Be it an individual or a people, neither must cede or surrender to an external entity the inherent and hence fundamental right to self-definition or self-determination. To give up this most intimate form of agency is to externalise the locus of one’s consciousness and its most tangible product–a crystallised identity.
This alienation then takes a life of its own and is extremely difficult to reverse and reclaim. However, no matter how arduous the process of reclamation, no self-respecting society has the option of lacking or losing the will to take back the right to define the self. What would be worse, is for the society to believe that it is better off living in the yawning shadow of a contemptuously overwritten version of its self by another.
Yukti 