Sathyam Commentary
12 June 1999
What is the point of all
this?
A visitor to the tamilnation
website, Aneesh
Pratap wrote : "What is the point of all this!
After constant wars and carnage based upon racial
divisions have created our nightmarish history, a
relatively peaceful world has come about. Why try to
promote tribalistic divisions for race-based web sites?
I can understand a place for a scientific,
anthropological examination of a culture, but 'Tamil
Nation' reminds me of names like 'Aryan Nation' (one of
the names used by the neo-Nazi movement). Perhaps you
should make an effort to make your website more
scientific rather than nationalistic. Some of the
'articles' I read sound like emotional
outpourings."
It is true that two world wars have contributed to
our 'nightmarish history'. At the same time, it is also
true that more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than during
the entirety of the war against Germany. Jean Paul Sartre's statement
at the International War Crimes Tribunal
in 1967 reflected the reality of the so called
'relatively peaceful world' that had 'come about'.
"Therefore, the Vietnamese are fighting for
all men ....Not just in theory or in the abstract. And
not only because genocide is a crime universally
condemned by the rights of man. But because, little by
little, this genocidal blackmail is spreading to all
humanity, adding to the blackmail of atomic war. This
crime is perpetrated under our eyes every day, making
accomplices out of those who do not denounce it.
(Jean Paul
Sartre's Statement 'On Genocide' at the Second Session
of the Bertrand Russell International War Crimes
Tribunal on Vietnam, 1967)
The continuing genocide
of the Tamil people by the Sri Lanka armed forces is
a modern day example of the 'relatively peaceful
world' that 'has come about'. Again, the
Gulf War and the present conflict
in Kosovo show that though we may all yearn for a
peaceful world, undivided by considerations of language,
race and nationality, we seem to be no closer to it. How
then do we move towards the ideal that we long for? Many
years ago, Aurobindo
wrote:
"Man's highest aspiration - his seeking for
perfection, his longing for freedom and mastery, his
search after pure truth and unmixed delight - is in
flagrant contradiction with his present existence and
normal experience. Such contradiction is part of
Nature's general method; it is a sign that she is
working towards a greater harmony. The reconciliation
is achieved by an evolutionary progress."
We live in a world which is quick to promote the free
movement of goods, money and information but criminalises the free movement of
humans across state boundaries. The nation state,
backed by the power that flows from the barrel of a gun
(and the nuclear bomb)
remains the central pillar of the world order. The
remarks of Jeremy Seabrook, bear repetition:
"Globalisation permits money and goods
to move around the world unimpeded, yet criminalises
the other indispensable element of production, labour,
when it seeks to move to where it can command a decent
livelihood. ...The story of labour holds sober lessons.
It shows that it is not only as workers that people
need emancipation from the totalising dogmas of
neo-liberalism, but as consumers too, as complete human
beings. There is a new urgency to the need to
formulate a richer
form of liberation than that envisaged by the
revolutionaries and pioneers of labour... (Jeremy
Seabrook in the New Internationalist,
January/February 1999)
Those who preach 'internationalism' to the Tamil
people are rarely prepared to give up their own national
identity. It is true that a time will come when the
separate national identities of the peoples of the world
will be transcended by a greater unity. But it will be
romantic to imagine that we have reached that stage
today. To those who advocate internationalism for others,
whilst holding fast to their own nation, the words of Sun
Yat Sen, written more than 70 years ago, serve as a
continuing reminder of today's political reality - and
the ever present need to match words and deeds:
"At present, England and France are advocating
a new idea which is proposed by the intellectuals. What
is that idea? It is an anti nationalist idea which
argues that nationalism is narrow and illiberal; it is
simply an idea of cosmopolitanism.. Cosmopolitanism
will cause further decadence if we leave the reality,
nationalism, for the shadow, cosmopolitanism.... First
let us practise nationalism; cosmopolitanism will
follow." (The Triple Demism of Sun Yat Sen,
1924)
We cannot live in a world which has not yet arrived -
though we can certainly work towards it. To work for the
flowering of the Tamil nation is to bring forward the
emergence of a true transnationalism. A true
transnationalism will come only from nationalisms that
have flowered and matured - it will not come by the
suppression of one nation by another.
It is true that the growth of nationalism will
eventually lead to a voluntary pooling of
sovereignties, in a regional, and ultimately in a
world context - but the crucial element must remain the
voluntariness of the
process.
"Nationalism is first and foremost
a state of mind, an act of consciousness .. the mental
life of man is as much dominated by an
ego-consciousness as it is by a group consciousness.
Both are complex states of mind at which we arrive
through experiences of differentiation and opposition,
of the ego and the surrounding world, of the we group
and those outside the group .
It is a fact often commented upon
that this growth of nationalism and of national
sectionalisms happened at the very same time when
international relations, trade, and communications were
developing as never before; that local languages were
raised to the dignity of literary and cultural
languages just at the time when it seemed most
desirable to efface all differences of language by the
spread of world languages.
