Nationalism: India needs to be cautious
Recently Saif Ali Khan said that there was no idea of India before Britishers came in. It made discussions about Indian culture/ Nationalism come to the forefront. As in India war takes place more in media houses than on the borders, often debate on Indian Nationalism is lost in the noise.
The major question that needs to be asked is ‘ Which model of Nationalism-Modern nationalism or Evolutionary nationalism- can help India to become a unified country.
Nationalism- Idea that promotes a sense of belonging among different groups of people
Modern Nationalism- It assumes that Nationalism is a result of extrinsic factors like education, constitution, industrialization, etc. It says that Nationalism is not inborn but will form when the above factors are implemented in the society by the government. Here some form of destruction of traditional social structures is required to make room for new ones.
Evolutionary Nationalism- It says that Nationalism is inborn and is a result of the human tendency to form groups based on kinship, family, community, religion, etc. Therefore culture is an integral part of nationalism and should not be discarded.
Indian Nation At a Glance.
India is a unique country in terms of its social setup. It is a land of diversity consisting of people from all 8 major religions, major linguistics sections, and various ethnic groups.
After Independence, while major countries became a nation-state( 1st nation is formed and then state) our country became a state-nation. It means that normally people of a particular religion( Israel) or language( Germany, Italy) came together to form a boundary/territory but in India, boundaries were first created, and an attempt to form a nation was made to create a sense of belonging among various groups of people.
To form one nation from a diverse group of people Modern Nationalism model was adopted by India. Various instruments were adopted to form a unified force among different groups of people. It was thought that if a unified force with an opportunity for social and economic mobility was created, it will lead to a sense of fairness among people and then to unity.
This idea was based on the ‘Open Access Societies’ concept of Doughlas North in which access to various social and market institutions is open to all individuals leading to equal opportunities and equality in the society.
Various instruments adopted were-
- One constitution- To abide by one law superior to any other law of the land.
- Rapid Industrialization- To provide economic mobility to the people.
- English mandatory for all schools- To create one language as lingua franca.
- Reservations- To provide social mobility to the people.
However, the outcome of the above socio-economic changes was not adequate. The economic model adopted by the government failed to provide upliftment to the people. And the social mobility processes followed by the government such as Reservation also failed to provide the required social engineering.
According to the UN, India has 30% of extremely poor children in the world.
According to the survey, more than 90% of the reservation goes to the top 10 subcastes under SC, ST, OBC leading to inadequate horizontal distribution.
Due to inadequate socio-economic mobility, India is still a ‘closed access society’ with few individuals controlling the social and economic landscape of India. Also, the English language didn’t penetrate to the lower rung of the society and only remained the language of the elite.
The main problem in modern nationalism
However, the main problem was underestimating the role of ‘culture’ in the formation of a nation (a concept of evolutionary nationalism). Right from Independence Indian cultural history was neglected by the elites. Vedas was seen as a book prescribing evils in the caste system. And caste system was thought of as the main reason for inequality in society. Any person with a tilak on the forehead was seen with suspicion. See the early villains in movies of the 1950s era. Our rich religious philosophies such as Vedanta, Yoga, Samkhya, etc were not given the respect that they truly deserved. Even today some believe that there was no concept of India before Britishers came in. They forget that India is 7000 years old civilization with leaders such as Ashoka, Adi Shankaracharya, Akbar who united the whole of India
When the system provided to the people is unequal, which will always be there, and their identities are bashed, it will always lead to some political interest groups mobilizing people and causing hatred on religious ( Babri Masjid demolition), linguistic( Anti-Hindi agitation), and caste( Bhim Koregaon conflict) lines.
The effect is that still India is called — ‘Nation in the making’
What’s happening and should be done
Today what we see is the attempt to accommodate evolutionary nationalism features in the modern setup by reclamation of the past. As Shashi Tharoor( Member of Parliament) said “ If you don't know where you have come from, you will never appreciate where you are going”.
However, there are some issues in the ongoing processes which need to be addressed.
- Hindutva culture needs to be more accommodative- As history tells us that during the later Vedic period when Buddhism and Jainism were on the rise, Hinduism adopted the values of these religions to make it more accommodating. The same should happen today also. For example- The recent ban on the sale/import of Dog meat by the Nagaland state government should be uplifted as this meat has always been part of their normal food chain.
- Religious philosophies should be taught in school and it doesn’t affect the secularism principle. All the Indic philosophies talked not only about social integrity and nation but also about the ‘theory of everything’.For example- There are debates about the relation between Advaita philosophy and the standard model of physics that how they are at loggerheads on the idea of the origin of the universe. Advaita says that the ultimate causation factor cannot be defined and should be a homogeneous substance known as ‘Brahaman’ whereas the standard model says that discrete sub-atomical particles like quarks, bosons caused the beginning of the universe. If the standard model is proven right( still graviton is not found) then Advaita should be false. These are the debates that should take place in our society rather than saying that Theory in Vedas is superior to E=MC² which doesn’t mean anything.
- Caste is a social system rather than a religious system- Almost all the religions in India has a caste system imbibed in them. It goes to prove the fact that the caste system is a functional system that evolved to create a kind of interdependency within subgroups. For example — During the current lockdown, it was the caste system in rural areas that helped many poor people to survive as subgroups within the caste system, which forms a community, took care of each other. However social mobility within the caste system needs to be improved. There is a need to change the reservation system to make it more equity-based
- Other controversial suggestions like Constitution need to be amended to include personal laws within its ambit ( debate around Uniform Civil Code) and Hindi should be made lingua franca, should be debated with inclusion from all the interested groups
India is destined to become a superpower but unity without uniformity should be our mantra.
