1
THE WESTPHALIAN STATE IN SOUTH ASIA AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
- Mijarul Quayes

Prolegomena
The 1648 Peace of Westphalia1 has been cited as the political big bang that created the
modern system of autonomous states. Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War
against the hegemonic power of the Holy Roman Empire, delegitimized the already
waning transnational role of the Catholic Church and validated the idea that
international relations should be driven by balance-of-power considerations rather than
the ideals of Christendom. The treaties2 affirmed the preexisting right of the
principalities in the empire to make treaties, but the domestic political structures of the
principalities remained embedded in the Holy Roman Empire. They set forth new rules
of international law establishing the modern state system. The foundation of this system
is the sovereign character of the nation state and the solemn prohibition against
interference in its internal affairs by external powers. The Westphalian state became a
prototype for the nation state with national sovereignty at the core.
This principle was restated with the adoption of the UN Charter and the establishment
of the United Nations. The reinforcement of the Westphalian principle in the UN
Charter did not however freeze the attributes of the state at the level of 1648 Europe.
Several factors can be identified that point to a constantly evolving change in the nature
and extent of state sovereignty over the years, specially pronounced when independent
"nation states" emerged outside Europe as a result of decolonization.
Furthermore, the idea of the state as an autonomous, independent entity, has been
receding under the combined onslaught of monetary unions, cable networks, the
Internet, and nongovernmental organizations. This trend, more pronounced in recent
years, has been described as one of "receding government, deregulation and the
shrinking of social obligations." Economic, social, and technological globalization has
been an important subject for consideration for several years, and many observers have
commented on how these developments have diminished the traditional power and
1
Established through two separate treaties, viz. Münster (the Holy Roman Empire with France) and
Osnabrück (the Holy Roman Empire with Sweden and the Protestant estates of the empire) on 24 October
1648. England, Poland, Muscovy and Turkey were the only European powers that were not represented at the
two assemblies.
2
The results of the treaties were wide ranging. Among other things, the Netherlands gained
independence from Spain, ending the eighty Years’ War, and Sweden gained Pomerania, Wismar, Bremen
and Verden. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken, and the rulers of the German and Sweden
gained Pomerania, Wismar, Bremen and Verden. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken, and the
rulers of the German and Sweden gained Pomerania, Wismar, Bremen and Verden. The power of the Holy
Roman Emperor was broken, and the rulers of the German states were again able to determine the religion of
their lands. The treaties also gave Calvinists legal recognition. Three new great Powers arose from this peace:
Sweden, the United Netherlands and France, although Sweden’s time as a great power was to be short lived.
The bulk of the treaties can be attributed to Cardinal Mazarin, who was de facto leader of France at the time.
France came out of the war in a far better position than any other Power and was able to dictate much of the
treaties.
The Peace of Westphalia is credited with laying to rest the idea of the Holy roman Empire having secular
dominion over the entire Christian world and established the nation-state as the highest level of government,
subservient to no others. Another important, and related, outcome was that it initiated the modern fashion of
diplomacy as it marked the watershed, subsequent to which, wars were not about religion, but rather focused
on reasons of state. This allowed Catholic and Protestant Powers to ally, leading to major realignments.
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position of national governments. The political content of the globalization picture,
however, has remained unclear. Some commentators emphasize political
fragmentation, while others celebrate the unipolar world of a benevolent hegemon.
Some see it as heralding, if not the inauguration, of world government, a significant
step toward an integrated global political community.
Even as the UN Charter reinforced the Westphalian principle of state sovereignty, the
countervailing principle of national obligations were also created as the global
community adopted the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and related
instruments. Previously, states were responsible only for inter-state obligations, but the
new global standards of governance, human rights not the least, created a set of norms
designed to regulate the state’s relations with its own population. The idea began to
take root that governments could be judged as legitimate or not in terms of internal, as
well as external behaviour. This, in effect, paradoxically modified the long-standing
injunction against interference in the internal affairs of nation states as laid down in the
UN Charter.
A clear deviation of these formalistic rules of the road set out in the Treaty of
Westphalia occurred on 10 June 1999, when the UN Security Council approved
Resolution 1244 (1999) on Kosovo, and the world’s major countries redefined the
sovereign character of the nation state, including their own. The notion of a progressive
approach to foreign policy that placed the right of individuals to live free from
persecution over traditional concerns of sovereignty began to evolve as a principle of
international law following Kosovo. It would be recalled that in the period 1998 to
1999, the world community, through the medium of the UN, judged and found wanting
the internal policies of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a recognized sovereign
nation, which is a member of the UN. Beginning in March 1998, the Security Council
adopted a series of resolutions on Kosovo that invoked Chapter VI of the UN Charter the section providing authorization for the use of force by the international community
where there exists a threat to international peace and security - to condemn the
Belgrade government, although the use of force was not authorized until the last
resolution, 1244.3
Then NATO, claiming authority under those UN resolutions, declared invalid the
authority of the current government of that nation to rule in a portion of its own
territory and intervened militarily to enforce that decision and thus, by formal decree
based on the political and moral standards outlined in the UN Charter and subsequent
international agreements, suspended the Yugoslav government’s "right" to rule in
Kosovo, a recognized part of its national territory. The hitherto inviolable sovereignty
of the nation state thus became conditional, subject to the approval of the international
community of its peers "in Security Council assembled." This, in systemic terms and
inasmuch as the formal persona of the state is concerned has been seen as marking the
transition of the post-Cold War world into what might be called the post-Westphalian
world.
What are the long-term implications of the Kosovo intervention? Will nation-states as
we know them disappear or reemerge strengthened and in some new form? If states
3
And on 16 October, 2003, the Security Council went another step down the road with resolution 1511 (2003)
on Iraq which endorses the exercise, albeit "temporary", by the Coalition Provisional Authority of "the specific
responsibilities, authorities and obligations under applicable international law".
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continue to weaken, where would citizens look for new forms of social protection, new
sources of identity, new forums for public discourse, both domestically and as part of
the global milieu. Changes in the nature of states will invariably also influence the
future shape of what we call multilateralism – the space for post-Westphalian entities to
interface (whether in the mould of the United Nations or in some newfound human
collective).
Is there any lesson in this specific to the polities of South Asia? What form and shape
would define this phase of their political evolution? This paper attempts to explore
these issues broadly and looks specifically for directions in the South Asian context.
One is aware, that given the diversity of cultural and political experiences in South Asia
and the fact that beyond the colonial experience, both spatially and over time, there
would be a multitude of paradigms - of the past shaping the present, of the past despite
the present, and equally of the present despite the past; of the present shaping things to
come, and again of the past defining future directions because of or despite the present.
It is important to underline that the mainstream state discourse has evolved with a
predominant Euro-centric accent. Issues such as sovereignty and international scrutiny,
institutions of governance and yardsticks of good governance, and of anarchy, failed
States, pre-emptive strike and threat perceptions that shape, variously and in given
contexts, the nature, face and direction of the Euro-centric state have usually been read
as universal models. The credentials of decolonized States as “nation states” owe more
to their colonial experience and boundaries of territoriality, and therefore these are in
essence different from the historical Westphalian states. Such states are invested with
the formal trappings of a Westphalian state and institutions of the superstructure. These
however have, by and large, not been found to be in consonance with the ethos and
cultural space of that “nation”. Such states have therefore been confronted with the
challenge of institution building and enhancing national capacity suited to the
newfound mould of a “nation state”. South Asian nations are cases in point.
