The Brexit Soap Opera: The origins

Britain’s geography, history and monolingualism

Britain’s geography and history are the two main reasons for Brexit, the desire of Britain to extricate itself from a 45-year old marriage to the European Union.

Great Britain, not to be confused with the UK, is an island, Europe’s biggest. (United Kingdom= Great Britain+ Northern Ireland). Two thousand years ago, it was termed ‘great’ simply to mean bigger than the ‘little Britain’ (either the Irish island or Brittany). Great refers to its relative size, not to anything else. As a result of living on an island, the English people developed an islandic mentality. They think they are intrinsically different than those on the European continent. They drive on the other side of the road, their signs show miles because Europe uses kilometers. They refuse to join Europe’s common currency. The Brits preserve a nonagenarian monarch, and pretend to seek her consent for every major political action. Though it takes only two hours to travel from Brussels to London by Eurostar, Brussels is overseas, because it is overseas. The sea separating Great Britain from Europe is the psychological factor behind Britain thinking of Europe as a different continent, Europeans as foreigners. The islandic mentality nurtured for sufficiently long time in sufficiently large numbers made Britain’s marriage with Europe an uneasy one.

Britain’s imperial history is the second reason. The British Empire was the largest empire in human history occupying more than quarter of the earth. That past has cultivated a sense of superiority and entitlement. English people as a rule know only English; they expect everyone else to speak in English. In my experience- I worked in a British multinational for a decade- British expats rarely attempted to learn the local language. My British colleagues would discuss cricket in groups that included French, Germans or Italians. It was not deliberate, I don’t think. They simply assumed that since Cricket was a game invented in England, everyone in the world must understand it.

Monolingualism inevitably produces nationalism. When an Englishman walking on Oxford Street hears the cacophony of foreign sounds, none of them intelligible to him; when a Polish waitress talks to him in a strange accent; when Romanian barbers chatter in Romanian while cutting the Englishman’s hair; he becomes truly nervous. His island has been invaded by aliens. Languagism and accentism are often underestimated as compared to racism and genderism. They can be more toxic. For foreigners to reach top offices in Britain, they need to speak like Brits. The UK government may allow ministers belonging to other races (e.g. Priti Patel or Sajid Javid) as long as they have the right British accent. If Poles or Romanians could speak English with the BBC accent, they would become more tolerable, too. But thanks to the EU, they enter the UK at whim with their foreign accents and deficient language skills.  

The funny thing is that the British accent itself changes every couple of miles. When I lived in Derby, I was shocked to hear ‘b-oo-s’ (bus), f-oo-n  and d-oo-st. It took me a few weeks to understand the British midlanders. (No subtitles when you speak with someone on the street). Derby accent, though, is an accepted British accent, however deviant. Cockney, Yorkshire, Essex are all different accents. Even Scottish and Irish can be endured, because they are formally recognized as British. But Hungarian and French accents definitely belong to aliens.

 The monolingual islanders with an inherent feeling of superiority and entitlement had to drive the aliens with strange accents out of their land. Observers say Cameroon’s announcing the referendum was wrong. It was simply a trigger. The UK-EU marriage has always been an awkward one. Way back in 1975, the Labour party had voted for Britain to leave the European Communities. Over the next decade that party remained Eurosceptic. Its current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, depending on the day of the week, either supports Brexit or is not opposed to it. UKIP (UK Independence party) was formed in 1993. Its successor, the Brexit party, has gradually increased its vote share to make it a leading party in the 2019 European elections in the UK.  

The other island

The Great Britain Island can easily exit from the European Union. But there is a problem. Look at the map. Part of the other island lying to the west of Great Britain belongs to the UK. This island was partitioned by the British Empire in 1921. The southern Ireland was predominantly Catholic; the Northern Ireland had a large percentage of Protestants. If the two parts had remained in the UK, Brexit was easy. If both parts were out of the UK, Brexit would have happened by now. But the southern part freed itself from the British Empire, and is now the Republic of Ireland. The Northern Ireland, on the other hand, decided to be part of the UK.

