|
|
The emerging nation-state,
consequently, witnesses rapid appropriation of workers,
peasants, minorities, and the lower orders, and enlists their
participation. But often we discover, as in India, that although
we have a political nation-state, the nation itself is yet to be
born. From this viewpoint, we can say that the intelligentsia
remains separate from the subaltern, and the field of writing or
rhetoric from the field of political action although nationalist
ideology tends to cover up its differences.
While nationalism
is not a homogeneous category, it includes all the connotations
of a popular bourgeois ideology, and has both affinities with
and differences from European varieties of nationalism. Which
takes us to Makarand Paranjape’s essay on Indian ideas of the
nation which, he writes, originate from locality, region and
territory; birth, tribe and community; and people, subjects and
citizens as against European nationalisms which arose from
either the Enlightenment tradition which considered the nation
to be a conglomerate of citizens or the post-Enlightenment view
that nation comes from people who share a common ethnic,
linguistic or cultural identity. These two meanings may be
linked up with praja, which Gandhi used to define the
nation, and ultimately with swaraj, which symbolised
complete autonomy. Here is again culture at work since swaraj
is a culturally connotative term: originally religious—symbolising
self-rule or restraint, and holding out the promise of
deliverance from the evil cycle of successive reincarnations—it
later got modified with its associations with politics,
indicating the individual’s attainment of oneness with the
Universal, which in turn would establish a feeling of fellowship
with every being one came into contact. Interpreted thus, the
term came to embody not merely national freedom but universal
federation also, which alone could establish ‘perfect harmony’
between nations.
With Gandhi, the
concept of swaraj evolves into a symbol having a very
definite political edge signifying self-government, yet alloyed
somewhat with an otherworldly sanctity to consolidate public
appeal. This may be an example of the indigeneity of Gandhi’s
appeal with scarcely any borrowings from the Western model of
nationalism: "This intermingling of an apparent
unworldliness with such this-worldliness becomes the locus of a
new home for an India that . . . is ready to assert her own
sense of selfhood and dignity once again."
It is from the
1980s that cultural identity assumed the narrow and parochial
dimensions of religious identity. Geeti Sen speaks of
differentiating national culture as "practised" from
national culture as "perceived" or, to use Benedict
Anderson’s famous phrase for the national community,
"imagined". In her essay, which too deserves a special
mention, she examines the concept of Mother India, the
film, to emphasise how nationalist ideology celebrates the
virtues of the Indian woman who is resurrected repeatedly in
homogeneous configurations of goddesses and mothers. It is true
that women have never been conceptualised as being primary to
any national movement. In the domain of gender, nationalism has
not proved to be a progressive ideology that revolutionises
sexuality. On the contrary, women who participate in the
national movement are seldom empowered by the liberation
struggle to emerge from their traditional invisibility. Sen
pleads for a human and secularised persona, imbued with shakti,
which was realised to some extent in Mehboob Khan’s film.
An excellent
collection of essays, the book is very readable for any one
interested in the cultural politics of nationalism.
|
THIS
book is about cultural perspectives of nationalism. Nationalism may
be largely political, but is based mainly on cultural symbols and
traditions such as religious icons, ancient societies, linguistic
and oral narratives, art, sculpture, painting, and so on. National
pride is predicated upon all of these. For example, when Bhagat
Singh soulfully sang "Mera rang de basanti chola"
in Shaheed, he was introducing "saffronisation" to
religion and a cultural coding into the formation of nationalist
sentiment long before Babri Masjid was torn down by kar sevaks,
and we began to acknowledge nationalism’s religious underpinnings.
Cultural nationalism, in this instance, however, becomes partial and
selective. But that is what nationalism is all about, although it is
variously disguised as secular, unbiased and liberatory. Bosnia,
Kosovo, Rwanda, Burundi, Sri Lanka and many other ‘nations’ bear
testimony to this assumption.
