When the Indian sub-continent was partitioned into two independent nations on his birthday in 1947, the Cambridge-educated sage Sri Aurobindo indicated he’d have far preferred a gift of one country to two. Sensitive to the sectarian troubles sown, he was especially sorry as a Bengali to see East & West Bengal divided, East given to a Pakistan divided geographically as well as culturally. From the inherent stresses, he predicted pretty much to the year how long it would take for East Bengal to free itself from the unnatural grip of rule by those with their own agenda so far away.
As mandated, the original partition precipitated countless deaths in the panic of people trying to find where they belonged & conflicts over dominance. Despite brutal repression by the Pakistani occupation, the separation of Bangladesh happened right on Aurobindo’s predicted schedule, with all the extra suffering that might have been avoided. Conflicts in & over Kashmir continue, while those in & around Pakistan have provided the people of the region a quite troubled (& still troubling) history, including many military coups, dangerous partnerships, & export of nuclear weapons technology.
One must wonder about the old idea of “Divide and Conquer,” so deeply embedded in the international strategic power game, yet with such a mixed history. There are various cases in which such an approach presumably makes good sense, encouraging adversaries to spend their hostilities on each other. Other times a potential adversary might be weakened by turning its hostile attentions to its internal factional divisions.
I suppose it might even seem like simple good sense to create two countries more or less balanced (& always potentially against each other) rather than one united baby super-power. Long before fear of institutions becoming “too big to fail,” there was a basis for fear of “too big to contain.” In the case of super-power politics, the great powers come into conflict in the same way that corporations do in the open market place, from their perceived need to expand market-share & influence. This is not always to the benefit of neighbors or of the expansive power’s own inhabitants, who tend to be conscripted to make the sacrifices & pay the costs required, for a share of benefits that, if they happen at all, accrue mostly to others & the state machinery itself.
It might have seemed as if this expansive drive reached its explosive climax in World War II, with one world order violently challenged by another considerably darker & more brutal. Implicit in the cooperation of the grand alliance that first stopped, then toppled the Imperial Japanese & Nazi regimes was an unmade promise to end imposed colonial rule, a path to self-determination. Not that the old powers wouldn’t try to re-establish control, as the French did in Indochina & elsewhere, generally with disastrous results.
In the case of the sub-continent, the British had never lost control, however, nor was independence a foregone conclusion, let alone its form & timing. They would hold Hong Kong for more than another half century, after all. Still, it became clear that the days of the British Raj in India were numbered. As with apartheid in South Africa later, the question became not if, but when & how, especially the latter, including the cost paid for the added time, which at some point leads to increasing losses, a bleeding of the ruling power in treasure, blood, & spirit, holding on only by becoming more brutal, less humane, a terrible cost on a people, perpetrators & victims alike.
One may make the case that the British Raj granted independence in a more timely & civilized a way than either the French with its colonies or the South Africans internally. They could have fought to hold on, as they had with the breakaway United States, or with previous Indian uprisings. Faced with the tactics of non-violence, people who wanted to consider themselves relatively enlightened, guided by principles of reason & fairness, had little choice, particularly in the geo-political strategic situation after a war fought, at least in part, against such brutal use of imposed power.
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One can hardly imagine the outcome of trying to hold on much longer, very likely giving the most extreme elements greater sway on all sides, while forcing many would-be moderates into a more radical agenda. From some perspectives, a war of liberation had been going on for a long, long time, with Russia & China both interested in fueling the process. Expansive ideologically & geographically, the chief argument the communists had was the idea that only communist revolution could liberate the people from the grip of a colonially imposed capitalist exploitation. The harder the colonial power tries to hold on in such a situation, the more it tends to justify the arguments against it.
On the other hand, the British, like most empires, had its self-justification, its reasons for being, among them two over-riding “functions” they could claim to provide. One of these is the maintenance of a social order based on more or less enlightened principles of law, including public safety. The second is the opportunity for education, advancement & diverse achievement provided. One shouldn’t underestimate the importance of either service, starting with public safety.
Where a society has individuals willing to prey on other individuals, as well as factional groups otherwise fighting for control &/or survival, having a relatively fair, effective, impartial peace-keeping authority may be considered a primary benefit of civilization. The opportunity for development, with all the virtues of culture, is another.
The history of colonial rule in India is “lenticular,” however, like a sign that reads differently according to the angle of light & looking. One can focus on the abuses & venalities for one picture, or on the higher values sometimes realized, for another.
