As nationalism rises, what holds Asian countries together?

Nations need to possess a relatively inclusive, overarching identity – a set of ideas that can make anyone feel they belong
However, the plights of the Rohingya, Kashmiris and racism against Papuans, show robust nation-states aren’t always nice places to live in if you’re a minority

Karim Raslan

Published: 12:26pm, 2 Sep 2019

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What is a nation? If it’s just a random grouping of people, what brings and then keeps them together?

Is it a shared history, religion, geography, culture or language? Can the reasons be merely economic: “Hey, we’re all making money, so why not “hang” together?”.

Well, for much of Asia, August was the month for flag-waving, patriotic songs and emotive nationalist videos. And please, we do not need to listen to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and the Malaysian cabinet singing poorly. All we want is for them to focus on the economy.

Countries as varied as Singapore, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia celebrated their National Days in August.

Malaysia’s racial and religious tensions rage on, fuelled by politics

The celebrations sometimes provoke controversy: Malaysians remain undecided on their nation’s “birthday”. Is it Merdeka Day on August 31 or Malaysia Day on September 16?

Anyway, back in the 1990s and 2000s, we were all beginning to think – thanks to authors Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman – that nation-states had reached their expiry date.

A group of young boys sit on the edge of a wall, some brandishing flags and wearing masks. Team Ceritalah

Globalisation, free trade and open borders were going to undermine national identities and meld them into a seamless, borderless world blessed with liberal democracy and capitalism. Ahem … we all know how that went.

Nation-states have fought back. They are in rude health – thanks in part to Donald Trump – everywhere. And yet, they remain fragile, artificial constructs. The late historian Benedict Anderson with customary flair described them as “imagined communities”.

They were, after all, a relatively new development. “State” and “nation” have been so conflated that the two are now considered one and the same.

Almost everyone lives in one of the world’s 186 nation-states. And as nation-states have grown stronger, life for those who are excluded – such as Myanmar’s Rohingya – has become infinitely more terrible, because without citizenship one can have little or no access to education, jobs, property or banking.

In Assam, India creates its own Rohingya and calls them ‘Bangladeshi’

Still, one of the best ways of assessing a nation’s success or failure is how it treats its minorities.

Nations need to possess a relatively inclusive, overarching identity – a set of ideas that can make anyone feel they belong. How else can we plan for the future, marry, have children and build their lives?

However, robust nation-states aren’t always nice places to live if you’re a minority.

Narendra Modi’s India has chosen an aggressively majoritarian path: asserting Hindu rights and identity above all else. With the predominantly Muslim state of Kashmir under lockdown and countless public lynchings of Muslims, the republic’s reputation as a tolerant, secular polity has been tossed away.

A woman displays a document that shows inclusion of her name in the final list of the National Register of Citizens in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. Photo: AP

On August 31, India published the final draft of its National Register of Citizens. The move, allegedly to verify who belongs and who does not, left millions of Muslims in the northeastern state of Assam, on the border with Bangladesh, stateless.

While Thailand’s polity is supremely Thai and Buddhist, the king’s defining role has long helped bind the minorities to the centre, or at least, the Chakri dynasty. This was certainly true of King Bhumibol Adulyadej – but will his successor Vajiralongkorn command the same reverence?

Malaysia, in contrast, allows its minorities to retain their cultural autonomy while privileging the norms of and providing affirmative action to the majority Malay Muslim community.

That, however, has not been able to break down the walls of suspicion between them. Everything – from education to business – seems to be politicised and racialised, in a race to the bottom.

Students of Surabaya march in Indonesia’s Merdeka Day parade. Team Ceritalah

The national identity in Vietnam, which marks its National Day today, has been heavily coloured by its struggles against Chinese, French and American domination. It’s what defines them, drives them to excel. In effect, being Vietnamese means fighting and lately working to stay free.

Indonesia, despite being the largest Muslim country in the world, does not tie its national identity to religion – but rather to the nation-building project Sukarno and his colleagues embarked upon in 1945.

But there are nuances: the socio-economic and cultural divide between North and South persists in Vietnam. Indonesia under the New Order suppressed both Chinese-Indonesian and regional identities.

Today, Indonesia must deal with the implications of the 2019 presidential elections, which resulted in President Joko Widodo’s re-election, thanks largely to Javanese and non-Muslim voters while losing ground elsewhere, especially in Sumatra. Moreover, unrest is building in Papua and West Papua over alleged incidents of racism against the largely Melanesian provinces’ students.

Indeed, Indonesians and their leaders have had to constantly work to live up to their pluralistic state ideology of Pancasila and “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” (unity of diversity) motto.

To be fair, Widodo’s recent decision to shift Indonesia’s capital to Kalimantan – where only 6 per cent of the republic’s population lives – highlights a conscious decision to reject majoritarianism.

It recalls Indonesia’s early nationalists selecting a dialect of Malay that eventually became Bahasa Indonesia to unite their diverse, fledging nation, a trading lingua franca that, unlike Javanese, everyone could “own”.

Will the current capital relocation similarly pay off given that it must be sustained by administrations long after Widodo has left office? Only time will tell.

So, with some notable exceptions, things do not seem very good for Asia’s minorities.

But then again, the failure of the global, liberal elite to stem the tide of populist demagogues powered by fake news means that this trend isn’t limited to our continent.

That is where we find ourselves in 2019, even as our nations celebrate their respective birthdays. The key point to remember is that nation-making is a constant process, from generation to generation, as we seek to reinvent what it means to belong to our respective nations.

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