Still their concern is worth giving a serious thought. The Hindu nationalism has been entrenching itself not only through electoral politics but also through its infiltration in various organs of state, its control over media and a big section of social media.

Yadav lays “the fault for the rise of the offending nationalism in India today at the doorstep of what he thinks of as a secularized, internationalist, modernist ethos that was cultivated
in post-Independence India, which eschewed all nationalism, thereby creating a “nationalism” vacuum that is now filled by the Hindutva conception of the nation.” Palshikar “closes the argument by tracing this nationalism to elements within the national movement more than a century earlier.”

Bilgrami, to begin with appreciates the Indian ethos by stating that “For centuries, Indian society has been characterized by an unselfconscious pluralism of religions and cultures. Today’s European-style nationalism, by contrast, manufactures division and calls it unity. And commenting on Palshikar’s views on its roots during freedom struggle, he says “No doubt there were antecedents to such attitudes during the freedom struggle but they were marginalized by the dominance of Gandhi and Nehru and though this certainly left unresolved
questions, these do not amount to the roots of current Hindutva nationalism.”

There are some more points which need to be taken into account while understanding the situation in India and the rising threat of Hindu nationalism. While in Europe the Sovereignty passed on from Monarchs/Kings to the Modern centralized state. The rise of such states had to deal with divergent groups in the society which lead to the concept of secularism.

In India we had a colonial state which usurped sovereignty of most of the Kings into the colonial state. This colonial state had to give way to the Indian state after Independence. This Indian state had its guidelines in the Indian constitution, which was “inclusive without othering” (Yadav’s phrase). India did walk this path and theoretically this is still the path of Indian nationalism. Hindu Nationalism is drawing a bigger line which in a way is narrow, European style but unlike Europe where language, religion and culture were the root of division and nationalism (mainly language), in India it was only religion which was the foundation of Hindu and Muslim Nationalism, also called communalism.

With the introduction of modern Industries, education, means of transport and communication roots of Indian nationalism started emerging. The supporting aspects of this nationalism were the social movements breaking the shackles of hierarchy. Movements led by Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, Com. Singarvelu organized the workers. Jotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar struggled for social equality, an important ingredient of Indian nationalism. Gandhi and Nehru contributed to the leading of people’s movement against colonial rule; this movement not only was aimed at changing the sovereignty from British to Indian elected representatives but also meant to be totally inclusive.

Right with the development of this Indian Nationalism; the feudal elements laid the foundation of trends which culminated in the formation of Muslim and Hindu nationalism. These trends articulated that religion is the basis of nationalism. They got support from Rajas, Nawabs (Kings) and elite sections which occupied a place on the higher pedestal of prevailing but declining social structure. Their rise in due course led to Muslim League, Hindu Mahasabha, and RSS. This did help the British to pursue the policy of ‘divide and rule’ for the British and later to partition of India.

Talking of India and Hindu nationalism, it had already become a force to reckon with and kept the European style nationalism of Germany and Italy as its role models. Its training of Swayamsevaks and Pracharaks spread their message far and wide through word of mouth. Immediately after we got Independence Hindu Nationalism’s strength was clear. It’s (ex) Pracharak Nathuram Godse pumped three bullets into the chest of the leader of anti-colonial movement, the biggest advocate of Indian Nationalism, Mahatma Gandhi.

RSS was not the only vehicle of Hindu nationalism. There was Hindu Mahasabaha and some elements of Hindu nationalism also entered the Indian National Congress. Nehru had realized this threat to Indian nationalism but could not weed it  out due to many reasons, the major one being the persistence of landlordism in the country. This was reflected in the heightened religiosity in society.

Hindu nationalism obviously stood for status quo of caste and gender relationships. Its appeal to certain sections of society became clear when a bill for cow slaughter was demanded and thousands of Sadhus gathered in the parliament. In1980s its influence started becoming obvious, when the response to Yatras and religiosity started going through the roof. On the pretext of the Shah Bano case the appeasement bogey worked and the Ram Mandir campaign opened the floodgates for the rise of Hindu nationalism.

Vocal articulation of Indian nationalism has been muted for some decades. The Right wing wants to present Nationalism itself as Hindu nationalism. Is there a hope for Indian nationalism becoming the main one today? Yes there is. We saw a glimpse of this during the last few years. The ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ and ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ have shown that the space which was undermined by the assertion of European style nationalism, Hindu Nationalism can be retrieved. The articulation of issues of Dalits, women, Adivasis, workers and minorities along with the movements for their demands can be the foundation. The appeal of our Constitution is very deep among the people. These twin movements, along with reaching the values of Indian constitution far and wide will be the two legs on which Indian Nationalism can be retrieved from the ground in times to come.

The post Understanding the growth of European-style nationalism in India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Outside the auditorium, a long queue assembled in the lobby of the O’Brien Science Building. Most of them were Indian students. Eventually, I began conversing with the person ahead of me and we found seats together. He was in his late twenties, doing his masters, and had previously worked at a large e-commerce MNC (multi-national company) before moving to Ireland. I asked him why he was attending today’s talk by the foreign minister. He said that he was a big admirer of Dr. S. Jaishankar and his work, as well as ‘other leaders’ like him.

According to him, Dr. Jaishankar was a ‘smart’ and ‘bold’ person who cared for the country’s interests and how Indians were represented abroad. Challenging his point, I brought up the recent deportations of illegal Indian immigrants from the United States and the minister’s tepid response to the matter. He replied saying the immigrants had committed a crime by being in the States illegally and therefore it was right they were sent back. ‘In chains?’ I added. No, he said. ‘That went too far. But America will be America.’

As for those ‘other leaders’ he said, ‘the thing I like about this government is that they put the country first. The country comes first and then everything else.’ I found this interesting. By putting the country first, he was referring to the government’s unwavering focus on growth and development. I said that not all Indians saw this growth. In fact, most Indians still suffered gruelling poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment. Becoming aware of my political outlook and wanting to avoid further argument, he finally said, ‘everyone has their opinions. And everyone’s opinion matters.’

Meanwhile, the auditorium filled to its capacity. The students were visibly excited to see the Foreign Minister. Observing them, I became aware of the possibility that many students here may share my friend’s views. Since coming to Ireland, I’ve had mixed feelings encountering large groups of Indians. Many of them expect you to speak in Hindi, even in a foreign land, which as a South Indian I am not eager to oblige. Then there’s a cautionary feeling; one that comes with being a minority in India. I first gauge the political leanings of the people I interact with, some of whom under the guise of being ‘non-political’, defer in favour of the ruling party.

Here in Ireland, I am far away from the religious violence at home. Yet I find it strange carrying on conversations with supporters of the ruling party, pretending their views shouldn’t affect the pleasure of their company.

Why beat around the bush? I thought. I asked him frankly what he thought about the divisive politics of the government — the remaking of India as a Hindu nation, and the rise of hate speech and violence against Christians and Muslims. In response, he said that every government had its own variety of politics. Hindu-Muslim was just the ruling party’s version of it. In the end it was about winning elections, in other words — power. I was oddly relieved to hear this answer. It seemed analysed from a neutral but nevertheless, ruthlessly pragmatic standpoint.

‘But,’ he continued. ‘There must be a balance of power. Hindus have nowhere else to go in this world. What if something were to happen to us? There must be mutual respect. We respect all religions. But they should also respect us.’ By ‘they’ he meant Muslims, whom he perceived as a looming threat to the existence of Hindus.