It would also be noted that, a low resource base and technological backwardness posed
for these States a dependence on foreign assistance. An endemic divide already defined
the post-colonial world with a technological and economic head start for the Western
powers. These effectively detracted from the sovereign essence of these states, and set
in place a reactive policy disposition to evolving pet peeves of the West-centric
mainstream such as human rights, globalization, privatization and downsizing of public
enterprises, NGOs with transnational outreach etc. Then there are the political fault
lines built into the post-colonial states even as they were born - ranging from
insurgency, to civil war, revolution and secessionist movements in the new States,
which are in part, the problem and in part, the outcome. It is essential therefore, as we
consider the Westphalian State in South Asia, to look at alternative theoretical tools that
provide an escape from the Euro-centric intellectual trap.
Any attempt to analyze the future of the Westphalian state in South Asia needs to begin
by probing the “Westphalian” character of the state at the moment of birth. Most of the
states in South Asia were part of the British Raj. Although Bangladesh’s emergence as
an independent State is in the post-decolonization context and presents interesting
study, the decolonization process also relates to it in the historical sense. The point of
departure in the present discourse must of necessity begin with the question: did
decolonization create Westphalian states in British India? This paper, in essence, looks
back to look forward in the South Asia context.
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
Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft4
This journey begins by distinguishing between the formalistic structural notion of the
state and the organic essence of the state.
The organic question in essence has to do with the issue of identity. This debate can be
brought back to the two ideal types of social organization distinguished by Ferdinand
Toennies as the typology of Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft.5 The crucial distinction
between these two concepts is that Gemeinschaft relates to a certain sense of belonging
based on shared loyalties, norms and values, kinship or ethnic ties (“community”); it is
conditioned by the feeling that this is a “natural” and organic association that is based
on an a priori social unity, on the idea of “one people”, and hence a clearly cognizable
demos. Gesellschaft, on the other hand, relates to the idea that people remain
independent from each other as individuals, but may decide in a “social contract”, or a
“convention”, to group together for the conduct of profit-making transactions
(“society”); it remains an artificial construct which will only continue to exist as long as
its citizens will find the contractual arrangements of common value.
Toennies’ sociological categories remain valuable for reading contemporary trends in
the rethinking of the state world wide, definitely for the integrating Europe, and for
understanding the state and its dynamics in South Asia.
State formation can be approached from two distinct tracks – (i) as the creation of an
infrastructure of governance based on law and a constitution; and (i) as the
development of a culture and consciousness within a “cognitive region” - that is to say,
a nation formation. Ideally, the consolidation of state and nation has run parallel, but it
has on occasion run out of sync. In the European context, we find the Polish state, for
example, has not existed for several centuries, but the Polish nation has always
endured. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, has survived seven decades without the
development of a coherent and robust Soviet “nation”. The conventional a priori, born
primarily of the European experience, has been that exceptions notwithstanding, these
two processes can not diverge too much. The decolonization process, however, has,
more often than not, created states that do not correspond to the “cognitive region” of
the nation’s culture and consciousness. And this forms the complexities that plague the
post-colonial states, such as in South Asia. Investing a polity with notions of
sovereignty and inviolability does not inaugurate it into a Westphalian state.
Consider today’s Bangladesh6. The distinctive consciousness of a Bengali people in
terms of linguistic and cultural consolidation goes back several centuries. The Bengali
republic or the Bangla “state” however, is only 36 years old. That too does not contain
4
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are sociological categories introduced by the German sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies for two normal types of human association. (A normal type as coined by Tönnies is a
purely conceptual tool to be built up logically, whereas an ideal type, as coined by Max Weber, is a
concept formed by accentuating main elements of a historic/social change.) Tönnies' concepts of both
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, strictly separated from each other conceptually, are fully discussed in his
work “Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft” (1887). The antagonism of these two terms belonged to the
general stock of concepts German pre-1933 intellectuals were quite familiar with and quite often
misunderstood
5
Ferdinand Toennies, Community and Association (London: Routledge, 1974).
6
Bangladesh (Bangla + Desh), literally Bengal land.
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the whole of the cognitive region of Bengal (Bangla). Furthermore, reference to this
political space as Bangladesh long predates “Bangla” (Bengal) becoming a “desh”
(country). And in today’s Bangladesh state, Bangla/Banga/Vanga (meaning Bengal)
and Bangladesh are used interchangeably. The national anthem, for example is a
homily to Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal) and the appeal is to the collective heritage,
notwithstanding West Bengal remaining a part of the Indian Republic since the
partition of 1947.7
Pakistan was created with the partition of British India on the premise that the Muslims
of the Indian subcontinent constituted a distinct nation vis-à-vis the rest of the
population. Geographical regions within the subcontinent were identified on the basis
of Muslim majority to create a notional cognitive region, sans nation formation, sans a
“national” consciousness and sans a “national” memory. And although the state persona
of the Pakistan state, created on 14 August 1947 continues de jure in today’s Pakistan,
it was effectively dissolved when the majority in that state (the Bengalis) chose to
create a Bengali republic on ethos antithetical to the two-nation theory. The trauma of
the Partition, especially in terms of mass movement and relocation of large population
groups notwithstanding, today’s India is home to a larger Muslim population than
Islamic Pakistan or Muslim majority secular Bangladesh.
The composition of post-1947 India, its commendable democratic institutions and
inclusive ethos notwithstanding, mirrors more an empire than a nation. The territoriality
of Indian sovereignty do not also correspond to the “cognitive region” celebrated in
national symbolisms or heraldry – whether one points to certain territorial references in
the national anthem or to the national emblem of the imperial Ashoka pillar, or the
chakra in the national flag. These do have a place in the historic persona of Bharat, but
may be discordant in the Bharatya Prajatantra (the Indian Republic, post-Partition).
The Westphalian gap lies here in the dysjunct between the new-fangled state and the
cognitive region of consciousness. Future directions for South Asia in a postWestphalian order, therefore, would need revisiting the construct and fundamentals of
the Westphalian state formation in South Asia.
Going back to the question of identity, or rather the development of a national identity,
one can distinguish two opposing conceptions: (1) those who see national identity and
nationalism as primordial to human beings in the sense that we all belong as if “by
nature” to some ethnic community, perhaps in the same way as we all by nature belong
to a family; and (2) those who consider these notions as ephemeral, as manifestations
of a modern, state-centric era that is now drawing to a close.8 As for national identity as
an almost mystical notion, as a bond between “the people” through culture, memory
and fate, one traces back the philosophical footsteps of German Romantics like Herder,
who clearly does not subscribe to the saying that “the past is another country”. On the
contrary, he asserts that without a clear sense of history, both the present and the future
will remain intelligible and interest in the past is a clear reflection of concern for the
7
Note also the battle cry of Bangladesh independence movement Joi Bangla (Bengal invictus), the
investing of Bangladesh’s founding father as Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal), the designation of the
Presidential residence as Bangabhaban (Bengal House) etc.
8
For a different classification (between “primordial”, “civic” and “universal” constructions of collective
identity), see S.N. Eisenstadt and B. Giesen, “The Construction of Collective Identity”, in Archives of
European Sociology (vol. 56, 1995).
