Identity, Ethnicity, Race and Religion: A response to a friend

I disagree with you not for the reasons you imagine me to but because I feel people exist in multiple identities and by taking such absolutist positions as you do or those who oppose you do, people often end up creating more problems than they solve. Kemal Ataturk was you are well aware someone who understood that taking inflexible positions on non-issues meant nothing and that he had a task which had an economic basis. The multi cultural “Islamic” Ottoman Empire had made sure that the Muslims were most backward of the lot having adopted only martial and agricultural pursuits where as Non-Muslim Ottomans had done well.

So Ataturk had his task cut out. And no Muslims/Turks following him were not Turkish racially nor were they all Turkish speaking. He had in his followers Arabs, Kurds, Circassians turkic etc .. they were brought together by Kemal Ataturk on the basis of a sort of a nationalism which had only one unifying base.. which is why after Turkey came into its own, many Non-turkish speaking Muslims were transformed into Turks and many Turkish speaking Non-Muslims became Non-Turks. The greatest achievement of Ataturk was burdening his people with the rigors of modern statehood. Turkification of this sentiment was an afterthought.

Now coming to the issue of ethnicity v. religion etc … I am beginning to think you are confusing ethnicity with race. Ethnicity is a much smaller concept than race which is much larger. Furthermore there are no set patterns of determining ethnicity… but we know ethnicity means particularism of a kind. To the best of my knowledge ethnicity means “group” or “allegiance” or association. Perhaps best translation of the word ethnic pride is the Urdu word “Asbiat” or “Tassub”.. so your assumption that ethnicity neatly translates into race is suspect, though there might be some overlapping between the two sentiments no doubt. Ultimately it is our assumption that people should think like we want them to think is the problem. Since Ethnicity does not neatly follow race or language or religion or group education or a group identity formation, it can be any of these, neither, some and all. This leaves us to what Mr. Benedict Anderson so famously theorised about “imagined identities” and “imagined homelands”. Essentially all identity formation is imagined in one’s head. And since freedom of thought and expression is a basic human right, you may say that a certain imagination does not capture your fancy but that would not void the imagination of someone else who has a diametrically opposite view of identity inter alia ethnicity, nation or even race for that matter. If this simple thing was understoood and accepted, there would ofcourse be nothing to fight about. I am sure you will appreciate that while I have pleaded the converse side of the coin I have not disputed that what you say vis a vis about Indian identity ethnicity etc might actually hold true for you, but on the same lines may I suggest that by conceding the issue about cultural Hinduism and its existence you have yourself accepted my claim that Hinduism and even semitic faiths like Islam and Christianity may have a strong cultural component which may affect identity formation. In the case of Jewish people, we see an imagined identity and the spirit of a resilient and brave people resisting imposition of other identities over many millenia, so much so that there is no disputing that being Jewish is as much an ethnic idea or a national idea or a cultural idea as it is a theological one.

The point my dear friend is that this why we have constitutions in the world (and I hope our battered watered down constitution in Pakistan is restored soon)i.e. to essentially allow people like you and Maulana Fazlurrahman to express their concepts of identity and also stop both you and Maulana Fazlur rahman from imposing your extreme positions on people like me – the true constitutional secularists who believe in state’s neutrality not just towards religions but ideas of identity. Look to me it does not matter if my next door neighbor in Pakistan thinks he is part of one Indian nation, a Pakistani nation, an Islamic Ummah or simple the Islamabadian nation…. as long as he pays his taxes, does not break the law and does not impose his idea of Indianism/Pakistaniat/Islam/Islamabadianism on me.

I hope this clarifies my position on the subject.

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Tags: culture, history, identity formation, nation, Political science, race, religion, sociology