By Jone R Baledrokadroka

According to J Z. Muller in the enduring power of ethnic nationalism (Us and Them: Foreign Affairs, Mar/Apr 2008), there are two major ways of thinking about national identity. One is that all people who live within a country's borders are part of the nation, regardless of their ethnic, racial, or religious origins. This liberal or civic nationalism is the concept with which the Draft Peoples Charter would like all to identify with. But the liberal view has competed with and often lost out to a different view, that of ethnonationalism. The core of the ethnonationalist idea is that nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry.

We will now look at the politics of identity through this phenomenon of ethnonationalism and trace its origins through the Indigenous Fijians history. For it is in understanding our local brand of ethnonationalism that we can deal with its real or perceived core concerns in building a nation.

Ethnonationalism draws much of its emotive power from the notion that the members of a nation are part of an extended family, ultimately united by ties of blood. It is the subjective belief in the reality of a common "we" that counts. The markers that distinguish the in-group vary from case to case and time to time, and the subjective nature of the communal boundaries has led some to discount their practical significance (Muller: 2008). But as the inventor of the word -ethnonationalism, Walker Connor, an astute student of nationalism, has noted, "It is not what is, but what people believe is that has behavioral consequences."

It could be said that it was Sir Arthur Gordon’s ‘Fiji for the Fijian’ Policy in 1876 that planted the seed of modern Fijian ethnonationalism. For the formation of the Great Council of Chiefs that year articulated in the minds of the Fijian chiefs a Fijian political entity of a geographic realm. More so the creation of the three Vanua Confederacies of Kubuna, Burebasaga and Tovata was in fact ethnonationalistic traditional engineering in support of colonial rule. For prior to this entity Fijian political consciousness was traced through folklore to the Nakauvadra/Vuda migration and the founding tribal state of Verata around 15-1600AD. It is however doubtful that Fijian political consciousness through folklore can be traced to the Lapita people’s eastward migration some 1000BC or 3000 years ago as pottery excavations show at Bourewa beach, Nadroga in April this year. The Lapita people (identified by their pottery style) were the first to move across the Pacific, probably from the Bismarck Archipelago in what is now Papua New Guinea. Their role in Fiji has long been speculated on though it is now thought that the Lapita people rapidly evolved into modern Polynesians, including the New Zealand Maori. This gives rise to the contending thesis that the present Melanesian stock of people in Fiji is of a later migration wave to that of the Lapita.

In resisting the encroachment of Christian conversion the following excerpt is a testament to pre-Christian ethnonationalistic belief and sentiments of the so-called Kai Colo in dealing with the Kai Wai or "them" of the out group. An eye witness report of Cakobau’s Christianization war campaign in Ba in the Fiji Times 23 July 1870 stated, "The mountaineers from Navosa came down to Nalotu, an inland district, hitherto subject to Ba and the advanced fortress, or Bai-ni-mua of the Ba people. They put up a war fence, and then Wawabalavu, the Navosa chief, called out and said, "You Nalotu people, I am Wawabalavu. It was I who ate Mr Baker, and the Bau men. Do you trust the Lasakau men(fishermen and sea warriors of Bau). Don't, their trade is fishing". The mountaineers were let into the fortress and a frightful slaughter of native Fijians who had accepted christianity ensued as the Nalotu people had chosen to believe their fellow hillmen’s rhetoric. Hence the blood bond now known as the Tako-Lavo relationship of Viti Levu hill tribes was manipulatively used by Nawawabalavu to facilitate this trechery. Today however in an ironic twist Wesleyan christianity has morphed with Fijian ethnonationalist fervour as witnessed in the 1987 and 2000 coups mainly due to its Fijian ethnic majority. To put it gently, the once oppressor of ethnonationalism has now become its vehicle of political ideaology.

