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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (3368)	12/9/1998 8:00:00 PM
From: Nandu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Just a clarification, so as not to confuse anybody. I am the SI member "formerly known as Anil Das".

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (3368)	12/11/1998 12:31:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

In Review- 'Seeds of Discontent' Seeds of Discontent Government Policies and Ethnic Relations in Asia and the Pacific edited by Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguli. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. $25. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Bertil Lintner -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- December 17, 1998 Since the collapse of communism, a new spectre has been haunting Asia. Ethnic strife has become a critical threat to the survival of many nation-states in the Asia-Pacific region, most of which were created by colonial powers in the last century, or have emerged from more recent nationalist movements. This book examines ethnic politics in 16 such countries; of them, only China and Thailand can claim to have had lengthy traditions of nationhood. Of the other 14, only India and Fiji existed as cultural entities--if not properly organized countries--before Western conquerors began to appropriate territories far from their own shores. The 13 academic authors of this book outline problems of ethnicity, caused in large part by colonial efforts to assemble diverse communities into new political entities. And they go way beyond citing the obvious examples that have often attracted media attention. The Indonesia chapter, for example, touches on current ethnic battles in East Timor, but delves more deeply into other religious and cultural complexities of that vast archipelago. The authors also describe how nationalist movements and nation-states were created during anti-colonial struggles before and after World War II. India's Muslims demanded a separate state that they wanted to call "Pakistan," an acronym derived from the names of the Muslim-dominated provinces of what once was British India: "P" for Punjab, "A" for Afghan (the Northwest Frontier), "K" for Kashmir (which is still disputed with India), "I" for Indus or Sindh, and "stan" from Baluchistan. The name "Indonesia" is derived from classical Greek: India and nesos, meaning islands. Before the Dutch colonized it, there was no country encompassing the more than 14,000 culturally diverse islands now comprising Indonesia. A Burmese kingdom existed before the British arrived in the 19th century, but the writ of monarchs in the ancient capital of Mandalay hardly reached beyond the central Irrawaddy plain. The Federated States of Micronesia were a cluster of islands before the Germans colonized them in the late 19th century--only to be handed over, first to Japan and later to the United States. The Philippines were just another group of islands before the Spanish took them over, introducing Catholicism and Spanish names--but not a common language, which the Americans did when they defeated Spain in a colonial war 100 years ago. Then the lingua franca became English, spoken by the hundreds of different indigenous peoples in the archipelago--but only as a second language. Finally, what were Australia and New Zealand before the arrival of the white foreigners? The authors of this very readable book argue that a new concept--the nation-state, with defined borders and central governments--has been superimposed on an old order. In the past, the jurisdiction of the centre had no precise geographical limitations. Tribute was paid to the kings in Mandalay to fend off intervention by a political centre. No administrators were sent out from the centre, and no services were provided. Sovereignty, or central control, was not an issue. The problem arose when colonial powers departed and the rulers of all those newly independent states inherited mostly artificial creations. Suddenly, tribute-paying equalled territorial claims and sovereignty. Nowhere is this problem more acute than in a vast country like China, which claims to have existed for thousands of years, never had any defined borders and was never really colonized. In the old days, the Tibetan court in Lhasa may have sent gifts to the emperors in Beijing, but very few Tibetans considered themselves Chinese because of that token gesture. Modern China, on the other hand, has maintained a completely new interpretation of this old concept. The present government of Burma adapted its colonial heritage to an extreme: In a deliberately rewritten version of history, feuding nationalities of that British creation became brethren, united by an undefined historical past. With the disintegration of the East Asian miracle, old animosities have once again been brought to the forefront. This is particularly apparent in Indonesia, where gangs of Muslim youths have attacked Christians, many of whom are ethnic Chinese, and where a long-simmering conflict in northern Sumatra is once again gathering momentum. This book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand what is happening in postcommunist Asia--and why the end of the region's economic boom may lead to ethnic conflicts potentially more dangerous than ideological disputes. Source:Far Eastern Economic Review-Bertil Lintner is a REVIEW correspondent based in Bangkok.