisive sectarian rhetoric. For example, Shia Muslim minorities are securitised by the state as societal threats on claims of religious deviancy in Malaysia and state actors on similar claims in Indonesia foster Sunni-Shia sectarian tensions.[1] In more recent times, political and religious elites in Indonesia and Malaysia invoke religious orthodoxy arguments to otherise Islamic reformists as ‘liberal’ enemies of an authentic Islam.[2]

These latter forms of intra-Sunni Muslim divisions in which Muslim reformists, who advocate for democratic values of racial inclusion, equality and fairness, are otherised and labelled as religiously ‘deviant’, are typically less considered in studies of sectarianism.[3] This is partly because Islamic reformists in Indonesia and Malaysia usually do not identify nor organise themselves as a distinctive sect in the same way Muslim minority sects such as the Shia and Ahmadiyya do, with their centuries-long history of sedimented theological differences. Nevertheless, when political and religious elites successfully label Muslim reformists as religiously ‘deviant’, they also consequently rigidify the boundaries of socially acceptable beliefs, attitudes and actions of Muslims in ethnically plural societies in ways that intersect with other long-existing social divisions of race, class and gender.

Through reflections on the ruling elites’ othering of ‘liberal’ Muslims as a pejorative category in Malaysian politics and its social implications in Malaysia, this essay explores how racial politics is implicated in and contributes to sectarianism. It contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the complex and intersectional nature of emergent forms of intra-Muslim divisions in ethnically plural Southeast Asian contexts, which will help to inform policy and grassroots initiatives aimed at improving social cohesion.

Colonial roots of racial divisions in Malaysia

The local people who lived in the ‘Malay world’ did not initially see themselves as part of a bounded community of Malays.[4] However, British colonial policy driven by the needs of the colonial economy in Malaysia was responsible for enacting policies that heightened racial group distinctions in society. Through the allocation of different racial groups to specialised occupations, the British colonials created racial and class distinctions between the bumiputera group (consisting of Malays and indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak) and the immigrant Chinese and Indian groups. The Malays and indigenous peoples worked in agricultural and fishing occupations while the Chinese worked in trade and commercial labourers and the Indians worked in service and in the plantations.[5] These British colonials regarded each group as separate racial entities that only interacted in the marketplace for specific economic interests and purposes, and largely lived in isolated social units because they lacked common social will and values.[6]

During the later years of colonial rule – in the run up to independence – a competitive attitude developed between the Malay elites and the Chinese and Indian elites as each group sought political power and rights. The Malay elites had little incentive to cooperate with the other minority group elites toward a political framework based on equal rights because the heightened racial differences were accompanied by strong perceptions of unequal class differences. For example, the Chinese were perceived to be economically well off compared to the other groups. In the jockeying for political power during this period, the Malay identity became explicitly marked as Muslim and the religion of Islam was harnessed as a tool for inter-ethnic rivalry and control because this had the benefit of limiting the power of non-Malay groups during negotiations on the new nation-state of Malaysia.[7]

State-led racialisation of non-Malays

This racially divided social order structured during the colonial period became entrenched in political and institutional configurations when Malaysia became independent in 1957. The Malay elites in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) forged a political alliance with Chinese elites from the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Indian elites from the Malayan Indian Association (MIC). The three racial-based political parties negotiated a political understanding where the primacy of the ethno-religious identity of the Malays was enshrined in the 1957 Federal Constitution.

In the constitutional framework, the minority ethnic groups in exchange for the recognition of non-Malay jus soli citizenship rights at independence accepted Malay political dominance.[8] Historically, this colloquial understanding of Malay dominance (ketuanan Melayu) entailed a social compact between the three races wherein the Malays were understood to be indigenous to the land of Malaysia and hence the rightful ethnic group holding political power in accordance with its constitutionally mandated special position.[9] Initially, governmental power was shared between politicians from the three race-based parties, and inter-racial demands were addressed through bargaining and compromises, but this practice was short-lived.

The newly independent Malaysia was fraught with issues of rural poverty that predominantly affected Malays. After an outbreak of post-election violence between the Malays and the Chinese in 1969, the government responded to growing Malay disaffection with an affirmative action policy, the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was intended to help increase Malay participation in the Malaysian economy and to reduce poverty. As race was a governmental criterion for the allocation of scarce resources, the NEP became responsible for heightening racial distinctions between Malay and non-Malay citizens.[10] To stay politically relevant and win Malay votes, Malay ruling elites conflated the notion of ketuanan Melayu with Malay special rights by positioning themselves as defenders of indigenous citizens’ rights.

The notion of ketuanan Melayu and the continued implementation of pro-Malay affirmative action policies that are linked to racial categories effectively racialised the Chinese and Indians minorities in Malaysia as immigrant cultural outsiders in contrast with Malays, who are upheld by the state and its civil society supporters as indigenous cultural insiders.[11]

Sectarianisation of the ‘Liberal’ Muslim other

Since the 1998 pro-democracy Reformasi (Reform) movement in Malaysia though, ketuanan Melayu became a polarising point of contention between UMNO Malay elites and reform-oriented opposition politicians. The opposition coalition, which was multi-ethnic and also included Malay politicians, advocated equal treatment for all ethnicities and emphasised needs-based assistance instead of pro-Malay policies; the political push for a new social compact increasingly attracted votes from non-Malay minorities and also Malays in the urban areas between 2008 and 2018.

This context of increasing political competition and mounting electoral losses motivated UMNO elites to reaffirm their commitment to ketuanan Melayu and construct the meaning of ‘liberal’ as ‘anti-Islam’ in an effort to retain political power. Through a sectarianising discourse, they framed ‘liberal’ Malays as a threat by associating them with non-Malay ethnic minorities and, by extension, with secular values to politically de-legitimise them. The state’s religious bureaucracies too were instrumental in bolstering this depiction of the ‘liberal’ threat through propagation of religious sermons. Central in this framing was the divisive argument that ketuanan Melayu, Malay special rights, and Islamic values were threatened by non-Muslim ethnic minorities and their ‘liberal’ Malay Muslim partners who were pushing for pro-democratic reforms.[12]

As political competition increased, the entrenched race-based political system and the constitutional provisions for Malay special position that heightened inter-ethnic differences also facilitated the sectarianisation of the ‘liberal’ Muslim. In the Malaysian context, the racialisation of non-Malays as cultural outsiders and the recent sectarianisation of the ‘liberal’ Muslim other by UMNO elites function together to construct social divisions for political gains.

The social cost of the ‘Liberal’ Muslim label

The ‘liberal’ Muslim as a pejorative category in Malaysian politics functions powerfully as a divisive tool when used to signal threat under changing contexts of political competition and socio-political crises. Having been ousted from government in the 2018 general elections, UMNO utilised the pejorative understanding of reform-oriented politicians as the ‘liberal’ other to manoeuvre its way back into the folds of power in less than two years with significant Malay support. New survey data also indicate Malays are more supportive of Malay-led political leadership than an ethnically plural leadership.[13] Therefore, it is likely that the ‘liberal’ other sectarianising arsenal would be used again for political gains because it works.

However, this comes at a social cost. While Malaysia rarely suffers from ethnic violence, there is a marked uptick in occurrences of ethno-religious controversies played out at the national level, which contribute to polarising societal attitudes about inclusive governance.[14] This polarisation contributes to the pejorative understanding of the ‘liberal’ other. This in turn affects the behaviours and choices of civil society actors engaged in inter-religious and inter-ethnic advocacy work.

Recent interviews with Malay Muslim women activists from ideologically different groups – secular, Islamic feminist and Islamic – indicate that self-awareness of the ‘liberal’ other label do influence some of them to modify their behaviours and choices in the course of their advocacy work.[15] Some women activists from the Islamic groups were reluctant to openly endorse certain advocacy positions by Malay activists and civil society groups who have been labelled by Malay politicians and the state religious bureaucracies as ‘liberal’.

For example, one women activist from the Islamic group, Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM, Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia) praised a prominent Malay women activist-lawyer for her work on helping the Orang Asli (indigenous people) defend for their lands against mining and logging activities in Peninsula Malaysia. However, the woman lawyer-activist was labelled as ‘liberal’ because she strongly opposed the overreach of religious bureaucracies and the UMNO government, and also supported the LBGT community. For the ABIM activist, the label made it impossible for her group to openly support the activist-lawyer’s Orang Asli agenda, even though she personally agreed with it. Women activists from Islamic groups also described being pulled into controversies in Islamic NGO circles after being labelled by other more conservative Islamic groups as ‘liberal’ for engaging with non-Malays in inter-religious activities.

Conclusion: Civil society’s role in mitigating divisions

The social cost then arises when the fear of social stigmatisation due to the ‘liberal’ Muslim label makes Muslims from Islamic civil society groups less willing to openly engage and work together with secular civil society groups or reform-oriented individuals on pertinent social issues. Yet such inter-group civil society engagement at the grassroots level is precisely what is necessary to help mitigate the negative consequences of political polarisation in Malaysia. Civil society groups of different ideological leanings (race-based/multi-ethnic groups and religious/secular) groups that can find common ground over specific issues will be better placed to build inter-group solidarity without fear of being drawn into polarising controversies that are ultimately due to the machinations of politicians interested in maintaining their hold on power.

Perhaps as a consequence of Malaysia’s rapid descent into political chaos and amplification of polarising rhetoric by politicians since UMNO’s sudden ouster from power in 2018, there is already an indication that civil society groups are making more attempts to build inter-ethnic and inter-religious bridges. For example, recent research indicates that there is evidence of inter-group engagement and instances of social learning that occur between women activists from the secular, Islamic feminist, and Islamic groups.[16] The prospects for mitigating polarising divisions lie in civil society activists from ideologically different groups recognising and building upon these emerging points of intersection, which will enable them to better hold politicians to account. Therefore, initiatives that promote and facilitate inter-group engagement can be a helpful start in helping civil society actors make these necessary recognitions.

Saleena Saleem is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests are on religion, state, and gender in South-east Asia. Saleena holds a Master of Science in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Master of Science in Business and Economics Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Boston University. She held research positions at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, and at the Centre for Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

[1] Saleem, Saleena. State Use of Public Order and Social Cohesion Concerns in the Securitisation of Non-mainstream Muslims in Malaysia. Journal of Religious and Political Practice 4, no. 3, (2018): 314–335. Formichi, Chiara. Violence, Sectarianism, and the Politics of Religion: Articulations of Anti-Shi’a Discourses in Indonesia. Indonesia 98, (2014): 1–27.

[2] Sebastian, Leonard C., Hasyim, Syafiq, and Arifianto, Alexander R. 2020. Rising Islamic Conservatism in Indonesia Islamic Groups and Identity Politics. Milton Park, UK: Routledge. Saleena Saleem, Saleena. Constructing the ‘liberal’ Muslim other: Ethnic Politics, Competition, and Polarisation in Malaysia. Religion, State & Society 49, no. 2, (2021): 109-125.

[3] One exception is a recent special issue collection that focuses on exploring emergent forms of sectarian divisions between Sunni Muslim groups in Southeast Asia, which are theologically and religiously more similar than dissimilar (Arifianto and Saleem 2021). Arifianto, Alexander R. and Saleem, Saleena. Introduction: Sectarianisation in Southeast Asia and Beyond. Religion, State & Society 49, no. 2, (2021): 86-92

[4] Milner, Anthony. 2002. The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

[5] Hirschman, Charles. The making of Race in Colonial Malaya: Political Economy and racial ideology. Sociological Forum 1, no. 2, (1986): 330–61.

[6] Hock Guan, Lee. Furnivall’s plural society and Leach’s political systems of Highland Burma. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 24, no. 1, (2009): 32-46.

[7] Hefner, Robert W. 2001. Multiculturalism and citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, in The Politics of Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, Robert W. Hefner (ed), Hawaii, USA: University of Hawaii, pp. 1-58.

[8] Milne, Robert Stephan and Mauzy, Diane K. 1980. Politics and Government in Malaysia. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press.

[9] The Constitution recognises the special position of the Malays, along with Malay rulers as heads of Islam, and accords Malay as the sole official language and Islam as the state religion; it also provides for special rights to protect the Malays. The special rights are related to the reservation of positions for Malays in the civil service, public scholarships and in public education. These special rights were later extended to the indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak when the two states joined the Malaysian Federation in 1963.

