Building on an historical inheritace
Mohit Sen
from-The Times of India December 10, 1997
The national state is under unprecedented assault. It would be one-sided to blame only the government for its incapacity and ineptitude, though it must also be blamed. There are others who
are far more guilty. They are those who are doing the assaulting.
Topping the fist of the latter is the US administration. The Soviet
Union having disintegrated, the more imperial elements of the US
administration are moving in for the kill. For them, the objective is the establishment of pad Americana in what they consider is a
unipolar world in terms of military and political power. The objective is to be gained as peacefully as possible and at minimum cost. There is to be no repetition of Vietnam nor even of Operation Desert storm. Casualties, above all, are to be avoided. The best way, therefore, is to accentuate conflict and then dominate both sides by mediation and peace-brokering.
Danger Signal
In the former Yugoslavia, in West Asia, in the Taiwan Straits, in the Korean Peninsula, even in Ireland we see this strategy in operation. It has been in operation in our subcontinent as well. Pakistan's undeclared war against us has spread beyond Kashmir and Punjab. If anything, it is the north-east which is the most troubled area. More directly, the Line of Control has been ignited.
Only those blinded and deafened by delusions about their supposed historical role and the efficiency of doctrines named after them can choose to ignore the signals that these developments send. The danger is that they seem to be ignored
by those at the helm of affairs. The bland statements coming from
Washington that the US administration wants no role in India,
Pakistan relations are being bandied about as testimonials of the
success of our government's approach to the Clinton administration. This is disastrous.
Another menacing development is the links that are being
established between important sections of business and terrorists
of different types. Whether it be in Mumbai or in Assam, the failure of the state to protect personnel and property is no justification for trying to purchase security from different types of mafia. At a different level, there is the unbridled assertion of economism by the trade union movement before which the government surrenders. It has no moral leg to stand upon, of course, to oppose the unions after the previous surrender to big business and the black money holders in the so-called dream budget.
The catalogue of the assaults on the national state can be considerably lengthened beyond what has already been mentioned above. The more important issue, howsoever, is to be
clear about the evolution of India as a nation.
Nationalism is a product of historical development. A nation is
neither something present from the beginning of time nor is its
advent sudden. The accumulation of experience leading to the
shaping of a distinctive and shared identity results in the emergence of a nation. That specific moment is almost universally associated with a movement succeeding in winning a state to which willing even joyful allegiance is extended by those whose loyalty has made the movement what it is.
The movement, however has to be of a specific kind and it has to
build upon historical inheritance. The movement has to embrace
all regions, languages, communities and classes which have, in
varying measure, shaped that inheritance and been shaped by it.
Conflict cannot be avoided but the point is to internalise it and
even to use it to advance the existing unity.
It is somewhat facile, though fashionable, to define the nation as an "imagined community", Such a definition begs the question. What is the community which does the imagining? Why should and when does the imagination result in the birth of national feeling?
Moreover, the division and even separation of segments of a
community can still not always prevent the birth of a nation.
Rigid Definition
India's emergence and continuation as a nation and the persistence of its national state is a copybook example of the
historical generalisation mentioned earlier. India can be said to
have begun in Mohenjodaro and become on August 15, 1947. Its
inheritance was a treasure of unified diversities. Colonial rule
came in the way of this inheritance becoming the foundation of a
modern state. The national movement was much more a reassertion and enriching of this inheritance than even a
movement of resistance to and elimination of foreign rule.
Fifty years have passed. The territory of India is smaller than that
on which the inheritance was built and where the battle for freedom was fought. But that, too, is now history. India has formed itself more decisively in these five decades than in previous centuries. Democracy, secularism and comprehensive development have led to our irrevocable establishment.
The emergence in politics of those from the lower depths has
serious negative features, especially in the shape of casteism.
Those who are so emerging, however, do not only bring casteism
with them. The national inheritance and the reinforced nationalism of the years of freedom have also shaped their personalities. The dangerously misleading response of pandering to casteism and even glorifying it as social progress overlooks the nationalism of the newly-emerged.
Unified Plurality
Denial of nationalism in the name of region and caste, is, however,
not as damaging as the attempt to construct an alternative
Nationalism. In the name of cultural uniformity which, in fact, does not exist, what is sought to be built is an excluding nationalism. Those engaged in this endeavour imagine that the more rigid the definition of nationalism, the greater will be its strength. The opposite is true both of nationalism in general and of our nationalism in particular.
We have become Indian by acceptance and addition and we
have established India by giving power to unified plurality. This
has, above all, been possible because of the winning of the
national state. The controversy about the role of the state in the contemporary stage of our economic development should not
lead to a belittling of its general importance.
Even in the sphere of the economy, there is need for an objective
historical approach. Should the state have stood by or
concentrated only on education, health and other social services?
Who else was there to build up India? And did we not need power
to defend our democracy and development from those who
wanted to neocolonise us?
Globalisation, it is said, has made the nation redundant. Not so
and not even in the immediate present. Some nations seek to
globalise others. Those threatened can resist successfully only if
they have recognised their own existence.
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