It was no accident that the leading voices for enlightened swaraj, self-determination, were themselves beneficiaries of “western” education, with exposure to European, American & classical traditions. There are core aspects of civilization inherent in the social contract under-girding democratic societies that are threatened by aggressive suppression of indigenous speech & political participation, particularly where shared values are what’s expressed–& suppressed. Despite illusions to the contrary, it’s simply not possible to suppress such values in the population at large and maintain them for the privileged class; the hypocrisy becomes too obvious.
In the lenticular world, there’s always the question of whether reasoning ostensibly for the greater good is really just a part of the packaging, propaganda used to cover the exploitation & injustice. Does the cost-benefit analysis that counts really consider the greater good, in other words, or just look at “the good” from the more limited perspective of the colonial elite alone?
Faced with an undefeatable ideological or philosophical challenge to its imposed order, an imperial power must at some point ask, “What’s the actual alternative, and how might we best influence its future?” What’s needed is not just an abstract idea of an “ideal,” however, but clear appreciation of the likely outcomes on the ground under the different alternatives. As Twain & others have reminded us, however, prediction is inherently difficult, “particularly about the future.”
If they did not take a worse path, the British might nevertheless have still done better than they did in the clumsy, autocratic, and poorly considered hand-over that included such an ill-considered partition. Most of the public details of the process are mostly irrelevant to the actual bottom line, results on the ground, which in this case involved terrible factional violence, widespread panic & dislocation, horrendous atrocities on a vast scale. Never mind the excuses & rationalizations, it simply did not have to be that way.
Horrified as they may have been, some of those most responsible might have felt the resulting chaos provided some vindication to the imperial idea. “So you want your independence? You’ll see how hard it can be without the enlightened guidance of a Greater Raj to stabilize your less civilized factions.”
The imperfections of a former colonial administration may look far less damming when compared to those that follow, especially to the former colonial elite–who nevertheless may not wash their hands so easily of some responsibility for the sufferings a more enlightened hand off would have avoided. The partition itself was a terrible idea, and ought to have been recognized as such by those not contaminated with a “divide-&-conquer” mentality, whether British or those pro-partition militants who could gain such power themselves in no other way. It was a costly mistake to feed such separatist ambitions, made indescribably worse by the arrogantly blind way it was carried out.
Forty years or so earlier, in the hours before a new law would restrict their ability to do so, President Theodore Roosevelt & forester Gifford Pinchot drew lines on maps to protect newly designated national forests, without knowing much about what the lines meant on the ground. That was one thing. It was another entirely to do so dividing human worlds along religious, ethnic or ideological grounds without regard for the actual ground, thoroughly mixed & variously pluralistic.
Whatever the pressures & rationalizations, there is no excusing either the partition or how it was carried out, including its timing. Yes, there are scenarios that could have been worse. But there are also many that required only rather minimally clearer foresight to have avoided so much trouble later. This fact ought to faced, as the lessons that should have been learned don’t seem to have been, starting with the horribly foggy notion of partition–unclear in its essence, and even muddier in its execution, lines drawn on maps without much regard for the territories.
The aim is not to point blame, as if trying to settle scores long since settled, but to understand the nature of the error, starting with a clearer notion of partition itself in relation to the idea of self-determination. Let’s face it; the essential issues still seem dangerously foggy to the general public & strategic planners alike, at least partly because these issues must be seem as part of a holistic continuum across levels, where the relative balance across the spectrumis the critical factor.
To clarify, an issue like “self-determination” necessarily operates across many levels, from the individual, the family, the voluntary group, the community, the state, etc. Each of these naturally wants & appropriate deserves some measure of self-determination. If that’s a given, so is the fact that none of these are absolute. If even the federal powers are limited by rights held by individuals, states and other entities, so, too, the individual & group rights are necessarily limited by the rights of other individuals & groups, as presumable represented by the higher orders of government with the responsibility for the fair administration of rights & services on behalf of the whole.
No one can declare his own rights absolute at the expense of his neighbor’s–or perhaps may declare, but not execute. Although a varying percentage will in fact try to do so, by guile, by corruption, &/or by force, having the power to do so. It’s a fact, and so we have a sheriff, a marshal, local, state & federal agencies charged with keeping the systems sufficiently honest, just, and in balance. None of these systems are perfect, and neither are the systems created to regulate them, in need of continual re-tuning themselves, yet the balancing functions they perform are no less vital–and the health of the system as a whole is reflected in the balance between the levels.
