SPECIAL ARTICLE
When Is Secession Justified? The Context of Kashmir
Neera Chandhoke
Given the turmoil in Kashmir today, a number of
right-thinking people have come to defend the right of
the people of Kashmir to a state of their own; or more
simply that the Kashmiri people possess the right of
secession via the right of self-determination. But if
self-determination has proved to be the veritable
will-o’-the-wisp in recent history – since it begs the
question of which entity possesses this right, and by
virtue of what do the people of a region possess this
right – secession is one of the most difficult of concepts
that political theorists have had to take on board after
the “ethnic explosion” that shook the world at the turn of
the 1990s. Do people have the right to establish their
own state quite in the same manner as they have the
right to elect their own government? How do we justify
secession? What are the moral considerations that we
need to weigh the right of secession against? This essay
seeks to negotiate these very questions in the context
of Kashmir.
Neera Chandhoke (neera.chandhoke@gmail.com) is at the
Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 13, 2010 vol xlv no 46
W
hen W H Auden penned the following lines: “Abruptly
mounting her ramshackle wheel, Fortune had ped-
alled furiously away. The sobbing mess is on our hands
today” (Auden 1945: 3), he could well have been describing the
“sobbing mess” that the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J and K), or
more particularly the Kashmir Valley is embroiled in today. The
thought cannot, but, be overcome by deep grief and regret. Only
if democracy had been institutionalised in J and K, only if the
Government of India (in sordid alliance with opportunistic state
governments in the region) had not majorly violated its own com-
mitment to the state; that of the grant of special status, and only
if the Indian state had honoured the basic rights of the people of
the Valley, fortune need not have mounted its ramshackle wheel
and pedalled furiously away.
It is not as if the Kashmiri people have not spoken back to a
history that is not of their own making. By the turn of the 1990s,
resentment at the manipulation of electoral democracy as well as
erosion of the constitutionally guaranteed status of the region
broke all bounds, and the Valley erupted in a series of violent
demonstrations. Because significant political groups were barred
from the electoral arena, they turned to other means, particu-
larly to the gun, and to other political agents, particularly to
Pakistan. Resultantly, the abnormal politics of violent confronta-
tion came to subjugate “normal” politics of participation and rep-
resentation, negotiation and compromise, dialogue and contesta-
tion. And violence continues to wrack the Valley to date.
The tale of Kashmir’s tragedy could, perhaps, have been fore-
told as early as 1953. The Government of India desperate to pre-
vent further balkanisation of the country entangled in a war not
of its own making with Pakistan, pilloried in the United Nations
Security Council by major western powers that had turned
against India, and pressurised by right wing groups to integrate
Kashmir into the country, was to adopt extremely short-sighted
policies in J and K. In retrospect it is surprising that the Govern-
ment of India failed to recognise that it was not dealing with a
population that had been rendered acquiescent under princely
rule. It was dealing with a people that had mobilised against the
misrule of the Hindu monarch since the 1930s. It was this politi-
cally aware population that was to witness a series of cataclysmic
events in the aftermath of 1947, the terror and the atrocities
inflicted by Pakistan-backed raiders in 1947, the disruption that
followed the 1948 Indo-Pak war and the resultant partition of the
state between two, and then three countries. Above all this the
population bore witness to the deliberate and insistent breach of
contractual and constitutional obligations by the Government of
India. Yet the Kashmiri people were prepared to give democracy
and constitutional commitments a chance. But it was precisely
59
SPECIAL ARTICLE
this that was denied to them. Consequently, 43 years after the
accession of the state to India the widespread belief that the
Indian state could deliver to the people of the state neither
democracy nor justice generated secessionist demands, nothing
short of azaadi. “Though nothing can be immortall, which mor-
tals make; yet, if men had the use of reason they pretend to, their
Commonwealths might be secured, at least, from perishing by
internall diseases” wrote Thomas Hobbes (1651, 1988: 170). But
reason has not proved a constitutive aspect of the Kashmir policy
of the Government of India. Therefore, the Commonwealth has
not been properly secured.
Given the “sobbing mess” that Kashmir is in today, a number of
right-thinking people have come to defend the right of the people of
Kashmir to a state of their own; or more simply believe that the
Kashmiri people possess the right of secession via the right of self-
determination. But if self-determination has proved to be the verita-
ble will-o’-the-wisp in recent history, simply because it begs the
question of which entity possesses this right, and by virtue of what
does it possess this right, secession is one of the most difficult of
concepts that political theorists have had to take on board after the
“ethnic explosion” that shook the world at the turn of the 1990s. Do
people have the right to establish their own state quite in the same
manner as they have the right to elect their own government? How
do we justify secession? What are the moral considerations that we
need to weigh the right of secession against? This essay seeks to
negotiate these very questions in the context of Kashmir.
The Right of Secession
If there was ever an age of innocence when it was believed that
the assertion of a right is enough to endow it with moral and
political weight, those days have long passed. For the realisation
of a right does not logically follow the assertion of a right. If a
right has to acquire weight it has to be publicly justified on the
basis of certain principles that are self-evidently moral, and
which constitute what can be called the shared understandings
of a society. Western political philosophers have been able to
develop such principles, because they prefer to take as their con-
ceptual referral, what can be termed consensual or procedural
secessions, for example the case of Quebec. In 1996, Canadian
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien filed a reference in the supreme
court on the issue of Quebecois separatism. In its response in
August 1998, the Canadian supreme court established the basic
legal framework for secession. The court ruled that secession is
neither sanctioned by the Constitution nor by international law.
