Nations, Nationalism, and India as a Nation (Part 1)

Part of the Hinduphobic discourse involves the strident denial of any uniquely organized society and a civilizational entity within the larger Indian /South Asian geographic region, and the claim that whatever residents in that area believed, wrote about, and offered the world was not ‘religious’. Thus, the assertion that there is nothing like India as a Nation and Hinduism as a ‘religion,’ and therefore any claims Hindus make about ‘Bharatavarsha’ or ‘Hindu / Sanatana Dharma’ are false. Here is a summary of the work refuting the assertion that there is ‘nothing’ like ‘India / Bharatavarsha’.

Introduction

Scholars used to the modern definition of a Nation or Nation-state cannot imagine a Nation as a civilizational continuity based on traditions, culture, and rituals. Unlike other modern Nation-states based on some homogenization variable (mainly linguistic), spiritual places, and important Texts have defined Bharat’s geography. India takes shape almost automatically if we place on the map all the Holy rivers and places available to us and identified for us since ages. Has the geography helped ? We do not know whether the specific shape of India is a cause or consequence of the Nation of people who call themselves Indians.

As an example, the Mahabharat gives an exhaustive list of mountains, rivers, and kingdoms forming the land of Bharatvarsha correlating with the entire Indian subcontinent. The rivers include the Ganga, Sindhu, Saraswati, Godavari, Narmada and Kaveri. Amongst the many named kingdoms across the country, it identifies many southern kingdoms, some of which are clearly identifiable today : Dravidas, Keralas, Karanatakas, Cholas and Vidarbhas. It says – ‘These countries are, besides, the abodes of many Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra tribes’. It also mentions Kasmiras and the Kalingas. The Mahabharat offers a picture of the breadth of Bharatavarsha too – from Gandhara (present day Afghanistan) to Pragjyotishpur (present day Assam).

‘India was never a Nation till the English came,’ claim those who are colonialists or those who are still under the sway of colonial thinking or those who are still beholden to Western largesse. India as a Nation and as a civilization can best be understood as the place where diversity was the norm and the essence of Nationalism was in protecting the diversity of the country. India is simply the longest continuing civilization – at least five thousand years old. Modern theories of Nations, Nationalism, or State, only a few hundred years old, may not make much sense in the understanding of India and the real idea of India.

India has diverse social, linguistic, and spiritual practices, and the cultural heritage acts as the cement that binds the Nation, says Michel Danino. Because of this, India transcends boundaries of what conventionally constitutes a Nation. This binding cultural heritage accommodates Vedic, non-Vedic, Jain, Buddhist, Tantric, Puranic, Sikh, folk, and tribal concepts, forms, attitudes, customs, and practices. Rabindranath Tagore said famously on India’s cultural unity : ‘India has all along been trying experiments in evolving a social unity within which all the different peoples could be held together, while fully enjoying the freedom of maintaining their own differences… This has produced something like a United States of a social federation, whose common name is Hinduism’.

Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda, stressing the spiritual and cultural aspects of India, recognized the recentness of modern Nationalism and the possible evils it could generate. Colonialism and the world wars were a direct outcome of the Nationalistic spirit intricately linked with the Nation. Tagore, rejecting the term ‘Nationalism’ in the Western sense, felt that that society as such has no ulterior purpose like economics or politics but was a ‘spontaneous expression of man as a social being’. The political side was only for self-preservation.

The forcible application of Western theories to the Indian context led to the division of country, first on a religious basis, and followed by the States on a linguistic basis. An artificiality in cultural identities is now the result of such policies. Our ancient kingdoms included people who spoke many languages without much dispute amongst the native speakers. It is time that we should begin viewing Bharat as a Nation through our own cultural and philosophical lenses.