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future. But Herder’s nationalism is inclusive, democratic and anti-imperialist. As Sir
Isaiah Berlin has remarked, “Herder optimistically believed that all the flowers in the
human garden could grow harmoniously, the cultures could stimulate one another and
contribute to a creative harmony.”9 This is a far cry from the more aggressive
nationalism which has developed after the French Revolution and has been most
forcefully formulated into the Jacobin political programme of fighting for the nation’s
life as well as for the ideals and institutions which have given the nation its “political
will”. The aggressive version of nationalism has gained currency with the thoughts of
Fichte, who argued that the superiority of the German “character” and its culture form
the very foundation of the German nation. Fichte was probably the first to argue that
“mankind is already divided into nations by nature, and the dissemination of nationalist
doctrines will resemble calls to the faithful to prayer.”10
In the South Asia context, we find Rabindranath Tagore addressing these questions of
freedom, identity and nationalism. Amartya Sen, in celebrating Tagore11, notes that for
Tagore, reasoning in freedom was of the highest importance - that people are able to
live, and reason, in freedom. His attitudes toward politics and culture, nationalism and
internationalism, tradition and modernity, can all be seen in the light of this belief. 12
Rabindranath's qualified support for nationalist movements - and his opposition to the
unfreedom of alien rule - came from this commitment. So did his reservations about
patriotism, which, he argued, can limit both the freedom to engage ideas from outside
"narrow domestic walls" and the freedom also to support the causes of people in other
countries. Rabindranath's passion for freedom underlies his firm opposition to
unreasoned traditionalism, which makes one a prisoner of the past (lost, as he put it, in
"the dreary desert sand of dead habit").
There is an amazing resonance of Herder in Tagore: "On each race is the duty laid, to
keep alight its own lamp of mind, as its part in the illumination of the world. To break
the lamps of any people, is to deprive it of its rightful place in the world festival." Like
the Renaissance man that he was, Rabindranath Tagore was predictably hostile to
communal sectarianism (such as a Hindu orthodoxy that was antagonistic to Islamic,
Christian, or Sikh perspectives). But even nationalism seemed to him to be suspect.
Tagore's attitude toward cultural diversity points to an interesting duality in him. He
wanted Indians to learn what is going on elsewhere, how others lived, what they
valued, and so on, while remaining interested and involved in their own culture and
heritage. Indeed, the need for synthesis is strongly stressed in his educational writings.
Tagore rebelled against the strongly nationalist form that the independence movement
often took, and this made him refrain from taking a particularly active part in
9
Ramin Jahabegloo, Conversations With Isaiah Berlin (London: Peter Halban Publishers, 1992), p.99.
J.S. McClelland, A History of Western Political Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 1996),
p.634.
11
Amartya Sen, Tagore and his India, The New York Review of Books 44 (1997)
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12
Nothing, perhaps, expresses his values as clearly as a poem in Gitanjali:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls; ...
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; ...
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
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contemporary politics. He wanted to assert India's right to be independent, Sen argues,
without denying the importance of what India could learn - freely and profitably - from
abroad. Tagore's criticism of patriotism is a persistent theme in his writings. His novel
Ghare Baire (The Home and the World) has much to say about this theme.13 He made a
special effort to dissociate his criticism of the Raj from any denigration of British or
Western people and culture. Even in his powerful indictment of British rule in India in
1941, in a lecture which he gave on his last birthday, later published as Crisis in
Civilization, he strains hard to maintain the distinction between opposing Western
imperialism and rejecting Western civilization.
Today, even as we see democracy and the market become ends of history, people are
already speaking of democracies within polities, as different from democracy of the
superstructure, within a monolithic state. Political organizations need to rest on
inclusion through participation. Tagore possibly visualized such organizations and
processes in his notion of the puro samaj or civic society, meaning community, and its
interface with the state.
As a latter-day exponent of this Primordial School of nationalism, Anthony Smith has
argued that the nation-state will continue to be the bedrock of world politics and that
the nation and nationalism provide the only realistic socio-cultural framework in
today’s world order.14 Smith flatly rejects the popular thesis that the nation-state as we
know it has had its day, and that in a world of globalization other forms of political
organization are better equipped and better positioned to deal with new challenges. His
argument is built around the thesis that “memory” is central to identity15, and that “we
13
In the novel, Nikhil, who is keen on social reform, including women's liberation, but cool toward
nationalism, gradually loses the esteem of his spirited wife, Bimala, because of his failure to be
enthusiastic about anti-British agitations, which she sees as a lack of patriotic commitment. Bimala
becomes fascinated with Nikhil's nationalist friend Sandip, who speaks brilliantly and acts with patriotic
militancy, and she falls in love with him. Nikhil refuses to change his views: "I am willing to serve my
country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country
as a god is to bring a curse upon it." As the story unfolds, Sandip becomes angry with some of his
countrymen for their failure to join the struggle as readily as he thinks they should ("Some Mohamedan
traders are still obdurate"). He arranges to deal with the recalcitrants by burning their meager trading
stocks and physically attacking them. Bimala has to acknowledge the connection between Sandip's
rousing nationalistic sentiments and his sectarian - and ultimately violent-actions. The dramatic events
that follow (Nikhil attempts to help the victims, risking his life) include the end of Bimala's political
romance. This is a difficult subject, and Satyajit Ray's beautiful film of The Home and the World
brilliantly brings out the novel's tensions, along with the human affections and disaffections of the story.
It would, of course, be absurd to think of Sandip as Gandhi, but the novel gives a "strong and gentle"
warning, as Bertolt Brecht noted in his diary, of the corruptibility of nationalism, since it is not evenhanded.
14
Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). For an
insightful conversation on the importance of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, see Anatol
Lieven, “Qu’est-ce Qu’une Nation?”, in The National Interest, no.49 (Fall 1997), and the critique by
Noel Malcolm of Lieven’s account in The National Interest, no.50 (Winter 1997/98). See also Godfrey
Hodgson, “Grand Illusion: The Failure of European Consciousness”, in World Policy Journal, vol.10,
no.2 (Summer 1993).
15
Smith defines an “ethnic community” as a group with a common name, myths of common ancestry,
shared memories, a common culture, a link with a historic territory or homeland, and a measure of
common solidarity. See Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basic Blackwell,
1986), pp. 22-30. David Miller suggest five elements which constitute a community: shared belief and
mutual commitment, extended in history, active in character, connected to a particular territory, and
marked off from other communities by a distinct public culture. See David Miller, On Nationality
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.27.
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can discern no global identity-in-the-making, nor aspirations for one, nor any collective
amnesia to replace existing ‘deep’ cultures with a cosmopolitan ‘flat’ culture. The latter
remains a dream confined to some intellectuals.”16 He goes on to explain that all
members of a political community have a “pre-history” which is based on shared
experiences that, by definition, sets them apart from other people and that endows them
with a feeling of belonging.17
This clearly goes beyond the “rational choice” of individual human beings of how to
decide for themselves who they are, where they come from, and where they are going.
