Chapter two examines how postcolonial states respond to ethno-nationalism in general and minorities in particular. I argue that nationalist ruling elites conceive of the postcolonial state itself as an ‘ideology’, claiming that the unified national state, its liberal constitutional structure, and the developmental agenda will end the troublesome ethnic parochialism and, therefore, solve the problem of minorities. The ideological making of the postcolonial state not only obscures and glosses over the real reasons for the problem, but also shift attention to issues that help maintain asymmetric power relations. To substantiate this argument, I first explain John Thompson’s notion of ‘ideology’ as a set of ways in which ideas and meanings help create and sustain relations of domination. I then develop my argument that the ideology of the postcolonial state functions in three different forms: the postcolonial ‘national’, ‘liberal’, and ‘developmental’ state. Working through these three ideologies, the postcolonial state demands the submission of the minority cause to the greater ‘national’, ‘liberal’, and ‘developmental’ interests of the state, thereby legitimising the oppression of minorities. I demonstrate these ideological functions of the postcolonial state with historical examples: the discourse used in Indian Constituency Assembly debates to discuss minority rights.

In 1972, a localised rebellion against the Tutsi-dominated state triggered a ‘selective’ genocide against the Hutu population. This chapter considers the actions and representations of the rebellion, then examines the phases of genocidal repression: massacres in the areas affected by the rebellion, the elimination of prominent politicians, and the decentralised arrest and disappearance of key individuals across the countryside. It explores the processes of legal triage that authorised the murder of civilians through the categorisation of suspicious classes of local intellectuals, teachers, priests and successful traders. It devotes special attention to the role of the youth league in the local repression, partly captured by the control of information and the bureaucratisation of violence. It then considers the different faces of truth in violence: total state denial, the use of frank truth as hopeless protest, the lingering possibilities of loyalty to official truth, and the construction of new truths in the aftermath. The chapter ends with the popular renditions of a postcolonial order, in the nature of violent authority and ethnic community, as being revealed through violence.

After independence, Burundi went through a process of rapid political disintegration. Uprona factionalised into political and ethnic blocs, while facing off against Rwanda as an ideological and geopolitical enemy. This chapter explores the rapid changes between 1962 and 1967, seeing the attempts to rule in the control of official truth. It examines the extreme hostility of the state towards the borderland population, and the forms of political language used in national address. It presents a moment of violence in 1964 when dissidents ran a campaign of arson from across the border, and the performances of loyalty enacted by others to display their obedience to official truth. Noting the national crisis over Prime Minister Ngendandumwe’s assassination in 1965, and the subsequent elections, attempted coups d’état and the first large-scale ethnic violence, it finally presents local responses to a military coup in 1966 that abolished the monarchy. Some resisted the coup by treating it as just another ‘rumour’, but most greeted the news with cautious silence. Official truth changed to exclude royal authority, but maintained old hostilities to Rwanda, rumour and ethnic politics.