Nations, Nationalism, and India as a Nation (Part 3)

In Part 1, we saw the definitions of Nations and Nationalism and how they evolved across centuries. In Part 2, we saw how these theories of Nations and Nationalism fail to make sense while trying to define and understand Bharatavarsha. When someone claims that India was never a Nation, it only betrays a poor understanding of the nature of India’s Nationhood.
Now, read the concluding Part.

European Nations decided on a systematic partitioning of Africa

One of the direct consequences of the Nations and Nationalism, which Indian thinkers like Aurobindo and Tagore did not fail to notice, was the colonial and missionary adventures of European Nations, especially to Africa, which included an extensive slave trade. The Scramble for Africa, or the Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, occupation, division, and colonization of African territory by European powers during a short period of New Imperialism between 1881 and 1914.

Between 1870 and 1914, European control over the African continent increased from 10 per cent to almost 90 per cent ! The Berlin Conference of 1884, which regulated European colonization and trade in Africa, was the final point of the Scramble for Africa, where the European Nations decided a systematic partitioning of Africa to avoid conflict between themselves. There were no African representations in this process of course.

Conclusion

Sri Aurobindo (The Incarnate Word) wrote :

‘The whole basis of the Indian mind is its spiritual and inward turn. There is a tendency, therefore, to create whatever it had to create from within outward. It could not begin with a political unification effected by an external rule, and this cannot be called a mistake or a proof of an unpractical turn. And even if an outward imperial unity had been founded – like that of the Roman world – it might not have endured. After all, the spiritual and cultural is the only enduring unity and, though the positive Western mind may be unwilling to understand or concede this, the proofs are written across the pages of history. In the nature of things spiritual unity is a large and flexible thing and does not insist like the political and external on centralisation and uniformity of an imperial state…The Vedic Rishis were not blind to the need of a political unification, which they subsumed under the ideal of the cakravartin, of which the Aswamedha and Rajasuya sacrifices were the outward symbol. Not a destructive and predatory invasion, but a hegemony or confederacy under an imperial head would be the nearest Western analogy to the conception they sought to impose on the minds of the people’.

The British converted our traditions into proper religions of the Abrahamic mould !

The British allegedly consolidated India politically to some extent, but they were not the first to do so. The British divided us politically into two countries using religion, caused social disruptions by their caste-system narratives and pernicious Aryan theory frameworks, converted our traditions (with a phenomenal tolerance to differences) into proper religions of the Abrahamic mould (characterized by differences and mutual intolerances), stripped us economically, dragged us into two World Wars where we had no stakes, caused the worst famines in Bengal influenced by their Malthusian ideas, fed their industrialization by raw material produced in India, made India a market for their finished products, destroyed agriculture by converting large tracts of land for cash crops or for their opium trade, levied heavy taxes, but apologists credit the British for uniting India as ‘one-Nation’ politically !

Indologists, Colonial scholarship and Colonialists

Typical of Indologists across centuries, and till date, believed that Indian civilization reached its peak only under Chandragupta and Asoka Maurya (3rd Century BCE – 4th Century BCE), the Gupta emperors (4th Century CE – 5th Century CE), and the last great imperial ruler – Harsha (7th Century) !

Vincent Smith (1848-1920) wrote : ‘Harsha’s death loosened the bonds which restrained the disruptive forces always ready to operate in India, and allowed them to produce their natural result, a medley of petty states, with ever-varying boundaries, and engaged in unceasing internecine war’.

For Smith, India had a ‘natural disunity’, and a centralized authoritarian rule imposed from outside was the only way to unity. Any amount of Indological scholarship does not refute this position even today despite glaring evidence to the contrary.

Colonial scholarship had to claim that India had declined to almost barbaric levels with nothing by way of literature, arts, religion, or the sciences. The architecture, though grudgingly acknowledged ‘grand,’ had ‘aesthetic issues and controversies’. Compared with other civilizations, India appeared to be singularly lacking in political unity and, therefore, in history. This happened because India was a land dominated by ‘imagination rather than reason’ or because of an exotic institution of caste.

The colonialists had a clear mission in showing the political disunity of India, but why do we need to repeat this story of ‘political disunity’ in India today ? ‘Colonial consciousness’ pervades India, Indian leaders and intellectuals. Did we really need political unity as required by the West ?

Diversity and acceptance of diversity define civilizational India

As a Nation of people with diversity and multi-cultural pluralism ingrained in nationalistic thought, the political state came much later. Our diversity and acceptance of diversity define civilizational India, not the idea of political unity. Crossing kingdoms did not amount to treason for us.

Invasions and colonial conquests took place because the invaders did not have such noble values. For them diversity, pluralism, and a decentralised polity were a weakness to conquer politically by force; for us it was a strength which keeps us united despite all attacks. We are the last surviving and the most ancient pagan civilization despite everything which happened in the last thousand years.

Sovereign independent states became the international norm due to the peculiar circumstances of European history. The consequences have been Nationalism, colonialism, and World Wars leading to global plunder and extermination of local populations. Our Nationhood was never a homogenization implemented from the top. States, Nations, sovereignty, and Nationalism are clearly rooted in European history and Christian theology.

‘Our ‘Nationalism’ was about absorption and not invasion. What do we try to protect when we talk of Nationalism ? It is the multitude of traditions and cultures existing in harmony in Indian society.

Standard Western theories trace the origins of Nations in institutional, economic, and technological transformations. These scholars only enlighten us on the emergence of modern ‘governmentality’ to attain greater efficacy but not Nations and Nationalism, says Saumya Dey (Narrativizing Bharatavarsha). Dey argues that the Greeks, English, and the French were an ancient ‘felt community’ much before the arrival of printing presses, Democracy, or industrialization. Dey says that the modern, Western term ‘Nation’ does not do justice to India’s expression of oneness.

India is an ancient felt community because it does not emerge through deliberate cultural or linguistic systematization. It functions and forms through a sense of belonging to the land, and disseminated through symbols. This process manifests itself as ‘culture,’ autonomous of the state. Thus, people could belong to the same set of meanings and land by perceiving the same symbols as a great unity even with different languages. Bharatavarsha has been a ‘felt community’ for thousands of years.

The swastika, the lotus, the Devatas of temples, the tirthas, Sanskrit language as a bearer of meanings par excellence, of both practical and spiritual relevance, are examples of these interconnected symbols. They evoke and collectively assimilate Indians into the same matrix of meanings. Dey concludes that Bharat views itself as a cultural unit with a federation of sub-identities preserving their individuality and equally contributing to the evolution of a common culture. In other words, there was an underlying and fundamental cultural unity in all the diversity.

Radhakumud Mookerji (The Fundamental Unity of India) relied on the Vedas and Puranas as historical documents for a common shared geography in the public consciousness and holding of some constituents as objects of veneration and pilgrimage. Both the ‘foci and loci’ of religious and cultural identities lay within the same sacred geography which was proof of civilizational unity for Mookerji.

India is a dynamic cauldron of many physical, spiritual, and social components : a huge number of Sampradayas or Paramparas. Thousands of texts describe all these apart from the sciences, arts, grammar, drama, dance, Devas, Devis, stories, etc. How does one make sense of all these ?

The traditions intricately link to each other with common elements in their descriptions, and yet may have completely different approaches.

They may not agree with each other and yet accept the other as not false. Traditions may come together to evolve a new tradition.

The absolutist philosophies of monotheism or Communism would be the stratagems for Nations in the modern framework. For India, in a very different cultural milieu, this can never work.

‘We were not comfortable with the idea of religion splitting us. India could absorb a multitude of religions without any issues so long as they subscribed to the idea of a multi-traditional land.

For reasons we do not understand, even Abrahamic religions took the form of traditions in our country. In this paradigm of mixing traditions without friction, there would be more space to understand and encourage the syncretism with Abrahamic faiths. A mix can happen without a threat to personal belief and faith.

Languages as the basis for the reorganization of States is an artificial and forcible application of one language – one Nation theory which can be traced to Europe. Tagore was clear that political organisation comes secondary in the Indian concept existing only for the self-preservation of a cultural ethos allowing radically different thoughts and ways of living in a single geographical area without trying to kill or convert. Political boundaries never mattered historically where pluralism and multi-culturalism were the norm. It was not a homogenization of the many which the West is so fond of.

In Indian kingdoms, multiple languages were the norm. Multiple languages under the Cholas, the Vijayanagara kings, and the Marathas did not give rise to demand for States on linguistic basis.

However, post-Independence, language has played a key and distressing role in Indian politics. The anti-Hindi agitation, the reorganisation of States on a linguistic basis, the fights for a classical language status, the Hindi-Urdu divide – all worked together to bring a cultural homogenization to groups of people when none previously existed.

Ashwin Kumar has dealt elegantly with language as a means for Nationalism and its inappropriateness in the Indian context in his wonderful book, ‘Nationalism, Language, and Identity in India’.

‘A forced homogenization on language or religion thus leads to a dangerous situation when the differences which erupt become proof positive to say that ‘India is not one Nation’. This is the danger of using Western theories to look at India.

This is what defines India as a Nation : A group of people in a land which allows traditions with multiple differences to co-exist. Our Nationalism precisely protects the ethos of multi-culturalism. Western ideas to mould political unity by homogenization using language or common economic ideals do not simply apply to India. Our economies, starting locally and spreading centrifugally, were traditionally the reverse of the central model adopted by most modern States.

Sanatana Dharma is about harmony in a centrifugal mode starting from the individual self and expanding to wider circles of family, society, and the State.

‘The key concept of Dharma, which asks us to sacrifice the lower for the sake of the higher in times of conflict, is almost intuitive in people calling themselves Indians. The modern, Western ideas are increasingly about the autonomous individual.

Theories of Nationalism are Western paradigms to build and understand Nations. The facts of India do not match the theories, but typically, the theories stay intact while denying the data. Instead of taking new approaches, the most convenient way for lazy scholarship is to say ‘India was never a Nation and became one after the British came’.

There is an alternative story of India.

– 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.)