This was another uneasy arrangement. Because Northern Ireland has two types of Irish people. Irish nationalists who dream of a United Ireland and Unionists, loyal to the UK. The ambitions of the Irish nationalists (remember IRA (Irish Republican Army) or Sinn Fein?) provoked violence, bomb blasts and police brutality. “The Troubles” continued from the late 1960s to 1998. Finally, with the signing of the Good Friday agreement, peace was established. The agreement recognized Northern Ireland was part of the UK, but with close links to Ireland. Every Northern Ireland resident was given a right to become the citizen of the Republic of Ireland. In future, if majority so wishes, Northern Ireland is free to leave the UK and join the Irish Republic. A Common Travel Area (CTA) allows free movement of people between and within the two islands.

This international treaty is a role model for creating peace. It successfully stopped violence for twenty years. And then the Brexit referendum happened.

The curious division

The border between the two Irelands is not natural but man-made. One hundred years ago, it happened fairly arbitrarily. It is 500 km long, with over 200 crossing points. The road N54/A3 crosses the border four times within 10 km. The drivers don’t notice changing countries because the border is currently open. When the border was closed, one railway line between Clones, Monaghan and Cavan crossed the border six times in eight miles, with custom checks at each crossing.

The border also goes through some houses, libraries, farms. Imagine a house whose residents live and eat in Ireland but sleep in the UK. This is not a fiction, but reality.

The two Irelands are so closely linked that 30,000 people cross the border daily for work on the other side. Every month 177000 Lorries, 208000 vans and 1.85 million cars cross the border. How efficiently can these people and vehicles move once a new border comes up? And how do you erect an international border inside a house or a library?

The British Empire effected three partitions based on religions. Ireland (Catholic-protestant), Israel (Arabs-Jew), India-Pakistan (Hindu-Muslim). The Irish partition in 1921 was the oldest. It has now come to bite the UK. What goes around comes around.  

If the Irish border were to remain open, Northern Ireland will become a giant zone for smuggling. It will cause the collapse of the single market. EU can’t allow that. (For fifty years, contraceptives have been smuggled from Northern Ireland to the Catholic Irish Republic).

Following the referendum in 2016, Theresa May called for a new general election. She lost more seats and needed an alliance with a small party called DUP. DUP is the Unionist party of Northern Ireland. God is a great storyteller. Cosmic irony is the device used in the Brexit story. The Unionist party with its ten members refused to be treated differently.

Islandic mentality, superiority complex and monolingualism inevitably triggered Brexit. The Irish issue created a roadblock.

Thus began the Brexit soap opera, with no end in sight.

Ravi

Kashmir: Management by Crisis

Business textbooks offer two different types of management: Management by Planning and Management by Crisis.

Top professional companies spend inordinate amount of time, money and efforts in planning. Most of them will have a clear vision, well-articulated mission and a roadmap to show how to get to the desired destination. Ten-year plans are broken into three or five year plans. Half a year is spent in creating a detailed plan for the following year. All plans are well-written and available to those responsible for executing them. This is Management by Planning.

At the other end of the spectrum are companies that don’t believe in or are incapable of good planning. Every time they face a crisis, usually quite frequently, they devise schemes and solutions to deal with it. Those companies keep moving from one crisis to another. In absence of planning, complex activities requiring long lead-times don’t happen. If such companies launch a new product, its advertising and distribution rarely happen together. Those companies are sloppy, unprofessional, unreliable and irresponsible. Their way of working is Management by crisis. 

The ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir had signed the Instrument of Accession joining India (subject to certain conditions) on 26 October 1947, more than seventy years ago. In those seven decades India and Pakistan have fought wars over Kashmir, the gory history of Kashmir is marked by militant attacks and round-the-clock presence of Indian army, Hindu Kashmiri pundits were killed or made refugees, and a division of the beautiful Kashmir valley with both sides accusing one another of occupation is a permanent feature. Sections 370 (allowing autonomy, own flag and own constitution to Kashmir) and section 35 A (preserving the landowning rights of the native male population) had maintained the ‘temporary’ arrangement of Kashmir being part of India and autonomous at the same time. Changing that seventy-year arrangement required a complex, detailed roadmap.

Where is that roadmap?

Management by Crisis and Shock Therapy

Competent individuals, companies and nations are sometimes forced to manage by crisis. An earthquake is a good example. Technology keeps improving but is not yet able to accurately predict each earthquake. The January 2001 Bhuj earthquake where 20,000 people lost their lives or the December 2004 massive Tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people required management by crisis. In such cases, the government is forced to take emergency measures, some of them work and others go wrong. It is not fair to expect precise activity plan and timetables.

