A movement for an independent republic of Catalonia has existed for decades in Spain, and has gained ground since the financial crisis of 2008. But last week, for the first time, it forcefully entered the consciousness of people around the world through images of Spanish police and Civil Guard personnel attempting to violently prevent Catalans from voting in a referendum on independence, a huge counter-protest in Barcelona on October 5 by those who support remaining in Spain, and the prospect of a Catalan declaration of independence in the days to come.

Catalonia is an autonomous region located in northeastern Spain. The demand for separate Catalan state is not primarily rooted in historical justice: no fully independent state of Catalonia has ever existed. Nor is it specifically about language. The public use of the Catalan language was banned for four decades under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, but since the 1980s Catalan has not merely been revived, it has become the dominant official and public language of Catalonia. It is used by the local government at every level and is the primary medium of instruction in schools.

All Catalans speak Spanish as well, but despite an official policy of language parity, Castilian Spanish occupies a distinctly secondary position in Catalonia. Many secessionist movements around the world, from the former East Pakistan to Sri Lanka, have been motivated in large part by disputes surrounding language use. In this case, the Catalans have largely won their language battle.

Nor is this a story about a prosperous territory seeking independence out of economic self-interest. Yes, Catalonia is richer than the rest of Spain, and subsidises other regions through tax transfers, but the disruption, indeed chaos, caused by breaking away from Spain would take decades to resolve. An independent Catalonia would be removed overnight from the European Union and Eurozone with no preparation for what comes next. Applicants to join the European Union need the unanimous approval of current members, meaning that Spain could prevent Catalonia from ever re-joining.

This is why, for all the specific historical and political factors, the movement for an independent Catalonia is of such interest and importance to the world. The Catalan case for independence rests on a generalisable claim to the right to self-determination, a right rooted in the recognition of national identity, and on the specific right to a referendum as a way to establish self-determination. Those Catalans who favour independence – somewhere around half the region’s population, and likely growing – do so not because they are sure they would be better off in some measurable way outside Spain, but because they do not consider themselves Spanish.

(Photo credit: Reuters).

The idea of self-determination

Self-determination, as phrase and concept, goes back to the 19th century, but it gained currency after US President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech of January 1918, laying out principles for a post-war international order. While it has come to be accepted as a right of some kind, its exact nature and scope has never quite been agreed upon.

Those in favour of Catalonia remaining within Spain argue that the Catalans already enjoy self-determination. Like all other Spaniards, they have equal citizenship with universal adult franchise, and the regional government of Catalonia has a substantial degree of autonomy. But the right to self-determination ultimately rests on our definition of the self in question, and this is the decisive factor behind the demand for an independent Catalonia.

The right to self-determination is a collective or community right rather than an individual one, and like others of its kind it is difficult to define and thus enforce. If Catalans consider themselves both Catalan and Spanish, then there is no need or legal justification for independence. If, however, those identities are seen as distinct or contradictory, then Catalonia is effectively under foreign rule, and independence is simply the granting of a long-denied right.

In the long run, the only measure of self-determination is the sentiments of the people in question. For all the problems with referendums as a means of decision-making, both the desire for, and the outcome of, a referendum are among the only means possible of establishing such a sentiment. This is why the Spanish government’s chief argument against the referendum – that it is illegal or unlawful – is so weak.

All states have laws and institutions that are designed to preserve the state as currently constituted in terms of its borders and political structure. These range from laws against treason or sedition to high exit barriers for groups or territories seeking independence, to pejorative language – such as the use of the term “secession” as opposed to the word “independence”. But such laws, like states themselves, are necessarily provisional. No state or constitution lasts forever. This referendum may be illegal under Spanish law, but it does not follow that it is unjust. In matters of self-determination, falling back against laws that by their nature are designed to deny such a right is not a sufficient defence.

The Spanish government claims that the Catalonian government does not enjoy majority support for independence. But there is a clear majority in Catalonia in favour of an orderly referendum to settle the question. In the long run, Spain can only preserve its unity by building support for a shared Spanish identity in Catalonia, and not by opposing a referendum on legal grounds. If Madrid follows up on its threat of suspending Catalonia’s regional autonomy, the cause of shared identity will be set back further, perhaps irrevocably.

But even a successful declaration of Catalan independence would, by resolving one question of self-determination, only generate new ones. This is because cases like Catalonia rest on a narrow, majoritarian, ethno-nationalist definition of the right to self-determination. There are, within Catalonia, not only millions of Catalans who consider themselves Spanish, but also millions of non-Catalan Spaniards, many long settled in the area. Would this last group be second-class citizens in a Republic of Catalonia? Would their linguistic rights be guaranteed? Majoritarian nationalism has an especially poor record on this score.

The example of India

It would be easy to look at the troubles in Catalonia and conclude that India does much better at accommodating multiple group identities. But our record is mixed, and our successes provisional. Independent India has faced two kinds of movements for self-determination. In border states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Punjab, and Manipur, New Delhi has reckoned with claims that Indian rule is illegitimate and that self-determination requires political independence. And a host of groups from the 1950s onwards have demanded separate states as a vehicle for self-determination within the Union itself. Tamil Nadu, while largely in the second category, has at times shown elements of the former.

Catalonia has parallels with both types of movements. India understood more readily than Spain the necessity of accommodating linguistic pluralism. The demand for a referendum, of course, has resonances with Nagaland and, especially, with Jammu and Kashmir. The great difference between Catalonia and Kashmir, which exculpates India from the charge of denying the right to self-determination, is the presence of Pakistan as a third party. Even beyond strategic considerations, India has never held the unilateral power to grant independence to Kashmir.

But, as the Catalan example shows, India’s ability to prevent so-called secessionist movements of self-determination rests on whether it is able to create and maintain a sense of complementary identities. In the Kashmir Valley, this cause appears lost, perhaps forever – the majority of people here see being Kashmiri and Indian as irreconcilably opposed. With independence also totally unviable, this situation is uniquely tragic, which may be why the current BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government appears to treat it as a lost cause.

In other parts of India, complementary identities rely in part on linguistic pluralism, but also on the fact that India lacks a recognisable majority community. It is easy to be both Tamil and Indian when being Indian is not associated with a particular non-Tamil group. In a society such as India’s, the creation of an identifiable majority community is the greatest threat to stable unity. Perhaps paradoxically, the ideal of a Hindu Rashtra, especially when it is understood to include Hindi as a national language and a particular Gangetic version of Hinduism, is inimical to the notion of an Akhand Bharat or undivided India.