Stating Lines of Propriety

Territorial conflicts are often marked by an aftermath which becomes better understood over time. Particularly, when countries are freed from foreign invasions, the solutions applied may seem civilized and sound at the time, even though not culturally relevant. Why? The way a society or country is organized may be multifaceted, the nuances of which aren't necessarily visible to someone from another tradition, despite spending a lot of time as an authority in the same space. Space. The reason I like the term 'space' over 'land' is because it is more inclusive and open to constructive change and criticism.

Today, if I had the opportunity to present one critique about how they solved the organization of people after 1947 in the Indian subcontinent, I would say how for whatsoever reason, some missed another way in which this space was organized. The organization of people by ethnicity (e.g., Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, etc.), forming the respective spaces, was and has been much stronger from the get-go in the development the sub-spaces in the South Asian region, sometimes more than religious divisions. The very existence of the states and Union Territories in India attests to this linguistic and cultural reality. In other words, even today we can relate with how a state-sharing Hindu or Muslim or Sikh or Christian may feel closer to each other than these individuals from separate states put together in the same room based on religious identity.

The states we have today are basically a representation of how ethnically similar people came together organically due to shared languages, dialects, customs, and sentiments, which have been recognized in their respective regions for centuries. However, one civilized line drawn by a foreigner, only based on two religions, ended up negating centuries of shared understanding in how we organized ourselves. If you don't believe in this blunder, try to reconstruct and recall, which areas were most brutally hit by distress and violence after partition, and you'll see (e.g., the division of East and West Punjab in which 'Punjabi' was the ethnicity impacted). The same effect took place elsewhere as well.

Conflict resolution methods are often found in traditional forms in their relevant cultures, in which they evolved and grew slowly based on the common, frequent long-term challenges these spaces experienced. However, the flawed approach has oftentimes considered Western methods as more civilized and better in bringing stability when this may not always be the case. Sometimes, culturally appropriate responses aren't recognized well when different lenses of organization and identity aren't considered. Therefore, traditional methods of solving in any cultural space shouldn't be mindlessly thrown away as an antiquated way. Some of these methods were optimal and sufficient for such regions for number of years, and what turned to be a big massacre was most likely constructed at the time for the most part due to how a binary organization was slapped on to the face of the Indian subcontinent. Every social psychologist knows, once you are identified only by one group identity and then conditions are made to protect your kind, hostility follows inevitably.

Hence, sometimes it's not more intensity and wrath that's required to enable good solutions. At times, collectively shared, inclusive psychological conditions of safety and unity can open people's eyes to the number of ways in which they are (and were) the same such as by socio-economic status, profession or trade, age, gender, ethnicity, language, and then of course religion. However, once you have an other side, it's too late psychologically, socially, and territorially. Then it's scary to imagine Mohenjo-Daro as a past-India.

Relevant paper on traditional methods of conflict resolution:

Kadir, J. (2019). The utility of traditional justice system of 'Panchayat' in resolving Pakistan-India interstate conflict. Journal of Living Together, 6, 133-143.