Image Courtesy:indianexpress.com
The Asiatic Society finally held its 27th Smt. Bansari Sheth Memorial Lecture online after the event that was originally scheduled to be held in March was postponed for months due to the Covid-19 outbreak. This year’s lecture was delivered by Justice Gautam Patel, Sitting Judge Bombay High Court on the subject ‘One Nation under the Constitution’.
Justice Patel began his lecture by paying homage to late Justice Nanabhai Haridas, a legal luminary and the first permanent Indian judge of the Bombay High Court. He was also the maternal grandfather of Bansari Sheth in whose name the lecture series had been instituted. The annual lecture is organized by the Asiatic Society, an institution founded nearly 200 years ago with the intention of “promoting useful knowledge, particularly such as its now immediately connected with India.”
In his address that was broadcast via Zoom, Justice Patel delved deep into the idea of ‘nationalism’ saying, “The core of nationalism is both self-determination and self-governance. Historically, nationalism was pivotal in ending colonial rule and the term is therefore positioned in opposition to both colonialism and imperialism.” He added, “Two key concepts define modern nationalism: unity or unification, and identity.”
Justice Patel then delved into Constitutionalism tracing its evolution through definitions by Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau and others. But returning to the idea of ‘nationalism’ in India, Justice Patel rootlessness born out of unemployment, particularly urban unemployment of educated youth, has now rendered the idea of nationhood a mere abstraction. He also spoke about the growing inequality between the rich and the poor. He then went on to explain how homogenisation was at the root of majoritarian nationalism.
Justice Patel said, “If you take a map of India and fling three darts at it, you are unlikely to find commonality of culture, religion or language between the three landing points. Even within any region there is wide diversity of faith, belief, practice, culture, art, language, food and all the rest of it. A unification of these people by seeking common ground is impossible, and this is precisely why we see ascendance of othering, an unseating of nationalism as a constitutional ideal and an attempt to enthrone some other commonality. Of these, the brute-force majoritarianism of religion is perhaps the most effective.”
The entire transcript of the lecture maybe read here:
Related:
All non-Muslim minorities are Hindus: Puri Shankaracharya
The new Hindutva
The curious case of a secular alcoholic, an Eid banner and hate mongers