I asked, in a country of 1.4 billion, where the majority was Hindu, Hinduism being the third largest religion in the world after Christianity and Islam, how were Muslims in India a threat to Hindus? Who lived in the constant fear of having their houses demolished, or being lynched by a mob driving home from work? In Ireland, a homicide makes it to the front page of every major publication in the country. In India, crimes against Muslim Indians and Dalits are hardly ever reported. With first-hand experience, we both laughed at the irony of this reality. In Ireland people were valued as human beings.

Most of all, I wanted to tell my friend that as a Christian I no longer felt safe in India, neither did I feel I belonged. That I was tired of being called a rice bag, a cultural traitor, with an insane desire to go around evangelizing and converting people. That it had become difficult seeing churches attacked and burnt, and parishioners beat up during our festivals. That I had grown up with Muslims, and watching their mere existence demonised with repeated calls for their slaughter was painful. That if it was Muslims bearing the maximum brunt of hatred now, it would be the Christians next. That his reasons for leaving the country and mine were very different. That I worried about my family and felt guilty I had left them behind. Did he know that feeling?

He seemed to agree with everything I was saying, yet there was something immutable in his stance. Who was I anyway, to come one day and challenge his views? Like he said, all opinions were personal and had no bearing on the other. But his opinion did matter. We were sitting in a foreign country where I considered myself safe. Because I didn’t feel safe in India, and that was directly because of his opinion and a good number of Indians who shared it.

To diffuse the tension, he laughed and said that he personally did not believe in religious discrimination, and had close Muslim and Christian friends. He apologetically repeated his first point, ‘people do anything for power. At the end the day, the powerful man rules. It’s sad, but it is the way it is.’

Forty-five minutes late, Dr. Jaishankar arrived dressed in a grey suit and tie, green for the occasion. Walking down the aisle, he was received with thumping applause. The meeting was attended by Irish and Indian ambassadors Kevin Kelly and Akhilesh Mishra as well as higher-ups and academics from UCD. The title of his lecture was ‘India’s View of the World’; an interesting topic in a time afflicted with polarisation, several major conflicts, and rising inequality. Yet apart from mentioning the developed world’s failure to meet SDGs (sustainable developmental goals), and vaguely reaffirming India’s neutrality on the Russia-Ukraine war, Dr. Jaishankar said little about what India thought of the world.

The talk seemed more about presenting India as a global superpower — robust growth, soon to be third largest economy, increasing number of airports, digitalised economy, and technological adeptness, were points he stressed on. Similarly, talk of global workplaces and collaboration in highly niche sectors like AI, drone manufacture, datacentres, and space exploration delivered in a ‘you need us more than we need you’ tone, took up most of the lecture.

Even the Q&A seemed curated with pre-selected questions to bolster this progressive and dominating image of the country.

The students were not disappointed. Every attempt at humour in the minister’s measured manner was met with laughter and delight. Every word clung to with rapt attention. My new friend laughed especially hard and clapped the loudest at the end of the talk. Looking around the audience, projecting my nausea for Dr. Jaishankar’s undeserved adulation, I realised a lot of the students were just happy to see someone in their corner. An hour before, while I waited in the queue outside the auditorium, I remembered being struck by the attire of the students around me. Most Indian students wear very basic winter jackets here. They come in dull colours, are of flimsy material, rarely fit, and are worn for the sake of warmth rather than style.

It’s not easy for Indian students studying abroad. Unlike the diversity focused college brochures, the study abroad experience for Indians is usually a lonely one, where students find themselves struggling to integrate into a new culture. They pay extraordinarily high fees (on loan) in a highly disparate currency, work stressful part-time jobs, and are for the most part broke the entire time. Their courses are chosen not out of passion, but to match the country’s Critical Skills List for the prospect of securing relevant jobs and permanent residence. They endure years of hardship to achieve one objective — making it, in a developed nation. In such conditions, symbolic gestures such as Dr. Jaishankar’s visit don’t go unappreciated.

Students cheered when Dr. Jaishankar called for a friendly visa-policy in the EU, and considered increasing shorter flights from Delhi to Dublin. These things matter to students. Hate politics, massive inequality, and upheaval of constitutional institutions back home aren’t relevant to their aspirations. If they manage to secure high-paying jobs and pay off their loans, then for all purposes, real or inflated, the government has done its work. Effectively, the government’s politics are benign and can be overlooked as long as growth, or at least the illusion of it, continued. It is selfish, wilfully ignorant, and prejudiced, but it works.

For the Indian diaspora there is another level of complexity, which is an internal feeling of cultural and racial insecurity. Indians want to be seen at par with everyone else. They wish to shed the timid, shy, thickly accented, English fumbling, and impoverished image the world has of them. Hence, the obsession with representation.

It was enough that Dr. Jaishankar was a high ranking minister, a charming man in a suite who spoke with erudition and was highly educated (He is an author of several books and has a Ph.D in International Relations). He deserved adulation not because of what he said or did, but because of what he represented to us on that stage. Speaking in front of Irish officials and university authorities, he represented what Indians could be — powerful and respected.

The BJP’s idea of development and progress is the same — symbolic gestures that indulge the aspirations and deep insecurities of the Indian psyche. The Vande Bharat train, grand airports, the perfunctory language of globalism, high growth, data, drones, and AI, are developmentally symbolic efforts to make India worthy of itself in the Western gaze. India’s view of the world is really India’s view of itself. To the Indian student subsisting on supermarket bought sandwiches and renting a dingy room in the suburbs, the narrative of the unstoppable Indian is something to draw hope and inspiration from. It validates their struggle.

The humiliating spectacle of Indian citizens handcuffed, shackled at their feet and dragged through a runway, and the governments’ failure to address it, is a case for cosmic irony. What can India say against ill-treatment of Indians overseas when it has itself become a model for far-right nationalism under the Hindutva project? Disdain for DEI policies in American Companies (which affect Ireland as well), curtailing H1Bs, and the ‘Normalise Indian hate’ climate currently unfolding in the Trumpian dystopia hurts Indians abroad. India has lost its moral ground in voicing out against racism because of what it does to its own, because nationalism is based on the consolidation of identities and suppression of all others. As countries progress toward the right and ire against immigrants rises, India shouldn’t be surprised when it points the finger and finds three pointing back — Muslim, Dalit, and Christian.

I don’t think my friend hated minorities. But the privilege of not being at the receiving end, occupied in his own aspirational struggle led him to have a certain blindness. In this case, we’ll call it prejudice. It doesn’t occur to him that Indians do well regardless of the hype of supremacy, because we are a brilliant people, and succeed wherever we go.

(The author is a student at the University College Dublin-UCD)

Related:

Why is the Govt of India silent on the spurt of attacks on Muslims, Adivasis?

Targeted attacks continue as Bajrang Dal’s disturbing trend of violence against Muslims goes unchecked

Multiple incidents of Muslims being targeted by extremist reported, attacks included hate speech and discrimination

The post The paradox of nationalism & Indian representation abroad: S. Jaishankar’s visit to my university appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As such temple inaugurations have also been occasions of promoting communal harmony as a couple of instances will show. Mahatma Gandhi while inaugurating Laxminarayan Temple (Birla Temple) in Delhi in 1939 had stated, “It must be the daily prayer of every adherent of the Hindu faith…that every known religion of the world should grow from day to day and should serve the whole of humanity…I hope that these temples will serve to propagate the idea of equal respect for religions and to make communal jealousies and strife; things of the past.”

