Sukumar Muralidharan’s The Nation and Its Citizens: Tales of Bondage and Belonging looks at the promises and reality of India

Neera Chandhoke

THIS relatively slim volume paints the history and the geography of the nation-state, in many parts of the world, in broad brush strokes. Muralidharan draws upon the expertise of scholars ranging from Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Adam Smith, Ernst Renan, Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, to Rajni Kothari, and relies upon the political acumen of leaders such as Dr Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, among others, to address a crucial issue. The central question he addresses is the following: why do nations retreat from the promises made to their citizens at the time the Constitution is signed? The referent point of his sweep of scholarship is India from the 19th century and the freedom struggle, through the 20th century, to the early 21st century and the making of authoritarian populism.

If basic questions of identity are being litigated afresh in India today, suggests Muralidharan, this is due to the failure to deliver on all the promises made at Independence, to be a nation for all. Whether a nation can ever be ‘for all’ is however a question that continues to trouble thinking people. The author acknowledges that the seeds of division were sown the moment public intellectuals and leaders began to trace the roots of the Indian nation to the distant Vedic past. The concept of the nation is a relatively new development in human history; it dates back to the 18th century. But as the noted historian Hobsbawm had written, every nation needs to have a past, because the past legitimises the present. The problem is that the past can never be known except through interpretation. And all interpretations are selective. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the hands of nationalists, history, suggests Hobsbawm, can kill more people than incompetent builders. India bears witness to this insight. Invocation of Indian nationalism propelled the colonial administration to conceive an Islamic nation. The stage was set for the two-nation theory which resulted in the blood-soaked partition in 1947.

Western historians distinguish between civic and ethnic nationalism, and hold that the latter is inferior. History, however, shows us that the line between the two is thin. Within a short span of time, notes Muralidharan, the French nation born out of the 1789 revolution was transformed from a community of values into a community of language and identity. It began to retreat from its own radical promises on citizenship rights. In India, despite the banal observance of rituals of unity and belonging, minorities are stripped of their basic rights and subjected to everyday forms of humiliation.

We find moments of inter-faith solidarity but these have become increasingly rare in a society dominated by majoritarianism, and by denial of caste hierarchies within society. By dismantling constitutional protections that shield vulnerable citizens from brutal state power, by supporting hate speech that demonises minorities, by turning a blind eye to violence, and by harnessing protective institutions such as courts to the project of majoritarianism, Hindutva has succeeded in completely dismantling the promises made to the people at Independence. ‘When it is possible to conclude that the promise has failed? An early symptom would be when… injustices from a recent past are celebrated, indeed portrayed as rightful restitution for the sufferings inflicted in a more distant time.” Renan told us that a nation must learn to remember as well as forget, but forgetting becomes impossible when historical wrongs are constantly held up before the people as the ‘original injustice’. What price do then values of freedom, equality, rights and justice hold as promises of a nation that is for all?

The author details moments in the life of the Indian nation after Independence, moments that prepared the ground for the onslaught of right-wing authoritarian populism. Perhaps the rot lies deeper. Extreme forms of nationalism subvert democracy. Indian nationalism was plural, with strong strains of constitutional democracy running alongside exclusionary notions of the nations. It is difficult to believe that the two ran in parallel directions. Muralidharan tells us of the consolidation of the project of resurrecting the temple of Somnath. The restoration of temples sacked by Islamic rulers sends powerful messages — the nation belongs to the majority. The results of majoritarian assertions are more than visible today, the consolidation of a religious majority as a democratic majority.

It is often forgotten that the majority principle is merely workable, it is not morally just. But who cares about inequality, hunger, and deep-rooted poverty when temples are restored, often garishly, much in the way Sanjay Leela Bhansali designs his film sets? Muralidharan’s work reminds us of the warnings of historians; the nation-state is one of history’s most serious mistakes. There is perhaps nothing as combustible as a nation which demands a state of one’s own. For what we once thought as a nation for all turns out to be a nation for the ethnic majority. It is not surprising that Hobsbawm, who has clearly inspired Muralidharan, wrote to a left-wing friend in 1988 thus: “I remain in the curious position of disliking, distrusting, disapproving, and fearing nationalism wherever it exists, perhaps even more than in the 1970s, but recognising its enormous force, which must be harnessed for progress if possible. And sometimes it is possible. We cannot have the right have the monopoly of the flag. Something can be achieved by mobilising nationalist feelings… However, I cannot be a nationalist and neither, in theory, can any Marxist for no serious historian can be a committed political nationalist.” What more damning obituary can there be of the nation?