Yogendra Yadav writes: When a nation's idea of itself is stolen, what follows must be more than recovery

Indian Express

a day ago

How should you react when something you value is stolen? Once you overcome the initial bewilderment (Where is it?), curiosity (Who stole it? How?) and guilt (Was I careless?), you arrive at the all-important question: How do I reclaim it so as to not lose it again?
That is the question I would like to take away from the thoughtful response ('Who stole my nationalism?', IE, May 31) to my article ('The nationalism we forgot', IE, May 27) by Suhas Palshikar — my colleague, co-author and friend for three decades. His disagreements are constructive, as our starting point is the same. Suhas bhai puts it better than I did: It's not just the backsliding of Indian nationalism, but the delegitimisation and resolute replacement by a phoney version based on the 'narrow, vicious, macho and exclusionary European duplication of nationalism'. Therefore, reclaiming Indian nationalism is arguably the most critical priority for political action today.
Let me begin by accepting all the corrections that Suhas bhai suggests to my initial outline. Indeed, Indian nationalism was an audacious project, difficult to realise and even more difficult to sustain. Yes, the uniquely Indian version of 'belonging without othering' always had its communal rivals in the Hindu and Muslim versions that copied the European models of national belonging via the 'othering' of religious communities. Of course, we have not just forgotten our nationalism; it has been stolen by the RSS version of pseudo-nationalism.
That leaves only one serious disagreement. Suhas bhai thinks that I exaggerate the role of the tiny English speaking and deracinated elite in squandering the rich legacy of Indian nationalism. I still believe that the ruling class is always tiny, yet its ideas become the ruling ideas with lasting consequences. But this is a dispute the two of us can continue over a cup of tea (with bakarwadi from Chitale Bandhu) in Pune.
Let me focus on the more pressing question of the here and now: What is to be done? How do we regain Indian nationalism in a way that we do not lose it again? This is not a simple political question of how to take on the BJP. This is also not a simple ideological question of how to combat the RSS's Hindutva with our received liberal progressive ideology. This is a serious intellectual and cultural question. I suspect that critics of today's phoney nationalism underestimate how serious this intellectual challenge is.
Let me list three uncomfortable questions that we need to address head-on before we begin the project of the recovery of Indian nationalism.
First of all, what is India? Is this a cultural-civilisational entity or just a political unit with boundaries defined by accidents of history? The pseudo-nationalist version offers a narrow yet thick notion of Indianness, of Bharatvarsha, a Sanatan and Akhand Bharat, that may be rescued from 1,000 years of Muslim and British colonial history. The response of the progressive critics is to fall back upon a liberal yet thin version of Indianness, which views India only in modern, political and constitutional terms, as a political community of people brought together by accidents of history.
The uncomfortable question that we need to ask is this: Is the modern Indian state a successor to the civilisation called India? If so, what are its defining cultural features? Answering this question, without falling into dominant majoritarian myths, was never easy. In a sense, Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India was an attempt to do exactly that. The task has got more difficult today after Partition and with deeper awareness of the multiple histories and geographies that the Indian state is heir to. Yet, this is a question we cannot evade any more. We need a thick yet liberal notion of Indianness, a notion that has cultural resonance with the people of India.
Second, should we be proud of being Indian? Here again we confront two bad answers. The dominant answer is jingoistic, the political equivalent of football club loyalty. Every Indian must, at all times, be proud of everything Indian as it is our 'motherland'. This powerful sentiment then drums up all kinds of reasons for this pride: India as the vishwaguru, India as the mother of democracies, India as the fountain of ancient wisdom, and so on. The critics of this narrative of national pride demand good reasons for such an assertion. Accident of birth is no proof of excellence; if anything, this conflict of interest calls for extra care in judging our own country. They find it difficult to take pride in a country full of class inequality, caste oppression, gender injustice and what not. They respond with guilt, if not shame, about being an Indian.
So, the difficult question is: Can we address the deep sense of cultural inferiority that Indians have inherited from their colonial past? Can we do so without inventing ridiculous lies about plastic surgery in ancient India? Can we do so without brushing under the carpet the ugly truths about our country, our society, our civilisation? Can we come up with ways of self-affirmation that inculcate pride without asserting superiority over others?
Finally, what do we owe this entity called India? Here again, the dominant answer is simple and powerful, if totalitarian. In this version of nation-comes-first, we owe everything, unlimited and unquestioning loyalty, even our lives, to our country. This requires suppressing any competing demand from a lower or higher unit: From attachment to any region, religion or language or from considerations of internationalism etc. The critics of jingoistic nationalism are more circumspect about what and how much they owe to one of the many entities that demand our affection. They want a space to assert other identities, from regional to global. Faced with aggressive nationalism, their loyalty appears shallow. They look non-aligned and can be dubbed anti-national. So the challenge is: How do we define deep loyalty to the nation in a way that does not preclude other equally legitimate commitments? I suspect that the progressive and liberal critics of the RSS-BJP do not have good answers to this or the other two questions.
In sum: Our challenge is to reimagine a deep and non-jingoistic nationalism, at once culturally rooted in the plural heritage of our civilisation and open to claiming the heritage of humankind. That is what the nationalism of our freedom struggle was. Yet we cannot simply go back to that nationalism now. As Suhas bhai reminds us, it was a rather precarious achievement in its own times. Besides, a lot of water and blood has flowed in the Ganga since then. So we have no option but to recreate, rearticulate and then regain the nationalism that we lost.
Suhas bhai is right: Creating a deep sense of 'belonging without othering' was and remains an 'audacious project' always exposed to external challenges and internal hiccups. This is infinitely more difficult than the jingoistic political project of finding external and internal enemies to forge a unity based on hatred. But I am sure he does not believe that in this audacity lies its impossibility, that this is a good reason to give up on this project. The project of reclaiming Indian nationalism is not an optional project for some Indians of a particular ideological orientation. The success of this project is the precondition for the very survival of India.
The writer is member, Swaraj India, and national convenor of Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan. Views are personal