More or less on similar lines Swami Vivekananda had earlier stated, (1997) ““it is here in India that Hindus have built and are still building churches for Christians and mosques for Mohammedans.” In his book ‘Lectures from Colombo to Almora’ we see Swamiji stating “Nay more, to understand that not only should we be charitable, but also positively helpful to each other, however different our religious ideas and convictions may be. And that is exactly what we do in India as I have just related to you… That is the thing to do.”

The present atmosphere is in total contrast to this as reflected by the fast of Suranya. It is also reflected in the incidents where cultural activists screening censor approved all time classic by Anand Patwardhan, ‘Ram Ke Naam’ are being arrested and issued non bailable arrest warrants. This happened in Hyderabad on 20^th January.

Then there are claims by the likes of Prafulla Ketkar, Editor of unofficial RSS mouthpiece Organiser claiming that “the pran-pratishta (consecration ceremony) of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya was not simply the culmination of the decades-old Ram Janmabhoomi movement, but the beginning of a “reconstruction of national consciousness”. This essentially means the whole process of social change and the idea of India which accompanied the freedom movement now stands to be negated and what can roughly called ‘Hindu India’ is already there and multiple steps towards Hindu Rashtra have been achieved by the communal forces.

What accompanied the ‘Idea of India’ was a coming together of different sections of society to fight the colonial powers, with the aspirations of striving for Liberty Equality, Fraternity and Justice for all. This massive movement had the overarching ‘Idea of India’, which culminated in the values of Indian Constitution.

There were challenges to this idea of India, which were rooted in the values of Kingdoms and what can be roughly called feudal society. The core of these values which are being hailed by the forces creating hysteria around temple consecration were/are the birth based hierarchies of caste, class and gender. The roots of these lay in the Kings and landlords of different religions and their ideologues who came forward as Muslim League, Hindu Mahasabah and RSS. While Muslim communal forces are implementing their idea of feudal values in Pakistan, the Hindu communal forces are now rejoicing, in gradually increasing intensity, now reaching its semi-peak with Ram Temple consecration.

The idea of India of freedom movement got manifested in the values of Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar and Gandhi focusing on Liberty Equality and Fraternity or friendship. Despite few differences with the father of Nation, Subhash Chandra Bose was also firmly committed to this “idea of India’.

The elite landlord and Manusmiriti worshipping ideology was the social base of Hindu Rashtra, Hindutva. These forces and this ideology have grown stronger particularly during last four decades and are rejoicing the sectarianism becoming stronger by the day. They are also giving narrow projection of the temple consecration in contrast to what Gandhi and Vivekananda stood. The sectarian nationalists are for the further deepening of particular ‘civilizational values’ inherent in what can be called as Brahmanism inherent in Manusmriti.

Those standing for doing away with the values of Manusmriti, those integrating all into the umbrella of Indian-ness, those who have stood together cutting across class, caste and gender are currently under different types of intimidations of Hindu India, the parallel and opposite of Muslim Pakistan are emerging.

The only ray of hope for ‘idea of India’ is the same classes of society who ushered in the Idea of India during freedom movement to come together. It is their collective movement; the overarching effort to undermine the forces which gloat over the birth based hierarchical values in the name of religion, those who uphold the Holy Scriptures in contrast to the Indian Constitution. Their movements have been scattered. Their group interests may be different but their interests in protecting the Indian Constitution and Idea of India which emerged during freedom movements does need a collective expression, cutting across the groups- party lines.

Many non-sectarian parties do exist today. The predecessors of many of these had fought the British colonial powers together despite their differences. It is time that the social and political alliance of these sections of society given primacy. As colonial rule was detrimental to the interests of large sections of society, similarly those in power ruling through polarization are also out to undermine the rights of weaker sections of society. This is abundantly clear during the last ten years or so.

Hysteria cannot be combated by hysteria. We need the ideology which binds the weaker sections of society, the Dalits, religious minorities, women, workers and Adivasis. They have many common values to protect and that is the ‘Idea of India’ which came with freedom movement. Can Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra be the first step in building such a common platform, can the yatra succeed in doing this is the question baying us all?

Related:

Temples should propagate equal respect to all religions: Gandhi on inaugurating Birla Temple

Sustaining Democratic Spirit: Movements and Yatras

Modi’s Attempt to Woo Christian Community

The post Restoring Inclusive Idea of India in the times of Sectarian Nationalism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 (1) Political religion of Nationalism
“They speak grandiloquently of national interest, national honour and national spirit; behind all these high-sounding phrases are hidden the selfish interests of the minority. Drugged by the political religion, called Nationalism, a people becomes the Nation which claims and obtains the effacement of individuals composing the people. Rising and capturing power on the authority of the people, the Nation becomes the enemy of popular freedom. The state being the political organization of society, it is equated with the nation. But it is a historical fact that political organization of society became necessary when homogeneous human communities were divided into possessing and dispossessed classes, and ever since that time the State has been the instrument in the hand of the former to maintain its position of privilege. So, by identifying itself with the State, the Nation becomes antagonistic to the interest and freedom of the people. It is a totalitarian concept. Therefore, nationalist politics cannot but be power-politics without any socially liberating principle.”

(2) Decentralization and a pluralist society
(i) One need not go to people only to catch their votes; to help them cast their votes intelligently would be an immensely more important work. The electorate should be asked to examine the programmes of all the parties, to see if the promises can be fulfilled or, if fulfilled, will really improve matters. As the electorate gradually become critical and discriminating, the time will come when the voters of a locality will tell candidates of all parties to leave them alone; amongst themselves they will find men in whom they can have confidence and who will remain responsible to them between two elections. Once that happens, the end of the party system will begin, and with the parties, the main cause for concentration of power, will disappear. In the process, we shall already have laid down the foundation of a decentralized State of local republics, which combine all functions of the State as they effect the local life…Being thus reared upon a broad foundation of direct democracies, the State will be really democratic. Thus, a pluralist modern society can be built up, at the same time doing away with centralization of power in politics and economics.

(ii) “ It is true that the common people are illiterate; they may not be able to govern the country. But at the same time, is it not a fact that left to themselves, even the most ignorant peasants can manage their affairs better than our present government? The distrust for the ability of the common people to think for themselves and take care of themselves is only a pretext for seizing power in their name and abusing that power to suppress their liberty.”

(3)Who is a revolutionary?
What is a revolution? And who is a revolutionary? A revolutionary is one who has got the idea that the world can be remade, made better than it is today; that is was not created by a supernatural power, and therefore could be remade by human efforts. A revolutionary further starts with the knowledge that the world has been remade time and again, and that the process of remaking the world takes place of necessity. Those Indians who have felt the necessity of remaking our country, and are convinced that the people of India have the power to do so, are revolutionaries. One cannot be a revolutionary, without possessing scientific knowledge. One must have the conviction that not only human beings can remake the world, can make and unmake gods, but ever since the birth of the race have been doing that. Human nature is to set up gods, topple them down, and set up new ones.

(4) Anti-fascism and a free society
We stand for a thorough reconstruction of the national life. Our political objective is the establishment of democratic freedom which will mean effective political power for the people. We strive not only for national freedom, but also for the social emancipation of the toiling masses. Our task is to spread enlightenment which will dispel obscurantism in the political and the spiritual life of the country. We advocate modernism in every walk of life against revivalism. We want the disinherited to come to their own and enjoy the richness and fullness of life on this earth. We want man to be the master of the world and the maker of his destiny.

