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The 'we-they' division at work

Asia watch by Lynn Ockersz



Forensic experts inspect the trains which exploded at the Atocha train station the day before, March 12, 2004 in Madrid. At least 198 people were killed and more than 1,400 wounded in bomb attacks on four commuter trains, 11 March 2004. AFP

What do the recent train bombings in Madrid, which claimed around 200 lives, and which are, reportedly, the work of Al Qaeda, have in common with a law currently being reviewed on women's residency rights, passed by the State legislature of Indian-ruled Kashmir?

At a superficial level, the two developments couldn't be seen as having a connecting link, but when it is realised that ethnicity and self-conceptions of communities are very much at the heart of much of the bloody turbulence sweeping the world, the Madrid carnage and the women's residency issue in Indian-ruled Kashmir could be said to be having a common epicentre.

While clear, conclusive evidence is yet to be unearthed, linking Al-Qaeda with the Madrid bombings, the very fact that an Al-Qaeda connection has been invoked in some sections of world opinion, points to the deep global divisions and animosities, ethnicity and ultra-nationalism have bred over the past few years.

Further confirming the entrenched character of these differences are threats reportedly issued by militant nationalistic forces in Russia's Chechnya province to step-up their armed offensive against the state.

If these recent developments in Spain and Russia bear testimony to the offshoot of armed militancy heightened ethnicity could give rise to, the residency law in Kashmir points to some of the popular conceptual tools of ethnicity and national self-centredness.

This is ethnicity asserting itself on two planes - armed militancy very often degenerating into terror and intra-state armed conflicts and fundamental conceptualizations by groups regarding who constitutes 'we' and who constitutes 'they'; in popular terms, "the sons of the soil" and the "aliens".

The Kashmir residency law has the added troubling dimension of being sexist besides intensifying the sense of who is the "true Kashmiri" and who isn't. In its bare essentials, the law debars locally-born women from marrying outside the Himalayan state, with the loss of permanent residency of Kashmir being posed as the price to be paid for the violation of this law. The loss of permanent residency could entail forfeiting inherited and immovable property in addition to an inability to secure state sector jobs.

The desired aim of the legislation, therefore, is to ensure that Indian Kashmiri women marry only those men who are considered members of their ethnic group. Since the majority of Indian Kashmiris are Muslim, the legislation could be considered as also having been designed to preserve the traditional identity of Kashmir as a Muslim-majority state.

In other words, the overall aim is to secure Kashmir for one cultural group to the exclusion of the rest. The principal consequence is the strengthening of the "we-they" division among the states majority community and other ethnic groups.

It is this fundamental "we-they" division which is being worked out in other theatres of conflict on a world-wide scale.

The developments focused on in different parts of the world - although emerging on different planes of action - testify to the increasing importance of self-conceptions on the part of communities and the disturbing rise of ethnicity as a factor in global politics.

www.Pathmaconstruction.com

www.imarketspace.com

www.continentalresidencies.com

www.ceylincoproperties.com

www.ppilk.com

www.singersl.com

www.crescat.com

www.peaceinsrilanka.org

www.helpheroes.lk


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