One kind of unhealthy society makes high state power absolute at the expense of abused individuals; another does the same thing by elevating the individual & gang’s freedom to operate, without a higher, community-serving restraining force. The potential for abuse exists at every level, in other words, individual, county, state, & national agency, but so does the potential for correction & the ultimately shared responsibility for bringing these about, at least in a system based on “checks & balances.”
A driver or cyclist makes countless adjustments, corrections, re-corrections, on many levels, from tiny tweaks & shifts to major moves in response to urgent circumstances. The same process goes on in societies & larger ecologies also, wherever feedback affects the system that continues to feed back. Where orders of magnitude are necessary & appropriate to the management of human affairs, claims on behalf of any single level to absolute authority ought to be a discrediting characteristic–whether of a self-declared Supreme Leader of a state religion or a citizen who declares himself king over all others for all time, laws be dammed, or a rogue government agency.
If there were an absolute, the two main claimants would each have an unshakeable case. The individual, for one, must at some point be considered captain of his or her own vessel, although still limited. And the “whole” also has rights it won’t have trumped by technicalities, or abstract restraints. Even its most basic restraints, designed to prevent the abuse of its members, are justifiably suspended in practice where the well being of the whole itself seems to require–as in the case of isolating an otherwise innocent individual to prevent or limit an epidemic.
The individual’s right to freedom of movement may be temporarily limited, but that does not make the government’s right to isolate individuals absolute or arbitrary. The margins between levels are themselves fractal, not absolute, in other words. The same may be said for the two essentially complementary principles of self-determination & pluralistic whole, partition & union. You can’t have one without the other; neither can be held up as absolute. If the imposed partition of the Indian sub-continent into two countries was foggy to the point of a serious breech of the last colonial responsibility, the partition of East Bengal from Pakistani domination was a step in the tight direction, a necessary correction, even though it doesn’t restore what was lost by the original partition.
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The Indian partition at independence was not only foggy, but a deeply flawed concept. How do you even contemplate dividing an inherently mixed population along sectarian & geographical lines, creating one supposedly pluralistic & non-sectarian state and another in which the majority may declare & define itself along militantly sectarian lines? If that doesn’t sufficiently set the stage for incessant conflict to come, throw in the possibility of disputed borders & unresolved territories like Kashmir.
The unnatural divisions of partition cut across so many lives and communities, and continues to cut, internally as well as along the fractiously disputed borders. A united India might have avoided most of that, with a constitution guaranteeing all its tribal & religious communities degrees of participation & self-determination within pluralistic, regional frameworks. The United States, another large & diverse pluralistic society, fought not just a war of colonial separation, but so-called Civil, Indian, & Mexican Wars to establish a unifying “pax Americana” within its current borders.
In many cases, it’s a larger unity that alone protects its parts from the conflicts they will inevitably have with each other. To some extent, that’s the fundamental principle underlying a society of laws based on rights. Control of & by a larger empire is not always the option of informed choice, however.
Something there is that resists such control from above, with its potential for insensitivity, abuse at multiple levels of administration & local oppression. Such control from above is often experienced as the more immediate existential threat than those from temporarily suppressed internal divisions or fractious competition with neighbors. The skirmishes and battles between groups like the Lakota & the Blackfeet might have been considered less dangerous to some chiefs than threats from the U. S. Cavalry.
On the other hand, the Cavalry, like every other such group, worked in a context of shifting alliances & hostilities, with native allies as well as “hostiles.” On the ground, there were in theory two ways to view what the “American” agencies represented: the larger threat by far, a common enemy all tribes might unite against, if only towards a negotiated settlement; another player in the game, potentially useful in a tribe’s other conflicts, some long-standing.
In retrospect, it seems evident how fruitless most tribal struggles against “Manifest Destiny” were bound to become. However heroic the attempts, nothing could stay that relentless tide, or break more than a few waves. Given the rise of more brutal & tyrannical empires elsewhere in the 20th Century, however, native seers might have found some value in American hegemony, after all, even if not for all parts equally.
We can’t help noting how unclear such things must seem at the time, how easy to be wrong, even dead wrong. Whether we’re talking about an advance of Roman legions, Mongol bands, Soviet tanks, Nazi blitzkrieg, Japanese invasion, or “pacification” of tribes removed to “reservations,” it’s natural to resist such domination. There are good reasons to retain one’s independence and distinctness, whether Estonian, Chechnyan, TIbetan, Lakota, Navaho, or Hopi….