[10] Peletz, Michael. 2005. Islam and the Cultural Politics of Legitimacy: Malaysia in the Aftermath of September 11, in Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization, Robert Hefner (ed), Princeton, US: Princeton University Press.

[11] Gabriel, Sharmani Patricia. Racialisation in Malaysia: Multiracialism, Multiculturalism, and the Cultural Politics of the Possible. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 52, no. 4, (2021): 611–633

[12] Saleem, Saleena. Constructing the ‘liberal’ Muslim other: Ethnic Politics, Competition, and Polarisation in Malaysia. Religion, State & Society 49, no. 2, (2021): 109-125.

[13] Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, New Study Reveals Empirical-based Insights into the Thinking, Behaviour and Living Conditions of Malaysia’s Majority Population, December 2021, https://asia.fes.de/news/malay-pulse

[14] Saleem, Saleena. Malaysia 2019: The Politics of Fear and UMNO’s Renewed Relevance. Asia Maior, (2020): 267–286.

[15] The interviews were conducted between December 2020 and July 2021 by the author for her PhD dissertation entitled “Mitigating Polarization in Plural Southeast Asian Societies: Trust Building, Social Learning, and Muslim Women Activism in Malaysia”.

[16] Findings from author’s PhD dissertation on “Mitigating Polarization in Plural Southeast Asian Societies”.

Topics

Civil Society

Conflict Resolution and Security

Democracy and Elections

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Human Rights

Regions

Asia

Malaysia

Implications for debates about sectarianism in Indonesia

Article by Dr Alexander R. Arifianto

Watershed political events over the past decade – starting from the 2010-12 Arab Spring; civil wars in Syria and Yemen; the continuing ethnic strife in Iraq, Lebanon, and numerous Muslim-majority societies; and the global rise of populist leaders who utilise ethnic, racial, and xenophobic rhetoric to mobilise political support – have renewed attention toward political sectarianism among scholars and policymakers alike.

While the concept of ‘political sectarianism’ can be applied to explain both inter- and intra-group conflicts involving two or more distinct ethno-religious groups, much of its conceptual and empirical applications over the past decade were applied to cases of ethno-religious conflicts in the Middle East, typically to cases of Sunni-Shiite conflict.^[1] Henceforth, scholars are increasingly calling for a broader application of the concept to analyse conflicts between different ethnic and religious groups in other regions of the world.^[2]

Of course, the application of ‘political sectarianism’ to other regions beyond the Middle East means that differing types of political contestation, religion-state relations, and regime type which become the basis of ethno-religious conflict in these societies must be taken into account. The historical and sociological contexts that are often being utilised as master-narratives used to justify and prolong the conflict should also be considered in our analysis as well.

For one thing, political sectarianism might not necessarily involve deeply seated theological divisions that are heavily politicised and may escalate into large-scale violence. Instead, it often takes place as a form of micro-level division among different Sunni Muslim groups due to theological, ideological, and ritualistic disagreements.^[3] Over time, such disagreements became so significant that religious leaders and politicians from the quarrelling groups began to politicise them in order to gain political advantage or patronage favours from the state.

Sectarianism in Indonesia: The early years

Intra-Sunni sectarianism has occurred – albeit with different levels of intensity across different time periods – for nearly a century in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority nation (239 million Muslims), a state which is also home to approximately 1,300 ethnic groups.^[4] The first major point of sectarian tension occurred in the early 20^th century when a group of modernist Muslims began to challenge the hegemony of the predominantly traditionalist-leaning clerics, which then were the prominent Islamic authority in Indonesia.

Modernists believed that the customs and rituals of traditionalist Muslims were heretical innovations (bid ’ah) that were contradicting the ‘true’ Islamic interpretations written down in the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophets (hadith). Modernists also opposed the then prevailing custom that individual Muslims should only listen to the clerics (ulama) and could not practice independent reasoning (ijtihad) and interpret the Qur’an on their own.^[5]

In 1912, Sarekat Islam and Muhammadiyah – the first two modernist Islamic organisations – were established. By the 1920s, modernists had imposed significant challenges to the authority of the dominant traditionalist clerics, prompting the latter to form their own organisation in order to undercut the former’s theological influence. Nahdlatul Ulama (‘The Revival of Islamic Scholars’) was founded in 1926 as the first formal association of traditionalist clerics throughout the then Dutch East Indies.^[6] Contestation between the modernist and traditionalist groups continued throughout the 1930s at about the same time the voices of Indonesian nationalists calling for an independent state were getting louder and louder.

When the Japanese Army seized control of Indonesia in 1942 they forced all existing Indonesian Islamic organisations to merge together under a single group called Masyumi. After Indonesia’s independence was declared in 1945, Masyumi became the country’s first Islamic party, becoming a leading political party during Indonesia’s first period as a democratic state from 1950 to 1959.

However, the traditionalist-modernist divide was resurrected in 1952 when the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) broke away from Masyumi, citing the latter’s refusal to grant the Minister of Religion Affairs position to a NU representative.^[7] Given the ministry’s significant role in Muslim affairs across Indonesia – ranging from the construction of mosques, Islamic schools (pesantren) and state universities, to the management of annual hajj pilgrims from Indonesia – the ministry is often contested between traditionalists and modernists for the right to formulate policies relevant to Muslim affairs in Indonesia and for its massive budget that becomes a patronage source for multiple Islamic organisations.^[8]

The rivalry between Masyumi and NU went on throughout the 1950s. After Masyumi was accused of supporting regional rebellions against the central government in Jakarta – Soekarno – Indonesia’s founding President – disbanded the party and imprisoned many of its leaders.[9] This move made NU the most influential Islamic organisation in Indonesia, and it developed a close alignment with Soekarno as he dissolved the constitutional assembly and parliament in 1959, establishing authoritarian rule in the process.

Sectarianism under Suharto

As an alleged coup attempt by the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965 severely weakened Soekarno’s rule, NU switched its allegiance to support the Indonesian military (TNI). Ansor – its youth wing – assisted the latter in a repressive campaign against alleged Communist Party members and sympathisers. This led to the deaths of nearly one million Indonesians, mainly in the NU stronghold in rural Central Java and East Java.^[10] When Suharto – the TNI’s supreme commander – seized power from Soekarno in 1966, the NU threw its support behind him.

While Suharto was closely aligned with NU during this period, he suppressed the modernists by denying the request from former Masyumi chairman Mohamad Natsir to have it reinstated as a legally recognised political party. In response, Natsir founded a new ‘non-political’ Islamic organisation called the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council (DDII).^[11] DDII became an umbrella organisation which channelled funds from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations modernist organisations, which are increasingly influenced by various transnational Islamic ideologies – from the Muslim Brotherhood to various types of Salafism during the 1960s and 1970s.^[12]

While Muhammadiyah – the largest modernist organisation – officially retained its own moderate Islamic outlook, many of its rank-and-file members increasingly came under the influence of one or more transnational Islamist ideologies. Some Muhammadiyah members broke away from the organisation to form new organisations with more Islamist ideological orientations. For instance, the South Sulawesi-centered Wahdah Islamiyah – influenced by the fusion of Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood ideologies.^[13]

By the mid-1970s, there was a growing rift between NU and the Suharto regime as the former objected to the latter’s effort to enact ‘secular’ laws on marriage and the education system which marginalised the role of Islamic institutions. In 1984, Abdurrahman Wahid – a grandson of NU’s founder – became the organisation’s new leader. While Wahid implemented policies to accommodate the regime at first – by declaring NU’s recognition of Indonesia’s secular nationalist ideology Pancasila (‘five principles’) as the organisation’s sole ideological principle – over time he became one of its leading critics. Wahid also declared that his organisation would follow principles such as democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism to set itself in contrast to the increasingly authoritarian measures adopted by Suharto during the 1980s.^[14]

Hence, by the late 1980s Islam in Indonesia was further divided into three distinctive ideological streams: the traditionalist stream of the Nahdlatul Ulama, the moderate modernist stream of the Muhammadiyah, and the Islamist stream influenced by various transnational Islamic groups. As the Suharto regime slowly declined during the 1990s, both NU and Muhammadiyah were at the front of a growing opposition movement against the regime.^[15] While individual Islamist activists were part of the opposition movement, Islamist organisations – still facing state reprisal – largely operated underground up until the regime’s fall in 1998.

After Suharto fell from power, Wahid became Indonesia’s first democratically elected President in 1999. Afterwards, however, sectarian tensions between NU and Muhammadiyah re-emerged as the latter accused Wahid of reneging his promise to share power with other members of the anti-Suharto opposition and filing out his cabinet with NU politicians and other close allies. Growing discontent against Wahid finally resulted in his impeachment in 2001. As a response to their leader’s removal, activists from NU’s youth wing , set fire to several Muhammadiyah-owned buildings in East Java province.^[16] However, further sectarian violence was avoided when Wahid agreed to step down peacefully from the presidency.

Contemporary resurgence of sectarianism

To avoid further tensions between NU and Muhammadiyah, Indonesian presidents after Wahid generally instituted an informal arrangement to provide a guaranteed ministerial seat to both organisations. While the Minister of Religious Affairs position is reserved for a NU politician, the Minister of Education position is generally reserved for Muhammadiyah.^[17] Presidents Megawati Soekarnoputri (2001 to 2004) and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004 to 2014) largely adhered to this informal power-sharing arrangement.

However, this changed when Joko Widodo became Indonesia’s new President in 2014. The new President calculated that as he faced an increasing challenge from an emboldened Islamist movement which threatened his regime’s stability, it was important to align his regime closely with the NU. This is because the organisation has not only consistently promoted its moderate Islamic vision for three decades, but also able to back their ‘moderate Islam’ promotion with hundreds of thousand clerics and religious teachers. As a last resort, NU could deploy a militia force under its youth wing Ansor to quell any threat from hardline Islamist groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) – well-known for its violent tactics deployed against its critics as well as against members of various religious minorities.^[18]

The most significant support from Widodo to NU was his support to the latter’s initiative to rebrand its main theological principles into a doctrine called Islam Nusantara (‘Archipelagic Islam’) in 2015. NU engaged in this theological rebranding because it faced increasing competition from various Islamist groups that had been growing rapidly since the fall of Suharto regime nearly two decades earlier, including the Tarbiyah (‘Nurture’) movement inspired by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), part of the global Hizb ut-Tahrir (‘Party of Liberation’) movement that called for Indonesia to be part of a new transnational Islamic caliphate, and dozens of Salafi-influenced groups. All of them are thought to chip away at NU’s claimed followership of approximately 90 million Indonesian Muslims.

Islam Nusantara is supposed to be a restatement of NU’s theological principles to younger followers of the organisation to show the compatibility of classical Islamic teachings with local (mainly Javanese-based) customs and ritual practices and Indonesia’s nationalism enshrined in its Pancasila ideology – all of which are considered to be heretical by the newer Islamist groups. However, its critics – including those from Muhammadiyah – considered it as an effort by NU to impose its own interpretation of Islam in Indonesia’s public discourses, notwithstanding the fact it mainly represented traditions and rituals practiced largely by NU ulama living in Java.^[19]

In return, NU leaders declared that their organisation was originally founded in 1926 to unite traditionalist clerics against the reformist agenda of ‘the Wahhabis.’^[20] This was a veiled accusation against modernist Islamic organisations like Muhammadiyah that despite its claims of having moderated its ideology, at heart it is still inspired by an agenda inspired by the early 20^th century Islamic reformers to challenge the authority and legitimacy of the traditionalist NU ulama.

Beyond these theological disagreements, the renewed sectarian division between NU and Muhammadiyah is also driven by the decision of the Widodo regime to reward NU’s support through political appointments as cabinet ministers, ambassadors, and executives of various state enterprises. This is especially prominent within his second-term cabinet in which NU is represented by Vice President Ma’ruf Amin (formerly the organisation’s supreme leader), Minister of Religious Affairs Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, and three other NU-affiliated ministers.^[21] In contrast, only one current minister comes from Muhammadiyah, and the current Minister of Education is a founder of a major Indonesian IT company with no connection to any religious organisation. NU’s close alignment with Widodo has paid off handsomely, while Muhammadiyah is politically marginalised due to the perception that its rank-and-file members are more likely to align themselves to the Islamist cause rather than with the President.

