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PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION
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demand disruption.* The difference comes to this : a community has a right to safeguards, a nation has a right to demand separation. The difference is at once clear and crucial. But they have not given any reasons why the right of one is limited to insurrection and why that of the other extends to disruption. They have not even raised such a question. Nor are the reasons apparent on the face of them. But it is both interesting and instructive to know why this difference is made. To my mind the reason for this difference pertains to questions of ultimate destiny. A state either consists of a series of communities or it consists of a series of nations. In a state, which is composed of a series of communities, one community may be arrayed against another community and the two may be opposed to each other. But in the matter of their ultimate destiny they feel they are one. But in a state, which is composed of a series of nations, when one nation rises against the other, the conflict is one as to differences of ultimate destiny. This is the distinction between communities and nations and it is this distinction which explains the difference in their political rights. There is nothing new or original in this explanation. It is merely another way of stating why the community has one kind of right and the nation another of quite a different kind. A community has a right of insurrection because it is satisfied with it. All that it wants is a change in the mode and form of government. Its quarrel is not over any difference of ultimate destiny. A nation has to be accorded the right of disruption because it will not be satisfied with mere change in the form of government. Its quarrel is over the question of ultimate
- This is what Sidgwick has to say on the right to disruption : “…..some of those who, hold that a government to be legitimate, must rest on the consent of the governed, appear not to shrink from drawing this inference: they appear to qualify the right of the majority of members of a state to rule by allowing the claim of a minority that suffers from the exercise of this right to secede and form a new state, when it is in a majority in a continuous portion of its old state’s territory…….and I conceive that there are cases in which the true interests of the whole may be promoted by disruption. For instance, where two portions of a state’s territory are separated by a long interval of sea, or other physical obstacles, from any very active intercommunication, and when, from differences of race or religion, past history, or present social conditions, their respective inhabitants have divergent needs and demands in respect of legislation and other governmental interference, it may easily be inexpedient that they should have a common government for internal affairs ; while if, at the same time, their external relations, apart from their union, would be very different, it is quite possible that each part may lose more through the risk of implication in the other’s quarrels, than it is likely to gain from the aid of its military force. Under such conditions as these, it is not to be desired that any sentiment of historical patriotism, or any pride in the national ownership of an extensive territory, should permanently prevent a peaceful dissolution of the incoherent whole into its natural parts.”— Elements of Politics (1929),.pp. 648-49.