Hopefully, this article would lead to a comprehensive exploration of these issues and help focus public attention on the content of the concept of nation-building. The concept of nation-building has and is being bandied around by a range of ‘public persons’, particularly politicians, but it is open to question whether the concept has been understood in its fullest, substantive sense.

It is vital that a consensual and clear understanding of this concept is achieved by the local polity, now that the notion is gaining ground that ‘terrorism’ is on the verge of being eliminated and that the Lankan state should forge ahead with ‘reconstruction and rehabilitation’ operations in the North-East. In other words, ‘post-conflict’ issues are coming to the fore.

Nation-making

"From nation-making to nation-breaking’: this was one way in which the separatist upheavals of South Asia were described by some Western observers years ago. They probably had in mind the establishment of Pakistan out of India and the subsequent breakaway of East Pakistan from West Pakistan and the constitution of the former as the independent state of Bangladesh, when they chose to use the catchy pronouncement.

An attempt was certainly made to forge the numerous ethnic and cultural groups of India into a single, undivided nation or an united collectivity on the basis of the principle of democratic equality, by the founding fathers of Independent India and, therefore, a nation-making process, in the fuller sense of the phrase, could be said to have been tried out on the subcontinent in the early post-colonial years. Reduced to its essentials, nation-building is all about establishing social cohesion and unity within a polity on the equity principle and it should be said to the credit of the founding fathers of modern India, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, that they were actuated by such visions. The ‘cement’ which was to effect the desired social cohesion was none other than the principle of the equality of citizens in every conceivable respect and their fundamental oneness.

Thus, a fully participatory, accountable democracy is integral to the flowering of nation-building, for, it is when all sections of a citizenry perform a meaningful role in self-governance that their allegiance to the state is strengthened.

For the Mahatma, for instance, democracy was ‘the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical, economic and spiritual resources of all the various sections of the people in the service of the common good of all’. The emphasis here is on ‘the common good of all’ and not on the ‘greatest good of the greatest number’, as the essence of the democratic system is popularly perceived to be. For Gandhi, democratic rule was not a matter of elected rulers respecting a ‘mandate’ which a perceived ‘majority’ of electors handed over to them, at the expense of the wishes of the rest of the electors, but a question of serving the legitimate interests of all by drawing the latter into the decision-making process at all levels of the state, to the greatest extent possible.

The same points were driven emphatically home when Gandhi said: ‘The only real dignified human doctrine is the greatest good of all’, ( ‘Thoughts of Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore’ by Brij Kishore Goyal, CBS Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi ).

A survey of post-colonial societies would reveal that this golden Gandhian norm in governance has been observed more in the breach by most Third World governments over the years. Third World scholarship, in particular, devoted to post-colonial issues, has been voluminous over the decades, but no one seems to have broached and probed the issue of nation-building as perceptively, objectively and lucidly as Frantz Fanon has done in his seminal work ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. Writing on the post-colonial African situation in the early sixties, particularly with reference to Algeria, Fanon says:

‘National consciousness, instead of being the all-embracing crystallization of the innermost hopes of the whole people, instead of being the immediate and most obvious result of the mobilization of the people, will be in any case only an empty shell, a crude and fragile travesty of what it might have been. The faults that we find in it are quite sufficient explanation of the facility with which, when dealing with young and independent nations, the nation is passed over for the race, and the tribe is preferred to the state. These are the cracks in the edifice which show the progression that is so harmful and prejudicial to the national effort and national unity. We shall see that such retrograde steps with all the weaknesses and serious dangers that they entail are the historical result of the incapacity of the national middle class to rationalize popular action, that is to say their incapacity to see into the reasons for the action’, ( ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, chap. 3, Penguin Books ).

These insights of Fanon help in illuminating the principal problems in governance which have been bedeviling countries such as Sri Lanka in their post colonial years. Basically, the ruling classes or power elites in these societies have failed to conceptualize and implement democratic governance on the Gandhian principle of empowering all sections of their publics, disregarding currently divisive factors, such as, ethnicity, religion and social class. Certainly, in Sri Lanka, we have had a semblance of democratic governance, but this structure has, in the main, only helped in advancing the interests of the social and political elite, some of whom have been championing majoritarian chauvinism. . Consequently, forces within the state are very much alive which give pride of place to serving their community or ‘tribe’.

This process had the effect of heightening ultra nationalist sentiments among sections of the minorities and very soon majoritarian chauvinism and minority chauvinism came to reinforce each other, causing ethnic tensions within the Lankan state.

Westminster-style ‘democracy’, with its reliance on the ‘first-past- the-post’ electoral mechanism, which has been seen as helping the majority community mainly, has only helped in alienating the minority communities from the state. Sri Lanka’s current presidential cum parliamentary hybrid system of governance has done little to change this situation.

Nevertheless, it would be relevant to emphasize that in the Sri Lankan case too, what has gone wrong with regard to democratic governance, is, to use the words of Fanon,’ the nation is passed for the race’ and ‘the tribe is preferred to the state’.

One of the most troubling consequences of this self-serving process on the part of hegemonic interests is that a national consciousness fails to develop in the polity. Put simply, the feeling that ‘all Sri Lankans are one’ or nation-building proper, fails to take root. There grows a legitimate anxiety among sections of the minorities, as the process of self-aggrandizement gathers pace among the hegemonic interests in the majority community, that they are sidelined by the state and are not considered by rulers as legitimate stake holders in the state. Thus are the seeds of national discord sown, thanks to the country’s rulers, over decades, failing to weld all sections of the people into a single, united people on the basis of equality in all its dimensions, including parity of status among religions.

Where to go from here

So, in a sense, Sri Lanka has to start all over again in constitution-making. The constitutional groundwork has to be laid for a fully participatory democracy, in which all communities would be stake holders. In this scheme of things, the ‘nation’ cannot be ‘passed over for the race’ and the ‘tribe’ cannot be ‘preferred to the state’. If such tragic lapses recur, the stage would be set for further national discord. It is not clear whether the mere implementation of the 13 th amendment to the present constitution would help in rectifying these distortions.

In this constitutional endeavour, Individual Rights would prove vital but would not satisfy all the requirements of nation-making. Group Rights are as important as Individual Rights and the needs of minority communities as collectivities would need to be addressed also. Land, for instance, is an important Group Right and substantial geographical regions where minority groups could enjoy land rights and practise their cultures, would need to be envisaged. ‘Panchayats’, having purview over relatively small land areas, may not serve the purpose, however well intentioned these schemes may be. It needs to be borne in mind that the bulk of communities needs to be resident undisturbed in sizeable geographical regions if they are to satisfactorily practise their cultural rights and progressive constitutions should ensure these requirements. This does not amount to making a case for exclusive ethnic enclaves and ‘homelands’ but is a recognition of the fact that without stable habitat space, it would be difficult to perpetuate cultures. If nomenclature, such as ‘Regional Councils’ are anathema in some ears, they may be dropped and acceptable alternative terms used. Such issues have been thoroughly debated over the years but, apparently, the desired attitudinal changes have been very slow in coming.

The ‘bottom line’ is that the legitimate and vital needs of all may have to be met by the state if nation-building is to be forged ahead with. This is the path to the establishment of an all- inclusive Sri Lankan identity that commands the allegiance of all sections of the people. It is the answer to the virulent sub nationalisms which have been tearing this country apart.

At this crucial juncture, the state would need to guard against confusing ‘rehabilitation and reconstruction’ of the North-East with nation-building proper. Certainly, they are part of the nation-building process but nation-building without political empowerment at the individual and group levels is unlikely to meet the need for long-term national stability.

Related: Some thoughts on Reconciliation and Nation-building in Sri Lanka ~ by Somapala Gunadheera