This view overlooks the fact that that very growth
of nationalism all over the earth, with its awakening
of the masses to participation in political and
cultural life, prepared the way for the closer cultural
contacts of all the civilisations of mankind, at the
same time separating and uniting them." (Hans Kohn: The Idea of Nationalism , A
Study of its Origins and Background. New York.
1944)
'Tamil Nation' may remind some of names such as 'Aryan
Nation'. But, unlike the neo-Nazi movement, the Tamil
people lay no claim to be better than any other people.
They simply say that they are as good as any other
people. They do not seek to rule others - they seek to
rule themselves.
The effort to acquaint the world of the
important contributions of Tamil culture, is not the
expression of an exaggerated nationalism. Tamil culture
is a culture of great antiquity and it has made, and will
continue to make, a rich
contribution to world civilisation. At the same time,
admittedly, Tamils have gained, and continue to gain, by
their interaction with other peoples and other cultures -
particularly those of the Indian sub continent. No people
are an island unto themselves. The Tamil people are not
chauvinists.
The question that nationalism poses
is not so much a question about 'division' but about
'association' - about the need for structures where
different peoples speaking different languages, tracing
their roots to different origins, and living in
relatively well defined and separate geographical areas,
may associate with each other in equality and in
freedom.
"It is sometimes said that to
accord international recognition to these separate
national formations will lead to instability in the
world order. The argument is not dissimilar to that
which was urged a hundred years ago against granting
universal franchise. It was said that to empower every
citizen with a vote was to threaten the stability of
existing state structures and the ruling establishment.
But the truth was that it was the refusal to grant
universal franchise which threatened stability ... Self
determination is not a de stabilising concept. Self
determination and democracy go hand in hand. If
democracy means the rule of the people, by the people,
for the people, then the principle of self
determination secures that no one people may rule
another - and herein lies its enduring appeal."
(The Fourth
World: Nations without a State)
The struggle of the Tamil nation is
not unique. The comments of Bernard Q.
Nietschmann help to point the direction of the
future:
"Increasingly, the Fourth
World is emerging as a new force in international
politics because in the common defence of their
nations, many indigenous peoples do not accept being
mere subjects of international law and state
sovereignty and trusteeship bureaucracies. Instead,
they are organising and exerting their own
participation and policies as sovereign peoples and
nations."
What is a nation?
A nation is not a 'race' - though it is
rooted in kinship. Neither is a nation a 'tribe' leading
a nomadic existence, without a homeland. Nor is a nation
simply a cultural togetherness, an ethnic group. In the
end, it is political freedom, which secures cultural
integrity. A nation is a political togetherness
consolidated by struggle and
suffering, and directed to secure the aspirations of
a people for equality and freedom - and to secure the
institutions necessary for that purpose. A nation is a
deep and horizontal togetherness which cuts across the
vertical divisions which exist amongst a people.
Tamils have no cause, to be apologetic about their
togetherness as a people. History and politics cannot be
made without passion. We are not desiccated calculating
machines. We are not
creatures of the mind alone. We have heart as well. A
'scientific anthropological examination of a culture' is
not an end in itself and the words of Gramsci offer an
useful caution:
 'The error of the
intellectual consists in believing that it is possible
to know without understanding and especially without
feeling and passion.. that the intellectual can be an
intellectual if he is distinct and detached from the
people-nation, without feeling the elemental passions
of the people, understanding them and thus explaining
them in a particular historical situation, connecting
them dialectically to the laws of history, to a
superior conception of the world... History and politics cannot be made without
passion, without this
emotional bond between intellectuals and the
people-nation. In the absence of such a bond the
relations between intellectuals and the people-nation
are reduced to contacts of a purely bureaucratic,
formal kind; the intellectuals become a caste or a
priesthood...'
(Gramsci, quoted in James
Joll's Gramsci, Fontana, 1977)
Yes, some of the articles at
the tamilnation website
may well sound like emotional outpourings - because in
fact they are. They are the out pourings of a
people who continue to
suffer because they continue to assert their democratic
right to rule themselves. They are the out pourings of a people who
continue to resist a genocidal war
being waged against them in their homeland. They are the
outpourings of
a people who have had their kith and kin, their udan
pirapakul, tortured and raped and buried in mass
graves, They are the
outpourings of a people living in many states but without
a state of their own.
The question: 'what is the point of
all this?' does not admit to an easy answer. It is a
question which many of us ask
(and perhaps, should ask) from
time to time. Each one of us will need to see the world
as it is, and seek to do that which to each seems to
bring a measure of harmony and peace. We ourselves
subscribe to the post
modern vision that -
".... we are not simply the products of our natural
and social environments. We are, to be sure, deeply
constituted by our relations to these environments. But
in each moment, we create ourselves out of these
relations in terms of our desires, purposes, meanings,
and values - in
short our spirituality. Because of this element of
autonomy, individuals are not only shaped by their
society; they can shape it in return ".
Having said that, in the end, the
words of Mahatma Gandhi will, perhaps, help to put all
our actions in context:
"Whatever you do will
be insignificant,
but it is very important that you do it." - Mahatma Gandhi
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