Complete with anecdotes, humor, and Sen’s trademark – pure insight – the 186 pages of the book, divided into nine chapters, is easy to glide by.
Though it seems on one hand as though Sen has a personal vendetta against Samuel Huntington and his highly acclaimed “Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order,” it slowly becomes evident that Sen’s underlying thesis is actually targeting what Huntington has done. Sen takes issue with the leaders and followers of today who readily compromise peace by generalizing people groups based on one layer of an identity of the “others.” The “others” in the context of post-9/11 being those of the Muslim world, the same population Sen is fixated upon throughout “Identity and Violence.”
Unfortunately, in exposing Huntington’s work, Sen also has the arduous task of dismantling the lens prescribed by Huntington that most have willingly put on, and to an extent, refuse to take off.
Of course, Nepal’s current development and political discourse barely hits upon taking issue with Islam in the same proportion that it does in other parts of the world. However, the relevance of Sen’s words is found as the message regarding identity is emphasized through his casework of Muslims.
It goes without saying that every Nepali has multiple identities, that every Nepali is multi-layered. So while only four-plus percent may claim Islam as their faith in this country, and are hence the “other” in terms of religion, the same four-plus group may share another layer of their identity with the remaining ninety-six percent. Perhaps the common feature with some of the remaining would be their occupation or gender or socio-income group or sexual orientation. A Muslim is not a Muslim alone, she is also a woman, a doctor, a Nepali, a swimmer, and so forth and so on.
For every level on which individuals differ, Sen can probably prove ten more in which they share a commonality.
To categorize the world according to civilizations based on one character, that of religion is obviously too simplistic. To tout India as the “Hindu” civilization as Huntington has proposed, when her multi-religious citizens, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian, Atheist and others are dismissed, is simplistic. It may be called “Hindustan” but it is the stan of those who are also not Hindu. Furthermore, to juxtapose the supposed Hindu civilization with that of the “Islamic civilization” in an effort to contrast these and others against the “Western civilization” is not only simplistic, but problematic too.
In discussing the supposed distance between the West and the East, Sen cleverly identities knowledge and discoveries that were made beyond the borders as prescribed by Huntington, or even that such supposed “Western” ideas as democracy in politics and atheism in religions were indeed explored in the East long before the West espoused their values.
Additionally, to label India as Hindu is to identity one character and hinge all other traits as if the “Hindu” factor can speak for everything else that India maybe as one, or may not be, as the multiple groups within India is also diverse.
If countries are categorized according to (the dominant) religion, individuals are as well. And, yet, any person is more than the faith one follows. As such, where two may differ on religious grounds, they may share similarities in terms of their gender or education.
Focusing especially on Muslims in the post-9/11 world argues that fixating upon one identity is missing the larger picture. And though his book focuses on religion, it is still relevant to the current context of Nepal where we are becoming increasingly ethnicized. For a nation held (if not forced) together despite differences in language, culture, religion, race because of a shared “Nepali” identity, focusing on the latter alone may lead the country to following the footsteps of Huntington and dismissing the other identities shared. The potential hazard of diving along ethnic lines, of course, as is suggested by Sen, is that it will eventually, if not quickly, become violent.
Violence is to be avoided, at all costs, is hardly disagreeable, but when a group (characterized by religion or race) is systematically discriminated against, a reaction is not only expected, but also necessary.
When those of minority religions are discriminated against, socially and legally, there is a struggle, some of which take a violent form when repeatedly attempted to be snuffed. When those of marginalized people groups – whether in terms of ethnicity, gender or socio-economic group – are also repressed, there is a struggle for change. It would seem natural to resist and to be in the offence so that the change can be apparent. But Sen appeases the reader when he clarifies, “The prospects of peace in the contemporary world may well lie in the recognition of the plurality of our affiliations and in the use of reasoning as common inhabitants of a wide world.”
Sen has three basic arguments. One, it is difficult to decipher the relations between individuals based one facet of the many identities they possess (in this case against Huntington’s position of comparing the Western civilization to that of the “Islamic,” “Hindu,” “Buddhist” and other such civilizations). Two, each civilization may be boxed on one level, but that it is diverse even within it (take the case of the Buddhist civilization, which, though Buddhist, still differs between those of Tibetan and Sri Lankan Buddhism). The “clash” Huntington speaks of may indeed occur beyond the supposed alliances that ought to have formed according to civilizations, as it can be sparked due to political interest.
So, while Huntington describes what has happened and why Sen takes precarious measures to describe what did not need to have happened, and why not. Identities are not fixed, and they are also shared, but to pounce on one as though it determines the rest is not only naïve but dangerous, too. After all, if individuals and groups alike could see others as those with whom they differ on one level (say religion), but also align with on another (say income group), then perhaps the connection between violence that espouses from clinging to one identity could be negotiated.
The bottom line is, everyone has multiple identities – to capitalize on one in the interest of power can and will lead to violence. On the other hand, acknowledging the ways in which individuals differ and the ways in which they are similar may lead to addressing the differences with a shared objective.
For as Khalil Gibran vouches, “Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.” We may be divided on one level, but we are the same on another.
Title: Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Identity
Author: Amartya Sen
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publishers: Penguin Allen Lane; 2006
Pages: 186 (text), 215 (total, including index)
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