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Culture and Conflict
No. 15/16 (fall-winter 1994)
State And Communalism
Communalism is above all marked by its claim to oppose to a citizenship relation another allegiance which asserts itself to be first and foremost. A result of the proliferation of identity fashions, it must initially be analysed under a strategic, non primordialistic, angle. It is to be defined as an ideology, that is, a modern and largely strategic construction which distinguishes from nationalism (which seeks to transcend cultural divisions in the name of an all-encompassing identity) and particularism (which mostly consists in claiming the acknowledgement of a specificity, perceived as absent until then, by the State). Secondly, communalism is to be analysed in its relations to the State. The strategies of both these actors pursue the creation and control of identity mobilisations. Furthermore, the international dimensions of these mobilisations are also to be emphasised.
Most analyses of the Bosnian conflict tend to either lessen its internal dimensions (the inter-communalist relationships) or to reduce them to a mere territorial clash. However, in order to understand the origins and development of this conflict, the deeply-rooted reality of communalism within the social, political and cultural life of Bosnia and Herzegovina is to be stressed. Between 1989 and 1992, the conversion of institutionalised communalisms into territorial and exclusive nationalisms led to the dismantling of the State and the breaking out of armed conflict. The latter has provoked the further crumbling of the communities themselves. Paradoxically, this second stage of decomposition might be the preliminary condition to a restoration of the State and of the communities around it.
Although the lifting of the communalist constraints over the Lebanese State was one of the major issues of the 1970s, the new Constitutional Law adopted at the end of the war (September 1990) entrenches a neo-communalist triumph substituting the notion of a co-existence pact to that of a National Pact. Such a choice corresponds to the dominant perception in post-war Lebanon assuming that the community is the most operational resilient social structure. It is also explained by the identity of the signing parties (the deputies) and of the sponsors (Saudi Arabia and Syria) of the Taïf Entente Document (1989). The communalist rehabilitation is sustained by two considerations. The first opposes the democratic character of communalist pluralism to the authoritarism of the " secular " environing Arab regimes. However, this argument passes over the truly communalist character of these latter regimes and lessens the risk of a totalitarian walled isolation of the communalist organisation. The second consideration concerns the possible dictatorial ambitions of a sociological majority (the Shi'ite), whose hegemonic organisation, Hezbollah, could be tempted to impose on all Lebanese its own system of law and of Islamic culture. Nevertheless, such suspicions do not give sufficient importance to the modernising and individualising processes which affect the Shi'ite community, nor to its wide social diversity. Still, the reinforcement of communalism favours the contamination by militian habits of political practices and the mixing of public interest and private interests, through the agreed election of community leaders to government, parliament and civil service - functions in which the clash of opposing brutish forces has replaced negotiation as the operating procedure. A weakness of the post-war communalist State is the absence of an overall project, of a definition of the national expanse and of an authority capable of regulating the inter-communalist competition without recourse to Syrian power, the great beneficiary of the new Lebanese regime. This loss of a common project threatens the State's legitimacy, if not even its sovereign existence and independence, to the point of tempting to establish the analysis of the Lebanese entity in terms of a political system.
The article discusses various aspects of Sikh communalism since 1947. The concept that Sikhs have of their identity has ever since been dramatically threatened by various political, socio-economic and religious factors. The central issue emerging from the Sikh question concerns the process of recommunalisation or reshaping of identities as a consequence of social, cultural and political frustrations. Should this question be interpreted as an example of the failure of the Indian state ? Or, on the contrary, can communal polarisation, far from being a threat to the existing political framework, be viewed as the linchpin of an ethnic counter-strategy encouraged by the state ? These themes are illustrated by analyses of the history of " Punjabi Suba ", the persistent ethnic politics since the mid-seventies of the Congress party and the influence on the rise of communalism in the Punjab of international factors such as the Sikh diaspora or India's neighbour countries.
Independent in 1968, a republic since 1992, Mauritius, a Commonwealth member, has had a different political fortune compared to the " Southern island ", Reunion, its close neighbour and a French overseas department since 1946. Mauritius holds a population of over one million inhabitants of which almost 70% are of Indian origin. Thus it seems to have passed the test of conciliating the exercise of democracy with the granting of guarantees - or favours - demanded by its different communities. Following this compromise, the system of " best losers " is practised at the time of elections : 8 deputy seats on 70 are reserved for the " best losers ", to assure, as stated in the Constitution, a representation " adequate to each community ". More than half the population follows Hinduism. The rest is on the whole divided between Catholicism and Islam. Furthermore, there is a large number of sects and groupings whose divisions aggravate the tendency to the multiplication of communities. Sino-Mauritians only represent 3% of the total population whereas the " general population " is close to 30%. The latter is formed by " Whites " and " Creoles ". The more or less visible African origin of the Creoles evokes a slavery past still important within political life, just as the " coolie trade " and the life conditions endured in another times by Indian workers. Thanks to universal suffrage, the descendants of the latter have been able to control political power but the economic, and everything concerned by it, is still to a large extent controlled by the old oligarchy of French origin. Three case studies have allowed the observation of reactions of different groups to different situations including all the elements stated above. The way in which the media treated them in 1993 and 1994 will be shown as well as how the State, having retreated from the practice of communalism, played a part in the difficult game consisting in the articulation by its representatives of discourses in the name of the nation, whilst at the same time remembering elections or nominations where the community membership had played a crucial role. Today, the Mauritian microcosm, an offspring of the " indo-oceanic cultural continuum ", reveals itself to be the fragile but hard-headed location of an economic as well as political balance. (N.B. : The Mauritius Republic, besides the 1865 km.² island on which this study has been based, also includes the small island of Rodrigues, where there are almost no Indo-Mauritians, and the tiny Agalega).
Chinese communities within ASEAN countries present a wide diversity of cases. However, in every case their existence is closely related to the issue of national construction and the real challenge today concerns the consolidation of this process in each and every ASEAN country. The socio-political transformations brought by prosperity and regional co-operation could help solve the problem of the diaspora's integration.
If by " communalist " movements one considers the religious or ethnic movements which disrupt the political order, aggravate the functioning of the State and the governmental power of nations in Asia, Africa and Europe, one may ask why such movements have not broken out in Latin America. Obviously it is not for lack of ethnic or religious groups ! In order to come to terms with this question, the paper begins by assessing the characteristics of communities, in particular those concerning exchanges and their corresponding solidarities. Then it briefly considers the way in which traditional communities have evolved from pre-Columbian times until nowadays. The article ends with an appraisal of the specific relationship between communities and the State in Latin America and tries to draw some predictive conclusions.
Evangelical churches in Latin America, as well as the Evangelists at their head, are transnational actors whose specific actions must be emphasised. Multiple transnational logics may be observed and analysed thus giving a clearer meaning to the presence and efficiency of these Churches and their priests within Latin American societies. Ever since the end of the 1970s we have witnessed the regionalisation of a religious area in Latin-America, structured as a network. From it has developed an evangelical political economy governed by a transnational logic ; portraying this area and its economy may thus permit the understanding of the strategy of these social actors.