Rather, as Smith argues, “beneath the public version [of nationalism] there is often a
deeper religious content to the sense of value and dignity of the national community,
one, which inevitably lends an air of exclusiveness to the core ethnic community of the
nation. This is a sense of national dignity and chosenness”.18 This mythical, and more
often than not also ethnic nature and foundation of nationalism (which may be a reason
to argue that the Westphalian states system is war-prone and inherently unstable), is
considered a key instrument of mastery of the contemporary nation-state. Most
identities are constructed as cognitive boundaries, which are based on a sense of
belonging. This, inevitably, assumes that “identity” is an exclusionary concept: You
either “belong”, or you do not; you are either a “citizen”, or you are not. Without the
Other, a regional or national sense of selfhood will be difficult to define and
configure.19
On the other end of the conceptual spectrum we find those who argue that “there are no
natural links binding people to one another; people are therefore the authors of their
own links, the artists of their own connections.”20 This argument holds that national
identity, nationalism and the nation-state itself, are little more than political and cultural
artifacts. Nation-states are read as social constructs that still look powerful and robust,
but which are actually both ephemeral and open to modification. It acknowledges that
Europe’s nation-states are only a few centuries old, and have therefore lasted no longer
than the Roman Empire. Indeed, for Europe the model of political authority has for
centuries been the “empire”, rather than the nation-state.21 From the Holy Roman
Empire to the many European colonial empires (under French, Dutch, Belgian,
Portuguese or Spanish dominance), the territorial, sovereign nation-state was either
non-existent, or only one part of a diverse conglomerate of authority. As Alain de
Benoist has argued, “the empire is not primarily a territory, but essentially an idea or a
principle. The political order is determined by it - not by material factors or by
possession of a geographical area. It is determined by a spiritual idea or juridical
idea.”22 In this historical context, the Herderian claim that individuals can only flourish
within their own nation-state seems absurd. It also exposes nationalism as little more
than a thinly veiled ideological exterior legitimizing the territorial sovereign state and
its power apparatus.
16
Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, p.24.
Ibid, p.98.
18
Ibid, p.98.
19
Iver B. Neuman, “Self and Other in International Relations”, in European Journal of International
Relations, vol.2, no.2 (June 1996).
20
Pierre Manent, “On Modern Individualism”, in Journal of Democracy, vol.7, no.1 (January 1996), p.5.
21
Peter Calvocoressi, “The European State in the Twentieth Century and Beyond”, in International
Relations, vol.XIV, no.1 (April 1998), p.1.
22
Alain de Benoist, “The Idea of Empire”, in Telos, no.98-99 (Winter 1993-94).
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Writing in the context of the European identity, Peter van Ham discounts the argument
that the “truth” can be found somewhere in the middle, as a compromise between the
Primordial and the Ephemeral perspective on the nation-state and nationalism.
However, he considers it rather brazen to claim the singularity of the nation-state and
its indispensableness for all meaningful human political and cultural development in
the light of the nation-state’s rather short historical life. He says that, in many ways,
nation-states continue to author and carefully cultivate their national heritages, the
cultural memories, as the indispensable fossils and sedimental sentiments for future
generations to admire and “learn” from. These national fossils may no longer be
politically relevant, but they do continue to serve as one of the few remaining unifying
and legitimizing instruments of state authority and power.23
This critique is part of a wider argument which claims that the nation-state and
nationalism have been suitable and fitting to modern industrial society (which required
mobile and literate citizens for effective performance). Nation-states have now lost
much of their core purpose in a postmodern era which requires new forms of political
organization that go above and beyond the contemporary states system.24 The
globalizing world, dominated by transnational firms, requires a totalizing global
ideology and a more global and unified (and perhaps even homogenous) culture of
mass consumerism that would respond to mass advertising. These ideas of postindustrialism are based on the assumption that new systems of mass communications
and the use of new computer-based technologies will put pressure on the nation-state
by eroding and undermining established national identities.25 Rather than confined
national entities, the era of globalization would call for continent-size markets regulated
by one, clear set of economic and political rules and values. This is the postmodern
cosmopolitan culture that some consider the pinnacle, others the nadir of human
progress. It is a pastiche of cultures, rather than based on one, specific culture. It is
eclectic in nature, disinterested in place and time, has no concern for ethnic or national
origins and is blissfully ignorant of history. This follows the hegemonic “logic” of the
parallel process of globalization and Europeanization in Europe, the ASEAN process in
South-east Asia and in South Asia, efforts at, to begin with, economic integration.
From this perspective, the Westphalian states system and its confined view of “national
interests” and “national sovereignty” are (or, perhaps better, have been) functional to an
era that is now drawing to a close, at least in most parts of the West, with their resultant
systemic impact. And hence, post-Westphalian aspirations in an imperfect
“Westphalian” South Asia.
The presumption that an “identity” constitutes the substructure for national
development should be further problematized. Should we take for granted that national
selfhood is some kind of puzzle that has a hidden solution, based on the assumption that
to know the “nation” is to know the hidden national Self that lies buried deep within it?
But what if this national Self, this national identity, does not really exist, can not be
Peter van Ham, “Identity Beyond the State: The Case of the European Union”, presented at the 5 th
World Convention of the Association of the Study of Nationalities (ASN), Columbia University, New
York (13-15 April 2000)
24
Peter van Ham and Przemyslaw Grudzinski, “Affluence and Influence: The Conceptual Basis of
Europe’s New Politics”, in The National Interest, no.58 (Winter 1999/2000).
25
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1992).
23
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discovered, but is actually made and continuously remade? This would render national
and all other identities more complex and turn it into something much looser, as an
aggregate of methods and policies, of clusters of rules and regulations that ceaselessly
interact in a prosaic process with the uncountable other facts of everyday life. Identity
must not necessarily be considered as a gift and as an inborn and primordial quality, but
as a dynamic process that requires enormous energy to maintain and that will never by
fully “complete”. This would be a conception of Self that assumes the absence of
totality and unity as a static condition.

Post-Westphalian directions
The matrix underlying the rethinking of the state consists of both these processes – of
formal attributes and the more substantive inner ethos of the collective. As we look at
the impact of the post-Westphalian political order in South Asia and its resultant
directions, the dynamics will gather from the impact with the status quo, the flawed
Westphalian character. The progression will be as much about the demands of
Gemeinschaft as the processes of the global mainstream.
The classical distinction is made between nations that define themselves along civic or
ethnic lines. Civic nationalism, which we can find in France and the United States,
defines the “nation” in terms of the willingness of its people to adhere to a certain set of
civic values and rules with jus soli (or citizenship by birthplace) as the norm. The focus
of allegiance is the state and its institutions, which also implies a high degree of cultural
assimilation as the price to be paid by ethnic groups for their integration in society.
Ethnic nationalism, which we can find in Germany and Poland, defines the “nation” in
terms of ethnic origin and birth; nationality is determined by jus sanguinis, that is by
ancestry and blood-ties, rather than by residence, choice and commitment. In a
somewhat simplified way, we could say that civic nationalism stresses the importance
of the individual’s commitment to the Gesellschaft, whereas ethnic nationalism tends to
emphasize the organic sense of belonging that is central to Gemeinschaft. A third
alternative of nationality would be the multicultural model where the nation does allow
scope for the maintenance of cultural and ethnic differences. The clearest examples of
this alternative are to be found outside Europe (i.e., in Australia and Canada).26
In South Asia, beyond the ethnic and civic dichotomy, we have situations that need to
be understood. For one, ancestry and blood-ties determine nationality in India. But
India is multi-ethnic and multicultural – the sub-nationalities themselves in many ways
fulfill the demands of Gemeinschaft. In that sense, India is also a civic nation in terms
of the willingness of its people to adhere to a certain set of civic values. Unlike France
or the US, despite various forms of exclusion and marginalization, cultural assimilation
is not demanded by the state or society. Of course, one cannot overlook the influence of
Bollywood across India and the quiet assimilation that it has engendered; but then that
is true also for other polities open to the all-pervading impact of Bollywood. An
ideological (Islam) civic nationalism characterizes Pakistan. Despite the ethnic
diversity, adherence to Islam plays the part of a leveller in the state, and non-Muslims
are less equal than the Muslims despite allegiance to the state and its institutions.
Bangladesh was founded on clearly defined ethnic nationalism. But there also, despite
Mark Mitchell and Dave Russell, “Immigration, Citizenship and the Nation-State in the New Europe”,
in Brian Jenkins and Spyros A. Sofos (eds), Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (London and
New York: Routledge, 1996).
26
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the power and richness of Bengali language and culture, there are pressures from below
that are gradually giving space to other cultures, however miniscule within Bangladesh.
The recognition of this internal ethnic diversity is reflected in the Chittagong Hill
Tracts Accord signed between the Government of Bangladesh and representatives of
the hill people in the south-east.
Although the examples around the world show that both civic and ethnic nationalism
can be based on the dual principles of individual rights and liberty, it has proven
difficult to anchor society and culture on tolerance and inclusion when allegiance is
mainly invested in ethnicity. By definition, ethnicity is a permanent element of identity
that is not subject to choice; it cannot be easily concealed. Ethnic nations are almost by
definition rather closed societies where bloodline or skin-colour may continue to brand
you as an “outsider”. In sharp contrast, allegiance, the defining element of civic
nationalism, is more flexible and more inclusive. In starker terms, it can be argued that
Western collective identity can be conceptualized as civic and inclusive-pluralist on the
one hand, and in terms of consanguinity and ethno-nationalist exclusiveness on the
other. South Asia offers a secondary element in this - the place of religion and the state
characterizing the collective into the secular-inclusive and religious-exclusive.
Bangladesh and Pakistan are two opposing cases in point.
It is perhaps also important to recognize that a sense of home does not have to be based
on written sources and unquestioned elements of collective memory. It depends to a
large extent on enacted ceremonial performances, commemorative rituals, language and
formalities that regularly charge our emotional batteries and renew our sense of
belonging. Since the state has become the “standard” unit for political authority,
nationalist thought has constructed a collective identity within the specific boundaries
of national territory. This is how nation-states have throughout the centuries developed
and cultivated the strong bonds of community. Roland Robertson has argued that
during the intense phase of globalization that took place between 1880 and 1920,
European states responded with an extreme form of nationalism and a “willful
nostalgia” in an effort to shelter their societies and cultures from the “outside”. 27 New
national symbols were developed, new ceremonies introduced and traditions
reinvented. These were new rites celebrating a “glorious past” and based on readings of
traditions and culture that sought to integrate and standardize citizens’ loyalty to the
nation-state and the national ideal. This “invention of tradition”, often going hand-inhand with the “monumentalization of the past”, obfuscates that states are rather formal
constitutional arrangements only occasionally based on a genuine collective heritage.
But more often than not, states are products of the imagination, rather than
“objectively” and “empirically” verifiable communities of interest and identity.28
It is all too obvious that as the economic and social patterns of nations and states
converge toward a higher level of association, there can be a fear of being
overwhelmed. Often, in such processes, questioning the legitimacy of national habits,
mores and traditions can reinforce localism, regionalism as well as nationalism. This is
clearly noticeable in contemporary Europe. Klaus Hänsch has argued that throughout
Europe we can find a “renaissance of nationalism”. It is a paradox that where the nation
R. Robertson, “After Nostalgia? Wilful Nostalgia and the Phase of Globalization”, in Bryan S. Turner
(ed), Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity (London: Sage, 1990).
28
Michael Wintle, “Cultural Identity in Europe: Shared Experience”, in Wintle (ed), Culture and Identity
in Europe: Perceptions of Divergence and Unity in Past and Present (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996), p.18.
27
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state can less deliver than ever before in history, a growing part of the citizens focus
their affections on the nation state. That, he argues, is not without logic. In a time of
growing alienation, the abstract European institutions, remote as they seem, are unable
to attract the imagination and affection of the common man.29 Therefore, the question,
whether this “spiritual need” for a sense of belonging can only be satisfied within the
confines of the nation-state, or whether one can image other, perhaps even cozier and
warmer communities on a sub-national level. These alternative communities do not
have to be organized on a territorial basis, but may well be within communities or
societal groups brought together by faith, cultural or intellectual pursuit, or even
voluntarism. There is no reason why the nation-state would have the monopoly of
“home”, and would be the single merchant of “belonging”.

Post-Westphalian: the EU Way
In many ways, the European Union represents a new phase of the human collective,
post Westphalia. It enters a new phase of the evolutionary process with its latest
expansion and the discourse generated by the draft European Constitution. The EU is
inconsistent with conventional sovereignty rules. Its member states have created
supranational institutions (the European Court of Justice, the European Commission,
and the Council of Ministers) that can make decisions opposed by some member states.
The rulings of the court have direct effect and supremacy within national judicial
systems, even though these doctrines were never explicitly endorsed in any treaty. The
European Monetary Union created a central bank that now controls monetary affairs for
three of the union's four largest states. The Single European Act and the Maastricht
Treaty provide for majority or qualified majority, but not unanimous, voting in some
issue areas. In one sense, the European Union is a product of state sovereignty because
it has been created through voluntary agreements among its member states. But, in
another sense, it fundamentally contradicts conventional understandings of sovereignty
because these same agreements have undermined the juridical autonomy of its
individual members. And then at the heart of “democratic” Europe, we have a
“democratic deficit” in the functioning of the European Commission, which is the
policy arm of the EU, and also the executive.
It goes to the credit of the EU visionaries that they have been mindful of the need to
ensure that progression towards integration would be holistic – the actual attainment of
common baselines and standards, both economic and social. Although there are
elements in Europe that call for the establishment of a United States of Europe, the
actual process of integration has been much more measured and much more conscious
of national exigencies. European nations invented the notion of “pooling of
sovereignty” – a sovereign decision of the states on creating an acquis communataire the community’s acquisition of competence from the member states (through the
pooling of their individual sovereignty). Over the years, the acquis has grown,
primarily because the Community has generally acted in consonance with the common
will of the members. This has been ensured through the institution of a powerful
Commission made up of members (Commissioners), who are nominated by the
member states. They ensure that the collective decision-making at Brussels does not get
out of step with perceptions and priorities in their respective capitals. As a corollary
29
Klaus Hänsch (President of the European Parliament), in his Robert Schuman Lecture at the European
University Institute (Florence), 27 June 1996.
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therefore, the European Parliament at Strasbourg has not become a European substitute
for the national Parliaments of Europe. And hence, the democratic deficit in the
European collective.
According to Peter van Ham, the European integration process is a unique
consummation of political will and geopolitical circumstance. The European project
has in many ways been a product of the Cold War, kick-started by the integrative
stimulus of the Marshall Plan, and hatched under the military wings of the US and
NATO. But it has also been a voluntaristic project, based on the power of ideas and the
forceful promotion of the concept of European unity and federalism. Participants of the
Congress of The Hague, which founded the European Movement in May 1948, clearly
agreed that the nation-state was the main source of hatred and war among European
peoples that had to be overcome. This anti-nationalist tenet has been a constant in the
debate about Europe’s future, initially based on the geopolitical necessity to contain
Germany within a strong institutionalized European framework, later as a phlegmatic
response to the pressures of globalization which continue to question the centrality of
the nation-state.30
In this sense, the basis for overcoming the hegemonic cult of the state is founded on the
notion that European integration is a means to promote peace, rather than merely an
economic programme to guarantee prosperity. In many ways, the European Coal and
Steel Community was not about coal and steel at all, but about the pacification of the
continent, German-French reconciliation and the building of a security community. It
has been a mechanical process, willed and consciously constructed by Western
Europe’s economic and political elite. And for committed European federalists, it has
also been a teleological process, based on the argument that the peoples of Europe may
finally liberate themselves from the unnatural bonds of their nation-states and find their
cultural self-realization in a freer, more open European political framework. Former
British European Commissioner Lord Cockfield, has summed up this argument by
noting that the gradual limitation of national sovereignty is “part of a slow and painful
forward march of humanity.”31

Decolonization, South Asian states and post-Westphalia
Although much of the colonial system was dismantled by the mid-1960s, one of the
legacies of the colonial period is that most former colonies remain poorer than the
advanced capitalist West and are often under the economic and political domination of
the former imperial powers, a situation often described as “neocolonialism.”