Changing Kashmir’s status was not a nature-made crisis. The BJP government that promised this step in its manifesto has been in power for more than five years. Five years is a sufficiently long time for meticulously planning such a complex change intervention. Before execution, the plan should give a clear roadmap of the duration of each sub-activity.

A complete communication blackout, however reprehensible, may have been essential. If the Indian government had said phones and internet would remain shut for a month, that could have been accepted as part of a planned timetable. However, what transpires now is that there is no roadmap, no timetable. It is purely management by crisis. A cowboy policy of shooting first and asking questions later.

This is the second instance where Narendra Modi has indulged in giving a shock treatment to the nation. First, demonetization, an entirely man-made crisis with awfully inadequate planning. Integration of Kashmir is the second Modi-manufactured crisis. For professionally executing such a project, a completely transparent roadmap could have been created for the world to see and debate. On one hand, the Indian State, a section of its sycophant media, and the ideologically inflamed masses claim to be militarily far superior, capable of confronting or crushing any terrorists. On the other hand, Indian Kashmir has been made invisible for three weeks, its leaders detained, curfew ordered, pilgrimages cancelled, army presence enhanced. Why such secrecy? Why such bullish behavior by a democratic state?

Because like demonetization, the Kashmir project is botched by a complete lack of planning.

Where is the talk about people?

The only two public documents made available by the Indian government are a 55-page “Jammu and Kashmir reorganization act, 2019” (dated 9 August 2019) and a 58-page “The Jammu and Kashmir reorganization bill, 2019” (dated 5 August 2019). Strangely, though not surprisingly, neither document discusses people in Kashmir.

For comparison, look at the 29-page German reunification treaty. East Germany, freed from communism with the fall of the Berlin wall, was absorbed in West Germany. The document calls it the East Germany’s accession to West Germany. From the Indian viewpoint, revoking article 370 is somewhat similar to that. It is Kashmir’s accession or re-accession to India, though Pakistan may view it as an annexation.

In the German unification document, its article 17 talks about rehabilitation of and compensation for all political victims. Article 31 talks about the welfare of families and women.

Why the two documents published by the Indian government have no reference to planned steps for rehabilitation of Kashmiri people? Those living there and those displaced? Where is the timeline for reducing and finally eliminating the presence of army? Where are the amnesty measures for the political prisoners?

When the documents don’t mention people, it is not unreasonable to call the accession an annexation.

Technicality and reality

In life, one can be technically right and morally wrong. Right in the letter of law, and wrong in its spirit. Morality is a virtue much superior to technicality.

Let us compare Crimea’s joining Russia in 2014. The world considers it an annexation orchestrated by Putin. Crimea, technically, belonged to Ukraine, and Russia with its sly maneuvering shamelessly grabbed it. That is the general perception. However, objective analysis shows Crimea had been Russian for more than 200 years. Since the time the Russian empress Catherine conquered it in 1783 by defeating the Ottoman Empire. Nikita Khruschev, a Soviet ruler, enigmatically gifted it to Ukraine in 1954. European Union inviting Ukraine to join the EU hastened Crimea’s transfer to Russia. (Read my detailed analysis of the Crimea question here). Crimea returning to Russia, though technically wrong, was morally fine. Because most Crimean people consider themselves to be Russian. They were happy to replace their Ukrainian passports with the Russian ones.

With Kashmir, it is exactly the reverse. In this exercise of re-accession, Kashmiri people are missing. Surrounded by Indian army men, Kashmiris are Indian citizens without pride or love for that citizenship. As we saw above, Indian government has come up with political promises without specific plans. The documents are not two-sided treaties, but unilateral bureaucratic acts or bills. They inform the affected party what the rulers have decided. No referendum has been held, no public opinion of Indian Kashmiris sought before the revolutionary change in their status.

Indian government’s Kashmir accession is, therefore, technically correct, but morally wrong.

