Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 209
Ye t both new states have forced an escalation in separatist
movements by even further concentrating power,
while enforcing discipline in the peripheries through draconian
special legislation to empower brutal paramilitary
forces. Through this vicious cycle, what began as initiatives
for greater autonomy and representation within India's
federal structure-protests against the "increasing concentration
of power and wealth, [and] the extraction of
surplus" in areas whose populations accuse the central government
of plundering their mineral wealth, raw materials,
and cheap labor, or in short, replicating the colonial relationship
in the name of national progress-then hardened
into demands for separate sovereign entities.3
This pattern came to a head in the 19805 in the
northeastern regions ofManipur, Assam, and Nagaland,
and in the northwest with the Sikh demand for Khalistan
as an independent homeland. At its peak in the early to
mid-1980s, this conflict claimed between fifteen and
twenty thousand lives. In Pakistan, the country's eastern
wing rebelled and then split to form independent
Bangladesh in 1971, leaving a still-undetermined number
(between one and three million) dead. Today separatist
unrest is echoed in its far west, Baluchistan. To the
south the Tamil separatist movement and Sri Lankan civil
war raged from 1983 to 2009, killing over thirty-eight
thousand. And of course, there is the perpetual tragedy
of Kashmir. Despite UN calls for a plebiscite on independence-hanging
in perpetual limbo since 1948-both
India and Pakistan continue to lay violent claim to a territory
with separatist aspirations. At least fifty-six thousand