This is why we radicals favour India’s active participation in the war against Fascism. Fascism stands for the destruction of the political, social and cultural ideals of democracy… The war against Fascism can be won only by rousing in the people their urge for freer and fuller life. The supreme task of our movement is to develop that urge, and thus while defeating Fascism, to lay securely the foundations of a free society which is not only free of foreign rule, but also free of native tyranny, exploitation and injustice.
(The above statement was issued during the Second World War 1939-1945)

(The author is Vice Chairman, Indian Renaissance Institute)

The post Re-construction, federalism, anti-fascism & a free society: MN Roy on his 136th birth anniversary appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Economist Jean Dreze has played a pioneering role in shaping India’s public and social policy. He is most well-known for his advocacy for the employment-guarantee legislation MGNREGA and the National Food Security Act (NFSA). In this interview with NewsClick, he talks about India’s social and economic policies, including the relationship between Hindutva and the economic model pursued today. He says is difficult to see a coherent strategy in current economic policies, while in the social sphere, ‘Rights are out, duties are in’. Edited excerpts.

Economic nationalism informed the freedom movement, which meant Indians took control of the economic sphere. Also, it meant boosting the public sector. What was the purpose behind it, and have we realised the goals?

Economic nationalism, like nationalism itself, can take many forms. I don’t think that it provides much policy guidance unless we spell out how national interests are defined. When India became independent, the control of the economy shifted from the colonial power to an elected national government, and that was certainly a good thing. It also ended the economic stagnation of the first half of the twentieth century and paved the way to sustained development. But does this mean that ‘Indians took control of the economic sphere’? Some did, some did not. Landless labourers, for instance, remained landless labourers, except in Kashmir, where there were extensive land reforms. By and large, the levers of the economy remained in privileged hands. The transfer of power from the colonial government to a privileged Indian minority was a limited form of economic nationalism, with slim results on its own for large parts of the nation.

One problem for India is to reconcile the conflict between capital and labour. What does the state’s retreat from production and public sector sell-off mean for the majority of working Indians?

Public enterprises can resolve the conflict between capital and labour only for a minority of public sector employees. Contrary to public perception, India’s public sector is one of the smallest in the world in terms of employment—barely 5 per cent of the workforce, compared with 12 per cent in Brazil, 22 per cent in the United Kingdom and 28 per cent in China according to ILO data. There is certainly much scope for expansion, especially in sectors like health and education. The fact remains that the bulk of the workforce will be employed in the private sector in the foreseeable future. The conflict between capital and labour there cannot be reconciled, but the state can help workers to handle it by expanding their rights, for instance, the right to decent work conditions and social security benefits. Workers’ organisations are also important in this regard, especially in the informal sector, where they are still few and far between. 

Taking a longer view, a more radical change in terms of the conflict can be achieved by giving workers more say in the management of private enterprises, if not control of it. In principle, many enterprises could be managed by the workers or by managers accountable to the workers. The bosses, of course, are not going to bow out sweetly, but an organised working class could possibly overcome their resistance step by step.

Hindutva is also a form of nationalism, which is proving very destructive. What is the economic model of today promoting? Like in the social sphere, does it also have hidden motives? 

Hindutva is a political movement, and its toll is more political than economic, whether it is the end of democracy or the breakup of the social fabric. In economic policies, there is more continuity than change. If anything, business-driven policies have intensified because business and Hindutva stand in a relation of mutual support. Hindutva adds some new elements, like the devaluation of rational thinking, the obsession with superpower status, the passion for centralisation, and the suspicion of anything foreign. But the material interests that drive economic policy are much the same as before, at least for now.

In matters of social policy, we did see major changes in the last eight years. Rights are out, duties are in. This change is reflected, for instance, in the central government’s hostility towards social programmes like the rural employment guarantee, maternity benefits, social security pensions and even child nutrition schemes. All of them have been undermined in one way or another. Self-reliance for the poor and state support for business seems to be the real meaning of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

How do you see the control of magnates over the economy and the tax breaks they get? Is it that Indians feel their power is not exploitative because they are not British companies as in the colonial era?

I think a lot of people have a vague awareness of corporate power and the wealth of the super-rich without necessarily realising their enormity. In the latest Mood of the Nation poll, the majority of respondents felt that today’s economic policies benefit big business. On the other hand, when it was pointed out a few days ago that it would take one million years for a hundred workers working at the minimum wage to earn as much as Gautam Adani already has, there was a flutter on social media, suggesting that most people do not realise how rich and powerful the super-rich are. But even if they do, it makes little difference because the public has little influence in these matters. Most people in India would probably support a wealth tax on the super-rich or higher property taxes, but none of that is likely to happen in a hurry. The power of the super-rich includes the power to defend their privileges.

Are ordinary farmers aware of how the terms of trade go against them?

I doubt that most farmers have a clear view of the terms of trade. They are obscure enough for economists. And they may or may not matter much to individual farmers. Roughly speaking, the terms of trade capture what the agricultural sector can buy from the rest of the economy per unit of produce sold in the market. This would be a useful statistic for a surplus farmer. On the other hand, consider farmers in Jharkhand, where I live. Most of them are deficit farmers who grow some of their food and buy the rest, along with other items, from their earnings as wage labourers in the non-agricultural sector. An improvement in the terms of trade may or may not help them. They have many other things to worry about, starting with the drought that is sweeping large parts of the state right now.

What most farmers do understand, I think, is that farming is not a very rewarding occupation, especially in dry-land areas. Their job is full of arduous work, hardships and uncertainty, but at the end of it, they can barely make ends meet. And it doesn’t get much better over time because productivity growth barely compensates for the shrinking of per-capita landholdings. Meanwhile, the rest of the economy is growing relatively fast, so farmers tend to be left behind. It is this relative loss, I think, that creates frustration among farmers and makes them look for alternatives.

How do you view the talk about ‘handouts’ and ‘doles’?

We should not use propaganda terms like doles and freebies used by the corporate-sponsored media to attack whatever subsidies they dislike. We should assess subsidies on their own merit. Subsidies may be justified on various grounds, such as social equity, public health or the protection of the environment. If they have no justification, you could call them wasteful subsidies. The bulk of wasteful subsidies in India benefits privileged groups and the corporate sector, for instance, in the form of over-subsidised power, tax concessions, unrecovered loans and privatisation of natural resources. These are the big handouts if you insist on using that sort of term. Some wasteful subsidies may benefit poor people as well, but they are quite small in comparison.

Redistribution is an essential role of the state, and there is nothing wrong with assisting the poor by providing certain facilities or commodities to them for free. Politicians often make exaggerated promises for their own purpose, which is not always a healthy thing. But it is only by extracting these sorts of promises that the poor get anything in India’s lopsided democracy. Most of the big steps of social policy in the recent past, like the employment guarantee act and the National Food Security Act, were made possible by democratic politics. The idea of restraining this process, as the Supreme Court reportedly suggested, is quite dangerous.

Is India facing a crisis of what should be its next development strategy? And what is the way out?

It is indeed difficult to see a coherent strategy in current economic policies beyond the general love of business. The NDA government came to power with a clarion call for the return of black money stashed abroad, but this turned out to be a wild goose chase. A surgical strike on black money at home was the next move, but this backfired badly when demonetisation sent the economy off the rail. The trail of confused policies continued with Make in India, Smart Cities, Atmanirbhar Bharat, “one district-one product”, and quixotic goals like doubling farm incomes by 2022 (that’s today) or making India a $5 trillion economy by 2024.

The common denominator of these policies is that they leave a lot to the imagination, so the specifics are easily turned into business sops. Atmanirbhar Bharat, for instance, quickly metamorphosed into the so-called “production linked incentive scheme”, a Rs 2 lakh crore shower of subsidies for big business, including foreign companies like Ola and Apple. As Raghuram Rajan pointed out, we are in danger of a return to some sort of Licence Raj.

The way out is to strive for public policies that focus on improving people’s lives instead of being swayed by privileged interests. The expansion of human capabilities is not just a welfare issue, it is also a springboard for development. A modest increase in the tax-GDP ratio, cuts in wasteful subsidies and a big investment in health, nutrition, education and social security would be a good start. It would serve the triple goal of economic development, helping the poor and curbing India’s huge inequalities.

Courtesy: Newsclick

The post ‘Self-reliance for Poor and State Support for Business is the New Motto’—Jean Dreze appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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

The post Homogenisation critical to rise of majoritarian nationalism: Justice Gautam Patel appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Former Vice President Hamid Ansari has ruffled some feathers. Known for his perceptive remarks on democracy, secularism and human rights, this time he has spoken again. At an international conference organised by the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, he described nationalism to be an “ideological poison”.

Saying that nationalism is often confused with patriotism, but they differ in meaning and content, he said that many societies have become the “victims of two pandemics” – religiosity and strident nationalism that impacts their behavioural patterns. He said humanity could be saved only if these two pandemics are evaded and replaced by human behaviour in light of collective experience and moral guidance. 

In his address at the event on Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev’s philosophy “to spread peace, harmony and human happiness”, he said that it weren’t the founders of religious faith who propounded religiosity, but their followers who diluted or corrupted their teachings. 

Speaking about Guru Nanak whose 550^th birth anniversary is to be celebrated soon, Ansari said that the Sikhism founder advocated brotherhood to all humans, espoused the cause of the downtrodden and advocated what in modern terms could be called ‘interfaith dialogue’.

Evoking the words of other national and international figures he said, “Decades earlier, Rabindranath Tagore had called nationalism ‘a great menace’, describing it as ‘one of the most powerful anaesthetics that man has invented’. He had expressed himself against ‘the idolatry of the nation’. Albert Einstein considered it ‘as infantile disease’.”

Pointing out to how patriotism was both militarily and culturally defensive, he said, “It inspires nobler sentiments but must not be allowed to run amok since in that condition it ‘will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend’.”

Saying how nationalism in its strident form is inseparable from the desire for power, he said, nationalism means identifying oneself with a single nation, placing it beyond good and evil, right or wrong, suspending individual judgment, and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its perceived interests. And doing so with impunity might lead to unstable and explosive conditions.

Calling both, religious and strident nationalism undesirable, he said that the alternatives to both, the salvation of humanity and human happiness lay in the promotion of peace and harmony through tolerance, dialogue, accommodation and acceptance.

Hamid Ansari: Always a vocal critic of right-wing propounded nationalism

The current speech by Hamid Ansari is not the first time he has expressed his views on the feeling of aggressive nationalism that is slowly engulfing the country.

In his book, “Dare I Question? Reflections on Contemporary Challenges”, a collection of his speeches and writings he says, “In the typology of democracy; ours is a liberal one based on universal suffrage, tolerance, respect for diversity, a comprehensive charter of rights and Rule of Law that brings together the notions of rights, development, governance and justice.

Their attainment is premised on equality and fraternity. Any dilution of this principle will take it in the direction of an ethnic democracy, implicitly or otherwise, and would bring forth an illiberal structure.”

In an interview in 2017 as the outgoing Vice President, he expressed concern about the escalating violence against minorities in the name of cow-protection to a renewed assertion of majoritarian-cultural nationalism. The propensity to be able to assert your nationalism day in and day out was unnecessary, he had said.

He has earlier asserted, “Hyper-nationalism and the closing of the mind is also ‘a manifestation of insecurity about one’s place in the world.”

Right-wing up in arms

It is natural to assume that Hamid Ansari’s statements against the evil spread of nationalism haven’t gone down well with the right-wing nationalistic fascist.

Tearing him and his speech apart on Twitter, Hindutvawadi trolls have come to the rescue of their ideologies against his.

Some of the tweets are below.

#Breaking | Mohammad Hamid Ansari, the former Vice President of India, reignites the nationalism debate by describing nationalism as an ‘ideological poison’.

TIMES NOW’s Mohit Sharma with more details. Listen in. pic.twitter.com/msov52Mbnp

— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) November 8, 2019

#Nationalism today is often confused with patriotism but they differ in meaning and content, says former vice-president Hamid Ansari.https://t.co/ufqECbNi4e

— The Hindu (@the_hindu) November 7, 2019

#Nationalism today is often confused with patriotism but they differ in meaning and content, says former vice-president Hamid Ansari.https://t.co/ufqECbNi4e

— The Hindu (@the_hindu) November 7, 2019

Hamid Ansari has consistently opposedthe idea of jingoistic nationalism and has said that democracy can become a tyranny if one is not allowed to criticise the government’s policies. Many rabid right-wingers have questioned his appointment as the Vice President of the country in the past. Today, after his speech they’re once again up in arms, guns blazing, ready to question his ‘nationality’.

Related:

Muslims have now become ‘Neo- Dalits’ in Indian Society

Dissent essential in open society: Hamid Ansari

How Hindus and Muslims together built India’s composite culture

The post “Nationalism is ideological poison”: Hamid Ansari appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Energy Infra Post
 

The post FDI in Coal: Why Every Ounce of Our Mineral Resources Should Remain in Public Hands appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Business Standard

The abrogation of Article 370, a constitutional provision that gave special provisions to the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has been followed by meticulous micro-management on the ground by the cadres of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to stifle all discussion and possible dissent around the issue. Now an incident at the Satara Law College yesterday reveals how local persons owing allegiance to the riling BJP threatened the authorities.

A program called “भारतीय राज्यघटनेतून 370 कलम हद्दपार: राष्ट्रीय व आंतरराष्ट्रीय परिणाम”, to discuss the actions of the Government of India around the abrogation of the Article 370 and the subsequent lockdown and curfew, was organised on August 29 in Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College of Satara. Satara falls in the Western Maharashtra region.’

Earlier, some persons allied to the BJP had objected to the program. An activist, on the condition of anonymity said, “These persons from the BJP said that if the program has any ‘anti-national’ content then we will disrupt (bawal) it. We will video shoot the whole program.”

The law college is affiliated to Rayat Shikshan Sanstha and was founded by the late Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil. Bhaurao Patil was a leading social activist and educator from Maharashtra. He was a strong advocate of mass education and had founded the Rayat Education Society.

Bhaurao played an important role in educating backward castes and people belonging to low income groups by coining the philosophy earn and learn. He was a prominent member of Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth seeker’s society), founded by Mahatma Jotirao Phule. The people of Maharashtra honoured him with the sobriquet Karmaveer (King of actions) and the Government of India awarded him with Padma Bhushan in 1959 in India.

The program was organised by various progressive groups. Upon hearing about the program, it is reported that these ‘activists’ approached the Principal Dr. Sujata Pawar and asked her to cancel the program. The Principal strongly objected to this and didn’t give in to their demands. She informed them that the college authorities will not cancel the program. The program was scheduled for today, August 29 at Satara.

Later, it was learnt that the BJP goons had demanded from the college authorities to allow one speaker on behalf of BJP so that “they could counter the claims” being made in the program.They were able to coerce the college administration with the help of police and reportedly compelled the college authorities to give them space in the program. The activist said, “Why was it necessary for them to demand to be a part of this program? Why could they not have a separate program?”