Nor is it “one size fits all” when it comes to would-be “greater wholes.” Whether the aim is tribal, national or larger well-being, each situation must be considered in its particulars, as well as at different time-scales according to situation. For every larger alliance that makes eminent sense, there may be any number that don’t. In this, the judgment is related to how any contract might be regarded–the devil in the details. But not random details–rather in those which reflect essential differences in the kind of order established, not an entirely static thing.
The characteristics that ultimately make the most difference can be described, and even defined in general terms. They are not that arcane, but mostly common sense, the same characteristics most people want in the operation of their communities, economic systems & personal activities. The things people don’t want are even more obvious, from oppression, abuse, the short end of the stick, barely enough stick to survive on, corruptions by which the powerful take unfair advantage of the less so, physical abuse & repression, inconsistent standards by which other individuals & groups are consistently favored at your & your group’s expense.
No one wants to give up any more personal freedoms than necessary, or even a sense of some individual sovereignty, the ability to make choices where one’s person is involved. On the other hand, from infancy, our choices are limited by our need for others & by circumstances, as we learn to accommodate self-determination to situation & self-discovery to opportunity. Beyond the comic book world, we don’t expect to achieve big things just by snapping our fingers, wishing they were so. We are not sovereign & independent, it turns out, neither with respect to society, nor with respect to nature. We are part of larger wholes, with or without inherent “integrity.”
When big powers mess about with boundary making, as in the foggy partitions carved up in the sub-continent & so-called middle east, they can do damage to their own long-term self-interest while focusing on shorter term strategic gains. The advantages they consider may be mostly their own, inherently temporary, with little regard to the longer term. This is especially apparent where maps are carved according to unnatural divisions, sowing seeds of discord.
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Given the quality of ambitiously expansive leadership in both countries, the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s might be considered a strategic advantage to the Israelis, Americans, Jordanians, & others who might otherwise have found their own interests more directly threatened. Better these two should use up each other’s will to fight on each other, so long as one didn’t emerge so victorious as to swallow the other to become part of one greater & more threatening whole.
Americans apparently sold arms to both sides, and mostly looked the other way when the worst WMD atrocities were carried out. Or perhaps not; perhaps the gassing of the Kurds went a step too far with some would-be backers, who started backing off. Then, with what must have looked like an American pass, Hussein went into Kuwait. After pushing the Iraqi army back in Operation Desert Storm, the Americans exercised more restraint than some thought appropriate, by not destroying the Republican Guard, making room for a more inclusive, less aggressive regime.
When the Shia rose up against Sadam’s domination in the south, expressly encouraged by the American president, however, the Americans then sat by while they were slaughtered, until driven by public opinion to at least establish no-fly zones. This was a costly strategic blunder. As seemed clear to me at the time, we should established–on explicit invitation from the local Kurdish & Shia populations under threat of slaughter–a line of defense effectively containing Hussein’s Bathist forces. Americans would be present at each line for protection, by invitation of the protected, not as an invading enemy, as they’d become in the next strategic blunder in 2003, which would with a stroke of the pen destroy the fundamental structure of the Iraqi state without the ability to impose a new & more effective one, fostering an increasingly inflamed insurgency as inevitable expression of patriotism, group loyalty, & response to abuses.
Instead, back in Bush 1, we established some limits to the Bathist control with a partial “no fly zone,” deferring any real resolution on the ground. The rest of the history is all too clear from then, a clumsy & incoherent policy that ultimately served the interests of adversaries. Now, similar lines are being fought over, at the cost of much extra struggle & suffering, as the area grapples with either fragmentation or some kind of federated regional relation, each with its dominant sectarian profile….
With foresight, these lines could have been established without further bloodshed with small protective forces put in place in 1990. Would that have eliminated all abuse or hostility against foreign troops. Tensions tend to exist with foreign troops even within the friendliest of host countries. Nevertheless, the prospects for a relatively violence-free détente looked strong, on the Korea model but with a more asymmetrical allied power, including the ability to prevent WMD development.
The level of force required to maintain a protected border against a far inferior adversary is far less than what is required to contain an insurgency with minimal indigenous support. Instead, the callous blunders of the father in encouraging uprisings he was not prepared to help were compounded by the arrogant frat-boy blunders of the son, naïve enough to gloat in staged “Mission Accomplished photo ops with no sense of what’s to come, the very model of lack of foresight.
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