Idea of Nation

The most difficult task about writing after deciding on the topic is "where to begin or how to start"? So lets start with a territory with which most of us are familiar because all the digital media anchors are shouting at the top of their voice in their prime time shows about this. It is "The idea of Nation and idea of India as a nation".

Recently some right wingers asked other political whos-who to prove their patriotism by shouting "Bharat Mata ki Jai". After JNU debates the idea of nationalism had anyway gathered some fire. The denial of some parliamentarian to shout "Bharat Mata ki Jai" added fuel to the whole issue. The issue got mired into petty politics but it raised some substantial questions. Questions like "what is the Nation and what is Nation-state"? "How Nation-state is different from State"? "What do we understand by India as a Nation"? "What is the difference between nationalism and patriotism"? and does shouting "Bharat Mata ki Jai" hold any relevance in the debate of nationalism?

The idea of nation came into existence after treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The European countries were realigned on the lines of national identities. Nation-state as a new term was coined. While Nation is described as abstract or imagined community ( Benedict Anderson), hyphenating it with state added some geographical substance to it. Nation was considered a purely social concept to identify people with similar language, culture and living practices. After 1648 treaty it was extended with concept of sovereignty which is internal supremacy and external independence.

Therefore the idea of Nation-state is understood as entity with 4 dimensions. It should describe a definite geography. It should have its own army. It should be habitated by people who identify themselves with the land. The people should have certain common cultural practices. In short, geography, army, people and culture define the concept of nation-state. State on the other hand remains purely geographical term with no cultural connotation.

India as a nation stands tall as an exception. Scholars like Fitch and Herder had predicted that any nation with more than one language will be broken in equal number of nation-state as many are the number of language spoken. India has nearly 24 major constitutionally recognized languages and nearly 263 dialects. However India stands united refuting all the western thinkers. The culture of our land changes every fifty kilometers. The 6 C's namely cuisines, carnivals, communication (languages), costumes, customs, and creed changes with every single unit of longitudinal and latitudinal traversal.

To understand the idea of India, one will have to walk in the history. This is the land where Greek-Bactrian invaders Kushana adopted Shaivism. The named their kids as Vasideva, an Indian name for a foreign invader. Our culture integrated him into itself. Here King Ashoka gave a secular code of conduct Dhamma and muslim ruler Akbar proposed Din-E-Ilahi. It is the land where Mahavir Jayanti and Muhharram fall on the same day and are celebrated peacefully without any disturbance. India is a place where a hindu king contributed to Jains and Budhdhist art and architecture. Rashtrakutas helped in building Ajanta and Elora caves which became prime symbol of cultural history of both the religions.

Here King Akbar donated the land for Sikhs holy shrine Golden temple in Amritsar. Tipu Sultan of Mysore renovated the ancient Sharda temple. Here the text of Ibrahim Adil Shah finds frequent invocation of goddess Saraswati. The Akbar of Kashmir Zamiul Abidine forbade Cow slaughter and abolished jajiya. In many instances Muslim rulers went on to marry inter-faith. The two wives of Akbar were from christian and hindu religion respectively.

Even from the perspective of development of history, It was williams Jones who decoded Brahmi script which helped us in knowing about ancient kingdom of Ashoka. It was Max Mullar, a german scholar who translated Riga Veda in Sanskrit and Halhed who translated Geet Govinda and Manu Smriti, basis of our caste identity. There are numerous references of Alauddin-Khilji, Muhammad Bin Tughlaq and Akbar protecting and conserving identities of other religion.

Even in the freedom struggle, second person behind Gandhi's famous Dandi march was a muslim Imam Sahib. From Ashfaq Ullah Khan to Frontier Gandhi, the contribution has been immense. People from all faiths participated enthusiastically in giving a free character to our nation and helped in awakening its soul.

Even today, Meghwal hindus in Rajasthan keep fast during Rojas. People of Hyderabad immerse the idol of Ganesha in a lake named after muslim ruler Husain Sagar which has a statue of Budhdha installed in the middle of it. Any cross section of people and you can find people from eight different religions namely Budhdha, Jains, Hindus, Sikhs, Parsi, Zorastrian, Jews and Christian. India is a land where all the 90+ division of Islam are practiced. It is the land where a person from minority community with nearly 1% of total population, Dr. Manmohan Singh went on to become prime minister and was given oath by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam a Muslim. And the leader of coalition was a christian woman of Italian origin, Smt. Sonia Gandhi.

Even from religious perspective, diversity and mutual respect is evident in common day life. The major lord of west, Lord Rama is minor god in the east, state of Bengal. Similarly the goddess of east , Durga is portrayed as prostitute in the tribal and southern culture. There, the devil Mahishasur who was killed by Durga is worshipped as god.

Examples are numerous. The mutual interdependence, respect, tolerance and acceptance of principle of Anektantvad lies at the base of idea of India. Whenever this land received any new thing, it adopted, accommodated and integrated the novelty into its own whole. Thus expanding the whole bigger and bigger each time. Possibly that is why our ancient text says for us, Vasudhaiva Kautumbakam.

In such historical, cultural and social context any one definition of nationalism would not justify our rich cultural attitudinal heritage. Any one ideology can not claim the monopoly over concept of nationalism. And from ideological point also, we see as many differing opinion as there are number of Ideology. Centrist says India as nation in progress, rightist call it Nation since beginning of time and leftist says no nation at all. Who is right and who is wrong can not be judged by few text book principles and scholarly intellectual debates. Instead, our history, our culture and very existence of our vibrant harmonious society in a nation of 125 crore should act as a touchstone of concept of nationalism.

However, there are certain behaviours which needs to be rejected outrightly as not falling into category of nationalistic sentiment. These are lies, hypocrisy, violence and polarisation of the culture and society. For example, people gathering at the corner of street to shout Bharat Mata ki Jai and later rob the same Mata by not paying due taxes, acting violently and disturbing its cultural fabric. This is where we need to differentiate between nationalism and patriotism. Patriotism is much stronger and value based concept. Nationalism is shallow. We need to be patriotic means we need to love our culture, society etc. Nationalism as a sentiment arises when we compare ourselves with some other entity. Thus Nationalism has a negative connotation. George Orwell described it as worst enemy to peace. Even Tagore described nationalism as narrow domestic wall which are fragmenting the world.

No one should be asked to shout Bharat Mata ki Jai to prove his nationalistic credentials. Instead, a better way would be to ask the person to plant 10 trees or serve a poor family to prove his nationalistic sentiments. This would helps more in binding our society in common thread of peace, diversity, tolerance, respect, interdependence and harmony. Remember we should not make Aurangzeb as our focal point of history when we have the historical benchmark set by Akbar, Tughlaq and Zamiul Abidine.