South Asian Societies Are Woven Not Around the State but Around Their Plural Cultures and Plural Identities

On 21 February 1952 students and citizens in Dhaka, then part of Pakistan, marched against the decision to make Urdu the sole state language, in a land where most people spoke Bengali. Police opened fire, and several protesters were killed. The Language Movement that followed became the foundation of Bengali nationalism and, nineteen years later, of an independent Bangladesh. In 1999 UNESCO declared 21 February International Mother Language Day. The episode shows what the topic claims, that South Asian societies are woven not around the state but around their plural cultures and identities, and that a state which ignores them does so at its peril.

The region has never been organised around a single central power for long. The Mauryan empire under Ashoka, the Mughals at their height and the British Raj each ruled most of the subcontinent, but their authority over daily life was light, and local customs, languages and faiths continued beneath them. A villager in the Gangetic plain or the Tamil country lived within a web of caste, kin, temple and market that existed before the state and survived its changes. Authority was layered and shared, and the state sat on top of society and not at its centre.

The plurality is extraordinary. India alone has twenty two languages listed in its Constitution and hundreds more in daily use. The region contains Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Christians and followers of tribal faiths. Pilgrims of several religions visit the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer, where Mughal emperors came to pray. The Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj draws tens of millions of people without any centre directing them. Festivals such as Diwali, Eid, Onam and Durga Puja are celebrated across communities as seasonal occasions that bind neighbours. In cities such as Hyderabad and Lucknow, composite traditions of food, music and dress grew from the mingling of communities more than from any official policy.

Thinkers have drawn attention to this tradition. Amartya Sen has written about the long history of public argument and heterodoxy in India, from the debates of the Buddhist councils to the tolerance of Akbar, who held discussions among scholars of different faiths and promoted the principle of sulh i kul, peace with all. Rabindranath Tagore argued that India's genius lay in its ability to accommodate, and he distrusted the nation state as a European import. The identity of the subcontinent has been built from below, by pilgrims, poets and traders, more than from above by officials.

The identity of the subcontinent has been built from below, by pilgrims, poets and traders, more than from above by officials.

The modern states have in many cases reflected this, with mixed success. India chose a federal structure and in 1956 reorganised its states largely along linguistic lines, after agitations such as that of the Telugu speakers for Andhra, in which the activist Potti Sriramulu fasted unto death in 1952. The result strengthened the union, since people who could use their own language in schools and government felt part of the country. Nepal, after its long conflict, adopted a federal constitution in 2015 with provinces intended to recognise its ethnic diversity. The accommodation of plurality has been a strategy of survival for these states.

The opposite policies have produced severe trouble. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhala Only Act of 1956 made Sinhala the sole official language and marginalised the Tamil minority. Years of discrimination and violence followed, and the civil war from 1983 to 2009 killed tens of thousands. In Pakistan, the denial of Bengali led to the break up of the country in 1971. The Partition of 1947 itself, in which the subcontinent was divided on religious lines, displaced some fifteen million people and cost perhaps a million lives. These were cases where a state tried to impose a single identity on a plural society, or where plural identities were turned into rival nationalisms.

The topic must therefore be qualified. Plural identities are not always harmonious. Language, religion and caste can unite a community and divide it from others, and they can be mobilised for politics of exclusion. The riots that accompanied Partition, the violence in Gujarat in 2002 and the conflicts in the northeast all show that cultural identity is not inherently peaceful. A society woven from many threads can be torn along the lines of the weave. Cultural plurality is a condition and not a guarantee of tolerance, and it takes patient institutions to turn the one into the other.

Nor is the state irrelevant. Citizenship, borders, courts, schools, welfare, and the army are all provided or regulated by states, and they shape the lives of citizens as much as culture does. A Dalit protected by a law against untouchability depends on the state against the practices of his society. Women who gain rights to inheritance or against domestic violence do so through legislation. The state can protect minorities against local majorities, as culture alone cannot. In South Asia, where social hierarchies are strong, the state has often been an instrument of emancipation as well as of oppression.

The best reading may be that states and cultures stand in a relationship of mutual dependence. A state with deep cultural roots, which draws on the language and symbols of the people it governs, is stable. A culture protected by a fair state can flourish without becoming defensive. The Indian Constitution tries to hold both by guaranteeing equal citizenship while recognising linguistic and religious rights, as in the protection of minority educational institutions. When the balance fails, in either direction, trouble follows.

The region's future depends on how this balance is struck. Migration, urbanisation and social media are creating new identities and rearranging the old, and the push toward uniform national narratives competes with the pull of local belonging. Whether South Asia will continue to be held together by the thick web of its shared life, or whether its states will insist on thinner and more uniform bonds, is not clear. What is clear is that those who have tried to weave the societies of the region around the state alone have found that the cloth tears, and that the threads were always older than the loom.