Concluding observations

To conclude, renewed political sectarianism in Indonesia has its roots in the theological differences between traditionalists, modernists, and (since the late 1960s) Islamists. While the theological differences between the three groups were not as divergent as the Sunni vs Shia differences – they are still significant to create identifiable sectarian differences between the three groups – based upon: 1) their interpretation of ‘appropriate’ customs, traditions, and ritualistic practices that is compatible with basic Islamic teachings; and 2) their ideological and political outlook – with traditionalists and modernists have largely see their political theologies to be compatible with the Indonesian nation-state based on the Pancasila ideology, while Islamists largely reject such a compatibility.

However, political sectarianism is not always salient throughout much of Indonesia’s post-colonial history. It tends to be more intense during the time where there is an increased theological and political competition among Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah, and the Islamists as more established groups like NU align with certain political regimes to exclude their rivals from gaining access to political appointments and other state patronage,deploying sectarian rhetoric and divisive strategies to marginalise their rivals. Efforts to de-escalate the sectarian divide between these groups may include power-sharing arrangements like those implemented by successive regimes in the 2000s and early 2010s. More importantly, it should incorporate more meritocratic appointments based on talents and capabilities instead of those based on political loyalties and allegiances to the current regime.

Alexander R. Arifianto is currently a Research Fellow with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) – Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research expertise is contemporary Indonesian politics and comparative Islamic parties and social movements in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. His articles have appeared in refereed journals such as Journal of Global Strategic Studies; Religion, State, and Society; Asia Policy; Trans-National and Regional Studies of Southeast Asia (TRaNS); Asian Security; and Asian Politics and Policy.

[1] Abdo, Genevive. 2017. The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprisings and the Rebirth of the Shi’a-Sunni Divide. New York, US: Oxford University Press; Hashemi, Nader and Postel, Daniel. 2017. Sectarianization: Mapping the Politics of the New Middle East. New York, US: Oxford University Press.

[2] Mabon, Simon. Afterword: Sectarianisation Beyond the Middle East. Religion, State, and Society 49, no. 2, (2021): 174-180.

[3] Arifianto and Saleem. 2021, op cit; Kilinc, Ramazan. From Honourable to Villainous: Political Competition and Sectarianisation in Turkey. Religion, State, and Society 49, no. 2, (2021): 93-108.

[4] Ananta, Aris, Nurvidya Arifin, Evi, Hasbullah, M. Sairi, Handayani, Nur Budi and Pramono, Agus. 2015. Demography of Indonesia’s Ethnicity. Singapore, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, p. 20.

[5] Noer, Deliar. 1973. The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia, 1900-1942. Singapore, Singapore: Oxford University Press; Federspiel, Howard. The Muhammadijah: A Study of an Orthodox Islamic Movement in Indonesia. Indonesia 10, (1970): 57-79.

[6] Bush, Robin. 2009. Nahdlatul Ulama and the Struggle for Power within Islam and Politics in Indonesia. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, pp. 36-40.

[7] Feith, Herbert. 1962. The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

[8] Martin van Bruinessen, Comparing the Governance of Islam in Turkey and Indonesia: Diyanet and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Working Paper No. 312, Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, May 2018, https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/wp312-comparing-the-governance-of-islam-in-turkey-and-indonesia-diyanet-and-the-ministry-of-religious-affairs/

[9] Feith. 1962, op cit.

[10] Fealy, Greg and McGregor, Kate. Nahdlatul Ulama and the Killings of 1965-1966: Religion, Politics, and Remembrance. Indonesia 89, (2008): 37- 60.

[11] Hefner, Robert W. 2000. Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 106-107.

[12] Arifianto, Alexander R. The State of Political Islam in Indonesia: The Historical Antecedent and Future Prospects. Asia Policy 15, no. 4, (2020): 116-118.

[13] Chaplin, Chris. 2021. Salafism and the State: Islamic Activism and National Identity in Contemporary Indonesia. Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Press.

[14] Bush, 2009, op cit; Barton, Greg. 2002. Gus Dur: The Authorized Biography of Abdurrahman Wahid. Jakarta, Indonesia: Equinox Publishing.

[15] Arifianto, Alexander R. From Ideological to Political Sectarianism: Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah, and the State in Indonesia. Religion, State, and Society 49, no. 2, (2021): 131.

[16] Arifianto. 2021. op cit, p. 132

[17] Alexander R. Arifianto, Jokowi’s Sixth Reshuffle: Securing His Legacy?, RSIS Commentary No. 21-073, Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, April 2021, https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/jokowis-sixth-reshuffle-securing-his-legacy/

[18] Arifianto. 2021. op cit, p. 135.

[19] Ibid, p. 133.

[20] Ibid, p. 134.

[21] Ibid, pp. 135-136.

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Gap society as a new narrative of social division in Japan

Article by Professor David Chiavacci

Since the turn of the millennium, Japan has been marked by heated political and public debates about a massive increase in inequality and new forms of social exclusion. A new self-perception of Japan as a ‘gap society’ (kakusa shakai) became dominant. This new narrative represents a rupture to the former self-image as a ‘general middle-class society’ (sōchūryū shakai), according to which Japan was an extremely egalitarian society. However, available research and data does neither fully support the assumption of a much more divided Japanese society in recent decades nor a view of an outstanding equal society in the earlier decades. How can we explain these discrepancies between public discourses and measured inequality? To understand the scope of the recent discussions on inequality and the associated reversal in self-perception, it is first necessary to take a closer look at the earlier model of Japan as a general middle-class society.

This general middle-class discourse, which became increasingly dominant from the 1960s onwards, attested to Japan being an almost uniquely equal society in terms of opportunities and outcomes. Thanks to its extremely meritocratic education system, all male students, regardless of their social background, could achieve potentially educational success and thus paving the way to prosperity and social advancement. For women, the model with its clearly delineated gender roles envisaged an ideal life course of its own. They were supposed to marry such a successful man and to support him in his career by managing the household and family on their own. Above all, in their role as mothers, they ensured the educational success of their own children and thus guaranteed the continuation of the family success story across generations. At the same time, however, Japan was considered also as a heaven of equality in terms of income and wealth distribution compared to the free-market West. In this view, Western societies were characterised by income inequality and widespread poverty like the US or UK, or, as in the case of the Scandinavian countries, by low social inequality and strong social security due to an extremely high tax burden and a comprehensive welfare state. In contrast, in the Japanese system, equal income and wealth distribution was generated, according to the self-image, by socially responsible enterprises run almost like families and the associated low wage differentials between managers and workers. Japan thus appeared, according to the narrative of the general middle-class society, to square the circle by successfully combining fair competition and equal opportunities with high social inclusion for all. In the dominant self-image, Japan was not only an ethnically extremely homogeneous society without significant minorities but was also characterised by social homogeneity and general prosperity in international comparison.

However, not much has remained of this image of Japan as a prime example of growth and equality since 2000, especially in Japan itself. From the mid-1980s onwards, the Japanese economy overheated, which was reflected in very high growth rates combined with unbelievable price increases on the stock and real estate markets. However, the bursting of these speculative bubbles led to decades of economic stagnation and very modest growth from the early 1990s onwards. Especially in comparison to the US, Japan seemed to stand still and steadily lose importance from the 1990s onwards. Even more painful for Japan’s self-image as a global economic power and leading nation in East Asia was the unstoppable rise of the People’s Republic of China, which embarked on an impressive modernisation and overtook Japan in terms of economic power within a few years. Even South Korea was far more successful in its economic development, symbolised by the overtaking of Sony by Samsung. This relative decline undermined Japan’s social self-image as a successful economic nation and led to crisis discourses and demands for comprehensive structural reforms. The reformers’ goal was to liberalise and deregulate the Japanese economy for generating new impulses for growth and innovation by unleashing market forces and increasing social competition through greater individual income differences, following the US and UK neoliberal model. There was talk of ‘evil egalitarianism’ (akubyōdō), which led to a sated attitude and undermined the population’s drive and will to achieve. However, this neoliberal reform agenda also led to a new focus on social inequality. Parallel to the reform debates, a public and later also political discussion on the development of social inequality in Japan began around 2000. The debate culminated in the mid-2000s in the new model of Japan as a gap society, which quickly became the dominant self-perception and displaced the previous discourse of Japan as a general middle-class society. The perception of social structures has shifted extremely with this new model. Japan is now characterised in terms of social inequality by an opening of the social gap, an increasing destabilisation in employment and a growth of impoverished low-income households. The new narrative of Japan as a gap society also led to a questioning of the desirability of a neoliberal realignment of Japanese society and the associated social differentiation and exclusion dynamics.

Based on empirical research, the extent and intensity of the debate on social inequality in Japan is surprising at first glance. Like in nearly all advanced industrial countries, an increase in income inequality can also be identified as a trend in Japan in recent decades. However, this development has been very moderate in international comparison, especially to the income concentration among top earners in liberal, Anglo-Saxon countries. Overall, available data shows no strong income concentration and rather a continuity in levels of social inequality in Japan since the 1980s, especially in comparison to the US or UK. These empirical results are also supported by comparative studies on political economy, which show that in Japan a neoliberal reform programme has only been realised in rudimentary form. More detailed analyses on income distribution attribute the moderate increase in inequality in household incomes primarily to the ageing of the population and a change in the composition of households. Thus, in Japan, it is not the rise in wage differentials and an unleashing of market forces, but rather the higher proportion of older workers and retirees, who have higher income differentials than young workers, as well as the increase in single households and senior-only households that are the main factors behind a certain opening in income differentials between households. However, it has also to be stressed that empirical research also does not support the former model of Japan as a heaven of social equality until the later 1990s. Social inequality from the 1950s onwards was much lower compared to Japan’s modern developments up to the 1930s. Still, in international comparison with the other advanced industrialised countries, Japan had a rather above-average inequality in income distribution in the post-war period. The education system was also by no means a meritocratic ideal in which social origin played no role. On the contrary, recent comparative studies show a relatively strong degree of social reproduction across generational lines for Japan.

How can the discrepancy between the fundamental change in the self-image and dominant discourse on social inequality in Japan despite a relatively strong continuity in social structures be explained? A closer analysis and interpretation of social development reveals clear cracks in the old social fabric, which make the resonance of the model of Japan as a gap society comprehensible. First, the collapse of the basis of the former model of a general middle-class society must be emphasised. This self-image of Japan as a general middle-class society developed from the early 1960s onwards. The first years after the wartime capitulation from 1945 to 1960 were marked not only by comprehensive reforms, but also by intense and sometimes violent disputes about Japan’s new direction. Hayato Ikeda (Prime Minister 1960-1964), however, with his income-doubling plan, not only succeeded in steering the economy to a path of almost double-digit annual growth until the early 1970s, but also decisively defused the conflicts in politics and the labour market. He established shared growth as the new social contract between the conservative elite and the population. In this consensus, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) became the guarantor that the population would benefit from the rapid growth of the Japanese economy through increased purchasing power and upward mobility.

In contrast to all large advanced industrial countries in the West, this pact between the LDP and the people continued after the end of the Bretton Woods system and the oil price crisis in the early 1970s. Although also Japanese economic growth subsequently slowed significantly, with almost four percent annual growth, increasing export surpluses, unabated penetration of the high-tech sectors, continued low unemployment and no significant inflation problems, the Japanese economy became a model of success, even for the West. The social upward trend also continued among the population, with the upper middle class of well-educated employees and their families in secure career positions in public administration and large companies expanding strongly during this period. Although the distribution of income may not have been nearly as extraordinarily egalitarian as suggested by the general middle-class model, this was of only secondary importance for self-perception, since the everyday experience of the population was primarily an increase in their own purchasing power, participation in mass consumption and social advancement over generations. To put it bluntly: in daily life, most of the population experienced and realised common growth. The general middle-class society was a reality in everyday life.

