By D V Kumar
Nationalism is a hotly debated issue in India these days and rightly so. It is only through a critical and creative dialogue that ideas in all their glory can be recovered. Unless they are subjected to constant interrogation, there is a possibility, in fact, a danger that they are appropriated for the all the wrong reasons. One such idea is nationalism. Ever since the incidents on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Feb 9 2016, there have been excellent articles from some of the outstanding social scientists especially from JNU on the question of nationalism. Also it has been quite an education to listen to some of them speak at , what came to be called as Freedom Square at JNU on nationalism.
Contrary to what dominant social science argued long back that collective identities (including the nationalist identity) would become weaker in the context of modernity and development, what one has seen in the recent past is actually a strengthening of them. Our discussion would , however, be confined to the trajectory that the idea of nationalism has taken in India.
There is something dialectical about the very idea of nationalism. It can be progressive, democratic, liberating and empowering and at the same time it can also be regressive, undemocratic and oppressive. It depends upon what uses it is employed for.
The nationalism that grew in India during the freedom struggle , as a response to the colonial rule, was largely a liberating, empowering and democratic phenomenon. It sought to include everyone on an equal footing. It offered a great possibility, a great hope. It was something to be celebrated. There was childlike innocence in the way we fought for our independence but at the same time there was a confidence born out of a long civilization. There was almost a touch of romance. One could have hardly refused to fall in love with the ideas of justice, equality and freedom which were the guiding principles of our nationalism. It was an open invitation to explore. Enough of foreign rule and it was time to negotiate our own lives in a creative manner. In this endeavour science was to be a partner. Science was viewed as culture. When Nehru spoke about scientific temper, he meant precisely this. Science was to be a way of life, not to be merely seen as an instrument of development, as was the case in the West. Yes, there were different social groups –dalits, tribals, religious minorities, women – who had their own concerns, grievances and anxieties. But there was a general consensus that these needed to be addressed. When the Constitution, which was a product of reasoned debates and contestations, came into existence, it unleashed enormous democratising possibilities. Its incorporation of fundamental rights and freedoms was a paradigmatic shift in a society which had and still has some of the most oppressive structures such as the caste system. A democratic Constitution could have emerged only in the context of a democratic nationalism.
The nationalism that is sought to be privileged now in India these days is almost the antithesis of what nationalism stood for during the freedom struggle and just in its aftermath. Three distinctive features of the present day nationalism can be identified. First, it is based on exclusions-dalits, tribals, religious minorities and women are subjected to a systematic relegation to the background. The fact that they can become easy targets for physical attacks for doing what they have been doing for years-skinning of dead animals by dalits (the new- found love for Dalits needs to be looked at from an electoral perspective), for example, clearly shows that they have no space in the dominant imagination of the nation. Also women are constantly lectured on what kind of dress they should wear and how which actually makes them objects of patriarchal domination. There is a symbiosis between patriarchy and nationalism. What we are seeing today is an aggressive and masculinised version of nationalism. As noted by Anderson, a nation is an ‘imagined political community’. He, however, did not look at the possibility of multiple imaginations and also the possibility that at certain historical junctures certain imaginations (rightwing nationalism at present, for example) hold sway over others. In the current dominant (rightwing) imagination, there is clearly no space for marginalised and oppressed sections of the society such as dalits. Either they fall in line or be ready to be subjected to ‘cognitive blackout’. Therefore the nationalism that is presently on the ascendant has lost its progressive and emancipatory potential. It refuses to be inclusive and democratic.
Secondly, nationalism has been reduced to symbols, polarising at that. Bharat mata ki jai and the cow, for example, have emerged as the symbols around which nationalism is sought to be constructed. These symbols, it needs to be recognised, have a chequered history behind them. Bharat mata ki jai was a slogan originally found in the novel Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. It was essentially used as a mobilising tool by the Hindu right wing nationalist leadership against the British and Muslims.. It was basically used to mobilise the Hindus. Therefore from the very beginning it has been a polarising tool. The other symbol cow (which is organically connected to the rural economy) has become a hugely politicised animal in the recent past. As D. N. Jha argues cows were sacrificed in the Vedic rituals in the ancient India and therefore to argue that cows were never killed in India would be historically untenable. It assumed a political character during the medieval times when the Muslim invasions began. It began to be used as a differentiating symbol between the Hindus and Muslims. Some wanted to separate themselves from Muslims who happened to be beef-eaters and they used the cow as a ‘signifier’ and made it ‘holy’. Symbols are important in the national imagination but care should be taken to select symbols which have the potential to unify rather than divide as it is presently happening, unless, of course, the intention is to divide rather than unify.
Thirdly, a cosy relationship developed between corporate capitalism and right-wing nationalism. Whenever capitalism is in crisis as it is in now, with high levels of unemployment and the falling rate of profit, it looks for those phenomena which can distract the attention of people. It has found in Hindutva one such phenomenon. Also capital needs a reactionary ideology to deradicalise class consciousness and prevent the possibility of marginalised sections of the society coming together in the fight for justice and equity. The ideology of the right-wing nationalism is precisely that. Further equality is an idea with which both of them- capitalism and right-wing nationalism- are uncomfortable with. It is not that this kind of relationship was not there before but what is new is the deep intensity of relationship that has developed between them now. ‘Make in India’ programme, for example, is indicative of the renewed relationship between them now.
The above features of the contemporary nationalism would compel one to conclude that it has assumed a distorted form. It no longer remains as emancipatory as it once promised to be. It is time we fought hard to recover the progressive and empowering idea of nationalism which once united us on the basis of principles of equality, justice, secularism and respect for the difference.
(D.V. Kumar teaches Sociology at the Department of Sociology, North-Eastern Hill University}