The promotion and propaganda of ‘one country, one language’, ‘one country, one religion’, etc. is fundamentally against the fabric of India.
SAJI P MATHEW OFM
Value of an individual, a society, or a nation could be determined by its relationship to truth. One’s history could be traced back to one’s journey to truth, or one’s journey away from truth. One comes to an existential standstill when the question of truth is about one’s own identity. Though it is a long debated question, at least once in our life time, as people living in India and as people who have grown
up with the rich insights and multilayered culture of India, we stand in wonder asking
the question, what is the idea of India? Many voices, images, and people rush to one’s mind attempting to force an answer. All seem right
at once. But a second thought puts us back to
the same existential struggle; we start with the same question again, what is the idea of India? In 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru said, 400 million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of thought and feeling make up the idea of India. Today we have 1.26 billion separate individual. The idea of India is an expansive one.
India as a Nation-State
We have many nations living in our nation- state called, India. A nation refers to a group of people bound together by common language, identity, ethnicity, history etc., they need not
be a country. When a nation organises itself under a government, which is considered as the ultimate authority, it begins to be also known
as a country. The terms ‘country’ and ‘State’ are often interchangeable. Culturally connected people who identify themselves as a nation
can do so while simultaneously being part
of a country. Several native American groups identify as nations; but they ultimately belong to the State. India in fact is a collection of nations; that is, peoples with their own ethnic identity. The country and its government has a responsibility to respect it while deliberating issues and in policy making. The promotion and propaganda towards ‘one country, one language’; ‘one country, one religion’, etc. is fundamentally against the fabric of India. If we are not mindful and respectful to the cultural, social, religious and linguistic fabric of India, nationalism becomes detrimental to the population of India. Then to be considered an anti-national, one only has to be a Dalit, or a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Kashmiri etc. the list will eventually extent to LGBTQ, or to rationalist or to environmentalist etc. On that account it definitely is incompatible with democracy.
The founding fathers of our nation had predicted the mess we would get into if we embrace rigid nationalism. Rabindranath Tagore had persuaded people away from it saying, nationalism is a menace, it would steer India to unimaginable problems. Tagore emphatically held that patriotism is not his spiritual shelter. His refuge is humanity. He would not allow patriotism to triumph over humanity. Tagore in Gitanjali prays, where world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls, into that haven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Indian Neo-Nationalism
Indian nationalism had its positive results
in Indian independence struggle. And it was characterized by people, irrespective of who and what, came together against the colonial rule. But in contemporary times Indian nationalism has taken on interesting twists and turns. Giving emergence to neo-nationalism. It is the idea of a nation-state where you emotionally belong to, you belong with your beliefs. It does not bother whether all in the nation-state finds space in it. It divides and divorces people. It separates people across imagined and reinforced narratives and borders. It is the imagination of
a people that we belong, we are together. That perhaps is fine until someone uses it to exclude others within; and fight and destroy others without. Nationalism slowly slips into licensed terrorism. Therefore nationalism cannot be the end aim, instead one world without domestic narrow walls must become the end aim.
Nationalism is an imagination, it is an idea. Benedict Anderson writing about nationalism uses the term imagined communities. Don’t dispense it saying it is just an idea. According to Karl Marx, “an idea becomes a material force when it grips the masses.” Nationalism is such an idea, an imagination. Nationalism is one of the most gripping, most potent idea in modern history. It works stronger than armies and weapons. It has the potency to kill and destroy. Unchecked nationalism can become a breeding ground for fascism.
The Intersectionality in India
India is one and many at the same time. India is complex. We have linguistic, cultural and religious differences. But what should be noted is that these pronounced sections of India
also intersect with other sections like gender, economic and caste discriminations. As Kalim Siddiqui in his research, A Critical Study of ‘Hindu Nationalism’ in India published in Journal of Business & Economic Policy in
June 2016, noted, Indian Muslims and other minorities and intersectional groups endure lower levels of education, income, political representation or government jobs than the majority Hindus. No majority includes everyone. Whichever section we consider as the majority there will be at least a small minority who don’t belong. All who lived in Germany were not Aryans. All who lived or living in India are not Hindus.
The Idea of India in the Era of Post Truth
Anyone who has got the history right cannot
be a nationalist; at least can’t be a nationalist
on narrow lines. New narratives have high-jacked history. Building narratives has become a political and business strategy. Corporates invest in narrative building. Corporate news channels, with its well-decided biases and its convincing presentations of fake and framed news, are fixing the idea of India. Truth has become fragile and complex in the hands of post truth.
How to survive the post truth era, the corporate era, the fascist era? Meet people. Encounter cultures. Meet people from the other side of truth. Do not claim that the moon rises only on our campus; instead take courage to go to other campuses and discover the truth about moon’s rising. Protest to one’s own self, one’s own community that unless we meet the other, go to other campuses; we would refuse to conclude the certainty about the truth.
We proudly sing that we all are Indians; but all of us do not sing it in the same language. All of us devoutly pray to protect our people and country from all harm; but we all don’t pray in the same worship places or rites. We all celebrate every success and festivals of our great nation with abundance of food and camaraderie, but we all
do not eat the same food. Our differences need not divide us. There is nothing in India that is common to all the Indians, except the spiritual conviction that we are Indians.
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