However, this shared growth model ended abruptly with the bursting of the speculative bubbles in the early 1990s. From the later 1990s, economic stagnation began to fully impact the labour market and income development. After decades of seemingly unstoppable increases in average household income, it began to decline significantly for a few years and remained at a significantly lower level until the present. In no other advanced industrial country have average incomes stagnated as much as in Japan in recent decades. It may therefore come as no surprise that new existential angst and fears of decline have spread among the middle classes in Japan. In view of their own stagnating income, many from the middle classes are no longer sure whether and to what extent they will remain part of the well-integrated middle of society in the long run. Especially in view of the demand for intensified social competition during the neoliberal reform discussions, many worry whether they themselves or their children will not be among the losers in this struggle.

Moreover, these existential fears are not entirely unfounded. Successful economic development in Japan was accompanied by a welfare model geared towards high growth. Instead of building comprehensive social security systems, resources were invested primarily in generating faster economic development. In other words, in the Japanese growth model, social inclusion was not realised through the establishment of well-developed social safety nets, but through participation in economic growth. Although social security systems have been further expanded and supplemented in recent decades, especially for the elderly, integration into the Japanese welfare model is still dependent on permanent full-time employment. All other workers, especially women, who do not have a standard employment contract are not comprehensively covered for illness, unemployment, or retirement. Unemployment in Japan has remained at a low level over the last 25 years, especially in comparison to many European economies. However, atypical employment has increased sharply and today affects not only married women who are integrated into the social security system through their regularly employed husbands, but also young, unmarried workers, especially female employees, but also increasingly male employees. These people are heading for very low incomes throughout their working lives and old-age poverty after retirement. This explains the uncertainty far into the middle classes, who fear that they themselves or their children could be drawn into this downward spiral of atypical employment and the associated consequences. It may come as no surprise then that poverty and especially old-age poverty have become the most important topic within the debate on increasing social inequality in Japan in recent years. Almost everyone has the impression that they are walking on very thin ice and could be pushed to the margins of society at any time.

In 2012, the new LDP Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gained international attention as a result of his economic programme, Abenomics. Domestically, too, Abenomics triggered high expectations, as it promised to put Japan back on a common growth path with a new monetary policy to generate inflation, with a stimulation of demand via government investment programmes and with structural reforms to strengthen economic competitiveness as its three main components. The new monetary policy is the innovative, but also very controversial part of this economic programme and includes the promise that Japan could return to the good old days of common growth without painful reforms by reversing a failed monetary policy. However, the results of Abenomics have fallen short of expectations. While the economy has grown steadily under the years of Abe government up to 2020 thanks to increasing exports, this growth has not led to wage increases and thus has not reached people’s wallets. The current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (in office since October 2021) has recognised the problem of the continued lack of shared growth under Abenomics. One of his proclaimed goals is to establish a new form of capitalism in which the fruits of growth should not be reserved for a few but should benefit everyone as much as possible: ‘Capitalism is not sustainable if it does not belong to everyone.’ This goal, however, has provoked open criticism, especially within the LDP and the business establishment. The proposed measures and reforms to achieve this goal remain vague. The Kishida government is aware of the problem, but it still must prove that it has bright ideas on how to solve it and that it will be able to implement them in the face of resistance, especially from conservative social circles and from its own party. Social division is an important and much discussed topic in Japan for over two decades, which has reached everyday life of most Japanese, and it will remain a focus in the coming years.

David Chiavacci is Professor in Social Science of Japan at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research covers political and economic sociology of contemporary Japan in a comparative perspective. His main focus is on social movements, social inequality as well as on Japan’s new immigration and immigration policy. His recent publications include Re-emerging from Invisibility: Social Movements and Political Activism in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 2018, co-edited with Julia Obinger), Japanese Political Economy Revisited: Abenomics and Institutional Change (Routledge, 2019, co-edited with Sébastien Lechevalier) and Civil Society and the State in Democratic East Asia: Between Entanglement and Contention in Post High Growth (Amsterdam University Press, 2020, co-edited with Simona Grano and Julia Obinger).

Further readings

Chiavacci David & Hommerich, Carola (eds.). 2017. Social Inequality in Post-Growth Japan: Transformation during Economic and Demographic Stagnation. London: Routledge.

Maslow, Sebastian & Wirth, Christian (eds.). 2021. Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change and Transformation of the Japanese State. Albany: SUNY.

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Dividing Lines – Conclusions and recommendations

Article by Prof Simon Mabon

Each year, over a long weekend in May, the universities of York and Lancaster compete against each other in a series of sporting events ranging from football to darts, cross country running to swimming. The rivalry between the white rose of the University of York and the red rose of the University of Lancaster evokes memories of the War of the Roses, the conflict between two rival cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet, Lancaster and York, which fought for control of the English throne across the 15^th century. Close to 600 years later, the legacy of this division remains in a sporting competition between two universities and occasional tensions between people from Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Whilst the nature of this division has transformed from violence into a sporting rivalry, other divisions remain central within the nature of political life. In some cases, division plays a useful role within and between societies, allowing people to define themselves by virtue of what they are not. Similarly, division – and forms of tension – play out socially in a range of different forms, from sporting rivalries to geographical tensions. Yet the nature of these divisions differs dramatically, contingent upon the type of identity and relations with the other.

Understanding division within and across contexts is challenging and yet hugely important when seeking to reduce inter-communal violence or prevent mobilisation leading to such forms of violence. As contributors to this collection argue, difference alone is not the main source of antagonism, violent or otherwise. Rather, it is the politicisation and/or securitisation of this difference, wherein communal identities are transformed into sites of contestation with difference framed as a security challenge to the ordering of political life. In each case, deep divisions within and across societies emerge as a consequence of the framing of particular identities as threats – defined broadly – to the desirable order and way of life. This ranges from the political divide in the United States to the role of religious groups in political life in Indonesia and Malaysia.

As essays in this collection have shown, the concept of sectarianism offers much by way of understanding forms of division across societies beset by difference. Whilst some may reject this, claiming that a conceptual approach found in the study of identity politics may suffice, this collection has shown that understanding division through the lens of sectarianism offers much. Indeed, sectarianism offers a lens through which one can understand cleavages within society that take place as a deviation from a collective whole. For example, the splintering of different identities from within a collective whole, be it national, political or religious identities. This approach allows for analysis of how such identities become internalised and take on salience beyond the transient, amorphous and instrumental view of identity held by those who view identities as mere social markers. In addition, the concept of sectarianism helps to understand the discursive construction and framing of such forms of difference, which can lead to mobilisation of communal difference. This can be seen across the essays in this volume, albeit conditioned by the context specific peculiarities of time and space.

Understanding the nature, construction and evolution of communal difference is of paramount importance to those looking to contribute to a more peaceful and just world. Whether this plays out within societies beset by deep divisions or between states, critically reflecting on the nature of division is essential. Although existing analytical approaches offer useful insight in exploring the nature of divisions, the concept of sectarianism serves as a valuable tool in understanding division in the modern word.

Key recommendations

Analytical:

To avoid viewing communal conflict as a product of immutable ‘ancient hatreds’;
To offer more nuanced analysis of communal difference beyond identity markers;
To contextualise identities within broader socio-economic moments;
To avoid essentialism in analysis of communal tensions; and
To acknowledge the importance of history, culture and religion in understanding difference but not to over stress it.

Policy Based:

To encourage a move to issue based politics;
To support civil society initiatives that operate across communal groups;
To support the emergence of issue based political parties;
To avoid a ‘one size fits all’ approach to addressing communal violence; and
To support efforts to facilitate democracy and good governance.

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A small chink of light: EU-UK relations and parliamentary cooperation

Article by David Harley

July 4, 2022

A small chink of light: EU-UK relations and parliamentary cooperation

At a time of strained relations between the two Executives (the UK Government and the EU Commission), could a new structure for cooperation between the two parliaments (Westminster and Brussels/Strasbourg) contribute to a gradual improvement in relations between the two sides?

The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) provides for the setting up of a Parliamentary Partnership Assembly (PPA), as the official structure for cooperation between the UK Parliament and the European Parliament. The PPA may also act as a forum empowered to submit recommendations to the UK Government and the Commission meeting at political level in the Partnership Council. This new body consists of 35 Members on each side. The UK delegation includes 21 Members of the House of Commons and 14 from the House of Lords, representing all sides of the Brexit argument and including several former MEPs, notably the leading Brexiteer Daniel Hannan (since last year elevated to the peerage). The devolved parliaments and the Northern Ireland Assembly have observer status.

The new Assembly met for the first time on 12-13 May in Brussels, where they discussed EU-UK relations, the Withdrawal Agreement, the implementation of the TCA and EU-UK cooperation on sanctions against Russia and the war in Ukraine in general. Opening the meeting, the Chair of the EP Delegation, Nathalie Loiseau (an influential member of Emmanuel Macron’s Renew party) emphasised her hope for “closer future ties and a better understanding of the implications of the EU-UK agreements secured so far, as well as what remains to be done. (The Assembly) will be a means of cultivating, through dialogue and debate, a better understanding between the parties and the opportunity to build a solid partnership based on mutual trust.”[1] The Chair of the UK Delegation, veteran Conservative MP Sir Oliver Heald, who reportedly spoke elegantly but gave nothing away, echoed these worthy intentions. Apparently, each side listened respectfully to the other’s point of view, without this necessarily leading to any significant shift in their respective positions.

The first session began with statements by Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič – who away from prying cameras was said to have spoken with unusual and refreshing frankness – and the UK Minister for the Cabinet Office Michel Ellis, standing in for Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, detained elsewhere. The meeting then focussed on EU-UK cooperation on the war in Ukraine, and adopted the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure; the second session considered the current situation regarding the Horizon programme and possible forms of cooperation in the field of energy against the background of the current global spike in energy prices and the conflict in Ukraine. James Heappey, UK Minister for the Armed Forces, and Stefano Sannino, Secretary-General of the European External Action Service, also took part in the discussion on EU-UK cooperation in relation to Ukraine. Both sides benefited from hearing directly the other side’s point of view on these questions of mutual interest. After the meeting a joint statement was issued by the two Chairs, in which they “looked forward to continuing our constructive and open dialogue during our second meeting, which will be organised by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in the autumn”.[2]

One should not underestimate the importance of the tone and atmospherics in such meetings, given the fraught context and occasional shouting match that have characterised EU-UK relations over the last few months. All in all, that first meeting in May sounded like an auspicious start to a relatively modest but potentially positive new chapter.

Since then, however, the UK Government has raised the stakes and the temperature by introducing the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, described by the EU Ambassador to the UK João Vale de Almeida as “a road to nowhere, illegal and unrealistic”.[3] The new Assembly’s next meeting is due to take place in November in the UK. Who would dare predict how EU-UK relations will evolve between now and then? If the UK maintains the position on the Bill recently outlined in the House of Commons by Liz Truss, in which it unilaterally overrides the Protocol, ‘the poison may seep out’ and the positive first meeting in May at parliamentary level may have also been a first step on a road to nowhere.

Both sides should prevent this from happening and insist on the continuation of parliamentary cooperation and, hopefully over time, effective scrutiny. An intrinsic part of any properly functioning democracy is the capacity for Parliaments to hold the Executive to account. The Parliamentary Partnership Assembly could make a modest but useful contribution to clearing the air and restoring trust between the EU and the UK at this critical moment for both parties, as well as invoking its right under the TCA to submit jointly agreed recommendations to the Commission and the UK Government through the Partnership Council. Instead of postponing the next meeting planned for November, they would be well advised to consider bringing it forward.

[1] European Parliament, Delegation to the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, May 2022, https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/webstreaming/delegation-to-eu-uk-parliamentary-partnership-assembly_20220512-1400-DELEGATION-D-UK

[2] Nathalie Loiseau and Sir Oliver Heald, Joint Statement released by Co-Chairs of the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, UK Parliament, May 2022, https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2022/may-2022/joint-statement-released-by-co-chairs-of-the-uk-eu-parliamentary-partnership-assembly/

[3] Sky News, Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is ‘illegal and unrealistic’, EU envoy warns, June 2022, https://news.sky.com/story/northern-ireland-protocol-bill-is-illegal-and-unrealistic-eu-envoy-warns-12640687

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Armenia’s Karabakh Dilemmas and the Quest for a Golden Bridge

Article by Ilya Roubanis (PhD)

July 1, 2022

Armenia’s Karabakh Dilemmas and the Quest for a Golden Bridge

The Ukrainian war calls into question Russia’s ability to act as a security guarantor for Karabakh Armenians. There is little to suggest that Moscow is inclined to challenge Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Karabakh. As the guarantor of the 2020 Ceasefire Agreement, Russia continues to provide the Armenian population in Karabakh with security guarantees, but this is a temporary arrangement, and there are reasons to believe that the evolving situation in Ukraine will erode Russia’s commitment. At this point, Armenia can do little else but lobby Moscow for support; the war in Ukraine de-substantiates the Minsk process, while bilateral negotiations in Brussels will not touch upon Karabakh. Following the war in Ukraine, Karabakh Armenians are falling through the cracks of Europe’s security architecture.

The nature of the study

This article summarises the conclusions of a study based on 25 structured interviews conducted from March to May 2022. These one-to-one interviews engaged Armenian foreign policy analysts, lobbyists and political activists in Paris, London, Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Stockholm, Athens, Berlin, Yerevan and Stepanakert [Az. Khankendi]. The interviewees were selectively targeted to engage all cultural fountains of the Armenian World – Western, post-Soviet and the Middle East – as well as to balance views favourable and critical of the government of Nikol Pashinyan. Beyond this core interviewee group, this study is also indebted to a secondary group of foreign policy analysts and former diplomats engaged as discussants from the United States, the UK, Georgia, Poland and Iran.

This entire project can be distilled into two Armenian dilemmas:

First, Yerevan and the global Armenian community are entirely dependent on Russia for the security of Karabakh Armenians; however, Armenians must engage with Europe and the United States to ensure Karabakh continues to be framed as an international diplomatic issue.
Secondly, Yerevan needs to engage with Ankara and Baku to avoid war, for which Armenia is not prepared; to do so, Yerevan needs to adhere to the nine-point ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia, where it implicitly accepts that Karabakh is an integral part of Azerbaijani sovereign territory.

Karabakh: neither an international nor a bilateral challenge

Historically, the Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) lay within the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Armenia led a successful military campaign from 1988 to 1994, capturing Nagorno-Karabakh and seven Azeri-majority territories west, south and east of the territory.[1] Since 2006 these territories have been de facto ruled by Stepanakert [Az: Khankendi], which in 2017 became the de facto administrative centre of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. The regime never gained international recognition, not even by Armenia.[2] Instead, Yerevan opted for indirect control over the territories and open-ended negotiations over the status of Karabakh through the OSCE Minsk process.[3] Each year that passed seemed to entrench the status quo until it did not.

In Autumn 2020, Azerbaijani forces launched a military campaign that allowed Baku to regain control over the seven adjacent regions and make inroads into Karabakh, including the towns of Shushi (Az. Shusha) and Hadrut. The 44-day war resulted in the death of including approximately 4,000 service personnel, civilian casualties, and tens of thousands of displacements.[4] In a small country with just under three million people, no family in Armenia was spared loss. For the Armenian world, galvanised as a community through its international campaign for the recognition of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, this was a moment of existential significance.

The Azerbaijani advance ended in November 2020 with a Russian-mediated nine-point agreement referred to in the Armenian World as “the capitulation”. Herein lies a demand for Armenia to recognise the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and forego any claims over Karabakh. Until the future of Karabakh Armenians is determined, the sole guarantor of their security is a force of 1,960 Russian peacekeeping troops.[5] The mandate of the Russian force ends in November 2025 and what happens next is anyone’s guess. Most Armenian interviewees hope that Russian troops will remain indefinitely, frequently citing Russia’s perceived interest in keeping boots on the ground.

However, according to an interviewee with direct knowledge of national security discourse in Yerevan and Stepanakert [Az: Khankendi], the Russian message is that Armenians should be preparing for “reintegration” with Azerbaijan. This message from Moscow tallies with the message from Yerevan. Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan and Foreign Minister Mirzoyan have stated that the Karabakh conflict is not a territorial issue but “a matter of rights”. That statement means that the government of Armenia no longer regards Karabakh Armenians as ‘a sovereign people’ but rather as a minority that needs to be protected by international law, if not by Azerbaijani justice.

That means that Karabakh Armenians rely on the internationalisation of the Karabakh question because they can’t rely on Armenia. The question then is how the Karabakh question becomes internationalised. Before November 2020, the primary forum for the negotiation of the Karabakh conflict was the Minsk Group, set up in 1992 by the Conference on Security Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).[6] This OSCE framework is also the platform through which Russia’s peacekeeping mandate in Karabakh gains international legitimacy. That presents Russia with a procedural problem. As noted by Thomas De Waal, Karabakh’s 2020 ceasefire agreement gains international legitimacy via the OSCE Tirana statement rather than any subsequent UN Resolution.[7] Therefore, the presence of Russian troops on the ground without the Minsk process would be legally precarious.

Ukraine changes this normative calculation because Russia appears to be divorcing from any need for external recognition for its authority in the ‘near abroad’. The notion of a single security-dispute mechanism emanating from the 1975 Helsinki accords has been fracturing and is now broken. Following the 2014 annexation of Crimean and the more recent invasion of Ukraine, relations between the West and Russia are past the point of no return. As explained by an American diplomat who served in the South Caucasus, as long as Moscow and the West are embroiled in a confrontation in Ukraine, no diplomatic framework that requires Russian-Western cooperation is workable.

An Armenian interviewee in contact with the OSCE co-chairs leaves no room for illusions: “there is no Minsk process.” Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov blames OSCE co-chairs France and the United States for disrupting cooperation over Karabakh.[8] Significantly, Russia has been entertaining the idea of a transition to the self-proclaimed three plus three frameworks: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan plus Russia, Turkey and Iran.[9] That may be unacceptable to Armenia and Georgia but points to the fact that Moscow no longer stands behind the Minsk process (CSCE). Increasingly, “might is right”, and Russia can carve out a diplomatic community in which Moscow is the sole rule-maker.

Perhaps more significantly, the Minsk process has failed to yield results since November 2020. As noted by a French-Armenian interviewee, no co-Ambassador from the Minsk Group has visited Stepanakert since 2020 [Az: Khankendi]. Statements by co-chairs amount to nothing but wishes for the renewal of bilateral negotiations.[10]

Contrary to speculation, Brussels does not present an alternative to the Minsk process.[11] On April 6 2022, the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Brussels and subsequently tasked their foreign ministers to “begin preparatory work for peace talks”. As noted by Thomas De Waal, the talks mediated by European Council President Charles Michel entail light touch facilitation rather than arbitration.[12] The precondition for Azerbaijani engagement is Armenia’s adherence to the November 2020 ceasefire agreement principles, recognising Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. Therefore, Armenia can’t put Karabakh on the table, and the EU won’t.

Many interviewees believe or hope that Russia will do what Europe won’t and step in to arbitrate a solution in which Karabakh Armenians are protected. An Armenian interviewee with intimate knowledge of the negotiation explains that the foundations of the Brussels process were set in Sochi.[13] After all, claims to the contrary are dismissed by the Kremlin.[14] In fact, a former British diplomat confirmed a meeting in London with the Armenian government liaison tasked with debriefing Moscow on the progress of the negotiations. Brussels is not and cannot be about Karabakh, and Moscow knows that.

Perhaps surprisingly, at least two sources in France suggest that President Macron has been advocating for the inclusion of French peacekeepers or military observers in Karabakh. This idea has apparently been pushed back by the foreign ministry. In any event, this would require Paris and Moscow to work together, which does not seem likely. Moreover, French credibility is questioned, as the tendency to instrumentalise the Karabakh conflict for electoral gain is not unheard of in Paris.[15] The 600,000-strong and politicised French-Armenian community is an object of desire in every presidential cycle. Far-right candidates Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen have been waving the flag of their support for Armenia during the Presidential campaign, which is not unprecedented.[16] Not to be outdone, the centre-right candidate Valerie Pecresse visited Yerevan and Stepanakert [Az: Khankendi].[17] The pattern may very well repeat itself in five years.

The Armenian opposition in Yerevan reverts to Russia as the only necessary protector of Karabakh Armenians. That assessment has become less realistic as Ukraine forces Russia to cut down on non-essential financial and military expenses.[18] A recent Crisis Group report refers to 1600 Russian soldiers in Karabakh, 360 short of the force specified by its mandate.[19] And then there is the question of what Russian troops in Karabakh are willing to do. After Azerbaijani forces moved to capture the strategic Parukh [Az: Farukh] village in April this year, Moscow issued a rare reprimand, yet no further action followed. In the words of a French-Armenian interviewee, the Parukh [Az. Farukh] village incident attests to the fact that Russian presence “is necessary but not sufficient to maintaining peace in Karabakh”.

Neither international nor bilateral?

The war in Ukraine freezes the international dimension of the Karabakh conflict indefinitely. The issue at hand is that Armenia cannot engage bilaterally on the question of Karabakh either, forgoing this right by signing onto the November 2020 ceasefire agreement.

Politically, that is an unmanageable admission for Yerevan. It is no surprise that the Armenian foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan contradicts Lavrov, hailing the cooperation of all the parties involved in the Minsk process.[20] Traditionally, Armenia leans on Russia for its foreign and security policy and promotes an Armenian human rights agenda with the support of its Western Diaspora. The constant and omnipresent fear articulated by interviewees is that Moscow will “pull a Bush” and ask the “with us or against us” question.

Until that happens, Yerevan will claim that the Brussels process is about the territorial delimitation with Azerbaijan. For Azerbaijan this is a non-issue; Yerevan insists there is a Karabakh issue but that is the subject matter of the Minsk process, which is no longer in effect. Therefore, when it comes to the Karabakh question, the debate in Armenia gravitates around a futile East versus West policy debate: “it’s all about Russia”, explains a globally respectable Armenian intellectual, noting how political discourse revolves around various degrees of owed loyalty to “the elder brother”.

Armenia’s Ukraine position is articulated sotto voce. When the leader of Karabakh Armenians, Arayik Harutyunyan, demands recognition of Luhansk and Donetsk, he sounds more Russian than Armenian. Yerevan abstained from the UN General Assembly vote condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the vote to suspend Russia’s UN Human Rights Council membership.[21] Most Armenian lobbyists interviewed dismiss any allegation that Armenia backed Russia’s invasion as Azerbaijani-Turkish propaganda.[22] In sum, Armenia cannot afford to have a Ukraine policy if the government insists on paying homage to the Minsk process. The government needs to pretend that a balance between East and West is possible; the opposition must pretend that allegiance to Moscow or lack thereof is a choice. If none of these illusions is maintained, Yerevan will be seen to admit that it no longer has a seat at the table where the future of Karabakh is discussed. This is politically untenable.

Fighting it out is not an option. The key to Azerbaijan’s military victory was arguably the diversification of its military arsenal, with support from Israel and Turkey. According to an Armenian defence specialist, even if Armenia had the money for an arms race, Yerevan would be unable to refuse Russia access to strategic technology and data. That means no diversification. A war of attrition in Ukraine makes matters worse as Russia exhausts its stock of ammunition, further diminishing the Armenian ability to replenish its arsenal. In this context, the ambition of rebuilding the Armenian army to end the slippery slope to appeasement seems less credible, even if there is a suggestion that Yerevan is already developing indigenous drone prototypes.[23] Playing for time is not an option as Azerbaijani troops move beyond Karabakh and the current point of contact. Armenia needs to engage with Azerbaijan and Turkey even if Karabakh is not on the table.

Here lie two problems for Baku: first, if the Pashinyan government does not have “a golden bridge” and signs an agreement with no provision for Karabakh Armenians, then the instrumentality of that treaty is reduced. In Yerevan and around the world, this peace agreement will be dismissed as yet another capitulation for Armenians. The second is that Baku does not want to see the renewal of a Russian presence in Karabakh beyond 2025; Azerbaijan would probably want to resolve the question of what happens to Karabakh Armenians before that date.

