In Ireland’s complex troubles, lessons for India

Recently Northern Ireland witnessed communal clashes which left 74 policemen injured.
The event threatens to undermine the fragile peace between Protestant pro-British loyalist unionists who want to remain part of the United Kingdom forever, and Catholic pro-Irish nationalists who wish Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic of Ireland.

Though geographically, Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, politically, it’s part of the UK.
After long domination under the UK, Ireland broke free about 100 years ago from centuries of colonisation and an uneasy union.
As a result out of its 32 counties, 26 became an independent, Roman Catholic-majority country, while 6 counties in the north, which had a Protestant majority, stayed British.
Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority experienced discrimination in the Protestant-run state which led to Catholic civil rights movement in 1960.
The movement demanded change, but faced a harsh response from the government and police.
Later the situation deteriorated into a conflict between Irish republican militants who wanted to unite with the south and UK troops.
As a result, during three decades of conflict, more than 3,600 people, a majority of them civilians, were killed in bombings and shootings.
It was only by the 1990s, when the peace deal was reached.
The 1998 Good Friday accord saw the paramilitaries lay down their arms and established a Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government for Northern Ireland.
Since then though the peace has largely endured, small Irish Republican Army splinter groups have continued to mount occasional attacks on security forces, and there have been outbreaks of sectarian street violence.

As the only part of the UK that has a border with an EU nation, Ireland, it was the trickiest issue to resolve after Britain voted to leave the union.
An open Irish border, over which people and goods flow freely, has been the main support to the peace process, as it allowed the people in Northern Ireland to move freely across both Ireland and the UK.
In the case of “hard Brexit” that took the UK out of the EU’s economic order meant the creation of new barriers and checks on trade.
Therefore, both Britain and the EU agreed that the border could not be in Ireland because of the risk that would pose to the peace process.
But as Britain left the EU on 31st December and the new trade arrangements became an irritant to Northern Ireland unionists who want to stay in the UK.
Now the early trade glitches are further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic fueling already existing the alarming situation.

Therefore, any functioning democracy must ensure a daily commitment to addressing communal issues with vigilance, tolerance and compromise.
The recent violence in Northern Ireland shows that every country needs leadership that takes responsibility for peoples’ social and economic problems and steers prejudices away from entrenched phobias.
The ruling party in India needs to be aware that creating religious tensions between communities has incalculable deep-seated negative consequences that will severely damage every section of society and all our established political and national institutions.

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/in-irelands-complex-troubles-lessons-for-india/article34502020.ece

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