Ideas of India Pointers-WPS Office

Ideas of India
What makes India, then, a nation?

 Jawaharlal Nehru articulated it as pluralism vindicated by history, seeing the country as an
“ancient palimpsest” on which successive rulers and subjects had inscribed their visions without
erasing what had been asserted previously.
 When an Italian nation was created in the second half of the 19th century out of a mosaic of
principalities and statelets, one Italian nationalist wrote: “We have created Italy. Now all we
need to do is to create Italians.” It is striking that, a few decades later, no Indian nationalist
succumbed to the temptation to express a similar thought. The prime exponent of modern
Indian nationalism, Nehru, would never have spoken of “creating Indians”, because he believed
that India and Indians had existed for millennia before he articulated their political aspirations in
the 20th century.
 Nonetheless, the India that was born in 1947 was in a very real sense a new creation: a state
that made fellow citizens of the Ladakhi and the Laccadivian, divided Punjabi from Punjabi and
asked a Keralite peasant to feel allegiance to a Kashmiri Pandit ruling in Delhi, all for the first
time.
 So Indian nationalism was not based on any of the conventional indices of national identity. Not
language, since our constitution now recognises 23 official languages, and as many as 35
languages spoken by more than a million people each. Not ethnicity, since the “Indian”
accommodates a diversity of racial types in which many Indians (Punjabis and Bengalis, in
particular) have more ethnically in common with foreigners than with their other compatriots.
Not religion, since India is a secular pluralist state that is home to every religion known to
mankind, with the possible exception of Shintoism. Not geography, since the natural geography
of the subcontinent – framed by the mountains and the sea – was hacked by the partition of
1947. And not even territory, since, by law, anyone with one grandparent born in pre-partition
India – outside the territorial boundaries of today’s state – is eligible for citizenship. Indian
nationalism has therefore always been the nationalism of an idea.
 It is the idea of an ever-ever land – emerging from an ancient civilisation, united by a shared
history, sustained by pluralist democracy. India’s democracy imposes no narrow conformities on
its citizens. The whole point of Indian pluralism is you can be many things and one thing: you can
be a good Muslim, a good Keralite and a good Indian all at once. The Indian idea is the opposite
of what Freudians call “the narcissism of minor differences”; in India we celebrate the
commonality of major differences. If America is famously a “melting-pot”, then to me India is a
thali, 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.
 Ambedkar dealt with the concept of nation and nationalism for the first time in his book
Thoughts on Pakistan, which was reprinted as Pakistan or the Partition of India. According to
one prevalent view, which is represented by Savarkar and his followers, the nation is primarily a
matter of geography, culture and language. The commonality of language, race, territory and
culture, or religion, makes the nation.
 Ambedkar’s views differed from this notion. He argued, “A nation is not a country in the physical
sense, whatever degree of geographical unity it may possess. A nation is not a people
synthesised by a common culture derived from a common language, common religion or
common race...Nationality is a subjective psychological feeling. It is a feeling of corporate
sentiment of oneness which makes those who are charged with it feel that they are kith and
kin...It is a feeling of ‘consciousness of kind’ which binds together those who are within the
limits of kindred. It is longing (a strong feeling of wanting together) to belong to one’s own
group...This is the essence of what is called a nationality and national feeling.” Ambedkar’s
notion of the nation was much more ethically oriented than the religiously and metaphysically
oriented ones of his contemporaries.
 Tagore opined that the term nationalism was derived from the term nation-state which was
nothing but the embodiment of Western ideas of capitalism and mechanisation. He believed
that these ideals were intrinsically against the Indian tradition of self-autonomy, pluralism and
religious tolerance which one would find in what he termed as the samaj.
 Unlike many others in his and our times, Tagore believes that the canonical texts of India – the
Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita might be at the centre of India’s classical culture but they do
not constitute the heart of Indian unity or provide the basis of it. Here he differs radically from
the likes of Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and an array of eminent 19th
century thinkers who believed that the canonical texts of Hinduism defined the basis of
Indianness. Indian unity, Tagore insists, is built on the thoughts and the practices of the
medieval mystics, poets and religious and spiritual figures. In such a country, importing the
Western concept of nationalism was like Switzerland trying to build a navy.
 The secular Muslim nationalists: https://scroll.in/article/1060236/the-muslim-secular-this-book-
argues-that-muslims-contribute-equally-to-indian-secularism
 Women nationalist's Idea: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay:
https://scroll.in/article/1067404/kamaladevi-chattopadhyay-this-biography-presents-a-
womens-rights-champion-ahead-of-her-times
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/reviews/book-excerpt-kamaladevi-chattopadhyay-s-role-in-
the-history-of-india-s-craft-renaissance-94915

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Ideas of India

What makes India, then, a nation?

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