A challenge that Armenia and Azerbaijan share is that talks in Brussels are taking place in parallel to the war in Ukraine, with both parties unable to calculate the catalytic effect of the conflict. As a diplomatic facilitator, the EU is happy to follow through with the diplomatic agenda set in Sochi. However, amid growing polarisation between Europe and Russia, that appears to be a fragile consensus. The assumption that Russia and the West can address regional security challenges as partners looks increasingly unlikely. In turn, the assumption of a multilateral rules-based order and co-development is likely to suffer, undermining the authority of the Council. The emerging reality is one of competitive regionalisation projects, which should be a concern both for Yerevan and Baku, both of whom have a tradition of multi-vector diplomacy.

A fuller version of this study has been published by the Observatory on Contemporary Crises in Madrid, Spain. You can read it here: https://crisesobservatory.es/the-state-of-play-in-nagorno-karabakh-the-scope-for-second-track-diplomatic-initiatives/

Ilya Roubanis (PhD, European University Institute) is a British-born International Relations analyst of Greek heritage. He is a fellow of the Observatory on Contemporary Crisis (Madrid) and the International Relations Institute in Athens (IDIS). For over a decade, he has worked in the South Caucasus as a government affairs consultant, risk analyst, and journalist.

[1] Joshua Kucera, For Armenians, they are not occupied territories, they are homeland, Eurasianet, August 2018, https://eurasianet.org/for-armenians-theyre-not-occupied-territories-theyre-the-homeland

[2] Pierre Alix-Pajot, The Republic of Artsakh’s Pursuit for International Recognition, Le Journal International, February 2018, http://www.lejournalinternational.info/en/la-republique-de-lartsakh-en-quete-de-reconnaissance-internationale/

[3] Andrew Rettman, Referendum to create ‘The Republic of Artsakh’ on Europe’s fringe, February 2017, EU Observer, https://euobserver.com/world/136961

[4] The Economist, Armenia’s Army turns on its prime minister, March 2021, https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/04/armenias-army-turns-on-its-prime-minister; RFE/RL, Armenia Abstains from UN Vote on Ukraine, March 2022, https://www.azatutyun.am/a/31734729.html

[5] International Crisis Group, New Opportunities for Crisis Mediation in Nagorno-Karabakh, May 2022, https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/caucasus/nagorno-karabakh-conflict/new-opportunities-mediation-nagorno-karabakh

[6] CSCE, About the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, https://www.csce.gov/about-commission-security-and-cooperation-europe; Minsk Process Review:

In 1996, the OSCE member states laid out three principles as a legal basis for the peaceful settlement process:

1) territorial integrity of Armenia and Azerbaijan;

2) legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh to be based on self-determination, which confers on Nagorno-Karabakh the highest degree of self-rule within Azerbaijan;

3) guaranteed security for Nagorno-Karabakh and its population.

In November 1998, the Minsk Group proposed that the use of the Lachin Corridor by Karabakh for unimpeded communication between Karabakh and Armenia be the subject of a separate agreement. The Lachin district must remain a permanent and fully demilitarized zone.

The basis of the negotiated settlement plan is based on the principles introduced by OSCE Minsk Group in Madrid (November 2007):

1) the return of territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control;

2) an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and self-governance;

3) a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh;

4) the future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally binding expression of will;

5) the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence; and

6) international security guarantees that would include a peacekeeping operation.

These principles are supported by other intergovernmental organizations, which have accepted the exclusive role of the OSCE. Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan rejected them but they interpret them differently.

[7] Thomas de Waal, Brussels takes the initiative in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, Analyticon, May 2022, https://theanalyticon.com/en/may-2022-en/brussels-takes-the-initiative-in-armenia-azerbaijan-negotiations/; OSCE, Joint Statement by the Heads of Delegation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair Countries, December 2020, https://www.osce.org/minsk-group/472419

[8] Turan, Washington and Paris refused to communicate with Moscow on the Karabakh settlement-Lavrov, April 2022, https://www.turan.az/ext/news/2022/4/free/politics_news/en/3506.htm/001; NEWS.am, Lavrov says US, France annulled OSCE membership: what’ll happen to Karabakh?”, YouTube, April 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-V4kwd6zGw&ab_channel=NEWSAM

[9] NEWS.am, Russian Foreign Ministry: Trilateral agreements are considered by the Russian Federation as a basis for the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, April 2022, https://news.am/rus/news/699005.html

[10] OSCE, Joint Statement by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair Countries, December 2021, https://www.osce.org/minsk-group/507320

[11] International Crisis Group, New Opportunities for Crisis Mediation in Nagorno-Karabakh, May 2022, https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/caucasus/nagorno-karabakh-conflict/new-opportunities-mediation-nagorno-karabakh

[12] Thomas de Waal, Brussels takes the initiative in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, Analyticon, May 2022, https://theanalyticon.com/en/may-2022-en/brussels-takes-the-initiative-in-armenia-azerbaijan-negotiations/

[13] Mariam Nikuradze, Armenia and Azerbaijan agree to bilateral commission in Sochi, OC Media, November 2021, https://oc-media.org/armenia-and-azerbaijan-agree-to-bilateral-commission-in-sochi-summit/

[14] Maria Zacharova, Russian Foreign Ministry: Trilateral agreements are considered by the Russian Federation as a basis for the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, NEWS.am, April 2022, https://news.am/rus/news/699005.html

[15] Tigran Yegavian, The French Presidential Election and the Armenian Question, EVN Report, April 2022, https://evnreport.com/politics/the-french-presidential-election-and-the-armenian-question/

[16] Ani Meljumyan, French far-right candidate seeks votes in Armenia, Eurasianet, December 2021, https://eurasianet.org/french-far-right-figure-seeks-votes-in-armenia; Marine Le Pen, Twitter Post, Twitter, May 2021, https://twitter.com/mlp_officiel/status/1393135243780055041; Siranush Ghazanchyan, Marine Le Pen says Artsakh Reunion with Armenia Desirable, Public Radio of Armenia, April 2017, https://en.armradio.am/2017/04/19/marine-le-pen-says-artsakhs-unification-with-armenia-desirable/

[17] Azatutyun, Another French Presidential Candidate visits Armenia, December 2021, https://www.azatutyun.am/a/31620016.html; Asbarez, French Presidential Candidate Visits Artsakh; Baku adds her on Black List, December 2021, https://asbarez.com/french-presidential-candidate-visits-artsakh-baku-places-her-onblack-list/

[18] Civil, Moscow says Abhazia, S. Ossetia Shall be less dependent on Russia, March 2022, https://civil.ge/archives/478378; The Kyiv Independent, Ukrainian Armed Forces: Russia plans transfer of troops from Armenia, March 2022, https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-ato/3433670-rosia-planue-perekinuti-v-ukrainu-svoi-pidrozdili-z-virmenii-genstab.html

[19] International Crisis Group, Nagorno-Karabakh: Seeking a Path to Peace in the Ukraine’s War Shadow, Crisis Group Europe Briefing No. 93, April 1993, https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/b093-seeking-a-path-to-peace_0.pdf

[20] Arka News Agency, Armenia sees Karabakh conflict settlement in OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship format – Mirzoyan, April 2022, http://arka.am/en/news/politics/armenia_sees_karabakh_conflict_settlement_in_osce_minsk_group_co_chairmanship_format_mirzoyan_/

[21] Azatutyun, Armenia Abstains from UN Vote on Ukraine, March 2022, https://www.azatutyun.am/a/31734729.html; Naira Nalbadian, Russia Again not Backed by Armenia on UN Vote on Ukraine, Azatutyun, April 2022, https://www.azatutyun.am/a/31793297.html

[22] Haber Global, Ermenistan’in SU-20 Yalani Ortaya Cikti! Iste Uydu Goruntuleri, YouTube, April 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJOieiDlNY0&t=141s

[23] Siranush Ghazanchyan, UL-450: Armenian company presents new drones, Public Radio of Armenia, March 2022, https://en.armradio.am/2022/03/20/ul-450-armenian-company-presents-new-drone/ Also see: Inder Singh Bisht, Armenian-Made Kamikaze Drones Undergoing Tests, The Defence Post, February 2021, https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/02/12/armenia-tests-kamikaze-drone/

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Do militarised responses belong in the UK’s International Development Strategy?

Article by Lewis Brooks and Julia Poch Figueras

June 20, 2022

Do militarised responses belong in the UK’s International Development Strategy?

Conflict and authoritarianism are on the rise. This won’t surprise anyone reading about events in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and elsewhere. The new UK International Development Strategy (IDS), published in May this year, reveals how the UK plans to deal with this shifting geopolitical landscape. If it is going to prevent future crises and support development, the strategy must steer efforts to address the causes of conflict while avoiding the harms that come from overzealous use of force by the UK or its allies.

The humanitarian impact of insecurity on development is clear – not least its horrendous effects on women and girls. Conflicts create global security challenges that impact the UK: shrinking the pool of democratic states, increasing corruption, impacting the global economy, and creating conditions for transnational crime and armed groups to thrive. But the use of violence in response to transnational security threats can exacerbate these challenges and risks sowing the seeds of future crises and inequalities.

What’s in the International Development Strategy on conflict?

The Government includes the need to address conflict in the International Development Strategy to ‘prevent the worst forms of human suffering’. There are also references to tackling the root causes of conflict and security challenges; leadership in the area of women, peace and security; and a new conflict and atrocity prevention hub. But prioritising ‘tackling conflict and insecurity’ is less explicit than in previous aid strategies and in last year’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.[1] However, there are positive links made to climate change where the IDS notes that ‘[w]omen, children and those living in conflict-affected states are most affected’, and the specific focus on women and girls is encouraging despite not recognising gender as a cross-cutting priority issue.

A positive development is the proposed shift in how the UK administers aid for development towards decentralisation and ‘reducing bureaucracy’. The strategy commits that ‘those who benefit from our work must have a voice in what we do, and how we do it’ and reforms ‘must be locally owned’. Ambassadors and High Commissioners will now have more agency to take decisions. Timelines for business cases will be cut and paperwork reduced. There is also an emphasis on a ‘patient approach’ to development. Taken together these could enhance the UK’s approach to conflict prevention: understanding the context to respond effectively and flexibly in collaboration with those caught in conflict as part of a long-term plan for peace. However, there are some potential inherent contradictions in what is being proposed and the strategy risks prioritising shortcuts to security over the long-term investments needed in the partnerships, analysis and political will to tackle underlying drivers of conflict.

The risks of a ‘hard’ security approach

Woven throughout the policy – and much more explicit in the recent Mansion House speech by the Foreign Secretary – are hints of ‘harder’ approaches: using the military to build the ‘security and resilience capabilities’ of other nations; improving ‘cyber and physical security’; and partnering with allies like the Gulf states who ‘will address malign dynamics such as terrorism and extremism, serious and organised crime, and irregular migration’.[2] The UK works with security forces across the world to increase their capacity through training, mentorships and providing arms and other military equipment for partner security forces.[3]

The majority of attacks and civilian casualties due to terrorism and organised crime occur in conflict-affected countries. There is a development and security interest in stopping this violence. Yet as a new synthesis of Saferworld research on the war on terror finds, interventions too often perpetuate the same drivers of conflict that the UK and other nations promise to address: corruption, exclusion and abuses.[4] In a bid to tackle ‘terrorists’, the UK and others reinforce the security forces of kleptocratic, patriarchal and authoritarian regimes, who exclude and oppress their people.