The program took place today and had Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s senior leader from the region, Vasant Nalavade as the main speaker. Nalavade is also a retired air-force officer. Reportedly, Nalavade could speak only for ten minutes in the midst of disruption and sloganeering. The BJP cadres apparently shouted “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and other slogans.  While two others, Praveen Deshpande Kolhapur and Anand Okh from the BJP, occupied the dais for a longer period.

While the number of students was around 50-60, the program saw a huge presence of BJP cadres and police personnel. Clearly, this ‘mass mobilisation’ was orchestrated to ensure dissent and discussion is crushed into silence.

By such moves, which are arguably coercive, a controversial decision of the government is being normalised through such micromanagement.
That a college can, in 21^st century India, be coerced into re-shaping discussions and seminars by political forces in power, signals the death knell for intellectual activity and democratic debate. It also is telling that all educational institutions are being watched by rogue and right leaning elements and whenever they would feel a threat to their ideology, they will resort to threats and intimidations. In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, the Home Minister Amit Shah had directed various state units to organise programs to hail the decision. Following this several programs have been held across the country, including one on “Akhand Bharat” in Mumbai few days back.
 
 

The post BJP ‘goons’ threaten to disrupt a program to discuss Art 370, end up sharing stage: Satara appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Source: Dennis Jarvis | Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
 

A little after the inaugural meeting of the Indian National Congress on 28 December 1885, the Bombay Gazette carried a report on the event, expressing genuine wonder at the proceedings. To begin with, it was noted, the very fact that Indians ‘representing the various races and communities, castes and sub-divisions of castes, religions and sub-divisions of religions, met together in one place to form themselves, if possible, into one political whole,’ was ‘most unique and interesting’.

Then there was fascination born from the sheer visual extravaganza that the meeting appeared to be: ‘There were men from Madras,’ announced the Gazette (throwing political correctness to the wind) ‘the blackness of whose complexion seemed to be made blacker by spotless white turbans’. Standing beside them was the cream of colonial Bengal society, many of whom ‘appeared in entirely European costume’. There were ‘bearded, bulky and large-limbed’ Pathans, just as there were ‘Banyas from Gujarat’ and ‘Sindhees from Kurrachee’. The Marathi delegates came flaunting ‘cart-wheel’ turbans while the fire-worshipping Parsis displayed, in the Gazette’s opinion, a ‘not very elegant head-dress’. To add to this, there were many delegates from the South who appeared bare-chested, just as there were some who saw no reason to use footwear. ‘All these men assembled in the same hall,’ concluded the report, ‘presented such a variety of costumes and complexions, that a similar scene can scarcely be witnessed anywhere’ – except perhaps, it offered, ‘at a fancy (dress) ball’. 

To Indians today there is nothing particularly unusual about the multiplicity of languages and cultures our countrymen and women uphold and celebrate – in a single urban classroom, for example, there may be children who speak English during their lessons, Malayalam or Meiteilon at home when with their parents, and Hindi to friends while playing gully cricket, added to which might well be extra lessons in Sanskrit or German. But a little over a century ago, the sight of so many diverse groups represented in one single room was nothing short of extraordinary. The proposition that these men – with their different colours, costumes, cuisines and castes – desired to assert a common political identity was even more revolutionary. After all, an almost chaotic sense of division seemed to be the guiding principle of life in India. There was language to begin with, so utterly complex that a dialect spoken in one district could be replete with peculiar inflections unfamiliar to fellow speakers of the same tongue in the next district. 

Beyond geography, there were the divisions of caste: while Brahmins existed everywhere, there were 107 different types of them in Varanasi alone, each variety claiming superiority, and each asserting the distinctness of its identity. Costume, again, revealed a great deal: where Tamil Brahmins grew their tuft of hair at the back of the head, the Malayali Brahmin wore it in the front; where Iyengar women saw white as the colour of widowhood, the Namboodiri bride, just across the Western Ghats, wore nothing but white to her bridal chamber. And while the Rajput lady moved around with a veil, wearing even a blouse was considered indecent in Malabar. Only the most tenuous of links seemed to run through these groups while the more solid ingredients essential to the birth of modern nationalism seemed, even to most Indians, worryingly absent. 
 

To some thinkers, India was enriched and made strong by the breathtaking heterogeneity that had long been its hallmark; others argued that homogeneity was what made sturdy nation-states.

What, then, united these people and slowly brought them together on a common platform? To begin with, it helped that they were standing up to British inequity, an unpleasant experience they all suffered in common. As was once remarked, ‘It is not so much sympathy with one’s fellows as much as hostility towards the outsider that makes for nationalism.’ It certainly did seem the case that while finding sturdy bonds between Indians was not an easy task, it was definitely possible to identify a common, oppressive enemy, in whose expulsion lay everybody’s combined salvation. 

The irony that this nascent sense of national feeling was, in some respects, a by-product of British rule was not lost on India’s early freedom fighters. It was after all the English language – a colonial import, if ever there was one—that permitted India’s nationalists to engage with one another. It was in English that Jyotirao Phule, one of India’s most remarkable crusaders against caste, read Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, and it was also this very language, among others, that delivered to the Maratha rajah Serfoji lessons in science in early 19th century Thanjavur.
Indeed, when that first meeting of the Indian National Congress was convened in 1885, the circular inviting participants insisted that while delegates ‘from all parts’ of India were welcome, they would need to be ‘well acquainted with the English language’ in order to be able to communicate with one another. In other words, to birth a mood of nationalism, what was needed was not only a shared love for India, but also one of the most potent instruments of imperial rule: the coloniser’s grammar book.

As late as 1947, the lack of a common language troubled the minds of India’s leaders, for language could potentially unite or divide. The report of the Linguistic Provinces Commission, appointed in 1948 by the Constituent Assembly, is telling of the formidable challenges in welding together such a patchwork of cultures as existed in India. ‘The work of 60 years of the Indian National Congress’ with its vision of a united land, the Commission noted, confronted ‘face to face’ the ‘centuries-old India of narrow loyalties, petty jealousies and ignorant prejudices engaged in a mortal conflict’. They were, furthermore, ‘simply horrified to see how thin was the ice upon which we were skating’.

After all, why should Naga tribes in the north-east feel any affinity with former subjects of the maharajah of Baroda in western India? What was to be done about the fact that though they were now people of one country, a Malayali’s traditional links with Arabia were stronger than any that existed with Delhi, just as Delhi’s bonds with Kabul were richer than its relationship with Tamil country? So, too, the Islam of the Mappila in Kozhikode had little to do with the faith as practiced in Bhopal, just as the daily worship of the Punjabi Hindu was vastly different from that of his co-religionists in Orissa. 

Ethnic nationalism would not work here because the subcontinent was bursting with ethnic diversity, and forcing any kind of rigid, overpowering uniformity over its peoples would break the nation before it was even born.

It was no wonder, then, that while the Congress had, before 1947, established regional units on linguistic lines, there was profound (though ultimately unsuccessful) resistance to permitting Indian states to be established on the basis of language. As the Linguistic Provinces Commission warned, ‘Some of the ablest men in the country came before us and confidently and emphatically stated that language in this country stood for and represented culture, race, history, individuality, and finally a sub-nation.’ If such sub-nations were given political expression, would that not jeopardise the larger vision of unity? Was this not a recipe for the future disintegration of the India for which our freedom fighters had suffered and fought?

