In the three months to the elections, there is the perennial challenge that mobilization tactics and strategies may once again further polarize our country as in so many previous elections. Form dictates function in politics as much as biology, and this is a lesson our politicians must take to heart. The unitary “nation-state” is one such form that encourages us to act in ways that may engender conflict when its inhabitants identify as distinct ethnic or religious groups. The concept of the “nation-state” has become such a ubiquitous international norm, that it is difficult for us to realize that the modern state was only born in the last few centuries. and that its premises may be problematic for some societies.
While the state and nation are usually conflated, in reality the state can never become identical with the people living within its territory. The state may represent the people but the people inevitably will identify easier with their “nation” – as constructed by their lived experiences than their state. This does not mean that the state cannot be a site of identification for the people, but since the values promulgated by the state being more abstract and “drier”, these will have to be transmitted independently. And it is here that our politicians on the hustings have a responsibility to protect the state they are competing to govern. They cannot delegitimize, for instance as recently with the Venezuelan Border controversy, the party then may win the elections to such an extent that the state loses not only domestic credibility but also in the international arena.
However while the concept of the “nation state” has become a central pillar of the dominant political paradigm in modern politics, it is but a contingent moment in European-generated history that definitionally insisted on the “societal consensus” and the “melting pot” theory of assimilation. But today, the “established” democratic paradigmatic nation states in the US and Europe are experiencing the challenges of that premise. National unity is always ultimately impossible if it means homogeneity, since such a unity will have to be created by a suppression of differences – which the later governments now seek to impose.
The contradictions and challenges of the nation-state were compounded after those imperialistic European states – during their 19th century consolidation phase – partitioned the world into empires and “spheres of influence”. They arbitrarily divided these into colonies for administrative convenience, where the multitude of ethnic groups within each enclave were suddenly told they had to become cohesive “nations”. The onus was even greater in those colonies, such as we in the West Indies, where the “native” groups were practically wiped out, ensuring there were no “natural” cultural strains as in the European model, to evolve into any “national” culture. The society had to be created almost sui generis – patterned on the European ideal, of course.
Our local politicians who inherited governance of the colonies adopted this imperialistic homogenising arrogance and insisted on even utilizing force, when necessary to create homogenous “nation-states” such as based on one religion – in our case, Christianity. We are reaping the whirlwind right now where some “partisans” of poor Adriana are certain that she was murdered by someone practising some alleged Hindu rite demanding human sacrifice. The Hindu remains the “othered”, despised outsider in a state founded on Christian axiology.
The reasons for this are complex but essentially lay at the heart of the nature of power, the potential for its abuse, its relationship to status, the power of the modern state and the fact that the group that controls that power is invariably from, or perceived to be, from one section. In a culturally plural society then, power always has an ethnic/religious contour and will be challenged along that parameter. In ethnically heterogeneous states, ethnicity becomes a dominant cleavage along which mobilization takes place even though the politicians strained mightily to claim “multiracialism”. In Guyana, whether the PNC or PPP ran the government, it was seen by the group on the outside as the “other” ethnic group dominating the government. The challenge has always been how we can continue with democratic elections for choosing our government while not allowing its agglomerating imperative to tear us apart.
However, with us now having become a nation of minorities, finally our parties competing for office can create a stable nation state by following the logic of crafting and executing platforms that solicits, as best as possible, all groups to gain a governing majority.
