Social Cohesion Challenges, Needs and Political ... - Club of Madrid

The Shared Societies ProjectBackground Papers:Responding to Social Cohesion ChallengesSOCIAL COHESION CHALLENGES,NEEDS & POLITICAL HURDLESLORD BHIKHU PAREKH ∗Sean Carroll, Club of Madrid Program Director: We are very happy and proud that Lord Parekh isone of the members of our Expert Advisory Panel. He was the Chairman of the RunnymedeCommission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (1998-2000), whose report, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, was published in 2000. He is a member of the National Commission on EqualOpportunity and has written extensively on this. He is engaged in global philosophical discussionsand also engaged really on how governments, leaders and societies deal with these issues. And soI would like to call on him to give us a sense of what we need to be looking at, with a particularfocus on what are the political hurdles. We are all singing in the same choir. We believe that thisissue is important and that leaders have to work on it. But along the way there are political hurdlesthat leaders working with civil society and with migrants and citizens have to work on. So LordParekh, thank you.Bhikhu Parekh: Thank you, Sean, for that extremely generous introduction. In order that I don’tdisappoint you, I must begin by saying that I am a simple-minded philosopher. Therefore, I may notbe able to come up with some concrete policy ideas on what we should be doing in order to createa shared, harmonious society.I want to begin by stepping back a little from the day to day controversies and ask myself a simplequestion: if one contrasts modernity, beginning from about the 18th century onwards, with theMiddle Ages or with non-modern societies, one is struck by one thing. The earlier societies seemedto have had no problem really in coming to terms with their differences. Differences were acceptedas a part of life. My neighbour doesn’t follow the same sort of customs as I do, people beyond myregion do not follow the same religion or follow the same customs, and people lived with it. I thinkwhat changes around the 18th century is the ideology of the nation-state. It comes to be believedthat unless we have a cohesive nation-state, we cannot have stability and social cohesion. I want toquestion that and argue that most of our problems in the contemporary world arise from the fact thatwe are still haunted, obsessed, with the ideology of the nation-state and we have not yet been ableto evolve an alternative kind of political framework, an alternative political vocabulary in terms ofwhich to conceptualize and debate our differences.The ideology of the nation-state has four basic features, all of them problematic, and all of thembeing increasingly revised and compromised. First, we have become accustomed to thinking interms of a homogenous nation-state. It is believed that society or the state must be culturallyhomogenous, a society based upon a single way of understanding human life, a single way oforganising human activities.Secondly, it implies equality of citizenship, and equality is understood in terms of sameness - youmust have the same rights that I have. The moment you start saying that perhaps there can be∗ Bhikhu Parekh is a Member of the Shared Societies Project’s Expert Advisory Panel; Member of the Houseof Lords and the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics4

The Shared Societies ProjectBackground Papers:Responding to Social Cohesion Challengesdifferences in rights, that there might be positive discrimination or some people might have morerights or different kinds of rights, you are immediately told that you are moving away from the liberalnotion of what a nation-state should be, and that is unacceptable. So there exists the idea thatequality of citizenship means not only equality of rights but the sameness of rights.Thirdly, individuals are the basis of society and we don’t recognize groups or communities.Fourthly, in order for it to be united there must be a direct unmediated relation between theindividual and the state. It should not be possible to say, for example, I belong to Quebec andthrough Quebec I belong to Canada, because that would be seen as mediated citizenship and Iwould be immediately asked a question, what are you really, Quebecois or Canadian? Or in India,for example, if somebody were to say, we are Muslims and we are Indians, the first question thatyou would be asked is but what are you really and which is more important to you? Now thisquestion is constantly asked and we have to ask ourselves why is this question being asked? Theclassical Athenians or the Romans were not asked this question; during the Middle Ages thisquestion was not asked, it is a peculiarly modern question. Which are you really? The assumptionbeing that you can have only one identity and if you have several you must privilege your politicalidentity, your identity as a citizen over all others.So these are the assumptions in terms of which the modern state is constituted, with the result thatit has been an extremely violent process. I cannot think of any state in human history since the 17thcentury, which hasn’t been created by massive amounts of violence. Indigenous people, forexample, how do you bring them into the state? If your assumption is of a culturally homogenousstate, then all cultural communities have to be dismantled. Immigrants: what do you do withimmigrants? They are not allowed to carry their own identity. Immigration is seen as a rebirth; yougive up your identity and embrace another. Regarding religious minorities, we have seen religiouswars in European history, in India, in Sri Lanka and lots of other places. The most importantproblem for us, if we are going to cope with divided societies, what I call multi-cultural or multiethnicsocieties, the most important thing for us is to be able to get away from this mindset of aculturally homogenous nation-state. Unless we do that, we simply wouldn’t be able to entertainconcrete proposals, because every time a concrete proposal is moved, people will say “Yes, butthis is only until the minorities or these regions are integrated: eventually our goal is to be this kindof nation-state.” And therefore, we always think of ourselves as in some sense defective, deficient,if we are not a nation-state from this European model.So my first concern is to suggest that unless we revise, radically revise, the way in which we look atthe problem of divided societies or what is the history of a divided society, we simply will not be ableto get anywhere. We will be multiplying problems, if not now then in the future. So that is pointnumber one and it is because we think in terms of this kind of ideology of a nation-state. Thelanguage that we use grows out of it. Assimilation, for example, basically means become similar.The assumption is that there is already an established cultural structure in which you are to beassimilated. Or we say assimilation is a French idea; a more Anglo-Saxon idea, more liberal, isintegration. But what does integration mean? This is something that the Parekh Report wasconcerned with, what do you mean by integration? When would you say that minorities orimmigrants are fully integrated? Supposing they take part in the economic life of the country,suppose they work as citizens, but continue either to marry among themselves or want to retaintheir own culture - are they integrated or are they not integrated? In Britain at least, we began withthis loose idea of integration and increasingly point to the minorities saying “look, we know you areeconomically integrated, we know you are politically integrated, but you are still marrying amongstyourselves, you are still retaining your own culture and therefore you are holding yourselves back,so you are not integrated. So even the idea of integration has this underlying totalitarian andassimilationist impulse. And the question that we have to ask - I have written about it but I do notwant to bore you at this time with tricky conceptual questions - is that the whole language of5

