Form dictates function in politics as much as biology, and this is a lesson that Guyanese politicians need to take to heart. The unitary “nation-state” is one such form that forces us to act in ways that may engender conflict when its inhabitants are from different cultural strains. 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.
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 within a common language, culture and traditions, 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. Where there are different “cultures/nations” within a state, inevitable systemic strains are unleashed, since to create the unified nation, there has to be continued application of force, symbolic and physical, on some groups to maintain the “imagined community”.
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. Even within Britain itself, the Scots, the Welsh and most obstinately, the Irish never fully accepted the homogenizing premises of the nation-state. Early in the day, Ireland declared it would go its own way. The disappearance of the Soviet yoke in 1989 precipitated the formation of a score of “ethnic” republics in Europe. National unity is always ultimately impossible if it means homogeneity, since such a unity will have to be created (or more mildly, be represented) by a suppression of differences.
The contradictions and problems 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”. Claiming huge swathes of real estate, which they arbitrarily divided into colonies for administrative convenience, 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 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.
The 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”. We are reaping the whirlwind: while both the competing modernization and the Marxist school in the last century had prophesied the eradication of ethnicity and the creation of unified “nation states” (implied with the Marxists) history has proven them completely misguided.
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 contour and will be challenged along that parameter. In ethnically heterogeneous states, ethnicity became a dominant cleavage along which mobilization took 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. However, with us now becoming a nation of minorities, finally either party can create a stable nation state by agglomerating a governing majority through crafting and executing inclusive platforms.
