Between Federalism and Separatism

The cases of India and Pakistan provide excellent examples for a comparative analysis of federalism as a national and ethnic conflict regulation mechanism. Both states were ethnically heterogeneous, and products of the same colonial regime and similar, although not identical, institutional frameworks. At independence, they both needed to pursue economic development, state-building and nation-building. Yet both states also provide examples of contested features of federal systems, effecting very differently motivated reorganisations of their provincial boundaries within ten years of independence. These reorganisations were both designed to manage ethnonational diversity; however, this was their only similarity. India’s reorganisation of states was based around linguistic identities, denying those based on religion. Pakistan rejected the recognition of language as the basis of identity, and through the adoption of the One Unit Plan fused the Western wing into one provincial unit. Paradoxically, that decision set off a bipolar antagonistic relationship against the linguistically homogeneous Eastern wing (today’s Bangladesh). Unsurprisingly, the One Unit Plan is widely derided for causing the breakup of Pakistan in 1971. What is more surprising are the views articulated by India Today in 1998: ‘Four decades ago, the country upturned every tenet of good governance by carving out new states on the basis of language rather than administrative convenience’ (Editorial, 20 November 1998).