Persistent Majoritarianism

The Sri Lankan civil war haunts A Passage North.  This novel is an addition to the post-civil war movies that we have watched these past few years.  In Dheepan, three Tamils, including a former Tamil Tiger, flee Sri Lanka and seek refuge in France.  Funny Boy was a coming of age story in which the "Black July" of 1983 changes everything for all the characters.

Only the bizarre English language could use the word "civil" in a bloody war.

The violence of the war might have ended, but the wounds are deep and remain raw.

In 1972, slightly over two decades after gaining independence from European colonizers, in the renamed Sri Lanka, "the United Front government enshrined the unitary structure of the state, gave Buddhism a newly privileged position, did away with the provision in the 1948 constitution protecting minorities, and entrenched the Sinhala-only language policy constitutionally."

One can easily imagine that this would not solve problems but create a whole bunch in a country with a significant minority of the population that is not Buddhist nor Sinhala.  

The UN Human Rights Commission noted last month that the country has made progress but has a long way to go "particularly the continuing precarious situation of the families of the disappeared – the majority of whom are represented by women.”

Across the waters from Sri Lanka is the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, with a population that is three times that of the island country.  Tamil Nadu's population is barely 5 percent of India's population.

Sri Lanka is significantly smaller than India, but offers a worrying portrait of what could happen to civil society when democracy that protects the rights of minorities is replaced by majoritarianism.

With Hindus comprising nearly 80% of the population, the BJP, which is the political party governing the country, is on full throttle towards majoritarianism.  A tyranny of the majority that worried the framers of the American democratic system.  It is on a course towards making Hinduism the state religion, similar to Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

 

Writing about the mounting majoritarianism and political polarization in India, Niranjan Sahoo reminds us:

After the BJP’s historic victory in 2014, ethnonationalism gained greater traction as a core component of the party’s platform. Some BJP members even called for amending the constitution to redefine India as a Hindu nation.

Sahoo concludes:

The main hope for positive change comes from India’s resilient society, which has rejected threats to democracy in the past. In addition, the country’s diversity, multicultural roots, and strong culture of interfaith dialogue, as well as divisions within the Hindu religion, may act as checks against majoritarianism. Yet time may be running out for India and its democracy, and the BJP’s increasing majoritarianism since the 2019 elections offers a dire warning. With polarization now reaching alarming heights, Indian democracy may have entered uncharted territory.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, we are warned.  If only the leaders from Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh turned their eyes towards the small little pearl drop in the blue waters, they too would worry about the dire implications of majoritarianism.  They need a passage south, comparable to A Passage North:

He couldn't help thinking, as the train hurtled closer toward his destination, that he'd traversed not any physical distance that day but rather some vast psychic distance inside him, that he'd been advancing not from the island's south to its north but from the south of his mind to its own distant northern reaches.