Decolonization was in that sense a confirmation of the status quo. And therefore, one
could question the process of decolonization itself in terms of delivering freedom.
Decolonization mainly meant political decolonization, and independence, limited in
substance to political independence. Economically and culturally, the former colonies
continued to be dominated by the West. This domination, in many cases, has even
deepened after transition to independence because political independence did not
address the colonization of the mind.
Peter van Ham, “Identity Beyond the State: The Case of the European Union”, presented at the 5 th
World Convention of the Association of the Study of Nationalities (ASN), Columbia University, New
York (13-15 April 2000)
31
Quoted in Alan S. Milward (with the assistance of George Brennan and Frederico Romero), The
European Rescue of the Nation-State (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), p.2.
30
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Neo-colonialist interpretations of economic development in the Third World suggest
that political decolonization nevertheless left intact the West's monopolistic control
over the production and marketing of goods in the former colonies. The means of
control are usually economic, including trade agreements, investment, and the
operations of transnational corporations, which are often seen as the primary
instruments of neo-colonialism. It is also argued that the imposition of Western
business methods on a developing country creates a new, alien, class structure that
divides societies. There is therefore the skepticism as to whether successor states of
British India were Westphalian states in the first place.
The most distinguishing feature of the colonial rule was its project to bring a sociocultural transformation with the object of westernizing the country, a kind of attempt
which no previous regime had ever undertaken. The result of all these exercises was
that while the age-old native system of social organization and governance was allowed
to go into disuse, the transplantation of western systems found the native soil unfertile
to take deep root. On another plane, the impact runs through post-Partition days. Issues
of centre-state relations, problems of insurgency and protection of the religious
minority have dogged the post-1947 India and Pakistan. The unresolved issue of
Kashmir and several full-scale wars have characterized the state of Indo-Pakistan
relations since birth. A sweep across the South Asian landscape will indicate how
uninformed and perhaps unskilled the Raj midwifery was in delivering modern states
out of British India. The birth of Bangladesh alone attests to the flawed premise of the
partition and necessitates an honest reappraisal. Prognostication of a possible postWestphalian future of South Asia would require revisiting 1947, and indeed clues for
the future construct may well lie in the “pre-Westphalian” chemistry of the region.
During the twenty plus years traversed since South Asia undertook its collective
initiative to institutionalize regional co-operation, there have been changes in the
leadership, and even institutional changes in the system of government, domestically in
several South Asian states. Externally, the Cold War came to an end with the fall of the
Soviet Union, with promises of the peace dividend. In Europe, Maastricht heralded a
new beginning in integration. On the economic front, the prospects and challenges of
globalization have defined domestic and external parameters. These will most certainly
tell on the future direction of South Asia as a whole and that of the individual States as
well as on the shape and substance of regional co-operation and more in the days ahead.
Therefore, the question: "whither South Asia?"
Elements at two planes are certain to impact the future shape of such a prognosis. The
first stems from the discernible reinvention of the State and its competencies, both
domestically and in the global context. To this of course, is added the impact of a
frontier-less global market and market forces that are not subject to state sovereignty.
The prospect of integration in some form poses one avenue, especially following the
inexorable progression of the European project. There are paths being laid out in the
ongoing process of institutionalized regional co-operation towards a South Asian
Economic Union.
Many argue that South Asia is characterized by mistrust among neighbours and
persisting bilateral problems. The intellectual journey from South Asian’s legacy of
mutual mistrust can take one either to shelving of all notions of cooperative initiatives
or, alternatively, reinvigorate our commitment to the process. Those who are familiar
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with the history of South Asia and inter-state relations in the region would agree that
the declaration of intent for cooperation is by itself an achievement; agreement on first
a preferential trading arrangement, then a free trade area, is also an achievement by
itself because it signifies a focus and an intellectual leap creating a mindset conducive
to the promotion of effective and positive synergies within the region. These building
blocks, and indeed, such a building blocks approach, are perhaps essential for such big
leaps. In one consideration, the myopic, strictly region-centric context, this could be
seen as ventures against the trend of history. From the vantage point of broader history,
this is a necessary road to take, despite the region’s short-term history. For a significant
part of the journey, the construct will be measured in terms of negative integration,
meaning winning over the barriers. One needs only to recall that Europe, which can
now talk of a possible common foreign and defence policy, began the journey with only
coal and steel.
Of particular importance in this context is the vision of graduating to a South Asian
Economic Union (SAEU). It is possible today for people in this region to look beyond
the nationalistic rhetoric that has characterized state policy across South Asia. The next
question to be posed is: How far can South Asia go in the manner that Europe is
moving towards with the passing of each day? Is SAARC a chrysalis stage from which
South Asia will be transformed, leaving behind the imperfections that states in the
subcontinent were heir to from the moment of their birth?
In the idea of a convergent South Asia, the tension lies between the prospect of South
Asia as a new “homeland” for all South Asians and South Asia as just a “homeland of
homelands”. Central to this is the issue of what needs to come first: the nation-as-apeople, or the nation-as-a-state - whether we first need a Gemeinschaft or a Gesellschaft
to accomplish the South Asia project. At the beginning of the 21st century, engineers of
the “South Asian soul” can look to European policymakers and realize that there is very
little for them “to make”, and that their policy tools are extremely modest. What is
needed first and foremost is for the dialectic process of remembering (the South Asian)
and forgetting (the national) to gather momentum without falling into the hegemonic
trappings of modern nation-building. The temptation for South Asian policymakers,
however, will be to assume that a consolidated South Asia is required to go through the
same phases of development as the nation-state, acquiring the same characteristics and
qualities, both actively remembering and forgetting. This would turn the collective into
a limited, sovereign community conceived on the basis of a deep, horizontal
comradeship.32 As Benedict Anderson wrote on the roots of nationalism, such a mode
of post-Westphalian evolution would mean continued rootedness in the existing
political culture of nationalism, “out of which – as well as against which – it came into
being.”33
The alternative construct would be to impart a face to the vision – a set of values,
norms and cultural attributes that means more than geography and boundary – a face
that means a way of life, and an intellectual space called home. A sense of belonging
must be infused in the hearts of the peoples as much as in the heads of policy-makers.
There will, of course, be issues and forums that the South Asian collective will find
more relevance than others. It is useful therefore, to identify core issues for South Asia
to anchor. Poverty alleviation has been a high priority area for all SAARC members. It
32
This would be analogous to the nation-state as imagined by Benedict Anderson. See Anderson,
Imagined Communities, pp.7-8.
33
Ibid, p.12.
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could, along with development issues on the fringe such as non-formal education and
social innovations for empowerment of marginalized and disadvantaged segments of
society, perhaps form a central anchor. And why not democracy? Or non-violence and
disarmament?
One other issue that affects all South Asian nations is migration, the movement of the
human person across borders. South Asian nations have played host to large caseloads
of refuges; there is a large South Asian diaspora around the globe; and SAARC
countries provide a large share of the migrant workers for the overseas labour market.
