What creates a sense of belonging? How important is belonging to our lives? How does history, politics, language, ethnicity and religion affect our sense of belonging? By questioning belonging are we also creating an exclusionary discourse of those who un-belong? Who decides who belongs and who doesn’t? These were some of the questions brought to the fore at the eighth annual History for Peace conference on ‘The Idea of Belonging’ held on 1, 2 and 3 August 2024 at the Tollygunge Club, Kolkata. The conference brought together academics, activists, journalists and theatre practitioners to engage with teachers, educators and civil society, and query the concept of belonging. This led to important deliberations on the role of shared histories in creating a sense of belonging, questioning if belonging was to conceived of as a choice for the individual, the role of migration, the importance of dialogue in creating a sense of belonging, if belonging were to be accompanied with a sense of justice and the role of exclusionary narratives preying not only on persons but also their memories. 

DAY 1 | 1 AUGUST 2024

In his opening address, Naveen Kishore evoked a sombre tapestry of vivid images to take the audience on a poetic journey into the lives of those who are made to ‘unbelong’. He stressed that not only was this process of ‘unbelonging’ involuntary and undertaken through violent coercion, but was, of late, given legal sanction. 

Kishore reminded us of our complicity in ‘unbelonging’, participating in the violence inflicted by being mute spectators from behind the safety of our screens. Witnessing, yet not dissenting, even when entire populations are kept in a perpetual state of war for the profit of others, such as in Palestine or Kashmir. He queries what happens to people when the threat of war, of violence, hangs eternally over their heads: how it kills the yet-living, sapping them of all self-esteem, sense of self––mere bodies, awaiting a physical demise.

Moreover, Kishore reminds us, we may not be in complete ownership of our own thoughts and emotions, as we live our lives ‘in the time of authority.’ How then do we learn to channel these into dissent, or resistance, that goes above being merely performance? How do we navigate seemingly oppositional truths?

To further stress the physical, social and emotional violence of being made to ‘unbelong’, Kishore draws attention to the anxiety and uncertainty inherent in being forced out of homes, to be sent to detention centres or transit camps. The utter helplessness of sudden and forced dislocation and the constant threat thereof.

Aloka Parasher Sen in her address 'Belonging and the Other in Early India' introduced the idea of belonging in ancient India by identifying four areas: linguistic spaces, territory, social identity, and alternative naming patterns to query what makes one belong. She drew attention to how identities are formed (or destroyed) in early India through repeated acts of mispronunciation hence leading to otherization. Parashar Sen enlightened the audience about the multifarious interpretations of ‘India’ while emphasizing the different patterns of identity formation in the North and South. Questioning the predominant belief of the notion of ‘tolerance’ of ancient Indian cultures, she asked if society would be as cohesive had it not been for a sense of ‘rule-boundedness’ wherein the entire community of the mlecchas and ashprishyas also survived. 

This was followed by a detailed response by Romila Thapar, who pondered the possibility of a ‘shared history’ despite the variety of temporary and permanent identity markers ascribed at birth or later. She claimed that many societal problems arise from or derive from an individualistic explanation of history, which serves as the narrative of identity formation for a certain community. Yet, historical evidence provides us with many examples of the intermingling of so-called disparate and mutually exclusive identities. Thapar connected historical patterns with contemporary practices by recalling how well the Indian diaspora assimilates into foreign culture and takes greater interest in the politics there, as can be seen in the United States. She reminded us that the problem of identity in India, which is steeped in the notion of purity and pollution, cannot have as easy a solution as the appropriation of the upper-caste’s identity. Thapar concluded by asking the audience if belonging were not a choice for the individual, we should doubt if it could be called belonging at all. These themes i.e shared histories, migration and diasporic identities, assimilation and acculturation set the tone for subsequent speakers. 

Amir Theilhaber’s study of Friedrich Rosen’s life, particularly his engagement with Agha Hasan Amanat’s Indar Sabha, showcased how ‘belonging’ could be understood in the colonial period within the rubrics of imperialism. Theilhaber began with a discussion of the Indar Sabha, a fascinating 1880s Hindustani production which had been variously praised for its syncretism. Some extolled that it was a Hindu idea adapted to Mohammedan taste, whilst others discussed the intermingling of ancient Hindu and Indo-Persian motifs. This stage drama also became popular as printed text being printed in different languages and scripts including Urdu, Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Sinhalese, Malay, Marathi among other languages.

Having established this background, Theilhaber turned to it as a subject of Friedrich Rosen’s research. What made this particularly unique is that Rosen’s preoccupation with something as contemporary as the Indar Sabha marked him out as an exception among other German Orientalists who usually focussed their studies on Sanskrit texts and Indologicial themes. Theilhaber shared that Rosen’ own upbringing––primarily in Jerusalem before moving to Germany made him feel very much like an outsider. Walking the borderline between being a scholar and a diplomat, like his father, Rosen’s work in Beirut, Tehran and Baghdad led to his familiarity with Persian and Arabic. He even tutored Lord Dufferin.

According to Rosen, the Indar Sabha was a starting point for Indian dramaturgy. It was a chance at revival of a perishing Indian culture. He believed in the danger the English posed and the imperialist enterprise posed a threat to the rich Indian culture. He believed in understanding the history of the Orient from its own inner life. In his own travels to India, he collected many paintings and artefacts like betel nut crackers, skulls and thigh bones that have since been preserved. His copious translation of the Indar Sabha, Theilhaber points out, transformed the performance into a rare literary text often accompanied by long explanatory footnotes. As a scholar and diplomat, Rosen found himself negotiating the border-lines of belonging––between the country of his study and his homeland, and in his academic pursuits.

‘To be or belong?’ asked Apoorvanand, exploring the relations between being/selfhood, belonging and the state. He began his talk with an anecdote about the cab driver, Imran, who drove him from the airport to the conference venue the previous day. In the course of the conversation, he discovered that Imran was from Chapra in Bihar. However, when probed further, Imran was admitted that actually he was from Bihar Sharif, he traced his roots to Bihar Sharif. Imran only discovered this fact when he started discussing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and asked his father about his roots. He had not been to Bihar Sharif and he did not have the papers to prove it. The NRC process, Apoorvanand recounted, has been and is a very invasive process. As Assam took on the NRC, other states in the northeast began to demand for it. Therefore, the NRC placed itself at the interface of the state, belonging and identity. The above led Apoorvanand to question why there is a need to belong and at what point it would be finally accepted that someone belongs. Drawing attention to the genocide of Palestinians, he questioned further as to why there was a need to prove that one belonging was more legitimate than the other. He asked why the claims to antiquity of Israel acted as a sanction for them to eliminate the other. Did belonging sanction the otherness of the other? The fate of a minority and their belonging ultimately depended on the goodwill of a majority population. Therefore, he asked why one had to belong and why it was so impossible to simply be. Apoorvanand contemplated if the two, that is being and belonging, could ever meet, ending his talk with Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘If I Were Another’.

Bhanwar Meghwanshi explored the idea of the ‘other’, opening his talk with a song from his childhood titled – ‘Mai tumko vishwas dun, tum mujhko vishwas do’ (You believe in me, I will believe in you). He shared stories from his childhood citing examples of a Dr Amir Khan, who greeted everyone with ‘Ram-ram’ (a common greeting among some Hindus) and a Sufi pir, Ramdev, from his village Pokhran, Rajasthan, who encouraged a sense of belonging among people, intermingling different religious symbols, showing how people could look beyond their caste, class and religion. These examples relayed to the audience the peaceful, syncretic environment of Meghwanshi’s upbringing.

However, at the same time Meghwanshi also shared how public places like sport grounds and parks were used to plant sentiments of hatred and othering in his youth. In fact, it was largely due to the encouragement of Meghwanshi’s geography teacher in school that he joined the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh at the mere age of 13. He shared his experience of being an active member of  the shakha (RSS gatherings) for five years. This included their involvement in the Babri Masjid episode in 1990, at which point he had begun questioning the Sangh’s motives. He illustrated how the Sangh promoted a false sense of purity and unity, one which was especially hypocritical when his fellow shakha attendees refused to eat food from his home given his Dalit identity.

Bhanwar Meghwanshi then leaned into his experiences as an activist, bringing together different nomadic communities and warring communities. He spoke about the Dalit Adivasi, Ghumantu Adhikar Abhiyan, which supports not only those affected by caste discrimination but increasingly lends help to tribal and nomadic groups, securing them small plots of land. He emphasized his use of inter-religious and inter-caste marriages to promote a sense of belonging in contrast to the now prevalent rhetoric of love-jihad. In addition, Meghwanshi spoke about the importance of initiating dialogue (samvaad) with groups that would otherwise refuse to interact. This included calling upon followers of Gandhi and followers of Ambedkar to interact and imagine Gandhi and Ambedkar instead of Gandhi vs Ambedkar. His efforts to organize a Dalit-Adivasi and Kshatriya-Rajput dialogue was a profound experience for both parties where the president of the Kshatriya Yuvak Sangha wept holding a copy of the Indian Constitution, realizing its significance for the first time. He concluded his talk emphasizing the importance of bringing about badlaav (change) through dialogue rather than badlaa (revenge).

Zoya Hasan’s talk ‘Constitution and the Politics of Belonging in India’ discussed how citizens of the country in acts of popular protest reimagined their relationship with the Constitution, drawing on the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 and the recently concluded campaigns in the lead up to the 2024 election.