Defining Nations, States, Nationalism and Sovereignty

‘Nation’ refers to a group of people implying notions of a blood relationship or a shared heritage and language. The extension – ‘Nationalism’ – emotionally identifies with one’s own Nation and supports its interests (intellectually and physically) even to the detriment of other Nations’ interests. This ‘Nation’ or a group of people in turn link to the claim of an independent land or ‘State’ for itself. Territory, in the past few centuries, and particularly since the 1860s (Bismarck trying to unite the German people), became an ideological basis of many nationalist causes. ‘Homeland’ as the basis for the Nation is evident from the earliest Jewish claims in the Old Testament. The perceived inseparable tie between ‘Blut und Boden’ (Blood and Soil) has caused numerous wars where more than one Nation (or a group of people) laid claim to the same territory (or State).

The Nation-state is now a combined idea where both words mean the same. Problematically, there are at least 8,000 nationalities (actual or potential) in this world, and their postulated ‘Homelands’ overlap with ‘distressing frequency,’ as Peter Ravn Rasmussen notes. Extreme Nationalist ideals have been the reason for cruelty, persecution, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and wars to redefine boundaries. In a pure form, the State is a political unit, separate from emotions of Nations and Nationalism, with a defined territory and a partial or total control of all its offices. The political theory of evolution of the modern States and Nations is however a recent construct and relates historically in an intricate manner to the religious wars of Europe and the Westphalian treaty. How could events in 16th Century and 17th Century Europe come to define our country ?

Theories of Nationalism – Schools of Thought

‘Nations’ first or ‘Nationalism’ first ? The great chicken and egg question intricately sustain and perpetuate each other. The Modernist School propose that Nations and Nationalism are products of modern industrializing societies created for economic and political purposes by the elite using either language, a constructed culture, or history. The Modernist schools look at a Nation as a social construct, either with the aim of achieving economic growth or achieving cultural homogenization through educational content in a vernacular language. Nationalism mobilizes populations and utilizes the collective effort to improve the Nation’s importance.

Anderson explains Nationalism as a collective construct – an ‘imagined political community’ – instead of as a natural phenomenon linked together by historical events. The feeling of Nationalism in an ethnic or racial group could lead to a feeling of National identity. Nationalism rises before the Nation, the latter being a social and political construct, with amendable boundaries. By believing sovereignty as the reigning principle for the Nation-state, the Nation receives a sense of freedom and would even make its citizens go to war to protect the Nation. Despite elastic boundaries, Anderson believes that Nations must be finite, with a demographic consistency and geographical restrictions. Outside the boundaries, there are other Nations with their own identities.

Ernest Gellner also believes that Nationalism arises first. He strongly reiterates this by saying that ‘Nationalism is not the awakening of Nations to self-consciousness : It invents Nations where they do not exist’. Members of a Nation would feel connected to their fellow members without ever meeting them. This relies on commonalities such as sharing the same history, heritage, traditions, goals, interests, or culture. The media, through ‘print capitalism,’ makes it possible for the Nation to be ‘imagined because the members of even the smallest Nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’.

The Primordialist School of Nationalism defines the Nation as ‘a named human population sharing a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members’.

Proponents believe that Nationalism builds upon existing beliefs of a population sharing the same kin or ethnicity. Nations are thus a ‘natural entity’ and come before Nationalism. The pre-modern ethnic and cultural foundations are strong emotional forces in Nationalism and National identity. This ethno-symbolic approach identifies traditions, symbols, myths, and memories of a Nation`s ethnic roots to build National identity, National unity, and National autonomy, and therefore the Nation. This approach tries to show that Nations and their ethnic roots have a legitimate historical link.

Another idea is that of cultural Nationalism, which is the romanticizing of the Nation as a unique historical and organic whole in contrast to the ‘rational’ political Nationalism. Though anti-modern in nature, cultural Nationalism may also serve as an agent of modernization by enabling a people to ‘recreate’ themselves.

– Dr Pingali Gopal (Excerpts from an Article under the same Title, Courtesy : IndiaFacts.org, 21.4.2023)

(Dr Gopal is a Paediatric and Neonatal Surgeon.)