Healthy body with a cancer

India takes pride in calling itself the largest democracy in the world. Indian Democracy has been a source of envy even for Pakistanis. Ruled over by military for most of its history, rational Pakistanis have, albeit grudgingly, looked at democratic India and its institutions as something Pakistan should emulate. Indian democracy has been a role model for South East Asia, if not the entire Asian continent. With the latest events, the other Asian countries will cease to look at it as a democratic icon. Worse, if authoritarianism and populism become India’s stable features, India’s neighbours will legitimately start copy-pasting them in their own countries.

As a person living in Bombay, and not in Kashmir, I am immensely proud of Indian democracy. I still feel it, breathe it, and I can fearlessly criticize anyone and anything I feel worth criticizing.

The problem is that no democratic nation can be partially democratic. A democratic State cannot have an autocratic state inside it. You can’t govern most of the country with a civilian rule, and part of it with an army. It’s like saying a person is perfectly healthy, but has cancer in one part of his body. Such health is not sustainable. Sooner or later, the cancer inevitably spreads to the other parts of the body.

India can’t be a democracy, and destroy it in Kashmir at the same time. It’s not yet late. Indian government must take steps to make the Kashmiri accession morally right.

Ravi

Articles 370 and 35 A scrapped. What next?

On Monday 5 August 2019, India’s government decided to revoke two articles of the constitution that offered special privileges and status to its northernmost state, Jammu and Kashmir. When the constitution was drafted, the ‘Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir’ was the only authorized body that could abrogate these articles. However, on 26 January 1957, that assembly died by dissolving itself, without recommending changes or revoking the articles. Jammu and Kashmir became the modern Trishanku.

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The Trishanku story is part of Ramayana, the Indian epic. King Trishanku had this unusual ambition of travelling to heaven with his body intact. He asked Rishi (sage) Vasistha to help him. This is against the laws of nature, said Vasistha, a mortal’s soul can reach heaven but not his body. Trishanku stubbornly pursued his fantasy. He approached rishi Vishvamitra, a rival of Vasistha. Their rivalry was as bitter as that between India and Pakistan.

Vishvamitra accepted the challenge, chanted the powerful mantras, performed the necessary rituals, and dispatched Trishanku to heaven. The gods in heaven were alarmed to see Trishanku entering heaven in his own person. They kicked him back to earth. Vishvamitra, to save his own face, created an artificial heaven in which Trishanku could reside. He agreed with the Gods that Trishanku will always hang in mid-air with his head towards the earth, and legs towards heaven. The unnatural ambition of king Trishanku resulted in his eternally hanging upside down.

*****

The Trishanku of Jammu and Kashmir, caused by articles 370 and 35A needed to be released from its hanging position. The Indian government deserves congratulations for its change intervention. Status quo is usually the sanctuary of the lazy, conservatives and cowards. Let us first see what is good about this initiative, followed by what is wrong with it. Why it will not work in its current form, unless accompanied by other measures.

First, articles 370 as well as 35A were ‘temporary’ and ‘transitional’. Can anything be temporary and transitional for more than seventy years? Or ever? A dispute is not resolved by making the temporary permanent. The desire and courage to change things is a welcome step, because it breaks the status quo, provokes a debate, and offers an opportunity to improve or rectify the change intervention itself.

Second, in a democratic republic such as India, all citizens and states must be offered a level playing field. As the nation becomes more civilized, special privileges should gradually disappear. While, in practice, unfairness and injustice are likely to remain part of every human society; at least constitutionally and legally, equal rights, freedoms and responsibilities should be granted to all. A single state in India enjoying a special constitution, its own flag, autonomy is an anomaly in a democratic republic.

Third, article 35 was blatantly sexist. A Kashmiri woman marrying a non-Kashmiri, even a non-Kashmiri Indian, was outcast. She and her children lost inheritance and residence rights in Kashmir. Farooq Abdullah, Kashmir’s chief minister for a long time, married a British woman. Their son, Omar Abdullah, not only preserved his residence and property rights, but also managed to become the chief minister himself. If Farooq Abdulla was a woman, and married a British man, the same Omar Abdulla and his mother would have become non-Kashmiris with no rights. In 2019, what are the grounds for supporting such a bigoted article?

Fourth, those who fear militarization of Kashmir as a result of this initiative must remember the permanent presence of the Indian army there for the last thirty years or so. Perennial presence of an army in a civilian society is a disgrace, a blot on democracy. Situation in Kashmir was already bad. It may become worse, it may become better. What is the point in keeping a bad status quo?