Whether it is a question of enfranchisement of the diaspora or ensuring of minimum
standards and protection measures for nationals working abroad, South Asian nations
have a common interest in comparing notes and drawing up a common
procedure/guideline for their citizens abroad. On the question of refugees also, South
Asian states have a common interest in promoting greater international burden sharing
obligations in the refugee regime, which today is centred on the principle of nonrefoulement. There is no real appreciation of the tremendous social and economic cost
of hosting refugees by host developing countries; and South Asia could adopt this also
as an anchor issue.
We see that some of the dialectical process of Europe-building will become more
visible and important over the years. It is most likely that the development of a
postmodern, palimpsest European identity “linking fraternity, power and time
meaningfully together”34 will not politically satisfy and aesthetically please those who
still crave for the solid and robustness of modernity’s ambitions. At this early stage,
“Europe” is likely to become what Renan has called the “daily plebiscite” that nations
require and receive as a measure of their popular and voluntary support.35 Like the
nation-state, the European polity and community will have to make and daily remake
its meaning in everyday, prosaic life. The nation-state may lose its central role as the
territorial form of signification, as the central system of political meaning for “its”
citizens; and postmodernity’s discontents will continue to call for a more
comprehensive and totalizing model of European order and identity. But Europe’s
modest achievement is that it has now come to realize that there can be identity in
“non” (or semi) -identity, that is to say in a sense of belonging that continuously shifts
and overlaps.
In that vein, South Asian nations will need to engage in collective soul-searching on
issues that affect all of us in a similar manner to create and own a sense of belonging.
South Asia would be beginning its identification of issues that could, down the line,
make up its acquis communataire and begin the positive journey in shaping its postWestphalian construct.
 The potential nature of things to come
Smith finds it difficult to imagine how a European federation could succeed in
stamping out the deeply ingrained and historic identities and cultures of the many
diverse peoples of Europe. Likewise, one can raise the interesting question of how the
South Asian project could advance without finding truly “Pan-South Asian” popular
traditions and values, as well as their equivalent symbols and experiences. Since
34
Ibid, p.36.
Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?”, in H.K. Bhaba (ed), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge,
1990), pp.8-22.
35
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Smith’s definition of identity focuses on a continuum of memory-situation-fate (which
requires every robust identity to have a clear notion of its history, its present as well as
its future), it will be difficult to construct a “South Asian memory” as well as notions of
a “South Asian future”. Beyond the common colonial experience and the singularity of
British India, there is no clear, popular notion of what “South Asia”, “South Asian
identity”, or “South Asian culture”, really stand for in terms of values, ideals and
traditions. One can also ask why anyone would want to choose a nebulous South Asian
identity/culture over another - most notably, over his/her own national
identity/culture?36
Taking the cue from Smith’s conclusions on the current European political context, one
can say that a South Asian identity could only emerge slowly through the formation of
South Asian memories and traditions, myths and symbols which would mirror the
image of the contemporary nation-state. Without a pan South Asian Gemeinschaft-ofsorts, the way forward toward a post-Westphalian South Asia in the mode of “political
Europe” will remain troublesome.
The idea of South Asianization can therefore provoke a certain sense of dislocation,
displacement and puzzlement. This is primarily because it problematizes our national
identity and forces us to think how the pan South Asianness resonates in our political
understanding of the Self. This increasing political homelessness has given rise to what
has been called “identity politics”, which refers to the notion of accepting and pursuing
politics in terms of gender, sexuality, race, region, state or continent, or other spatial or
non-spatial terms of reference. Identity politics is based on a demand for authenticity,
insisting on the right of those previously invisible and unrecognized to receive
opportunities for self-realization.37 Wendy Brown has defined this as a reaction “to an
ensemble of distinctly postmodern assaults upon the integrity of communities
producing identity.”38 Although there is little doubt that identity politics has increased
the awareness of marginalization, discrimination and the very notion of “difference”, it
has failed to develop into a long-term tool of social and political change. Identity
politics has in most cases been a strategy and compensatory technique to draw attention
to underprivileged groups, and has often led to more fragmentation, divisiveness and a
continuous lack of unity.39 Identity politics has therefore been criticized since it
“creates and perpetuates an understanding of public identity composed in terms of the
suffering self: the oppressed are innocent selves defined by the wrongs done to them.”40
Focussing on identity therefore tends to be a passive instrument of division, a search for
the qualities and values that divide people, rather than a quest for a human essence that
Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, p.128. It is therefore worth noting that Germany’s
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer, has noted that “History is Europe’s identity. This is what
makes its unification so exceedingly difficult.” See Fischer, “Europe’s Choice: Full Unity or Old
Balance-Of-Power Wars”, in New Perspectives Quarterly, vol.14, no.4 (Fall 1997).
37
For an overview, see Martha A. Ackelsberg, “Identity Politics, Political Identities: Thoughts Toward a
Multicultural Politics”, in Frontiers, vol.16, no.1 (1996).
38
Wendy Brown, “Feminist Hesitations, Postmodern Exposures”, in Differences. A Journal of Feminist
Cultural Studies, vol.3, no.1 (1991), pp.66-7. See also Katherine Kia Tehranian, “Global Communication
and Pluralization of Identities”, in Futures, vol.30, nos.2-3 (March/April 1998).
39
Kristin Severson and Victoria Stanhope, “Identity Politics and Progress: Don’t Fence Me In (Or Out)”,
in Off Our Backs, vol.28, no.4 (April 1998).
40
Susan Bickford, “Anti-anti-identity Politics: Feminism, Democracy, and the Complexities of
Citizenship”, in Hypatia, vol.12, no.4 (Fall 1997).
36
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may unite or at least connect people. Postmodern scholars have further problematized
the subjective construction of particular identities, arguing that these different factors as
race, gender, class and sexual preference can not be regarded separately and that any
attempt to prioritize such factors would simply be another dimension of a totalizing and
dominating essentialism.41 With “essentialism” is meant the attribution of presumably
defining characteristics to a person, a group, or even a concept, assuming that some
attributes can be expected to shape their relations to other persons, other groups, or
other ideologies. Essentialist politics therefore views that some relations are more
important than others (i.e., the Marxist assumption of class as the defining social and
economic category), which have therefore to be taken into account when constructing
strategies for political change.42 The process of European integration should therefore
be understood as a massive European venture of reversed identity politics - it can be
read as a search for what makes it possible to think in terms of a concept of “Europe”.
It is a sustained effort to invent an all-embracing “imagined community” on a
continental scale. 43 And this can also be applied to South Asia.
In this context, the argument is frequently made that changes in technology, economic
relations and social institutions have led to a contradictory and almost dialectical
process of simultaneous globalization and localization. Technology homogenizes time
and space, creating global images that erode established categories of identity. As a
result, people have begun to imagine “new communities” apart from the traditional
nation-state, new “homes” based on new social epistemes (i.e., what people collectively
know about themselves as well as others).44 These new “homes” are developed along
the lines of cognitive regions, whose borders are inevitably fluid but which nevertheless
are defined by a shared, inter-subjective understanding of culture, common identity and
a commensurate sense of solidarity.45 These new “homes” are not simply and solely
based on the subjective emotions of a certain, undefinable we-feeling, but perhaps most
of all on the basis of shared knowledge and a shared notion that they all inhabit a (nonterritorial) space in which they can feel “at home.”46 European integration offers
opportunities for new or oppressed identities to find a societal niche for themselves. It
will also increasingly call for new, looser senses of political affiliation to manifest
themselves on the supranational level. For us in South Asia, the element of emulation
here is an identity politics of affinity that Europe calls for, rather than a parochialized,
narrow sense of Self.47
One needs to be cautious however about imagining this new “home”. Take for instance
the case of Europe - Europe does not stand for toleration any more than it stands for
ethnic cleansing. The doctrine of toleration is a European invention, but so is the
Nicholas C. Burbules and Suzanne Rice, “Dialogue Across Differences: Continuing the Dialogue”, in
Harvard Educational Review, vol.61, no.4 (November 1991), p.394.