These questions had exercised India’s best minds from the very start, with the result that more than one vision of nationalism was articulated across the political spectrum, from the poet Rabindranath Tagore to the proponent of Hindutva, V.D. Savarkar. As the scholar Sunil Khilnani notes, from the late 19th century the challenge, both philosophical and political, was always about ‘How to discover or devise some coherent, shared norms – values and commitments—that could connect Indians together under modern conditions.’ And whether or not India’s diversity was an asset or a dangerous weakness depended on which of these visions was allowed to prevail and gain moral influence over the majority of India’s people. 

To some thinkers, India was enriched and made strong by the breathtaking heterogeneity that had long been its hallmark; others argued that homogeneity was what made sturdy nation-states, and as far as possible, diversity ought to make way for a master culture, woven around a majoritarian religious principle. To some, as Shashi Tharoor puts it, India resembled a thali or a platter with ‘a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.’ This vision of nationalism focused on transcending difference by looking to a shared, modern future – whatever India’s fragmented yesterdays may have been, everybody could now be an equal partner in shaping its tomorrow. On the other hand, to proponents of what would become Hindutva, this was, to quote Ashutosh Varshney, the ‘opposite of nation-building’ for a ‘salad bowl does not produce cohesion; a melting pot does’. And if India had to become a melting pot, as opposed to a thali or a salad bowl, its regional cultures and local identities would have to make sacrifices for a greater cause. Hindutva was the pot, and it was the smaller cultures that would have to endure the melting.

Given that the freedom fighters had to rally Indians behind them and stand up to imperial might, it is understandable that the first of these visions were more popular – to take everyone along in a working consensus was wiser than to succumb to quarrels about which culture would become national, and whose identities would be renounced. Instead of one kind of uniform appearance, a joint cooperative effort was what they envisioned. 

As the Mahatma wrote, ‘Hindustan belongs to all those who are born and bred here and who have no other country to look to. Therefore, it belongs to Parsis, Beni Israels, to Indian Christians, Muslims and other non-Hindus as much as to Hindus.’

As early as 1884, the poet and champion of the modern Hindi language, Harischandra, explained this vision of Indian nationalism. Referring to all residents of Hindustan as Hindus, he declared: ‘Brother Hindus! You, too, should not insist any more on all details of religious faith and practice. Increase mutual love and chant this “mahamantra”. Who lives in Hindustan, whatever his colour and whatever his caste, he is a Hindu. Help the Hindus. Bengalis, Marathis, Panjabis, Madrasis, Vaidiks, Jains, Brahmos, Mussalmans, all should join hands.’ 

The following year, the prominent Muslim reformer Sir Syed Ahmed Khan added his weight to this conception of Indian nationalism: ‘Remember,’ he pointed out, that ‘the words “Hindu” and “Muhammadan” are only meant for religious distinction, otherwise all persons whether Hindu, Muhammadan, or Christian, who reside in this country belong to one and the same nation.’ By 1909, Madan Mohan Malaviya too reaffirmed this position. ‘How ennobling it is,’ he pronounced, ‘to even think of that high ideal of patriotism where Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees and Christians stand shoulder to shoulder as brothers and work for the common good of all… we cannot build up in separation a national life such as would be worth living; we must rise and fall together.’ 

Perhaps the greatest support for this vision of modern Indian nationalism came from Mahatma Gandhi and our future prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Though they disagreed on many things, the Father of the Nation and his protégé were more or less in agreement on the broad idea of what made the Indian people one. Ethnic nationalism would not work here because the subcontinent was bursting with ethnic diversity, and forcing any kind of rigid, overpowering uniformity over its peoples would break the nation before it was even born. 

Religion, as far as Gandhi saw it, could mobilise people but could not serve as a sufficient or enduring basis for nationalism. It had value, admittedly, and there was civilisational unity among the people despite numerous differences – why else would men and women from across the subcontinent crisscross the land on pilgrim routes that encompassed Rameswaram and Benares, Jagannath and Haridwar? But this did not make India a land of Hindus alone – everyone who had adopted India as their home had a place in the nation. 

If a nation was, as Marcel Mauss noted … a society ‘where there is a relative moral, mental, and cultural unity between the inhabitants’, in India that unity was exemplified in the mature understanding among its peoples to preserve and cherish diversity.

As the Mahatma wrote, ‘Hindustan belongs to all those who are born and bred here and who have no other country to look to. Therefore, it belongs to Parsis, Beni Israels, to Indian Christians, Muslims and other non-Hindus as much as to Hindus. Free India will not be a Hindu raj; it will be an Indian raj based not on the majority of any religious sect or community, but on the representatives of the whole people without distinction of religion…’  ‘Religion,’ he believed, ‘is a personal matter which should have no place in politics.” Naturally, the idea of nationalism as a commodity designed only for Hindus was as abhorrent to him as the notion that Muslims constituted a separate nation and could seek, for that reason, partition. 
Nehru, too, articulated nationalism in similar terms where diversity was not an impediment to love for one’s country, and inclusiveness and tolerance were, in fact, an ancestral principle once again elevated to the forefront as modern India reclaimed its destiny. He too pointed to a certain civilisational bond. ‘Some kind of a dream of unity,’ he argued, ‘has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilisation. That unity,’ however, ‘was not conceived as something imposed from outside’, as the British had done. ‘It was something deeper, and within its fold the widest tolerance of belief and custom was practiced, and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged.’ 
Various races, religions and ethnicities had co-existed in India, and difference was accommodated within a larger tradition rather than subjugated or rejected. There was, in other words, room for everyone in India in the past, and the India of the future would reinforce such inclusive national ideals in order to make its way in the 20th century and beyond.
If a nation was, as Marcel Mauss noted in L’Anee Sociologique, a society ‘where there is a relative moral, mental, and cultural unity between the inhabitants’, in India that unity was exemplified in the mature understanding among its peoples to preserve and cherish diversity. 
This vision of nationalism was not without its challengers. V.D. Savarkar articulated in what is now a founding text of Hindutva an ideology where ‘Hinduness’ rather than a celebration of unity in diversity becomes the cornerstone of the nation. This was not a religious argument, offering instead several political criteria. After all, Hindus themselves were hardly a united force. The 1911 Census of India found, for example, that ‘a quarter of the persons classed as Hindus deny the supremacy of Brahmans, a quarter do not worship the great Hindu gods… a half do not regard cremation as obligatory, and two-fifths eat beef.’ There was, in other words, no perfect way to define who was a Hindu and who was not on account of the sheer divergence of custom and practice within Hindu communities – i.e. Hindus, too, could only be understood in the plural rather than the singular. 

[N]ationalism, according to Golwalkar, was not ‘a mere bundle of political and economic rights’, it was a cultural idea in which some were included and some had necessarily to be left out.

Savarkar offered an explanation for this state of affairs. The Hindus, soon after the Aryans arrived, had formed themselves into a nation. Over time, however, this was ‘first overshadowed and then almost forgotten’ as culture became fragmented. Lord Rama, who is treated by Savarkar as a historical figure, rejuvenated the nation, only for its unity to be crushed by the advent of Muslim invaders. Leaving aside the lack of historicity to this argument, the point ultimately made was that what bound together the Hindu nation was the ‘blood of the mighty race’ of the Aryans, so that ‘no people in the world can more justly claim to get recognized as a racial unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews’ That is why, he claimed, ‘the Nayars of Malabar weep over the sufferings of the Brahmins of Kashmir’ (when in fact the Nairs had little knowledge of where precisely Kashmir was or what its Brahmins were doing). Meanwhile, though Muslims and Christians in India were converts from Hindus of yore, they were, nonetheless, disqualified from membership of the nation. 

