South Asia and Genocide: A Case for Prevention

Benita Sumita

Abstract

Working on a paper regarding South Asia and Genocide is treading on very shaky, mostly uncertain territory that has only limited scholarly exploration. Genocide as we know and understand it as a grave crime that threatens peace and security of a country or region and becomes a serious concern to the international community as a whole is not a phenomenon that has been experienced by the South Asian region – or so the debate would be. Then the question would be why talk about a region that is free of the evil and why not hail it as a model to pursue? Simply because it is not. The argument made in this paper is that South Asia is a boiling pot of violence, conflicts, targeted clashes, which center around incessant identity hostilities and aggression. Take any country in the South Asian region (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) the conflicting/clashing parties and contributing factors might change but the violence is still centered on group – cultural, religious, ethnic, nationalistic – identities. As a prominent Indian journalist, Siddharth Varadarajan, clearly states in his paper on the need for transitional justice in South Asia demographic cleansing (as he calls it) is rife in the region . This includes forced migrations, internal displacement and targeted violence and killings on massive scales either instigated by state or non-state actors. Within this context, the need to study the probability and vulnerability of the region to Genocide or genocidal incidents becomes clear; especially in the light of the theme of the conference – ‘Responding to Genocide before it’s too late: Genocide Studies and Prevention’.