Fifth, the bogey of a demographic change. Until these articles were revoked, no non-Kashmiri individual or organisation was allowed to buy property in Kashmir. Now, “outsiders” threaten to “invade” Kashmir, and change its demographic composition.

So what?

I have always been a staunch advocate of free movement. Kashmiris can reside anywhere in India and buy property, why can’t the reverse happen? A few hundred meters from my residence in Bombay, I know a dozen of Kashmiris who have made Bombay their permanent home.

In Bombay, now called Mumbai, where I was born, the percentage of native (Marathi-speaking) people is now reportedly between 16% and 22%. So what? The building in which I live is surrounded by Muslims, Gujaratis, Catholics, Sikhs, Parsees, Jains, Biharis, Uttar Pradeshis, Bengalis – none of them are the “original” sons of this soil. So what? They have all contributed to the development of Bombay; they provide services of some sort to one another. (This change in Bombay’s composition has happened without any ethnic cleansing of Maharashtrians).

When you begin to look at a human being as a human being, demography never changes.

Sixth, some people are angry that Kashmiri assembly was not consulted and its consent not sought before bringing the change. True, Kashmir is currently without a local government. A governor appointed by the Centre was used as a proxy for the local government in seeking the consent. This was a cunning maneuver that may not stand in the court of law. However, what is meant by the local Kashmiri government? Over the last fifty years, it is essentially ruled by two families, Abdullahs and Muftis. Those two families were the modern princely rulers of this erstwhile princely state.  Would they ever give consent to lose their own privileges? Of course not. Asking their consent is a bit like asking Queen Elizabeth whether she would like to abrogate throne and abolish the British monarchy.

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As we saw above, the step to revoke articles 370 and 35A, to bring Jammu and Kashmir on the same footing as the rest of India, is extremely logical.

However, logic doesn’t always work in political governance.

Two key issues are not addressed by the revocation of articles 370/35A.

First, this initiative fails to reunite Kashmir. Kashmir like Korea, Germany, and Ireland was divided in two parts. All the divisions happened more than seventy years ago. West and East Germanys finally united in 1990, and the Germans are now a single nation. The two Irelands signed a Good Friday agreement, and merged under the umbrella of the European Union. Koreas are still split, and we know the devastating difference between them. South Korea is one of the richest nations, and North Korea a brutal dictatorship that offers to its citizens malnutrition in exchange of mandatory sycophancy. Many Koreans simply and accidentally found themselves at the wrong side of the border.

Kashmir was bisected completely arbitrarily, by a random line where Pathani tribal forces confronted the Indian army way back in 1948. That line cut not only the geography, but an ethnic community. Families were split, some members acquiring Indian, others Pakistani passports, merely as a historical accident. All negotiations and peace talks in the past seventy years were focused on how to re-draw the line of control, how to divide Kashmir. What is needed is the uniting of Kashmir. The 2019 radical step of the Indian government fails to resolve that.

Second, the perception of the Kashmiri people. If they perceive India as a foreign ruling power, no technical changes will help. One side’s terrorists are another side’s freedom fighters. Kashmiris look at the Indian State as Indians looked at the British Empire, an alien oppressor.

An average Indian feels that Indian Kashmiris should consider themselves fortunate.  After all, they belong to a democratic state of India rather than Pakistan, a poorer state ruled by military for most of its existence. This is a fallacy. The kind of freedom and liberty I enjoy in Bombay are not available to the Kashmiris in Srinagar. If, over the years, you see Indian army men every time you come out of your house, you won’t know about Indian democracy. (Indian Kashmir is consistently ranked higher than Pakistani Kashmir in terms of freedom and liberty. However, this is like saying Afghanistan should feel happier it is occupied by the USA rather than the USSR.)

If a place can be governed only with guns, then that place is entitled to think of the gunmen as a foreign power, which occupies and annexes.

The 5 August 2019 attempt by the Indian government, therefore, becomes a “war initiative” rather than a “peace initiative”. Until Kashmir is united, and until this perception of India as an occupying power is removed, that initiative is unlikely to succeed.

A book I am currently writing offers a blueprint as to how a “peace initiative” can resolve the Kashmir dispute, and bring peace to the India-Pakistan relations.

Ravi