Why was this so? Hindus, according to Savarkar, were members of a single nation because no matter the countless diversities they counted within their ranks, no matter how fragmented they were, they saw India not only as their motherland (mathrubhumi) and fatherland (pitrubhumi, the land of their ancestors), but also as their holy land (punyabhumi). Muslim and Christian converts might fulfil the first two criteria but they did not envision the subcontinent, defined since antiquity as the land between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, as sacred – it was in Mecca and Rome that their sacred sites were located. The Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and others whose religions were born in India were all eligible to be members of the Hindu nation, but Christians and Muslims, whose faiths emerged in lands beyond India’s historical limits, were at best second-class citizens. 
 

While the inclusive nationalism of Gandhi, Nehru and assorted political leaders came from direct experience of fighting for freedom, Hindutva was constructed by thinkers who were not active participants in the struggle against imperialism.

Savarkar’s heir, M.S. Golwalkar, built on this and rejected the notion of territorial nationalism, as promoted by Gandhi, Nehru and the freedom fighters. ‘In this land,’ he declared, ‘Hindus have been the owners, Parsis and Jews the guests, and Muslims and Christian the dacoits.’ Religious resentment was pronounced in Golwalkar, who was suspicious of minorities. ‘They are born in this land, no doubt,’ he wrote. ‘But are they true to its salt? Are they grateful…? Do they feel that they are the children of this land… Do they feel it a duty to serve her? No! Together with the change in faith, gone are the spirit of love and devotion for the nation.’

In essence, then, the Hindutva vision was perched on the twin notions of Hindu pride as well as an antagonism towards the disloyal ‘other’ – nationalism, according to Golwalkar, was not ‘a mere bundle of political and economic rights’, it was a cultural idea in which some were included and some had necessarily to be left out.

But this predictably controversial Hindutva vision existed largely on the fringes of society. While the inclusive nationalism of Gandhi, Nehru and assorted political leaders came from direct experience of fighting for freedom, Hindutva was constructed by thinkers who were not active participants in the struggle against imperialism and therefore could fabricate theories divorced from the lived experience of the masses. In actual fact, most Hindus hardly saw themselves as a fixed, united group who could transform that identity into a rock-solid sense of nationalism. 
Even the question of who exactly a Hindu was, in practical terms, remained frustratingly unresolved. In 1871, for example, a ‘committee of native gentlemen’ defined as Hindu all those who believed in caste. But caste appeared among Muslims and Christians also. In the 1891 census, then, the Hindu was defined by exclusion, as ‘the large residuum that is not Sikh, or Jain, or Buddhist, or professedly Animistic, or included in one of the foreign religions, such as Islam, Mazdaism, Christianity, or Hebraism’. 

Sir Monier Monier-Williams felt that the notion of a pan-Indian Hindu identity was ‘wholly arbitrary and confessedly unsatisfactory’ for the simple reason that in practice, Hinduism was amorphous. Some, such as a Brahmin census commissioner in princely Travancore, argued that Hindus were those who accepted the faith of the Brahmins, which, however, ran into trouble when one considers the words of J.W. Massie, who as early as 1840 pointed out that to consider the Brahmin as representative of all Hindus was as bewildering a statement as saying that the Italians represented all Europeans—there was too much diversity for simplistic statements to be true.  

[T]o repeat a cliché, one can be simultaneously a proud Santhal or Kashmiri, a devout Muslim or Parsi, a determined atheist or rationalist, a straight majority or a gay minority, and yet love one’s country.

The issue of diversity and nationalism and whether they complement or oppose each other, then, boils down to which vision of the nation is embraced. The Constitution India adopted in 1950 enshrines the former idea, creating a space for Indians to love the country without having to surrender any other equally legitimate identity – to repeat a cliché, one can be simultaneously a proud Santhal or Kashmiri, a devout Muslim or Parsi, a determined atheist or rationalist, a straight majority or a gay minority, and yet love one’s country. One can assert proudly a patriotism that rises over and above other feelings, without clashing with individual and group identities. 

In this vision of the nation, nationalism is not a zero-sum game; it can coexist with a variety of other valid sentiments. It draws wisdom from the past, but is oriented towards a progressive future. As Nehru saw it, it was predicated on a national philosophy featuring the seven goals of unity, parliamentary democracy, scientific temper, non-alignment, socialism, industrialisation and secularism. 

Some of these values may change with time, as we evolve as a people, but the Indian nation is not threatened if a state voices sharp concerns, or if raucous debate and disagreement take place routinely, so long as they occur within established institutions and in keeping with certain ground rules by which everybody agrees to play. Indeed, it creates checks and balances that prevents any one group from dominating the rest; any one region from engulfing others; and one version of a religion from enforcing its principles on even the last rationalist, or those who believe in a different definition of the same religion. The principle was that we could all continue to embrace our differences while staying wedded to a national consensus. 

The other vision of nationalism, meanwhile, has mutated into a one-size-fits-all variant, which is at odds with history, and denies consensus as the guiding principle of the nation. ‘Such identity,’ the historian Romila Thapar notes, ‘tends to iron out diversity and insists on conformity’ – in other words, pluralism is weakness. 

Leaving aside the treatment it proposes for religious minorities, this means radical changes even for Hindus themselves, as a tradition that has been described as a fascinating ‘mosaic of distinct cults, deities, sects and ideas’ (including contradictory ideas) is regimented to address various anxieties. This is a nationalism that follows one definition, one form, one loyalty, and one narrow ideology. 

[D]ecades and generations of officially promoting diversity means that attempting to reverse the flow and manufacture a narrow nationalism will provoke challenges, if not long-term disaster.

Naturally, this calls for a new structure and a new vocabulary of Hindu identity, featuring certain sacred books but not others; fewer gods, at the cost of others; and a standardisation of practice that sometimes goes against India’s own manifest heritage in its quest to service an overarching, synthetic cultural identity. So, for instance, all Hindus must avoid eating beef (though several castes happily did in the past) and should avoid meat in general (though a number of Brahmin communities too were not vegetarian). Nationalism must have a fixed language—Sanskrit is ideal but in the interim, Hindi will do – a language that to large numbers of Indians is hardly less alien than English, with which the country has made its peace. And then dress codes, social behaviour and much else must also fall in line, creating more a sharp machine to nurse insecurities than an organic people who live, breathe, prosper and preserve their diverse traditions and personalities. 

One-size-fits-all rules, however, have a tendency to backfire in India. And decades and generations of officially promoting diversity means that attempting to reverse the flow and manufacture a narrow nationalism will provoke challenges, if not long-term disaster. When, for instance, Hindi nationalism was force-fed from Delhi, the powers in Karnataka responded in 2018 with a Kannada-oriented sub-nationalism that even flew its own flag. If the idea is to create an ‘us or them’ with the ‘majority’ on one side, and the minority as the enemy within, the architects of this scheme will discover too many ‘thems’ sown into the fabric of the majority itself.

The historical lesson is clear – there was a reason why in 1947 India prevented nationalism from distorting into a rigid beast and envisioned it as a more malleable reflection of our multiple realities. To re-engineer this mature, long-standing policy in black and white today will only prove calamitous, showing that far from making India great again, what we will end up doing is breaking India.

Manu S Pillai is the author of three books of history, most recently The Courtesan, the Mahatma & the Italian Brahmin.

First published on https://www.theindiaforum.in/
 

The post An Essay for Our Times: Diversity and Indian Nationalism appeared first on SabrangIndia.