Zia Haq picks his favourite read of 2024

The inside stories of the ‘BK-16’, the 16 individuals arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case under a stringent law that allows indefinitely long periods of detention

Modern nation states are very typical. They are hegemonic in nature, monolithic in tendency and generally not tolerant of dissident political aspirations that threaten it. This is the case everywhere, be it the battles of the Irish Republican Army or the Maoist movement in India.

The iron frame of the modern state (HarperCollins)

The modern nation state seeks to put an iron frame around itself as a defence mechanism to thwart any move to undermine it. It also crushes such dissidents. Liberal nations do accommodate all sorts of aspirations arising from different cultures, languages and traditions through enshrined rights. Yet, there arise competitive political spaces because, in reality, a nation state is not a “group of people with the same culture and language” as the Oxford Dictionary defines it. India is the best example of social diversities (that is why the Indian Constitution provides for a Sixth Schedule).

Zia Haq (Courtesy the subject)

So, it is a matter of concern when political dissidence takes potent forms because there’s no proven way to resolve such conflicts, much less engage with people who hold different political views.

In The Incarcerations, anthropologist Alpa Shah tells us the inside stories of the ‘BK-16’, the 16 individuals arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case under a law so stringent that it allows indefinitely long periods of detention. The government claims that they backed Maoist extremists to the hilt. They claim innocence. Each of these individuals fiercely fought for the basic rights of indigenous tribes often displaced by a resource-hungry path to economic growth. Be that as it may, Jesuit priest 84-year-old Stan Swamy, one of those arrested, died pleading for a sip cup to drink water since his jerky, unsteady hands couldn’t hold a tumbler. Shah’s book is the finest account of land conflicts, injustices and the extent to which the modern nation state can go to preserve itself.