One such UK ally is Egypt, whose regime has benefited from UK diplomatic support, military training and arms sales. Meanwhile, the Egyptian military has taken over more of the economy; and used the guise of ‘counter-terrorism’ to abuse and detain human rights defenders, journalists, transgender people and the political opposition. Security forces are accused of abuses against sexual and gender minorities and being complicit in cases of gender-based violence (GBV).[5] Egyptian security forces have failed to halt violations of human rights by the ISIS-affiliated armed group known as Wilayat Sinai or Sinai Province and carry out their own abuses. Many other UK allies fit a similar profile: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or individual groups like the Libyan militias trained as counter-migration ‘coastguard’ by the EU and UK.[6]

These interventions have been a nightmare for development, human rights and democracy. Those trying to deliver humanitarian aid or broker peace have found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Aid was even withheld from rebel areas in Syria to avoid contact with fundamentalist armed groups – increasing risk of starvation for civilians who couldn’t access the relief.[7] The narrow focus on stopping armed groups from recruiting is hindering efforts to build genuine, long-term stability. For example, these initiatives exploit the stereotype of the ‘peaceful mother or sister’ by using women to gather intelligence on their communities – but they don’t support these women to improve their political or economic rights. Women are treated as just another resource, and harmful social and gender norms are another useful tool in the pursuit of short-sighted objectives. The role that masculinities play in conflict, violence and recruitment is usually ignored in these responses.[8]

It is unsurprising that these interventions are exclusionary and top-down – planned in male- and elite-dominated spaces, and failing to seek the participation of civil society. They don’t try to understand the root causes of exclusion, inequality, injustice and insecurity in people’s daily lives, and they ignore minority groups’ experiences, needs and concerns. This is particularly concerning when we know that a country’s economic, political and social development increases with the active contribution of the majority of its population, and that the effectiveness of peace processes depends on the participation and buy-in of the affected groups.[9] So it is in the Sahel, where the international community has poured vast resources into countering armed groups and the ‘threat’ of irregular migration, while state security forces abuse and marginalise communities. The result: underlying conflicts have not been resolved and now the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group, is stepping in to exploit the crisis.

All this leaves the International Development Strategy at risk of trying to walk in two opposite directions: addressing some of the causes of conflict and human suffering while trying to take a short cut to security by addressing the symptoms only.

Where next for the UK’s conflict efforts

The Government must now fill in the gaps, iron out the inconsistencies and add detail to the commitments set out in the International Development Strategy. Whatever policies come next, the central theme of them should be addressing the root causes of crises. Support for open societies, particularly for democracy and human rights, is a glaring omission in the IDS, given its prominence in the Integrated Review.[10] Poor governance, marginalisation and corruption are significant drivers of conflict – all issues that open societies help to expose and tackle.

Diplomats and officials now turn to making the strategy a reality. Their choices must mitigate the risks of security partnerships, either by improving training or investing in democratic civilian oversight. And officials should decisively end partnerships where the recipient is more likely to foment conflict than end it. Mitigation is a strategic necessity; it can’t be a box-ticking exercise.

The UK National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security is a reasonable starting point on gender equality. Women’s and girls’ challenges should not be treated in isolation but as part of a set of norms that structure the discrimination and abuse against them and other marginalised groups, including sexual and gender minorities. A gender analysis of the strategy’s priorities would identify the root causes of conflict and violence and how to address them to advance towards a more just, equal and peaceful society. It should be a priority to include women from diverse backgrounds in decision-making processes they are traditionally excluded from.

Finally, we need more detail on the commitments to localisation – the UK must prioritise giving those affected by conflict a greater say and role in ending it. Not as faceless sub-contractors to a grant fed down through layers of INGOs and consortia – but as civil society, communities, protest movements, faith groups, women activists and women’s and girls’ rights organisations – in other words, the people who are best placed to respond to the conflict dynamics they identify and take advantage of the peace opportunities their networks connect them to.

The strategic conflict framework alluded to by Minister Vicky Ford in February must be the vehicle for drawing together the threads left dangling by the International Development Strategy and taking them further.[11] Only by addressing the root causes of conflict and focusing on long-term, equitable peace and development – rather than on short-term threats – can the UK’s approach to conflict be classed as a development strategy.

Lewis Brooks is the UK Policy and Advocacy Coordinator at Saferworld where he leads the organisation’s engagement on security, development and conflict policy as well as contributing on themes such as arms export controls and gender, peace and security. He has spent the last 9 years in various advocacy, policy, project management and research roles focused particularly on conflict and human rights. Immediately prior to Saferworld, Lewis was the Head of Policy and Research for the Royal Commonwealth Society – leading their Commonwealth approach to promoting LGBT rights.

Julia Poch Figueras works as a Gender and Peacebuilding Adviser at Saferworld where she focuses on integrating a gender transformational approach into peace and security-related programmes, research, policy and advocacy. She has contributed to several research and analysis on gender, peace and security in several contexts such as Colombia, South Sudan, Uganda and South Asia, and regularly engages in advocacy initiatives on women, peace and security in the UK and the EU.

[1] HM Government, Global Britain in a competitive age, March 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/975077/Global_Britain_in_a_Competitive_Age-_the_Integrated_Review_of_Security__Defence__Development_and_Foreign_Policy.pdf

[2] FCDO and The Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP, The return of geopolitics: Foreign Secretary’s Mansion House speech at the Lord Mayor’s 2022 Easter Banquet, Gov.uk, April 2022, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/foreign-secretarys-mansion-house-speech-at-the-lord-mayors-easter-banquet-the-return-of-geopolitics

[3] Abigail Watson and Lewis Brooks, ‘Persistent Engagement’, Persistent Risk: The impact of UK security assistance on rights and peace, Saferworld, October 2021, https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1373-persistent-engagement-persistent-risk-the-impact-of-uk-security-assistance-on-rights-and-peace

[4] Larry Attree and Jordan Street, No shortcuts to security: Learning from responses to armed conflicts involving proscribed groups, Saferworld, May 2022, https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1389-no-shortcuts-to-security

[5] HRW, Egypt: Security Forces Abuse, Torture LGBT People, October 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/10/01/egypt-security-forces-abuse-torture-lgbt-people

[6] Ruben Andersson and David Keen, Partners in crime? The impact of Europe’s outsourced migration controls on peace, stability and rights, Saferworld, July 2019, https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1217-partners-in-crime-the-impacts-of-europeas-outsourced-migration-controls-on-peace-stability-and-rights

[7] David Keen, Syria: playing into their hands, Saferworld, October 2017, https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1141-syria-playing-into-their-hands

[8] Catherine Powell and Women Around the World, Gender, Masculinities, and Counterterrorism, Council on Foreign Relations, January 2019, https://www.cfr.org/blog/gender-masculinities-and-counterterrorism

[9] Donald Steinberg, Peace Missions and Gender Equality: Ten Lessons from the Ground, International Crisis Group, March 2009, https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/peace-missions-and-gender-equality-ten-lessons-ground

[10] Rowan Popplewell, Why the UK government’s international development strategy is a big gamble, May 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/uk-government-international-development-strategy-gamble/

[11] Vicky Ford MP, Letter to Baroness Anelay of St Johns DBE, Tom Tugendhat MP and Sarah Champion MP, FCDO, February 2022, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/9069/documents/159486/default/

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International Development

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India and the UK: Tensions between values and interests

Article by Ivan Campbell

June 6, 2022

India and the UK: Tensions between values and interests

In March 2021, the UK launched ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’. At the heart of the Integrated Review was “a renewed commitment to the UK as a force for good in the world – defending openness, democracy and human rights”.[1] As the UK has subsequently embarked on a new foreign policy agenda, attention has turned to its efforts to forge new bilateral strategic partnerships – including how the UK will reconcile the values associated with being a ‘force for good’ with its trade, security and other interests –with a particular focus on how it will fulfil its commitment to defend openness, democracy and human rights overseas.

The Integrated Review also signalled an important geopolitical shift by the UK Government – the ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ – towards South and East Asia, a region that accounts for 40% of global GDP and includes the world’s fastest growing economies. To quote: “The Indo-Pacific region matters to the UK: it is critical to our economy, our security and our global ambition to support open societies”.[2] The Integrated Review several times cites India as a key partner in its ambitions, and the UK Government regards its relationship with India as the cornerstone of the Indo-Pacific tilt, so this is foremost among the new bilateral partnerships the UK would like to establish.

India is the world’s most populous democracy, and was founded on the principles of secularism and pluralism. However, the quality of India’s liberal democratic credentials has been increasingly questioned over recent years, for example in the V-Dem Democracy Report 2021.[3] Since the BJP Government came to power in 2014, its policies have been criticised by both Indian and international observers for eroding democratic norms. The rise of Hindu nationalism can be seen as part of a broader phenomenon of authoritarian populism, characterised by democratic backsliding and retreat from the rule of law and protection of minorities.

The UK-India relationship thus presents an early test case of the UK’s new role in a changing world, and particularly how it can be ‘a force for good’ as set out in the Integrated Review, while pursuing its strategic interests in respect of trade and security. To help address this challenge, the Foreign Policy Centre and Aston University co-hosted a webinar for leading Indian academics and civil society leaders, as well as international researchers, to share their perspectives on the state of openness, democracy and human rights in India today, as well as to consider the implications for UK policy.

In order to understand how these values play out in the Indian context, the speakers considered three core indicators of democratic health: civil society space, the status of women, and the protection of religious minorities. The panel then reflected on how the current UK Government approaches its relations with India, what considerations – whether of values or interests – predominate, and how the relationship might be recalibrated so that ‘Global Britain’ lives up to its aspiration of being a ‘force for good’.

The event was scheduled to coincide with the April 21-22 visit of UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to India to meet with his counterpart, Narendra Modi, where they were due to discuss defence, diplomacy and trade, with the UK Government keen to progress a bilateral trade deal. Despite the stated focus of Johnson’s visit, it took place against a backdrop of inter-religious violence in India’s capital and the demolition of Muslim-owned buildings, so it was hard to ignore the salience of values.

What then is the current state of openness, democracy and human rights – the values the UK commits to defending – in India? One speaker described a context where space for civil society has been drastically curtailed in recent years. This stems from the BJP Government’s view of India’s traditionally independent, vibrant and multi-faceted civil society as a threat to its authority. Indeed, in the context of marginalised opposition parties and a hollowed out parliament, it was argued that India’s civil society represents a greater ideological challenge to the BJP’s power than the formal political opposition.

The speaker described how the Indian Government’s response is reflected in an evolving narrative about the harmful role of civil society. When Prime Minister Modi first came to power in 2014, civil society was characterised as anti-growth and anti-development; and the stigmatisation of civil society has only increased since, with the Government now referring to it as anti-India and anti-national. In response, the Government has deployed an array of legislative tools to curtail the ability of NGOs to operate in India. A key tool was the 2020 Amendment to the ‘Foreign Contribution Regulation Act’ (FCRA), which restricted NGOs in a number of ways, including by permitting them to continue with service-delivery activities, but effectively prohibiting NGO research, advocacy and campaigning. This has had a huge impact on human rights work by Indian civil society, for instance protecting the rights of Dalits, as well as on environmental campaigning.

The Amendment to the FCRA also treats all funding from foreign sources for Indian NGOs as a potential threat to national security, leading to a massive reduction in support for Indian civil society from overseas. The effect of cutting off international funding, combined with the adverse effects of the COVID pandemic, has been in the words of one speaker a ‘body-blow’ for frontline Indian civil society, forcing many smaller Indian NGOs to close down. International NGOs in India have also been seriously affected, with long-standing civil society donor the Ford Foundation suspended, Greenpeace shut down, and Amnesty International charged with money-laundering.

The speaker explained how the FCRA Amendment is part of a larger story of a systematic assault on civil society leaders and organisations. Other regulatory restrictions imposed by the Government include serving income tax notices on civil society leaders, while there has also been a growing number of cases of NGO leaders – as well as Opposition MPs and journalists – being arrested or otherwise persecuted in recent years. All of these government measures and actions have had a chilling effect on NGOs, and have vastly reduced the space for civil society to operate in India.

In apparent contrast, another speaker described how the BJP Government has played up its efforts to improve the status of women in India. It has highlighted its commitment to women’s empowerment, and Prime Minister Modi has put his personal imprint on public schemes intended to benefit women and girls, such as the Pink Toilets campaign. This has contributed to considerable electoral benefits for the ruling party, with a higher turn-out of women than men in state-level elections, and a big swing in voting towards the BJP. However, this has not yet translated into increased women’s political participation at any but the lowest level of government, with India’s parliament comprising 14% women and only 9% in State Assemblies. Such low levels of women’s political participation were attributed by the speaker to a benefits-based rather than rights-based view of women’s status, and to the gatekeepers of India’s political parties preventing women from entering politics. These barriers to women’s political empowerment account for India’s fall towards the bottom of the global gender gap index.[4]

Women in India are also experiencing a decline in economic participation and opportunity due to the BJP Government’s roll-back of social welfare infrastructure. This is evidenced by a significant decrease in women’s employment in paid economic activity (down to 18% compared to 57% for men), while women spend four times as much of time as men working on unpaid domestic chores. All of this has contributed to a decrease in women’s economic assets and greater vulnerability. Meanwhile, continuing violence against women and girls is another factor behind women’s low status in India. Although a number of new laws have been introduced ostensibly to protect women – such as the Child Marriage and Anti-Trafficking Bills – the system for implementing these laws ascribes all power to the authorities and limits women’s right to choose. As Indian women’s groups have complained, these laws give license for police intrusion into women’s lives.