The Shared Societies ProjectBackground Papers:Responding to Social Cohesion Challengesintegration and assimilation eventually will have to go and we will have to think of a new way ofthinking where people can belong together without necessarily sharing a common substantiveculture. This can happen between husband and wife, this can happen in a family, this can happenin a club, this can happen in many organizations. We are mutually committed, we care for eachother, we belong together, and we create a common organization without this whole repertoire ofbeing integrated or assimilated. So this is the first important point I wanted to raise, since we arelargely concerned with concrete proposals, I wanted to make sure that we define the theoretical ormuch more important philosophical framework in which we think.So the conclusion at the end of this argument is that we need a plural political framework, analternative to an ideologically cohesive nation-state. What do we call it? It is difficult to say, becausehistory has just begun to ask these kinds of questions. Now, what should be the basic concerns, theinspiring principles of this alternative plurally oriented political framework, and not an ideologicallycohesive state? I want to suggest that there are five or six things we need to bear in mind. Firstthing is no organization, no political community of any kind can come into existence unless it hasbroadly agreed upon certain principles as to how it should be governed. In other words, who shouldhave the power, who has the power to take decisions in the name of the community as a whole? Sothe first concern of this plural political framework would have to be a basic agreement on theprinciples of cooperation. How should this community be constituted and equipped to takecollectively binding decisions? On that there can be no compromise. And the ultimate loyalty in thisplural society that I am talking about is to the set of constitutional institutions and procedures interms of which it resolves differences and takes collectively binding decisions. No other loyalty isrequired or should be asked for. It will develop in the course of time, as it generally does, but this isthe central organizing point.Second, this community has to recognize that individuals are also members of particularcommunities. And therefore, the state will consist not only of individuals, but also of communitiesand groups. And therefore, the distribution of rights will have to take into account not onlyindividuals as bearers of rights but also group rights, community rights.The third thing that this plural community has to recognize - and I am just going to lay downprinciples so we can later apply them to concrete situations and ask what are the new ideas that weshould be taking on board - is that because people belong to different groups and have differentidentities, political life can become extremely dangerous and unstable if it tries to monopolize allother identities and does not allow people to express their respective identities. For example, if thestate were to say, “look, your religion, your other things are all your private matters, they should notbe allowed to appear in the public realm; in the public realm only one thing counts and that is thestate.” Then what you are doing is requiring them to abandon their religious, ethnic, cultural andother identities, which is an extremely heavy price on which to base the state. Such a state, whichonly privileges one identity and marginalizes or ignores others, is a politically and emotionally costlyenterprise. It will not last long. I can give you examples of various countries, including India. Atindependence it had to face the trauma of partition and reassure its 14% of Muslim population.Now, what kind of a state are you going to create such that Muslims can feel at home? And the firstthing they had to recognize was that Muslims have their own laws, the civil code, family laws andunless the legal system recognizes their civil laws you were asking every Muslim to face the choiceof loyalty. And therefore, the Indian Constitution very wisely said that Muslims are governed by theircivil laws. Criminal laws are uniform to all Indians, but the civil code varies with the communities.The same sort of thing has come to haunt us here in Europe, and I do not know if you are familiarwith the statement the Archbishop of Canterbury made a few weeks ago, saying that if a Muslimcommunity here is to feel at home and not to feel deeply alienated, we will have to find some way ofrecognizing their civil laws within the British system of jurisdiction. If that civil law is oppressive ofMuslim women or children then, of course, we should lay down certain general principles, which6