Any state whose government represents the whole of the people
resident within its territory on a basis of equality and without
discrimination, and which respects the principle of self-
determination in its own internal arrangements, is entitled to the
protection of its territorial integrity by international law and
institutions. It could not be seriously claimed that the population
of Quebec was discriminated against. Therefore, Quebec could
not, even if there was a clear result in a future referendum, invoke
the right of self-determination in order to dictate the terms of
proposed secession to other parties of the federation.
But though the court ruled that unilateral secession has no
basis in law, it also held that clear popular support for secession
60
can engender an obligation on the parent state to negotiate with
the separatist leadership. All parties to the negotiation, deter-
mined the court, should be governed by four principles: federal-
ism, democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law, and the
protection of minorities. The Government of Quebec alone does
not have the power to determine what is, and what is not negoti-
able. Further, the government of a territory that intends to secede
would have to address the interests of the federal government as
well as those of other provinces, the rights of all Canadians both
within and outside Quebec, the rights of aboriginals, and also con-
sent to negotiate on matters of common concern, from the division
of debt incurred for Quebec, to the settlement of boundaries.1 In
sum, Quebecois can only be granted the right to secede if they
fulfil certain requirements and adhere to certain processes after a
referendum elicits the popular will. The quintessential liberal
democratic framework laid down by the court has been adopted
by a number of philosophers when they seek to justify secession
(Moore 2001; also Philpott 1995).
The problem is that all parent states, and all separatist move-
ments, do not follow a preordained script that has been indelibly
etched onto the liberal stone. Most cases of secessions in the
Balkans, the Caucasus, and in much of the post-colonial world,
hardly fall into the category of consensual secessions. These can
best be termed contested secessions. The two features that con-
stitute secession as a contested political act are as follows. One,
the state tries to militarily suppress even the intent to secede.
Two, violence becomes the handmaiden of the secessionist move-
ment. And since violence tends to breed violence, over time the
trajectory of violence outstrips the initial reason for the outbreak
of the movement. Violence, in effect, acquires a biography that
begins and ends with violence itself.
Since contested secessions are usually stamped with the cloven
hoof of extensive and immoderate violence, we do not require an
astrologer to tell us that secession will, in all probability, inflict
major harm upon populations who live in the disputed territory,
as well as on populations who live outside the territory. It is not as
if this aspect of secession is not recognised by liberal philoso-
phers. Allen Buchanan (1997), for instance, suggests that the right
of secession is a “remedial right only” or a right that acquires
salience in very specific circumstances. But at the same time he
also suggests that if “the only effective remedy against selective
tyranny is to oppose the government, then a strategy of opposi-
tion that stops short of attempting to overthrow the government
(revolution), but merely seeks to remove one’s group and the
territory it occupies from the control of the state (secession),
seems both morally unexceptionable and, relatively speaking,
moderate” (p 36, italics added). Despite all the wariness he shows
on the issue of secession, Buchanan seems to completely under-
estimate the scale of the tragedy that even attempted partitions
of territory and people have led to in major parts of the world.
For instance, in Sri Lanka, an estimated 7,000 Tamil civilians
were killed, and 72,000 civilians were displaced from their
homes by the Sri Lankan army, as well as by the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam, in the last phase of the civil war between January
2009 and May 2009 alone.2 For 26 years the country was torn by
violence, which extracted a heavy toll. In 1971, when East
november 13, 2010 vol xlv no 46 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Pakistan declared itself independent of Pakistan, an estimated
three million people died in the war between the new state of
Bangladesh and the parent country. About 8 to 10 million were
rendered homeless (Bose 2005). In another historical context,
A E Housman (1940) had written: “They say my verse is sad: no
wonder, Its narrow measure spans, Tears of eternity and sorrow,
Not mine, but man’s” (p 155). These lines may well provide the
epigraph of contested secessions.
If the infliction of major harm is one of the fallouts of contested
secessions, other features also occasion worry. For example, no
one can deny the strong empirical correlation between ethno-
nationalist groups and demands for secession. But ethno-
nationalist groups are not precisely known for either their com-
mitment to liberalism, or to democracy. Their justification of
secession rests on other (debatable) grounds. Take the Kashmiri
separatist leader and Islamic patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani,
who has for long argued that J and K should join Pakistan because
Hindus and Muslims in India belong to two different nations,
even if they live in the same territory. For a Muslim to stay among
Hindus, he reportedly argues, is as difficult as it is “for a fish to
stay in a desert”.3 Considering the dreadful history of the two
nation theory, should democrats even consider supporting this
particular claim, and this particular leader who has for some
strange reason shot into prominence during recent protests in the
valley? More significantly, if the main legitimacy claim for an
independent state of J and K is constituted by the two nation
theory, what will happen to the minorities in the new state? What
will be the fate of women in this “Islamic” state? Will they be
condemned to lead the kind of lives that extremist women
organisations in the Valley insist they should be leading? Should
we even be considering an ideology whose credentials as justifica-
tion are so deeply flawed? In short, when our right-thinking friends
defend the right of secession, do they even take into account the
illiberal nature of the group that demands a state of its own?
Let us not mistake the matter. Secession not only involves
rejection of the sovereignty of the existing state over the territory
and the population the separatists claim as their own, and reneg-
ing of political obligation, it also involves abdication of moral
obligation to people who do not belong to the community in ques-
tion. Secessionists are not revolutionaries who dream of a better
future for all; they simply do not care what will happen to their
former compatriots who will be left behind, all that they want is
to opt out of the existing state and create a state of their own. And
if perchance secession is demanded by the leaders of a religious
group that is both close-minded and chauvinistic, we have cause
to fear for the fate of those who will perforce live in this state.
This is not to dismiss the right of secession because in some cases
there is no other option; it is merely to suggest that (a) the right
does not stand on the same ground as other rights, and (b) it can
be justified on very specific grounds.
When Is Secession Justified?
Let us assume for a start that our collective agent P (which is
settled on its homeland) has the right to secede from state S and
establish a state of its own Si, provided two preconditions hold.
The first precondition is that P should have been subjected to
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 13, 2010 vol xlv no 46
SPECIAL ARTICLE
institutionalised injustice by the state. The notion of “institution-
alised injustice” holds that discrimination and coercion are
built into the institutional structures that govern the daily lives of
a particular group of citizens. Therefore, members of P are
neither protected against certain acts that harm them, nor
enabled to access the goods they have rights to. We can, for the
purpose of this argument, identify at least two categories of
institutionalised injustice.
Within the first category of institutionalised injustice falls
discrimination. That is P is denied the same rights that protect
other persons who live under the jurisdiction of S. Therefore, P
will not have access to the same opportunities, the same privi-
leges, and the same immunities as other members of say M, or N,
or Y that live under the jurisdiction of S. In extreme cases, the
lives of the collective can be at risk because they are no longer
protected by basic rights. In such cases, P, we can conclude, has
been subjected to institutionalised injustice because it has been
systemically discriminated against.
The second form of institutionalised injustice that a group can
be subjected to follows the breaking of contracts that have
granted to the region a specific kind of political status, say
regional autonomy. Within a federal system, a particular terri-
tory may be granted special rights for a variety of reasons. For
example, the territory may be inhabited by indigenous people,
who are governed by their customary laws. Being a vulnerable
community, the group will need to be protected through special
contractual provisions, or at least statutory commitments. Or the
territory in question may have been previously autonomous, and
joined the larger political unit on certain terms and conditions
that are specified in a contract. The clauses in the contract stipu-
late the powers and the limits of the two parties to the contract,
grant to the inhabitants of the area certain powers and immuni-
ties, and give to them the right to govern themselves within the
compass of regional autonomy. In case the provisions of the
contract are violated by the central government, the inhabitants
of the territory, we can say, have been subjected to institutional-
ised injustice.
Note that in the first of the two cases cited above, our P has
been subjected to institutionalised injustice because its members
are denied the same rights that are available to the rest of the
citizens in the polity. In the second case, P has been subjected to
injustice because the contractual provisions that governed the
accession of P to the larger country, and that gave to the region a
distinct political status, have been infringed. Arguably, if a group
of citizens who are settled in a piece of territory they identify as a
homeland have been subjected to both these forms of injustice,
they have the right to secede. That makes the right of secession,
just like the right to protest, the right to practise civil disobedi-
ence, and the right to revolution, a contingent right. That is, the
right can be justifiably claimed only in the context of institution-
alised injustice.
The second precondition for a justified right of secession is that
institutionalised injustice should be irrevocable. That is, we should
be able to assess that the state is not likely to reverse its policies,
compensate the victims for harm done, and institutionalise just
procedures and institutions before we proceed to justify secession.
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This interpretation takes as its conceptual referral the report of
two commissions set up by the League of Nations to inquire into a
dispute concerning the status of Aaland Islands.4 After excluding
the existence of a general right to secede, the Commission of Rap-
porteurs observed that “the separation of a minority from the
State of which it formed part and its incorporation into another
State may only be considered as an altogether exceptional solu-
tion, a last resort, when the State lack either the will or the power
to enact and apply just and effective guarantees”.5
When does a state lack either the will or the power to enact
and apply just and effective guarantees? For this we need to
recognise that there is no such thing as a perfectly democratic or
just state. Most formal democracies are imperfectly democratic
and weakly just. It follows that the project of democracy has to be
realised through determined and intentional political practices.
If one objective of these practices is to check abuses of power by
the government, the second objective is to press upon the govern-
ment the need to reverse or withdraw policies and actions that
are palpably unjust. The one virtue of democracy is that it can
prove self-correcting; provided decisions and policies are
subjected to a vigilant and democratic civil society, and scruti-
nised by institutionalised checks and balances.
Taking these factors into consideration we can suggest that the
right of secession is justified if:
(i) A group living in a particular region has been subjected to
institutionalised injustice that arises out of (a) the deliberate
v iolation of core moral rights and resultant discrimination,
(b) violation of contracts that grant to that region a special politi-
cal status.
(ii) P is unable to access institutions and procedures that can help
reverse institutionalised discrimination, such as voice in partici-
pative and representative institutions, the ability to hold state
officials accountable, appeals to an impartial judiciary committed
to upholding justice, access to human rights and civil liberties
groups in civil society, and to a free media that can highlight
injustice. These groups and organisations, it has been suggested,
possess the potential to press the democratic state to reverse
institutionalised injustice, and thus further realise both demo-
cracy and justice.
(iii) Institutionalised injustice is beyond recall and beyond
redemption because P does not have access to the safeguards
against injustice outlined in B.
The right of secession is, therefore, contingent not only because
it can be justified in cases of injustice but when this injustice is
irrevocable, that is when the existing state shows no intent of
reversing discriminatory policies and practices that target P,
compensating for past injustices or institutionalising procedures
that can realise overdue justice for P.
P, in other words, does not have access to condition B. If this
argument holds, it follows that injustice can only be irreversible
in undemocratic states, because these states have not institution-
alised a system of checks that can help curb injustice, or at least
compensate for harm done. Nor do these states possess demo-
cratic civil societies with the power to intervene in cases of
injustice. The case of Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan can
therefore be justified. But India happens to be a formal democracy,
62
albeit an imperfect one. In light of this particular consideration
let us now see whether the right of secession can be justified
in Kashmir.
The Case in Kashmir
We can conclude that the people of the state have been subjected
to institutionalised injustice. The special status allotted to the
state by the Constitution, and by subsequent political contracts,
has been wilfully subverted, and the core moral rights of the
people of the Valley have been seriously violated by security
forces after the outbreak of militancy in J and K. Yet can we also
subscribe to the view that this injustice, although serious, is
irrevocable? Injustice cannot be seen as irrevocable if people have
the right to access the judiciary, and if civil society organisations
possess the capacity to press for the repudiation of injustice.
Since the latter years of the decade of the 1990s, processes of
electoral democracy have been re-established in the state, and
regional parties have come to power. The political space has also
been opened up with a new political party emerging onto the
scene in 2002. Both the regional parties are committed to negoti-
ate for the reinstatement of the special status of J and K. Some
civil liberty groups in India have powerfully highlighted the
deliberate violations of civil rights of the people in the Valley by
the security forces and draconian laws, and demanded the resto-
ration of justice. And in the Valley a number of civil society
organisations have made human rights issues, encounter deaths,
rapes, and disappearances, their major concern.
Admittedly, the re-establishment of full democracy (lifting of
all coercive laws) and the reinstatement of the special status of
the state is a process that is precarious, and, therefore, in constant
danger of being subverted. Nevertheless the onus for sorting out
the Kashmir issue is, I suggest, on India’s chaotic but occasionally
inspired, energetic, and resourceful civil society. But too many
civil society agents have been influenced by official dismissal of
the struggle in the Valley as terrorism, and as the handiwork of
neighbouring countries, and far too many agents have been pre-
judiced against the militants by reasons of a corrosive national-
ism, and a biased media. In the process they have forgotten what
the mandate of a democratic civil society is. If there is one thing
that democratic civil societies worth their name cannot afford, it
is indifference to institutionalised injustice. If our democratic
civil society is prepared to mount an onslaught on the Indian
state for sins of omission and commission, and if the state is pre-
pared to acknowledge the extent of historical injustice visited on
the heads of the Kashmiri people, and make amends, the right of
secession in Kashmir is a weak one.
A right can be typed as a weak right when substantial moral
considerations mediate the realisation of the right. The process of
justifying a right implies that this right has to be balanced against
relevant moral considerations, which have a bearing upon the
right. Some of the moral considerations that have an immediate
bearing upon the right of secession in Kashmir are (a) injustice
might not be irrevocable even if the Indian state is imperfectly
just and inadequately democratic, (b) the infliction of major harm,
(c) the illiberal nature of the group that demands a state of its
own, and (d) the presence of third party agents who coming in
november 13, 2010 vol xlv no 46 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

from neighbouring countries have hijacked protests against the
way-laying of democracy, and bent them towards jehad. Above
all, and this is the fifth moral consideration, what about the rights
of people in the state of J and K who do not want to secede?
According to the 2001 Census in J and K, Muslims form 66.97%
of the population, Hindus 29.63%, the Sikhs 2.04%, and Bud-
dhists 1.2%.6 The Muslims constitute a majority in the state but
the community is divided by language and sect. Sunni Muslims
live mainly in the Kashmir Valley and in two districts in Jammu,
in Poonch Muslims speak Punjabi, and Kargil is peopled by Shias.
Jammu and the foothill are dominated by Hindus, and Leh by
Buddhists. For all these groups as well as for numerous smaller
groups such as Gujjars, Bakkarwals, Kashmiri Pandits, Dogras,
and Buddhists the state of J and K is homeland.7
The demand for secession has erupted mainly in the Valley of
Kashmir, and in the two Muslim-dominated districts of Jammu.
But though the Muslim community forms an overwhelming
majority of the population in Kashmir, for the Kashmiri Hindus
and Sikhs the Valley is home as well. In the wake of the 1990
popular uprising in the Valley, 95% of the Valley’s 1,50,000 to
1,60,000 Hindus were forced to leave their homes and their work
places, because they were threatened by poster campaigns, the
use of Islamic slogans during processions, and newspaper decla-
rations that J and K was poised to be an Islamic state.8 Notably,
Sikhs and moderate Muslims have also been forced to leave the
Valley that has been their home for centuries (Evans 2002: 19-37).
More significantly, the demand for secession by militant
Muslim groups in the Valley has propelled the politicisation of
other identity groups. The Buddhist community in Ladakh had
begun to assert a distinct identity as far back as the 1930s, when
the Muslim-dominated National Conference had mobilised to
challenge the discriminatory policies of the Hindu ruler.9 The
Buddhists held that they preferred to be governed directly by the
Government of India, or be amalgamated with Hindu majority
regions in Jammu, or join East Punjab, or be reunited with Tibet.
With the outbreak of militancy in the state in 1990, the Buddhist
population in Ladakh began to agitate for union territory status
under the direct control of the Government of India.10
In Jammu, the predominantly Hindu community had, from the
time of accession, been uncomfortable with regional autonomy
granted to J and K, given that the state is dominated by the Mus-
lim community. Developments after 1947 fuelled suspicions that
the Government of India preferred to deal with the Muslim
leadership in the Valley, and that it tended to neglect the interests
of other religious groups. These fears led to the politicisation of
the Hindu community under the leadership of the Hindu right,
which demands integration of J and K into the Indian Union, and
abolition of the special status of J and K.
Whether the politicisation of identities in Jammu and in
Ladakh on religious lines is politically desirable is a relevant
question, but not the issue at hand for this argument. Without
defending right wing Hindu fundamentalism, we can acknowl-
edge that the crucial issue is that of competing identities. Over
the years the regional divide has been exacerbated, generating
both plural and incommensurate voices on the future of the state,
and the intensification of intra-state tensions.11 Ironically, whereas
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
the Valley-based leadership calls for either independence or
restoration of regional autonomy, it seems to oppose the grant of
subregional autonomy to other groups.
Matters have become even more complicated because the
former residents of the Kashmir Valley, the exiled Hindu
Kashmiri community have begun to agitate for a separate home-
land comprising the region to the east of the Valley and the north
of river Jhelum (The Hindu 2007: 5). The homeland should have,
it is claimed, the status of a Union Territory governed by the
central government. The other group that has demanded auto-
nomy from Kashmir is the Gujjar community that constitutes 9%
of the state’s population. The Gujjars who form the third-largest
community in J and K are Muslim nomads. They were granted in
1991 the status of a scheduled tribe (ST). This has led to the politi-
cisation of the Pahari people who speak a distinct language, and
who consider themselves as possessing a separate identity. The
group has begun to demand separation from the Valley, as well as
a distinct political status. The residents of the Chenab Valley have
also put forth a claim for an Autonomous Hill Council (Behera
2006: 128-30). In sum, not only is there no consensus on the issue
of secession in the state, different groups of residents conceptual-
ise the future of the state in incommensurable ways.
Let us now reflect on the two factors that have significant bear-
ing on the right of secession. One, even if the separatist leader-
ship commits to minority rights in the new state, groups other
than the Muslim majority in the Valley simply do not subscribe to
the project of secession. Two, all these groups have begun to lay
claim to (a) a distinct administrative status within the region,
and (b) closer integration of the state into the country. In other
words, not only do these groups desire a dilution of the special
status granted to the state, they also desire a looser form of sub-
federalism within the state, with some units being administered
directly by the central government. We can, of course, hold that
only the residents of the Valley of Kashmir should be allowed the
right to secede. Since their civil liberties have been violated, we
can argue, they have been subjected to double injustice. But this
course of action carries adverse implications for the moderate
Muslims who do not share aspirations for a separate state, as well
as for Sikhs and Hindus for whom the valley is home. Most of
them have been practically forced out of the Valley. However
given their historic links with Kashmir, should they not be con-
sulted on the future of the Valley? Do the rights of the secession-
ists outweigh the rights of minorities completely?
The Problem of Conflicting Rights
What we see here is the making of a serious moral dilemma born
out of the conflict between P’s right of secession, and the rights of
other groups in the territory not to secede. Conflict between
rights is, of course, not peculiar to the right of secession alone; it
is endemic to rights. Since rights are asserted and claimed in a
context that is indisputably social, and, therefore, one that is
marked by both a scarcity of resources and imperfect altruism,
the rights of P can affect the rights of Q. How do we then trade
off the P’s right with Q’s right?
Two courses of action can be adopted to resolve the issue. It
can be argued that P’s R to G is more significant than Q’s R to Gi.
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But this would mean that P’s rights override Q’s rights. A trade-
off between rights is simply not a desirable option because it
infringes the basic assumption of rights; that is inviolability. Much
more desirable is a second option; that the scale of the good P
and Q lay claim to is reduced for both. The advantage is that the
rights of both agents are realised, albeit to a lesser degree than
initially envisaged. What is significant is that the trade-off in this
case is not between two sets of rights. The trade-off is between
the full realisation of the good the right is a right to (for one
agent), and a realisation of a reduced scale of the good (for both).
If we follow the second course of action, the one alternative to
the right of secession, which if realised will harm other agents, is
to fulfil the substance of the right within the existing state, in the
form of the institutionalisation of self-determination through
regional autonomy, representation, and protection of minority
rights. But then what exactly does self-determination mean?
A Brief Biography of Self-Determination
It is well known that after the end of the first world war, US
President Woodrow Wilson placed the principle of national self-
determination squarely onto the global agenda. The principle
however proved to be contentious. For by the beginning of the
20th century, the concept of the nation had come to be pluralised,
between what came to be known later as civic and as organic
nations. Wilson, however, simply did not seem to be aware of
either these complexities in the concept of the nation, or of the
knots in the filament that tied nations to self-determination, or
properly states of their own. For him, the concept of a self-
determining people, as Lynch has noted, was rooted in the Anglo-
American tradition of civic nationalism, or the right of communi-
ties to democratic self-government. The idea that the principle
could also emanate from traditions of collective or ethnic nation-
alism (Lynch 1999) in which nations are held to be collective
agents that possess a distinct identity from their individual mem-
bers, was quite alien to Wilson. It is not surprising that the
moment he began to confront difficulties in implementing the
idea of national self-determination in eastern and central Europe,
Wilson began to voice reservations about the concept, “in point of
logic, of pure logic, this principle which was good in itself would
lead to the complete independence of various small nationalities
now forming part of various Empires. Pushed to its extreme, the
principle would mean the disruption of existing governments, to
an undefinable extent” (Lynch 1999: 19). Ultimately, the ambigu-
ous and the troubled principle of national self-determination was
not incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations even
though it was employed to split up numerous defeated territories
in eastern Europe, Balkans and the west Asia to create new
states. Notably who got their state and who did not was contin-
gent on the political calculations of the great powers and not on
the will of the nation concerned.12
The irony is that even though the League rejected the concept
of national self-determination, the principle came to strongly

III Balvant Parekh Distinguished Lecture

and
National Symposium on “The Human Sciences in the Time of Disciplinary Decadence”
10-12 February 2011
Venue: Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences,
302, Siddhi Vinayak Complex, Behind the Railway Station,
Faramji Road, Alkapuri, Baroda Tel: (0265-2320870)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, New York City will deliver the
Third Balvant Parekh Distinguished Lecture on “Teaching Literature Today” on February 11, 2011 at the Centre. To
coincide with her visit, a symposium on the above topic will be organized. Historically speaking, the human sciences
emerged during the time of the First World War from a crisis in European thought; now is perhaps the time of the second
renaissance of that awakening. At a time when disciplines like the humanities and social sciences are under a serious
threat from the market forces that have considered these knowledge-generating fields of study as useless luxuries for
social well-being, one needs to recall the old Greek term “theoria” for reclaiming what could be called an “originary
experience” of knowledge combining a penchant for theory and its application in praxis. The human sciences have to be
understood as an attempt to get back to that experience. As a hybrid episteme drawing its sustenance from the positive
attributes of both the sciences (natural and social) and the humanities, the human sciences seem to have provided a
way out of the “disciplinary decadence,” to use a phrase from Lewis Gordon, our institutions have fallen into. They are
also an attempt to simultaneously de-transcendentalize Theory as abstraction and to distil empirical praxis to conceptual
reflection. Professor Spivak’s recent works and concerns are directed toward that effort. Some of the papers presented
at the symposium will be published as a book. Those who want to present papers in this Symposium should mail their
abstracts to prafullakar@gmail.com by December 15, 2010. Full papers should reach us by January 15, 2011. Registration
fee for participation is: Rs.1000/ (Rupees one thousand only), which may be sent by money order or bank draft favoring
Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences by January 15. This amount will take care of
lunch and tea during the Symposium. Those who want to attend the event without making any presentations are also
welcome to register by paying the same amount.

64 november 13, 2010 vol xlv no 46 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

shape the popular aspirations of colonised people. It was fore-
grounded as the main rallying cry of nationalist movements
against colonialism. Leaderships of freedom struggles across the
colonised world set out to construct nations out of a plurality of
different and diverse social groups. By the time the moment of
decolonisation came around, however, national self-determination
had been practically banished from the domain of international
law. Though the right of colonised people to independence via the
principle of self-determination was recognised as the cornerstone
of the new order, now the entity that possessed this right was “the
people” who inhabited a territory under colonial rule. The substi-
tution of the concept of the “people” for that of the “nation” as the
bearer of the right of self-determination carried at least three
powerful messages. One, territorial borders were sacrosanct via
the principle of Uti Possideti Juris; two, the UN clearly privileged
the liberal democratic notion of people as the locus of popular sov-
ereignty over ethnic nations and ethno-nationalism, and, three,
national groups within the territory did not have the right to their
own state. The only successful case of secession in the period after
1945 has been that of Bangladesh. But Bangladesh was not placed
in the category of national self-determination outside the colonial
context. Recognised by the UN some three years after the country
had seceded from Pakistan, the independence of Bangladesh was
seen as a fait accompli. After Bangladesh, the UN has recognised
four countries that acquired independent status as a result of uni-
lateral secession and armed conflicts: Slovenia in 1991, Croatia in
1991, Eritrea in 1993, and East Timor in 2002. But the emergence
of the first three states was attributed to causes other than seces-
sion (dissolution of a state or of a federation). East Timor was
placed in the category of non-self-governing territory which had
the right to self-determination.
The irony is, however, that secessionist movements continue to
invoke the principle of national self-determination to justify
secession, and post-colonial states continue to legitimise them-
selves by creating nations out of a welter of heterogeneous popu-
lations. In country after country language policies, or religion, or
ethnicity, have been employed as a tool to forge nations out of
plural populations. This has proved as we have seen in the case of
Pakistan and Sri Lanka, politically suicidal. The problem is that
no agent apart from the state concerned has the authority to
intervene in gross forms of injustice regularly meted out to
minorities by states. The UN is proscribed from interfering in the
domestic affairs of its member states via Article 2 (7) of the
Charter. Significantly, the UN has begun to take cognisance of
the, often, endangered rights of minorities within nation states.
For instance, in General Assembly Resolution 2625 (1970), the
ritual invocation of the principle of territorial integrity carried an
important addendum: “Nothing in the foregoing paragraphs shall
be construed as authorising or encouraging any action which
would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integ-
rity or political unity of sovereign and independent States con-
ducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights
and self-determination of peoples…and thus possessed of a govern-
ment representing the whole people belonging to the territory with-
out distinction as to race, creed, or colour” (italics added).13 The UN
General Assembly’s “Declaration in Commemoration of the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 13, 2010 vol xlv no 46
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations” of 9 November 1995
echoed this warning.14 The implication of these declarations is
plain; the international community will not tolerate any violation
of the principle of territorial integrity, as long as states conduct
themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and
self-determination, and as long as the government represents the
entire people.
If we follow the logic of this interpretation of self-determination,
the realisation of the principle does not have to involve the violent
renegotiation of territorial boundaries, except when the existing
state denies self-determination to the people. Two implications
follow this renegotiation. One, there is no essential link between
self-determination and the right of secession; only a contingent
one. That is, if states do not institutionalise appropriate condi-
tions for the realisation of self-determination, then groups might
have a right to secede. Two, if the argument that self-determination
is best realised through institutions such as regional autonomy is
acceptable, then the restoration of constitutionally sanctioned
autonomy to J and K should not be seen as sui generis, or as
exceptional to the state but as part of a larger plan of devolving
power to territorially settled minority groups. Arguably self-deter-
mination is not only a means of staving off secession, it is good in
its own right because it is part of a larger political pact that seeks
to realise democracy through decentralisation of power and dev-
olution of resources.
Therefore, the restoration of the special status granted to
J and K by the Constitution of India and by a number of political
agreements will not be only about redressing historical wrongs,
the institutionalisation of self-determination might also serve to
deliver justice in the context of the clashes of rights mentioned
above. Notably, if the scale of the good P has asserted a right to is
pruned from secession to self-determination, Q will also have to
scale down the good it asserts a right to, say from non-secession
to self-determination within the country. The advantage of such a
mode of reconciling conflicting claims is that (a) the rights of both
agents are realised, albeit to a lesser degree than initially envisaged,
(b) it is recognised that P has been subjected to historical injustice,
and (c) this injustice has to be reversed. This measure is but the
start of a fuller process of restoring and realising justice in the
beleaguered state of J and K. Fortune might be persuaded to pedal
back to the region just as furiously as it pedalled away.
Conclusions
Finally, let me ask one question of our right-thinking friends who
defend secession. Is the alternative to the depredations of the
nation state the setting up of another nation state, which will
inevitably be embedded in the same problems as our original
model? States across the world suffer from pretty much the same
malaise; an inherent tendency to accumulate and abuse power.
State power can be controlled only through constitutions, rule of
law, institutionalised rights, an independent judiciary, and above
all a vibrant civil society, and systems of checks and balances.
Secession is hardly a solution to the problem that besets groups; it
might even be a part of the problem. Moreover, if often coercive
efforts to build nations out of plural populations are the source of
secessionist movements, the setting up of a state of one’s own,
65
SPECIAL ARTICLE

which cannot be but a clone of parent nation state, is hardly a
solution. The problem of the nation state is not resolved in this
way; it is merely deferred. If the nation state has proved one of
history’s most grievous mistakes, then many nation states can
only reproduce this mistake. Instead of focusing on secession per
se, we perhaps need to think out alternatives to the nation state;
how the aspirations of minorities can be best realised within the
state, and how sovereignty can be diluted through political
arrangements within the state.
Buchanan has put this point across well. He argues that seces-
sion challenges the ability of the political philosopher to reimagine
the sort of political institutions and practices that govern indi-
vidual and collective lives. The impulse to secede from an exist-
ing state, he alleges, betrays a fundamental lack of political
imagination, because paradoxically, secession is one of the most
conservative of political acts. The secessionist tends to assume
that his problems are due to the state in which he finds himself,
and that the solution is to get his own state. The anti-secessionist
tends to be equally unimaginative, seeing in every demand for
autonomy a threat to the existence of the state. The imaginations
of both are cramped by the narrow horizons of the statist para-
digm. What the usual rhetoric of both parties overlooks is that
sovereignty can be unbundled in many ways, and that the only
choice is not to stay in the state, or get away. Once we take seri-
ously the indefinitely large range of possible regimes of political
differentiation within state borders, the rich menu of intra-state
autonomy arrangements, we liberate ourselves from the con-
fining assumptions of self-determination. There are various
inter- and intra-state autonomy regimes that can cope with, or
serve to avoid secessionist conflicts. Therefore, international
legal institutions should support, and even mandate intra-state
autonomy regimes (Buchanan 2004: 7). Buchanan’s argument
gives us cause to ponder and reflect. Perhaps the seductions of a
state of one’s own need to be unpackaged. Perhaps the virtues of
democracy and justice and the need to redress injustice need to
be giftwrapped and presented more attractively.
In conclusion, the right of secession has to be taken seriously
both by its practitioners and its defenders, used sparingly, and
justified rigorously. For that I suggest that the right can best be
likened to the right of euthanasia. The right to life is inalienable,
and no one has the right to take her own life. Yet when the health
of persons is so impaired that they live a life below the threshold
of what we consider distinctively human, when their future
seems to be ridden with nothing but pain and suffering, some
states allow the terminally ill to choose to put an end to their mis-
ery. But just because a case can be made out for the right to put an
end to one’s life, it does not mean that we defend euthanasia per
se, except in the very last instance. What is needed is the invest-
ment of more energy into finding a solution to the problem, more
funds for medical research, and more energy into preventive
medicine. Euthanasia might be a last option when everything
fails, but easy resort to premeditated and intentional death is best
avoided. Similarly, even though secession might become a neces-
sary course of action if injustice is irrevocable, it is best that the
invocation of this right is forestalled through the realisation of
self-determination in another avatar.

Notes
1 Case summary, http://csc.lexum.umontreal.ca/
en/1998rcs-2-217/1998res-2-217html accessed on
9 December 2008.
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world 18 May 2009,
accessed on 16 June 2009.
3 Cited in Praveen Swami (2008), “Kashmir: The War
for Hearts and Minds”, The Hindu, 4 June, lead article.
4 The Aaland Islands, a group of about 6,000 islands
that lie between Sweden and Finland, had be-
longed to Sweden until 1,809, when these islands
were ceded to Russia. Finland was incorporated
into Russia in the same year. With the outbreak of
the Russian revolution, Finland declared itself in-
dependent of Russia. The representatives of the
Aaland Islands at the Versailles Peace Conference
expressed a desire to be reunited with Sweden. The
Government of Finland held that the Aaland Is-
lands had been incorporated into the state of Fin-
land in Russia. The League appointed a Committee
of Jurists to examine whether the organisation was
competent to consider this petition. A Commission
of Rapporteurs was also appointed to assess the
merits of Sweden’s petition asking for a referen-
dum. The Aaland Islands, the members of the Com-
missions concluded, were undoubtedly part of Fin-
land during the period of Russian rule.
5 Report submitted to the Council of the League of
Nations by the Commission of Rapporteurs,
League of Nations, Document B7.21/68/106, 16
April 1921 cited in Antonello Tancredi (2006).
6 Census of India 2001, data on religion, www.cen-
susindia.net/religion accessed on 19 April 2007.
7 On the Pakistani side of J and K, Balti, Shina,
Khowar, Burushashki, Wakhi, and Pahari speak-
ing people are part of the state, and in the North-
ern Areas, Ismaili, Sunni, Shia, and Nur Bakshi
sects live together. For a detailed discussion of the
ethnic composition of the state see Behera (2006).
8 Most of the groups that carried out ethnic cleansing
had come into the Valley from the outside, for exam-
ple the Jaish-e-Muhammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
9 The leadership of the National Conference was to
sometimes resort to the regional idiom, and
sometimes the religious idiom Zutshi (2003), has
charted out the flip flop between the religious and
the regional idiom well.
10 Bazaz (1954: 553) in sum, the Ladhaki leaders
sought federal status for the region, so that the
relationship of Ladhakh to J and K would be on
the same lines as that of J and K to India.
11 For instance, in May 1995, the government in New
Delhi passed the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Council
Act. The Act created autonomous councils in Leh and
Kargil, along with an inter-district council to promote
coordination and communal harmony. This partly
met the aspirations of the Buddhists for a measure of
autonomy from the valley. But Kashmiri Muslims con-
demned the initiative because they saw it as a move
towards the territorial disintegration of the state.
12 For instance, under the 1919 Treaty of St Germain,
Italy annexed the German speaking South Tyrol,
an act that was a clear breach of the principle of
self-determination.
13 Annex to GA Resolution 2625 (XXV), UN GAOR 25
Session, UN Doc A/8082. http://daccessdds.un.
org/doc accessed on 23 November 2008, 124,
italics added.
14 GA Resolution 50/6, 9 November 1995, http://
daccessdds.un.org/doc accessed on 23 November
2008, p 3.
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66 november 13, 2010 vol xlv no 46 EPW Economic & Political Weekly