42
Barbara Epstein, “Why Poststructuralism is a Dead End for Progressive Thought”, in Socialist Review,
vol.25, no.2 (1995), p.94
43
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and spread of Nationalism
(London: Verso, 1983).
44
Zdravko Mlinar, “Individuation and Globalization. The Transformation of Territorial Social
Organization”, in Mlinar (ed), Globalization and Territorial Identities (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992).
45
Emanuel Adler, “Imagined (Security) Communities: Cognitive Regions in International Relations”, in
Millennium. Journal of International Studies, vol.26, no.2 (1997).
46
William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990).
47
Ross Posnock, “Before and After Identity Politics”, in Raritan, vol.15, no.1 (Summer 1995).
41
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concentration camp.48 Clearly, South Asia can also look back on a checkered past and
the only way to develop a collective consciousness might well be to turn our backs to
South Asian history and develop as a community that is oriented toward the future.
This raises the further question of course, of whether the new South Asia could provide
its many and diverse peoples with a new sense of belonging, probably not based on
Smith’s notion of “shared memory”, but on a foundation of common sedimented
experiences, cultural forms which are associated, however loosely, with a geographic
South Asia.
This would call for what Zygmunt Bauman has labeled a “palimpsest identity”, which
is “the kind of identity which fits the world in which the art of forgetting is an asset no
less, if no more, important than the art of memorizing”. It is the kind of identity “in
which forgetting rather than learning is the condition of continuous fitness, in which
ever new things and people enter and exit without rhyme or reason”.49 This again
follows Nietzsche’s call for “active forgetfulness”, a conscious and incessant effort to
protect the human being from absolute historical memory and to burden it with socalled “historical truths”.50 Only such a palimpsest identity may provide us with the
freedom to generously accommodate the many cultures and multifarious senses of
“we”. Although the act of forgetting may seem a somewhat artificial and insincere
method of advancing a South Asian identity, it should be recalled that nation-states
have over centuries practiced a complex and dialectic policy of both remembering and
forgetting in their efforts to produce nationalism and a sense of belonging. Ernest
Renan has claimed that forgetting has been “a crucial element in the creation of
nations”, and that once a nation has been established, it very much depends for its
continued existence upon a collective amnesia.51 National unity in South Asian nations,
has often been established through brutality and force, and the newly created “Indian”,
“Pakistani” or “Bangladeshi” had to actively forget his local, regional and other nonnational roots and past by adopting a hegemonic national identity. The history of
nation-building and nationalism therefore illustrates that identity-formation by
definition involves active (and often enforced) collective amnesia.
But on what cultural basis can such a South Asian identity rest? Maintaining and
nurturing local and regional cultures is a prerequisite for developing a South Asian
polity with grass-roots support, based on a supranational identity that develops parallel
to other identities. The ethno-national approach of Smith toward the construction of a
European Gemeinschaft with all the traditional paraphernalia of statehood ranging from
shared myths and memories to an anthem and European flag does not offer a workable
alternative for South Asia. A civic, rather than an ethno-national approach to
nationalism and citizenship, perhaps offers a better opportunity for building an open
post-Westphalian polity in South Asia.
Michael Ignatieff, “Nationalism and Toleration”, in Richard Caplan and John Feffer (eds), Europe’s
New Nationalism. States and Minorities in Conflict (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
p.221.
49
Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity and Its Discontents (New York: New York University Press, 1997),
p.25.
50
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Translator’s Preface”, to Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998 - corrected edition), pp.xxx-xxxi.
51
Quoted in Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995), pp.38-9. Renan has added that
“[o]r l’essence d’une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que
tous aient oublie bien des choses.” Quoted in Anderson, Imagined Communities, p.6.
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This must have been the reason why the EU Member States decided to set up a Europe
of the Regions at the same time as further steps toward Europeanization were taken at
Maastricht in 1991. The post-Westphalian Europe is therefore not only integrative, but
also actively mindful of and promotes diversity within the nascent European political
community. This Europe will remain a cultural potpourri, even if national allegiances
may face fierce competition from calls for regional and overarching European loyalties.
This would also be a sound basis for a nascent European citizenship.
This duality is an essential framework in which rethinking of states will proceed. The
post-Westphalian nascence would be founded on conceptualizing “ordered disorder and
complex syncretisms in which wholes are seen as looser agglomerations and polymers
of parts, which we find celebrated in postmodernism.”52 In this evolution of South Asia,
identity should be based on its celebrated diversity, its openness and inclusiveness. This
identity should be derived from practice, which can experience the continuous
redefinition of itself only through relationships with others.

In lieu of a conclusion
The future of the Westphalian state in South Asia lies in its past, more specifically in
the flawed birth of the “nation states” of South Asia. Emerging out of colonization,
these were laden with the succession of State personality of the colonial state. Creating
nations by marking on a map and “condemning” people to the bondage of such
dispensation is not creating Westphalian states. These new states were in effect postcolonial colonial states (not colonizers, but colonial in structure) – functioning
anarchies, as Samuel Galbraith puts it. The State is irrelevant for the majority of the
people it represents. An organic progression of the historic India (call it South Asia),
pre-colonial realities, including subaltern realties, need to connect to present day
political realities for people to exercise choices.
Even as today’s South Asian states embark on the next stage in their evolution, these
are constrained by dual pressures from above and from below – from voices for
inclusion, autonomy to insurgencies on the one hand, and the globalization process and
multilateral scrutiny on the other. The future of the South Asian states lies at the nexus
of these processes and aspirations. Critical in this is the need to promote cultural
diversity within the South Asian space. It is important for both the limits of cultural
South Asianization and the very complex nature of this effort. Like Europe, South Asia
will have to focus on the sub-national even as it creates a supra(post?)-state construct.
The latter would be the inexorable result of forces external to the states, the learning to
step with the global mainstream, so to speak. The former would flow from growing
scrutiny of state performance in promoting effective inclusion and diversity on the one
hand, and destabilizing pressures from below on the other. Therefore, integration must
go hand in hand with a commitment to improve the knowledge and dissemination of the
culture and history of the peoples of South Asia to preserve and safeguard cultural
heritage of collective significance. This would serve two purposes: (1) to encourage a
feeling of South Asianness and spiritual, emotional and intellectual belonging; and (2)
to protect South Asia’s culture(s) from the tidal waves of globalization. Both these
internal and external functions are complementary. Individual national cultures may
Mike Featherstone, “Globalizing the Postmodern”, in Featherstone (ed), Undoing Culture.
Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: Sage, 1995), p.81.
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well be too weak separately to survive the onslaught of globalization and South
Asianness could provide sanctuary in collectivity.
Instead of a sovereign superstructure for a state, South Asia’s political evolution needs
to evolve through the empowerment of citizens, within inclusive communities. The idea
of an integrated South Asia could reconcile us with that construct - provide a flexible
superstructure, instead of a rigid nation state - with a window providing a two-way
interface with the constituent communities, Tagore’s puro samaj, if you will. This
would provide the advantage of scale at the superstructure level, inclusion at the level
of functional communities and effective channels of clearance, service delivery and
transparency.
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