Identity politics afflicts many nations

THE United Kingdom may have dodged the bullet but the referendum on Scotland's independence has changed the agenda of the debate. Scottish voters, by a margin of 400,000 or so, may have allowed themselves to be persuaded by the last-minute blandishments of a united team of Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrat leaders to remain a constituent part of the UK, at least for a generation. Now, the debate has shifted and British Prime Minister David Cameron is talking about how to devolve power to the English, Welsh and the Northern Irish as well. If Mr Cameron and the other parliamentarians keep their word, Scotland's rejection of independence will now trigger an unprecedented programme of devolution in every part of the country. A White Paper on new powers for Scotland (and presumably for the other ethnic regions) is to be ready by November and draft legislation to ensure maximum devolution is promised by January. Clearly, the United Kingdom will be a very different country when this process ends.

More importantly, identity politics remains a potent issue everywhere. Spain fears that the referendum has given ideas to their own separatists in Catalonia and the Basque region. Italians face separatists in the north and in Venice. In the United States, the Texas Nationalist Movement representatives were keen observers of the plebiscite and intend to begin a push for the state of Texas to secede. There is also a lively movement in Alaska to break away and to create an all-white nation. Quebec has twice failed in referendums on breaking off from Canada in recent history but separatist sentiment seems alive and well among French speakers.

In eastern Europe, Ukraine has been fighting a civil war on its breakaway provinces and, whatever the truth about Russian involvement, clearly there are large numbers of people there who refuse to accept the identity Kiev wishes to foist on them. Other nation states have come into being in recent decades. The regions that formerly constituted Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia have all decided that going their own way was better then endless bickering.

Closer home, China faces problems relating to Tibetan and Uighur identities, which it is trying to deal with, including by encouraging inter-ethnic marriages. Yet, despite everything that Beijing has done in those regions, the Dalai Lama and Buddhism remain powerful symbols of Tibetan identity. The World Uighur Congress and East Turkestan Movement - both based abroad - seek to separate Xinjiang from China. They have been instrumental in keeping alive the Uighur identity and their desire for separate nationhood. In the Philippines, President Benigno Aquino III is trying to shepherd through a law to pave the way for the establishment of a new Bangsamoro political entity in the south. Southern Thailand is in the grip of a Muslim-led insurgency. And the list goes on. To their credit, the British have settled this issue peacefully and democratically. Unfortunately, that is not the prospect for many of the other independence movements, some of which have become running sores on the body politic of afflicted countries.