The Constitution, she argued, re-emerged in public view in a new light in December 2019 when there were protests against the government’s decision to amend the Citizenship Act by providing an accelerated pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, whilst pointedly not granting eligibility to the Muslims. She acknowledged the scale of non-Muslim participation at these protests despite the assumption that these were Muslim protests, highlighting how protestors turned to the Constitution to claim their belonging in a national space.

Similarly, the campaign launched during the 2024 Lok Sabha election was to save the Constitution. In January of 2023, the same time as the inauguration of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, there were calls to make changes to the Constitution from members of the ruling party. There were fears that the Constitution would be replaced by the diktat of Manu (Manusmriti). At the same time, paper-leaks in central examinations such as NEET had created a huge uproar. She argued that this was linked to a deliberate attempt to keep people out of jobs, particularly those who could have been the beneficiaries of reservation policies. In Uttar Pradesh, in particular, the election was fought with the Constitution as the central axis and those who claimed to be its rakshaks (protectors) or bhakshaks (devour, here meaning destroyers).

She drew attention to Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and then the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which heralded constitutional values. In fact, Gandhi’s display of a red copy of the Constitution during the PM’s oath taking ceremony again emphasized that this election was fought with the Constitution at its forefront. The BJP’s poor performance in Uttar Pradesh, and its loss in Faizabad district to a Dalit Samajwadi Party candidate indicated that the people had placed their faith in the ruling party's partisan politics, signalling a shift away from the way elections had previously been socially engineered. She emphasized an increased need to uphold Constitutional values in these turbulent times––federalism, diversity, secularism, human rights and above all intellectual freedom.

DAY 2 | 2 AUGUST 2024

Angana P. Chatterji exploring the dynamics of memory and belonging, succinctly traced the dynamic relationship between the Indian state, minorities, refugees and citizenship. She sought to communicate her learnings from her sustained interaction with and advocacy from those forced to the margins and their immense local knowledge and courage. Sharing the poignant story of a Muslim daily-wage worker who died by suicide in Assam, she highlighted how state driven exercizes such as the CAA and the NRC are so utterly incapacitating for those not formally literate, it drives them into vortexes of despair.

The Indian state, according to Chatterji, inherited some feudal and colonial ways of managing diversity, which have, under the present majoritarian sentiment, been channelised into quests for uniform legislation and the increasing racialization of identity. Citizenship has been reimagined along nativist and religious lines, with dissent (ideally, lack thereof) forming a key marker of belonging.

Chatterji highlighted the biased nature of the NRC findings in Assam, with those being targeted as foreigners being majorly Muslim, or socially and economically marginalized populations such as the tea-labouring tribes. Moreover, the Election Commission and the Assam Police also have a role in determining who is a ‘foreigner’ despite lacking the mandate to do so. On the other hand, the redressal mechanism for those mislabelled ‘foreigners’ by the NRC is also convoluted and inefficient, with cases pending, verdicts released without the accused being present, negation of extant proofs of belonging, or the demanding of bribes. 

Thereafter, Chatterji drew attention to the hypocrisy of Bangla Hindus being seen as asylum-seekers whilst Bangla Muslims are labelled infiltrators. Protests against the CAA or the NRC, in similar fashion, were termed seditious. Police excesses and rampant accusations of being ‘foreign’, coupled with the threat of statelessness and exile has led to despair and suicides. These are legitimized by the assigning of revisionist identities and the portrayal of violence as an essential part of national feeling, alongside the normalization of excessive power in the hands of the government.

For those living in the margins, an erasure of identity becomes inevitable, leading one of them to say, as Chatterji quoted, ‘I can no longer see my reflection in the river that gave us life. I am become shadow.’

Drawing on his personal experience and academic research, KK Suan Hausing spoke at length on his idea of what constitutes citizenship. He proposed that citizenship, or rather proof of citizenship, should be flexible and not constricted to mere papers and identity proof, which only makes citizenship a precarious matter. The modern idea of citizenship, a product of a colonial discourse, needed to be challenged. It was high time for a ‘politics of belonging’ which may transcend such artificial boundaries. As a Manipuri himself, Hausing spoke about the various conflicts between markers of identity which are now being pitted against one another to promulgate a style of majoritarian politics, through a narrative that fits with the current national trend of engaging in exclusionary politics in the formation of national identity.

‘To belong is to acquire something from somebody’, said the former IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan while recounting his experiences as a civil servant in the northeast for several years. Gopinathan’s reminiscences from his time in Aizawl showed how he persisted in creating a sense of belongingness for himself, despite being a foreigner from the mainland. He explained that he made an effort to learn the language, learnt to listen and most importantly, fight for justice. For Gopinathan, belonging ultimately meant fighting for justice. As long as he was ready to put himself on the line and prove to those around him that he was reliable, that he could be trusted, he would be an insider to any region. Hence, while there may always be some group that is different and often looked down upon because of that difference, there would always be an opportunity to listen, communicate, learn, reciprocate and hence, belong.

Shamara Wettimuny, a historian hailing from Sri Lanka, explored the various intricate aspects that constitute a sense of being in her country, drawing on the island’s history in the 19th century. At this point in time, the surging anti-colonial movement created a certain discourse, which framed the notion of a certain sense of belonging even for the future independent Sri Lanka.  Public schools and colleges, under the influence of this discourse, framed syllabi supporting a dominant Sinhalese Buddhist narrative, promoting a sense of ultra-nationalism through a one-sided lens and excluding minority communities by not reflecting upon their share of experiences and histories. Majoritarianism in Sri Lanka takes the form of different kinds of nationalisms, she remarks, which are in itself, associated with the ideas of ownership, authenticity, claims to land and space, and often the superiority of a particular culture, religion, or language.

Amidst several instances of religious revival, migration, and changes in demography in Sri Lanka under colonial rule, a need to assert one’s ethno-religious position came to be crucial giving rise to several dichotomies that led to the othering of certain communities. The Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 and the Indian and Pakistani Registration Act of 1949 rendered over 800,000 migrants of Indian origin living in Sri Lanka, stateless, especially the Malaiyaha Tamil community, while the Muslims residing there, known by the ethnic group, Moors have also been faced with othering. Anagarika Dharmapala, a renowned nationalist figure in Sri Lanka, shared similar sentiments, adding to it a xenophobic colour perpetuating the claim that the Sinhalese are the rightful owners of the land and were being undermined by the immigrants and ‘foreigners’ in not only the market sphere but on a socio-cultural level as well.

In contemporary Sri Lanka, this attitude persists, with social media platforms and TV channels often delegitimizing and dehumanizing the minority communities, leading to their further marginalization and exclusion from society. Given the looming powers of the state controlling how history is remembered and taught, to conclude her talk, Wettimunny discusses the role of non-state initiatives like her own organization, Itihas, which aims to promote a more inclusive and thorough understanding of Sri Lanka’s past, doing away with the idea of ‘one truth’ and enabling a space where multiple realities are acknowledged and heard.

A Mizo brought up in Meghalaya, Karen Donoghue spoke about an interesting conundrum, which perhaps made her research even more challenging as she was collecting oral narratives from the Mizo diaspora that shifted or, sometimes, fled to Meghalaya, during the rise of militancy during the previous century. As she gathered data from the community, now settled in Shillong, she shared painful memories of some who lost sons and some whose fathers passed away while protecting them, some who did not even know what became of their loved ones. Donoghue shared how they built a very positive community in Meghalaya called the Happy Valley. The influx of Manipuri migrants led to further tensions and Donoghue laid out how these conflicts were negotiated in the past few decades.

Donoghue’s poetic exercise with memory, grief and trauma was followed by Kanato Chophy’s interventions in understanding the role of assimilation in an effort to promote inclusion. He drew attention to how a Naga lore of reading mountain faces has now been projected as part of Shivabhakti (devotion to the Lord Shiva). He questioned if this attempt at hegemony would inundate Naga culture. Further, Chophy asked if resisting attempts at assimilation earned one the title ‘anti-national’. Having laid out these questions, Chophy turned to the Constitution, a text which granted the country its status as a sovereign, democratic republic. ‘Does the Constitution allow for a sense of belonging?’ Chophy asked. He argued that the ideals in the Constitution created the prospects of a sovereign state to be ruled by democratic principles. So it was certainly possible to be part of India, the state, but warned that there was a difference between the statehood of India and the idea of a ‘cultural’ India that was trying to assimilate plural realities into a singular imagining of culture.

In conversation with Monideepa Banerjie, both discussants criticized the hailing of a ‘primordial essence’ in identity. Donoghue also shared how a Mizo Modern School in Shillong was countering many narratives of violence and would create fault-lines in a singular notion of militancy and oppression. Legitimized violence and regional trauma have been great concerns when it comes to northeastern identities and both speakers championed the cause of a more flexible approach to national identities which would not only encompass local aspirations and demands but also resist more assimilative or appropriative tendencies of dominant parties, which wish to mobilize these communities in their favour.

Reports by Disha Subramaniam, Ishita Biswas, Mayukhi Ghosh, Pratyusha Chakrabarti and Sabarno Sinha. Pictures courtesy: Pratyusha Chakrabarti.

Find the reports for Day 3 of the conference here: https://www.historyforpeace.pw/post/the-idea-of-belonging-annual-history-for-peace-conference-day-3-a-report