The Shared Societies ProjectBackground Papers:Responding to Social Cohesion Challengescivil law will not violate. But subject to satisfying those general principles, we shall allow the Muslimcommunity in, let’s say, matters of adoption of children or distribution of property or divorce to beguided by a Muslim court - in other words the idea of multiple jurisdiction.The fourth important thing one has to recognize is that a plural community of this kind must makesure that no community, no individual, is subjected to discrimination. Because ultimately a statederives legitimacy from the fact that all citizens believe that it is neutral, that it will be impartial. Ifcitizens begin to feel that the institutions of state cannot be trusted, then that state looses itslegitimacy. And if it looses its legitimacy it has no power to maintain law and order. This is, forexample, what tended to happen in almost all European countries that I have known and it also hashappened in many of the developing countries, where you could not trust the police to be neutral -the police would always side in cases of quarrel with the majority community from which they aregenerally drawn. Now, if you cannot trust the institutions of the state, the civil service and the policeto be neutral and impartial, then the citizens are going to want to take the law into their own hands.And therefore, in any divided society it is absolutely vital that there should be a firmly implementedanti-discriminatory policy. And in some cases you have situations where minorities are not fullyrepresented in the institutions of the state, for all kinds of reasons, and therefore some form ofpositive discrimination or affirmative action becomes necessary. I cannot think of manycommunities which have not sooner or later been forced to introduce some form of positivediscrimination in order to ensure social harmony and bring in those communities that have been leftbehind. This is a common policy in India, a common policy in many other countries and even herein Britain. The new Equality Bill says that in certain cases, in relation to certain communities youmight have positive discrimination; because that is the only way you can rectify historical inheritedinequalities and create an equal playing field for these communities.And I just want to make two quick points and then I should stop. The other important thing to bear inmind is, again an increasing problem here and in many divided societies, that you generally havecommunities leading parallel lives, lives which do not cross or interact. They might be residentiallyconcentrated so that a whole community goes to its own schools, own restaurants, own shoppingareas and has no other meaningful contact with other members of that society. This is what I meanor what we mean in this country by ‘parallel lives’ - that people live next to each but that there issome kind of invisible border or boundary which is never crossed; and your children go to the sameschool without ever meeting somebody from another community. If that happens, at one level thismay have to be lived with because you cannot force people to assimilate. But at another level youare storing up a problem because if you don’t have friendship across ethnic boundaries, if you don’thave meaningful contact then you are vulnerable to all kinds of stereotypes about the othercommunities. And those stereotypes in times of crisis can be extremely dangerous, whether it isRwanda or other places, or Bosnia, where, even when interaction had taken place over large areaspeople lived separate lives and therefore were vulnerable to political manipulations. And as far aspossible any social and economic policy has to be so designed that communities interact withoutbeing forced, because sometimes when communities withdraw, they withdraw because they areafraid of being rejected, they are feeling insecure for all other kinds if reasons. But we need to makesure that our policies, housing policy, our economic policy, employment policy, urban-regenerationpolicy have to be such that no community is left behind and that different communities haveoccasions, frequent occasions, to interact with each other and build a common understanding ofeach other.And I think finally, in all communities history often weighs very heavily, whether it was South Africa,whether it was India or whether it was here in Britain. We do not begin our present and plan ourfuture in a vacuum. We begin with people having inherited certain historical memories. So thathowever good your policies are, there is always a danger that the past weighs on you. Youremember what other communities have done to you at certain points in history. Sometimes in the7

The Shared Societies ProjectBackground Papers:Responding to Social Cohesion ChallengesBalkans the memory goes back three, four or five hundred years. Now the question is, and I havenot yet found an answer, although a lot of interesting work has been done, how do you break, howdo you release the burden of history? People are creatures of memory; they are not just creaturesof interest. And if your relations with others are mediated by memory, and if memory is constantlystanding in your way, how do you break its burden? It is striking that almost everywhere the mostfashionable language in the last 10-15 years is that of apology. Clinton apologized for the wayAmericans treated the blacks; the British Prime Minister is asked to apologize for the British Empire,Australians are apologizing for the way they treated the indigenous communities. And you askyourself why this trend has emerged? I think politicians realize that in order to bring communitiestogether they run up against the burden of history, how to exorcise people’s minds so that they areable to trust each other. Now apology is seen as one possible answer but I don’t think it takes usvery far. If for example the British Prime Minister or the French President apologized to the excolonies,what good does it do to anybody? I think we need to find deeper ways. I have looked atfour or five gestures of reconciliation, which really achieved what they wanted to achieve. Germanshave behaved well in terms of apologizing for what the Nazis have done, generously funding Israel,rewarding people who have been in concentration camps, their survivors and others. But all this,while meaningful, did not quite add up to an emotional trigger. When Willy Brandt visited Auschwitz,unprompted he fell on his knees and there was a tear coming from his eye; a spontaneous gesturewhich worked miracles and had a profound effect. Now this is one way to take the sting out of apainful past. There are many others such as helping those we have harmed in the past by financialcompensation and favourable terms of trade, but I am not here to talk about them. When we talkabout concrete projects I do not want you to understand concrete merely in a concrete sense of oneparticular policy. ‘Concrete’ must include also these emotional triggers, ways of emotional release,and how to make the past bearable. Thank you very much.8