In contrast to these aspects of a decline in women’s status in India, the speaker pointed to an increase in women’s participation in local ‘self-governance’, such as on Village Councils, where approximately a million women take part. Despite suffering frequent verbal and physical attacks for their participation, these forums have enabled Indian women, especially those from lower castes, to increase access to social resources. Moreover, Indian women’s growing participation in street-level politics – e.g. public rallies and demonstrations – was cited as another example of their political empowerment. This could be seen in the 2020-21 Indian farmers protests – where women were centrally involved and affirmed their status as economic as well as political actors – and in the 2019-20 Shaheen Bagh protest in Delhi, when mainly Muslim women demonstrated against the Citizenship Amendment Act and called for India’s Constitution to be protected.

A third and critical dimension of democratic back-sliding in India relates to the protection of religious minorities, and especially of India’s almost 200 million Muslim citizens, who account for 14% of the country’s population. One speaker described how there has been an increase in religious polarisation under the Hindu nationalist BJP Government, leading to frequent violent clashes, especially between India’s Hindu and Muslim communities. As noted above, Prime Minister Johnson’s visit took place against the backdrop of communal violence in the capital, New Delhi, and other Indian cities, which was followed by local authorities demolishing mainly Muslim-owned buildings for alleged encroachment on roads.

This is just the latest eruption of Hindu-Muslim violence in India, and needs to be seen in the context of a raft of legislative measures by the BJP Government, which many feel are designed to marginalise Muslim communities. Most notable among these is the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which offers amnesty to illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and provides them with Indian citizenship, as long as they are not Muslims. Opponents of the CAA claim it is exclusionary and effectively enshrines religious discrimination into law. This violates the secular principles enshrined in India’s constitution, as well as the BJP’s commitment to freedom of religion in their 2014 manifesto.

Other legislative measures perceived to marginalise or persecute India’s Muslim communities include the 2017 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, which bans the sale and purchase of cattle. This Act’s most serious consequences were for Muslims who are engaged in meat production across India and also in the country’s sizeable beef, dairy and leather industries. The Amendment has emboldened Hindu vigilantes to harass and attack those who trade in or consume beef.

The speaker also cited the tacit support of some government authorities for the practice of Ghar Wapsi, a campaign of conversion to Hinduism from Islam and other religions, promoted by Hindu nationalist organisations. A counterpart is the baseless rhetoric about the threat of the ‘Love Jihad’, which claims that Muslim men are seducing Hindu girls to convert them to Islam. Meanwhile, in 2019, India’s Parliament approved a bill to make the Muslim practice of ‘instant divorce’ a criminal offence. “Triple talaq”, as it is known, allows a husband to divorce his wife by repeating the word “talaq” (divorce) three times. Opinion in India is divided over whether triple talaq discriminates against women or makes it easier for them to escape abusive marriages. However, it has been seen by some as a further attack on Muslim identity and culture.

The speaker explained how the cumulative effect of these legislative measures has been to embolden Hindu nationalists and to make India’s Muslims and other religious minorities, such as Christians, feel unprotected by the rule of law and therefore more vulnerable. It has led to an increase in hate speech against Muslims and other minority religions, as well as a growing number of physical attacks. Furthermore, many Indian analysts consider the Government to be complicit in the growing atmosphere of intolerance, hate and violence against Muslims. Certainly the marked deterioration in civil liberties for India’s religious minorities under the BJP Government undermines the values of secularism and pluralism on which the Indian state was founded.

The speakers then turned their attention to the implications for UK foreign policy, and specifically for the Government’s current approach towards India. In May 2021, the UK and Indian governments launched a 10-year joint road-map, which characterised both countries as “vibrant democracies and leading economies… (with) shared history, values and culture”.[5] The roadmap includes the ambition to double UK trade with India by 2030, and to work together “to develop a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific Region”.

The roadmap reflects the UK’s priority concerns vis-à-vis India. Given projected post-Brexit reductions in UK GDP, the Government is championing India as one of the main alternative trading opportunities. A swift Free Trade Agreement would be seen to vindicate the Government’s strategy for ‘Global Britain’. Meanwhile, the UK regards China as a ‘systemic competitor’, with the Indo-Pacific as the main theatre of competition. In this geopolitical context, India is regarded as the critical player in countering China’s rise, both in economic terms and as a democratic partner. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sharpened this framing of the liberal democratic bloc battling against the world’s autocracies – and India is seen as a key ‘swing state’.

Given the decline of liberal democratic values in India, how can the UK reconcile its stated commitment to defend openness, democracy and human rights with its ambition to forge a strategic partnership that will advance trade and security interests? The approach taken thus far by the current government is reportedly one of quiet diplomacy. In response to questions in the UK Parliament about human rights abuses in India or anti-Muslim violence, Ministers have given assurances that concerns have been raised in private by UK officials with their Indian counterparts. To quote one such response: “We engage with India on a range of human rights matters, working with Union and State Governments, and with NGOs, to build capacity and share expertise to promote human rights for all”.[6]

However, the private raising of concerns by UK officials has as its counterpart the public recognition and celebration of India’s democratic credentials. These are regularly invoked by the UK Government in bilateral encounters; for instance, ahead of his recent visit to India, Prime Minister Johnson remarked that: “The world faces growing threats from autocratic states which seek to undermine democracy, choke off free and fair trade and trample on sovereignty. The UK’s partnership with India is a beacon in these stormy seas”. Similarly, the UK has conferred elevated status on India in multilateral settings, with for example Prime Minister Modi invited to be lead speaker on the topic of Open Societies when the UK hosted the G7 last year.

The UK’s approach to India on human rights issues thus seems to be premised on the hope that India will live up to the values attributed to it – a tactic of “admonition disguised as praise”, as an Indian journalist described it. However, the mounting evidence of a deterioration of human rights, openness and democracy in India suggests that the UK’s approach is having little discernible effect. Indeed the speaker argued that the UK’s repeated public affirmations of India’s democratic credentials are actually helping to whitewash disturbing trends in India’s values, and thus contributing to a permissive space for democratic decline.

As noted above, the Indian Government’s clamp-down on civil space has been effective in stifling civil society organisations. The combination of new regulations, use of enforcement agencies and direct threats has led to a restrictive environment and understandable caution among organised civil society in India. However, one speaker made the point that Modi’s policies have also had the effect of mobilising swathes of Indian society that had not previously engaged in civil activism – be that the farmer’s protests or Shaheen Bagh rallies. This unorganised civil society is a growing force within India, and underscores the resilience of the struggle for social justice.

The role of Indian civil society in pushing back against the erosion of democratic values by the Government is all the more important given the absence of formal political opposition. Speakers described how the Hindu nationalism of the BJP is the dominant ideology, with the Congress party failing either to provide constructive criticism of BJP policies or to offer a meaningful alternative vision that Indians can relate to. Meanwhile, power has become so concentrated that State-level governments and Assemblies have been unable to provide an effective challenge or check to the national government.

As for the Indian Government’s stance vis-à-vis the UK, it is well aware of its leverage as a swing state in the new world order. Therefore public condemnation of its values by Western states risks pushing it into the arms of global competitors. However, the Indian Government would likely have been encouraged to see the Indo-Pacific tilt in the Integrated Review – a significant geopolitical realignment given that not so long ago the UK Chancellor declared a “golden era” of UK-China relations and aspired for the UK to become Beijing’s “best partner in the West”.

How should or can the UK Government reconcile, or at least balance, its interests and stated values in relation to India? The Integrated Review does acknowledge that this may not be straightforward, recognising that “we will need to manage inevitable tensions and trade-offs: between… our short-term commercial interests and our values”.[7] However, the consensus among the speakers was that the UK Government’s current policy towards India does not indicate any real tension between values and interests. Whatever efforts the UK Government may make in private to defend openness, democracy and human rights in India, these are vastly over-shadowed by its pursuit of economic and security objectives – especially with securing a Free Trade Agreement seen as the panacea to the economic harms consequent on Brexit.

What alternative foreign policy approaches might the UK adopt in relation to India? Outright public criticism of India’s democratic values was cautioned against as this would likely be weaponised as a rallying point by the BJP Government’s support-base, as well as damaging the bilateral relationship – viz. the nationalistic push-back against the US Secretary of State’s recent criticisms. Ditching the UK rhetoric about defending openness, democracy and human rights in its policy towards India would be a more honest approach, and allow the UK Government simply to pursue its interests – although such a course of action was not advocated.

Making UK-India cooperation dependent on standards relating to democracy and human rights was mooted as a pragmatic and relatively discreet approach and it was noted that trade deals often include labour and human rights commitments. However, one-way conditionalities would rightly be rejected as an extension of British imperialism, so any such approach should be reciprocal, with both sides having to meet agreed benchmarks. This is all the more important as the UK itself is not immune from criticism about its own record on openness and democracy. A September 2021 report by the global alliance of civil society organisations, CIVICUS, named the UK as a country of concern on its global watchlist of nations where there is a significant decline in respect for civic space. It cited the UK as a country where civic space has narrowed, criticising recent reductions in the respect and protection, which the UK Government affords people’s rights to associate, assemble peacefully and freely express their views.[8]

This last point highlighted a concern expressed by all speakers that the tone adopted by the UK in its relations with India is critical. There is a strong post-colonial sensibility among Indians, and in the past UK politicians and others have often spoken about India in an imperialist tone, which only serves to reinforce this. Moreover, the war in Ukraine has fuelled anti-West sentiment among many Indians, who consider the West guilty of hypocrisy and double-standards when comparing its approach to Afghanistan. Thus, rather than the West pressuring India to take a stand against Russia, India should be encouraged to maintain its neutral position of non-alignment. This underlines the need for the UK to engage with India in a spirit of humility and to negotiate with it as two countries that share important values but that are also both confronting challenges in reconciling those values with their interests.

Against this back-drop, a question was posed about what role UK civil society organisations – including think-tanks and universities – might play to support those Indian actors that are defending openness, democracy and human rights in India. Speakers emphasised that such values must, and can only, be built by Indians themselves. And the process of re-imagining a normative framework for India will be a long and laborious one. Nevertheless, reports by international organisations that raise awareness of the decline of democratic values and human rights in India, such as one by a US think-tank sounding the alarm on violence against Muslims, are appreciated and useful for Indian civil society. Meanwhile, the speakers affirmed the value of international civil society initiatives, such as this event, that raise awareness of the threats to democratic values in India and the shrinking space for civil society, while highlighting the gulf between the UK’s foreign policy rhetoric and the reality.

Ivan Campbell is a peacebuilding consultant and psychotherapist in training. He has almost 30 years experience working on conflict, security and peacebuilding with Saferworld and International Alert, and is on the FPC’s Advisory Council.

Image by Number 10 under (CC).

[1] HM Government, Global Britain in a competitive age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, March 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/975077/Global_Britain_in_a_Competitive_Age-_the_Integrated_Review_of_Security__Defence__Development_and_Foreign_Policy.pdf, p.14

[2] Integrated Review, op. cit. p.66

[3] Nazifa Alizada et al., Autocratization Turns Viral, Democracy Report 2021, University of Gothenburg, V-Dem Institute, March 2021, https://v-dem.net/static/website/files/dr/dr_2021.pdf

[4] World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2021, March 2021, https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2021

[5] FCDO and Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street, Policy paper: 2030 Roadmap for India-UK future relations, Gov.uk, May 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/india-uk-virtual-summit-may-2021-roadmap-2030-for-a-comprehensive-strategic-partnership/2030-roadmap-for-india-uk-future-relations

[6] UK Parliament, India: Religious Freedom and Violence, Question for FCDO, January 2022, https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2022-01-17/hl5435

[7] Integrated Review, op. cit. p.17

[8] People power under attack 2021, Country rating changes, see: https://findings2021.monitor.civicus.org/

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