The beauty of compromise

Over the past few decades, the nation states of Southasia have been home to some of the most bitter and costly conflicts of the modern world. Subaltern classes have resisted the hegemony of the elite; areas on the periphery have protested exploitation by the centre. To class and geography have been added the fault lines of language, caste, religion and ethnicity.

No region of the world – not even the fabled Balkans – has witnessed a greater variety of conflicts. Southasians are an expressive people, and so they have expressed their various resentments in an appropriate diversity of ways: through electing legislators of their choosing; through court petitions and other legal mechanisms; through marches, gheraos, dharnas, hunger strikes and other forms of non-violent protest; through the torching of government buildings; and through outright armed rebellion. The record of our nation states in dealing with these conflicts is decidedly mixed. Some conflicts, which once threatened to tear a nation apart, have been, in the end, resolved. Other conflicts have persisted for decades, with the animosities between the contending parties deepening with every passing year.