The portrayal of the "out group" is again herein recalled to illustrate the distrust that festered in some indigenous minds of the past and one may argue residually exsists today. On 22 Jan 1875 at Navuso, Naitasiri, Administrators along with Ratu Cakobau and his two sons who had returned from Sydney , Australia briefed some eight-hundred Hill chiefs and their tribal retinues on the implications of Fiji’s new status as a Colony. Ratu Cakobau and his two sons had been sick on the trip back to Levuka. With no quarantine laws in place, they carried back with them this Measels strain from aboard the HMS Dido to Navuso. The Measels epidemic that befell Fiji in 1875 from January to about June 1875 which wiped out 30% or 50,000 of its indigenous population was a tragedy of the first order. This tragedy coming hot on the heels of their forced conversion to christianity and colonial cession were in the minds of particular chiefs of Viti Levu hill tribes- a foreign conspiracy. Unfortunately this distrust of "them foreigners" as engrained in the Kai Colo psyche have since in some way been pointed at all other late comers to our shores by ethnonationalists. As such, Sir Arthur Gordon’s pardon of the mutinous Hill Tribes of Viti Levu in 1876 was in reconciallatory acknowledgement of this tragedy of history.

Except for Navosavakadua’s Tuka sect and the early colonial indigenous commercial enterprise Viti Kabani, ethnonationalism lay dormant for some one hundred years under colonial rule as Fijians were quite content with being British subjects under monarchical rule if not only symbolic. After Independence ethnonationalism first arose with Nationalists Sakeasi Butadroka’s cry of ‘Fiji for the Fijians’ much to the annoyance of the chiefly led Alliance mainstream party with its all-inclusive racial policies. This artificial political façade was hardwired to fail given the flawed compromise of the 1970 constitution.

Robert Norton in his work on ethnonationalism in Fiji stated, "Conflict between indigenous Fijians and immigrant Indians, though strongly based in economic and socio-cultural differences, has not been intensified by acquiring a function in the reconstruction of identities previously suppressed. Manipulation of ideals and symbols by Fijian leaders to secure popular support has tended to reaffirm established frames of routine social and political life within Fijian groups, rather than being an innovative assertion of distinctiveness in opposition to "the other."

However as has happen in Fiji in the aftermath of the Coups of 1987 and 2000, the triumph of ethnonational politics as some would label the SVT and later SDL parties rule, has meant the victory of traditionally rural groups over more urbanized ones, which possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial economy.

In addition the resultant forced migrations including after the 2006 ‘Guardian’ Coup in Fiji, generally penalized Fiji-the expelling country and reward the receiving ones. Again as in the case of Fiji, forced migration is often driven by a majority group's resentment of a minority group's success, on the mistaken assumption that achievement is a zero-sum game. But countries that got rid of their Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, and other successful minorities deprived themselves of some of their most talented citizens, who simply took their skills and knowledge elsewhere.

As somewhat perceived by Fiji’s military prior to the 2006 Coup, ethnonationalist ideology such as the Qoliqoli and Reconciliation Bill called for congruence between the state and the ethnically defined nation, with explosive results. As Lord Acton recognized in 1862, "By making the state and the nation commensurate with each other in theory, [nationalism] reduces practically to a subject condition all other nationalities that may be within the boundary. Analysts of ethnonationalism typically focus on its destructive effects, which is understandable given the direct human suffering it has often entailed. In fact the first and second world wars were direct results of the destructive aspects of this phenomenon.

However if ethnonationalism has frequently led to tension and conflict, it has also proved to be a source of cohesion and stability. Muller contends, when French textbooks began with "Our ancestors the Gauls" or when Churchill spoke to wartime audiences of "this island race," they appealed to ethnonationalist sensibilities as a source of mutual trust and sacrifice. In similar fashion, Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna Fiji’s first Statesman in recruiting Fijians for war duty stated that as a Nation, Fiji would not be recognized unless its sons sacrificed blood on the battlefields for freedom.

Hence in concluding on a positive note for Fiji, as in European history, ethnonationalism was not a chance detour. It corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process of modern state creation, it is a crucial source of both solidarity and enmity, and in one form or another, it will remain for many generations to come. One can only profit from facing it directly. As such Liberal democracy and ethnic homogeneity are not only compatible; they can be complementary. We as a nation will have to learn to live with it along with the intended civic and more liberal nationalism as espoused by the Draft People’s Charter.

Jone R Baledrokadroka is an alumni of the Asia-Pacific Center For Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii.