Dear Editor,
It is to the life and work of Gulab Singh (1792-1857) , founder of royal Dogra dynasty and first Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, that the northern extremities of India can principally be attributed. But the Gulab Singh legacy-spanning the Jammu hills, vale of Kashmir and the trans-Himalayan plateau of Ladakh-is not merely geopolitical and territorial. Within the jurisdictional domain of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is contained a populace of immense socio-cultural diversity. While the rest of India has been territorially made, unmade and remade, and almost always on socio-cultural lines in order to manage diversity, the territorial expanse of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir has been altered not by internal reorganisation but by external aggression. This ‘inside-outside’ dynamic-external compulsions preventing internal rearrangement-has ensured that Jammu and Kashmir will remain, well into the future, exactly as we encounter it today: a political community of extraordinary diversity. Thus, accommodating diversity will remain the primary political challenge for the State and its people.
What sort of politics makes the accommodation of diversity possible? Unfortunately, no single type of politics will prove adequate to the task. Accommodating diversity requires the intersection of five different types of politics. The first is identity politics, which is the politics of difference. The second is multiculturalism, which can be considered as the politics of equal recognition. The third is liberalism, the politics of universal dignity. The foruth is consociationalism (power-sharing), which is the explicit politics of accommodation. The fifth is subsidiarity ( taking political decisions at the lowest possible level at which they can be taken), which is the politics of autonomy.
In the final analysis, we seek to accommodate diversity because if we succeed in doing so, the sum will be greater than its parts and all of us will benefit. But this will happen only if we understand that all groups in society, for all their mutual differences, share the same seven desires. Only upon truly understanding the seven desires can we bring into being a new kind of politics that accommodates diversity.
Varun Sahni
Professor in International Politics
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi
