A Nation Searching for a Narrative

in Times of Globalisation
Neera Chandhoke
As India’s position in the world has receded, as Indians are seeing other countries of Asia, and increasingly
China, outstrip their country, as Indian society is mired in caste and religious wars, as the state has to
devote more and more of its energy to these cases as well as to cases where people demand self-determination,
as integration into the world marked through globalisation underscores India’s underdevelopment and
powerlessness in the global arena, the response of large sections of the Indian middle class has taken the
form of aggressive intolerance. This intolerance that puts the blame on readily identifiable scapegoats –
the religious minorities for instance – provides fertile ground for the seeds of communalism and majoritarianism.
The net result is that the nation has been narrated in a new model – that of majoritarianism that serves
to exclude rather than include, marginalise rather than integrate, and keep out rather than embody large
sections of its own inhabitants.
As the gruesome and searing images of soever wracked by uncertainity the present – have been perhaps irremediably rup-
Christian missionaries being burnt alive may have been, was ours. Today for most tured. And the narrative of the nation that
and churches being set on fire etch them- of us even the present marked as it is by was lovingly and carefully built through
selves on our collective consciousness, loss of control over political and economic and in the struggle against colonialism,
with their irrefutable connection to the agendas as India rapidly globalises, does and that constituted much of the imme-
earlier patterns of brutal destruction di- not seem to be ours. For globalisation has diate post-colonial generation – my gen-
rected at the Muslim community, can we put a neat end, proclaimed a grand finale eration – appears to be on the margins of
as citizens of this democratic republic as it were, to all our convictions that the obsolescence.
dodge the hard question as to how did we country is in control of its own destiny, What is perhaps odd is that at the very
get here.1
and that the narrative of the nation is self- time that the nation has been opened up
INTRODUCTION referential, inasmuch as it draws its sus- to international messaging, we see the
tenance from internal interactions and eruption of cultural nationalism in a dis-
THE proposition that middle age brings debates. turbing mode. At the very time as we are
with it profound lassitude, dispiritedness, Now a great deal of theoretical energy being constituted by the informational
and perhaps resignation may be a truism, has been expended in explaining, concep- revolution as citizens of what McLuhan
but it is not by that fact necessarily ren- tualising, and describing globalisation. calls the ‘global village’, we are seeking
dered untrue. Because life undeniably does Western theorists tell us that the process to recover our ‘authenticity’ as the inheri-
seem to be so much more messier when has intensified global interconnectedness, tors of some bona fide meaning system
the nation and its inhabitants arrive at mid- so events in one part of the world – the on what it means to be Indian. On second
age. For one, the dizzying euphoria of collapse of stock markets for instance – glance, however, this contradiction is
youth that the present and the future can simultaneously affect other parts of the perhaps endemic to the process of
be managed, if not ordered, and guided, world. David Harvey in an evocative for- globalisation. For even as the process has
if not controlled, declines into a generalised mulation describes the process of simul- ruptured the self-referential narrative of
and crippling lack of confidence that taneity as ‘time-space compression’.2 For the nation, these ruptures have bred their
perhaps it cannot be so. Even more dis- us in the postcolonial world, however, this own reflexes and trajectories in the form
turbing is the accompanying recognition formulation cannot be but incomplete and of defensive and reactive formulations on
that perhaps we may never be able to inadequate inasmuch as it fails to capture what the Indian nation is about. Indeed the
control the future; that perhaps we have the phenomenon of power that occupies irony of globalisation rests in the fact that
never been able to do so despite all the the core of globalisation. Indeed, as the at the very time it seeks to pound the world
massive conceits of youth. This seems to west imposes its own ideas of how our into a single consciousness through the
be particularly true of India and Indians society, cultures, economy, and politics informational revolution, this very revolu-
as our country proceeds beyond middle should be arranged on us, most of the tion has bred and fostered several un-
age too – and here the imagination floun- postcolonial world has experienced palatable definitions of cultural exclusivity.
ders. For no one seems to know where we globalisation as colossal arrogance and This may possibly be natural to the
are going, though there is still some violence. As this part of the world is being human condition, inasmuch as human beings
measure of reasonable certainty that we hammered into shape to meet the needs constantly hunt for assurances. Therefore,
know where we have come from, and of the global economy once again, as we the construction of a world that promises
perhaps where we are right now. are being told how to think and what to open-ended possibilities, a world that
Contrast this to the heady optimism that think once again, relatively self-sufficient assures multiple definitions of who we
pervaded the country in roughly the 15 societies have been prised open to receive are, can also nurture deep and profound
years following independence. Bolstered new commands on how to comport them- uncertainity and confusion as to who we
and buoyed by memories of the impres- selves. The dreams we once dreamt of on really are. Overset by doubt and hesita-
sive victory that the nationalist, anti-co- our respective pillows that India would be tions people tend to search furiously for
lonial movement had won against colo- in time a self-reliant and self-sufficient definite referrals of identity that will fix
nialism; we had felt that the future how- nation here I speak of the Nehruvian vision who they are for themselves and for others.

1040 Economic and Political Weekly May1, 1999

 In other words, we are disposed to chase
unendingly for ‘referrals’, at the very
moment that we are told that identities are
not only plural but that they are fluid. And
more often than not, these ‘referrals’
happen to be that of a unified, homo-
genised (albeit constructed) nationalism –
a nationalism that pledges certainty. The
problem is that the quest for certainty
amidst flux has bred undesirable and
unviable formulations of cultural nation-
alism; a nationalism defined on the axis
of the majority religion, and a nationalism,
recollect, that had been ruled out by the
leaders of the freedom movement in India.
Recollect also that the leadership at inde-
pendence had sought to bind people in
sentiments of belonging that accrue
through civic nationalism based on citizen-
ship rights, democracy, and equality.
Today formulations on cultural or organic
nationalism seek to overturn all such
notions and practices.
Unquestionably, some of these formula-
tions give us cause for worry. For a
generalised muscular aggressiveness on
what it means to be Indian has resulted in
belligerent and vicious attacks on cultural
and religious minorities, aggressiveness
against Pakistan, and institutionalised a
generalised atmosphere of intolerance in
the body politic. Notions of a culturally
pure nation are leading the nation far away
from the manner in which it was originally
narrated by the left liberal leadership in
India. In the process we – and I speak of
left liberals – seem to have lost control
over historically constituted and handed
down narratives of the nation, because
they have been hijacked by fringes of
rightwing elements.
Now we can respond to this debilitating
loss of control in two ways. One, over-
come by a general sense of fatigue we can
say, as many postmodernists are saying,
that there is nothing that can be done; that
dreams of political intervention in the polity
are both futile as well as illusive. Such
interventions we can argue in a postmodern
mood inevitably degenerate into status-
quoism and the consolidation of power in
time. We can in other words shrug our
shoulders and renounce all responsibility
for sorting out this mess.
On the other hand, arguably messiness
can occasionally prove to be creative.
Perhaps this, I suggest, is the time to
narrate the nation in a new mode; a mode
that will perchance cover the flanks of the
narrative of nationalism that most of us
inherited as our patrimony. It is also
conceivably time to explore the structural
inadequacies in the way in which the nation
has been in Benedict Anderson’s admit-
Economic and Political Weekly May 1, 1999
tedly overused but nevertheless useful
formulation ‘imagined’, at least by some
sections of the body politic. In fact, an
engagement with received narratives of
nationalism may be profoundly construc-
tive. For it is only through this process,
that we can shift from being consumers
of received narratives, to being producers
of a shared narrative of the nation.
This narrative in order to prove viable
and relevant for our needs – that of a multi-
cultural, multi-religious and multi-ethnic
society – should possess in the main one
property. It should of course possess the
potential to address the problems of the
here and now, as well the capacity to take
on undesirable formulations on the nation.
But more importantly, it should be able
to fashion the nation in a democratic mode.
For there happens to be no earthly reason
why societies that aspire towards democ-
racy should speak languages of national-
ism that are founded on intolerance, chau-
vinism, and fascism. Such languages, we
need to recognise, neutralise, and even
betray democracy. In other words, if our
society has to fulfil its own promise of
democracy, our narratives of the nation
have to be democratic. There is no other
choice, for no healthy society that also
happens to lay claim to being a great
civilisation can live with schizophrenia.
Today, however, our society is fast
approaching the verge of schizophrenia,
because we proclaim our commitment to
democracy at the very time discourses of
fascism have made their appearance on the
political stage. But there is no way that
we can live with democracy as a constitu-
ent political principle, and fascism as the
constituent national principle. The two are
fundamentally incompatible, and attempts
to commensurate such incompatible prin-
ciples are not only politically and morally
flawed, they are frankly dishonest. If we
adopt democracy as the founding prin-
ciple of the body politic, we will have to
subscribe to a democratic nation; if we
adopt fascism, we abdicate all pretensions
to democracy. And whether we want to
give up democracy as the organising
principle of the body politic is something
we need to urgently reflect on. For this
will inevitably happen if we continue to
watch silently the untamed communali-
sation of our society. And silence I may
remind the audience, signifies acquies-
cence. We really have no option except
to intervene immediately in this matter.
The nation has to be re-narrated in a
democratic mode in order to recover the
nation for the people of India. It has to
be re-narrated in a democratic mode to
retrieve it from fascist, right wing elements
that parade intolerance, violence against
minorities, and frank criminality, as pa-
triotism.
I
The Nation Re-Imagined
In a prefatory point it can be argued that
a nation cannot be (through debates and
contestations) narrated or ‘imagined’ as
Anderson would have it, once and for all,
and left to fend for itself. For the social
conditions in which this narrative is
received – the conditions of reception if
we will – inevitably change over time.
Therefore, unless the narrative constantly
adjusts to changed conditions and altered
aspirations, it will be quickly rendered
incongruous and irrelevant. In other
words, the nation needs to be constantly
re-negotiated to suit the needs of the
present. If such re-negotiation does not
occur through the adoption of fresh and
appropriate techniques of representation,
the narrative will fail to spark off collec-
tive imaginations of belonging and of
connectedness. And once this happens,
nationalism as the narrative of the nation
is itself rendered archaic. In short, at
historically significant moments of its
political biography, any nation will be
compelled to both re-imagine as well as
re-narrate itself to its inhabitants and for
its inhabitants.
Now arguably such historically signifi-
cant moments can arise in at least four and
possibly more situations. The first such
situation will logically arise when memo-
ries of the moment in which the nation was
originally imagined – in the Indian case
during the freedom struggle – begin to
fade from people’s minds and recollection.
Therefore, if the nation has to continue to
inhabit the psyches of its people, continue
to be in Renan’s famous words, a “24 hour
plebiscite”, it will need to adopt new
techniques of representation. These tech-
niques of representation may be culled out
of many sources – memories, mythologies,
songs, literature, and films. What is
important is that they collectively impart
significance to what it means to be Indian,
and they harness collective emotional
energies in the project of the nation.
Therefore, they have to be fashioned anew
at such historically significant moments
simply in order to perform the task that
has been assigned to them.
Ironically, the origins of the second
moment that compels re-narration of the
nation usually emanate out of the original
act of imagining the nation. For the act
of imagining a nation in a plural society,
inevitably generates multiple imaginations
of multiple nations. We in India are surely
1041
familiar with this phenomenon. Roughlyat
the same moment that the Indian nation
took shape through and in the anti-colo-
nial struggle, sections of Indian society
began to imagine a nation they were to
later call Pakistan – an act of imagination
that led inexorably to the partition of the
country. Nationalism, therefore, as his-
tory shows us in some tragic detail breeds
its own trajectories in the form of multiple
nations of intent. Think of erstwhile
Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia,
and Rwanda, and now Bosnia, Kashmir,
the north-east of India and Punjab not so
long ago. As these nations of intent in-
creasingly define their political identity
against the original narrative of one, united,
political community, nationalism will have
to come to terms with these assertions. It
normally does so by acknowledging them,
neutralising them, coercing them, or as-
similating them. In each of these cases,
the original narrative of nationalism is
restructured as it battles with such develop-
ments – sometimes successfully, some-
times unsuccessfully.
The third situation in which the nation
will have to be re-negotiated usually arises
when religious, language, regional, and
ethnic communities within the plural nation
increasingly demand autonomy, oft against
the narrative of homogeneous nationalism.
Conversely, such a moment will consoli-
date itself when majoritarian movements
endeavour to build a homogeneous, ‘united’
nation through suppressing these asser-
tions and curbing identities, and when
they posit one identity, one culture, one
language for the plural nation. A prudent
and a judicious nation normally acknowl-
edges that identities smaller than that of
the nation are legitimate and acceptable,
and that people have a right to them. It
accordingly adjusts its narrative to assert,
or to reiterate plurality.3 An unwise nation
following the majoritarian mood tries to
curb these smaller identities, often with
disastrous results – think of Bosnia or
Rwanda. In both cases, the nation is
compelled to re-imagine itself.
Fourthly, as we see all over the post-
colonial world, nations tend to re-narrate
themselves, often in a belligerent mood,
when the international community inter-
venes openly in the affairs of sovereign
nations. This intervention may take the
shape of open use of military force as in
Iraq. Or it may take the form of harsh and
stark political and economic conditionali-
ties that accompany loan packages by
multi-lateral lending agencies. The net
result is that the (formerly) self-referential
character of the national narrative and the
sovereignty of the recipient countries have
1042
been deeply compromised. Most nations
have sought often in disastrous ways to
counter these interventions by aggressively
re-stating their own nationness, reformu-
lating in the process the original act of
imagining the nation.
II
The Crisis of the Nation in India
By the last years of the eighties, all four
of these situations had converged in a
particularly insistent manner to raise
questions about the original project of
nationness in India. Much of the charm
and the seductiveness of a nationalism,
that had accompanied a sustained and a
victorious struggle against the colonial
power, had worn off for generations of
Indians born 25 years after independence.
Commitment to the nation had simulta-
neously waned with people investing their
energies in regional, caste, language,
religious, and other such particularistic
agendas. The national consensus had
further frayed as regional movements in
Punjab not so long ago, Kashmir and in
parts of the north-east challenged the
territorial integrity of the country. Various
groups based on language and religion –
think of the Shah Bano case – were as-
serting their autonomy and identity. Above
all as India was forced through a combi-
nation of circumstances to go to the IMF
for a loan in 1991 the national narrative
was deeply jeopardised. Indeed, the fra-
gility of the nation was never as evident
as when the country had to modify and
sometimes abdicate projects and plans that
had been arrived at through historically
constituted debates, under harsh economic
conditionalities.
Now this was precisely the moment
when the project of hindutva, which serves
to define the country in a majoritarian
mode, made its appearance on the political
stage. At the very time India was accepting
its integration into the world on grossly
unequal terms, and as it was opening up
its borders to the world outside, sections
of society were seeking to turn the country
inwards. This turning inward, back to some
unspecified Hindu tradition – garv se kaho
hum hindu hai – may have been a response
to the complex of causes described above.
The point is that the response took the
shape of raucous and belligerent appeals
to ideas of a ‘strong’ nation based on
cultural purity and exclusiveness. These
appeals found ready resonance in a civil
society that was showing increasing frus-
tration with the way the country was going.
Resultantly, the nation for at least large
sections of civil society began to be re-
imagined in a majoritarian mood. Logi-
Economic and Political Weekly
cally, the same rhetoric that sought to
mobilise the country on the grounds of a
‘regenerated’ Hinduism served to openly
exclude the minorities from the definition
of the nation. For if the nation is defined
by the fact that the majority belong to the
Hindu religion, those who do not sub-
scribe to the religion are not a part of the
nation. This is the clear and unambiguous
message of hindutva.
The project of hindutva is not, of course
by any stretch of imagination, a new one.
It happened to come into existence at
roughly the same time as the Congress
initiated the project of secular nationalism
in the twenties. This is not strange, not
when we recollect that every construction
of nationalism is a plural venture. If
nationalism is a participative project be-
cause it is plural, each participant group
naturally constructs its own and perhaps
incommensurable version of what it means
to be a nation. This is intrinsic to mass
nationalism. Accordingly, as rival formu-
lations struggled in the public arena to
imprint the body politic with their own
imagery and model of the nation state; the
nation became a contested concept. It, in
other words, became the object of diverse
and often incognisant thinking.
On the one hand, the leadership of the
mainstream section of the freedom struggle
– Jawaharlal Nehru in particular – was to
insist repeatedly and emphatically that it
was undesirable to use the terms Hindu
and Hinduism to characterise Indian history
and culture. Even as competing religious
identities polarised around the lines of the
two-nation theory were to challenge and
fragment the movement, the Congress
continued to reiterate that the only basis
upon which the new nation could be
organised was secularism and the rights
of the minorities to their own religion and
culture. These rights were granted as early
as 1928 in the Motilal Nehru constitution.
Subsequently, article 29 and 30 of the
fundamental rights chapter of the Consti-
tution sanctioned minority rights, and
articles 25-30 guaranteed the freedom of
religion.
The task of building and consolidating
a secular nation gained urgency as the
country was partitioned along the lines of
religion, and as wholesale massacres that
accompanied the birth of Pakistan seared
collective memories of the body politic.
In fact, the explosion of religious sensi-
bilities around this event provoked intense
emotionalism and some degree of irrationa-
lism. Several leaders were arguing for the
establishment of a Hindu state to offset
the Islamic state that would presumably
consolidate itself in Pakistan. The demo-
May1, 1999
cratic leadership of the country, therefore,
had to accomplish two tasks in order to
fulfil its commitments to secular nation-
alism. First, it had to send a straight and
unambiguous message to the majority that
the new nation had no place for a majori-
tarian religion, and that it would function
on the basis of secularism or the Gandhian
respect for all religions – sarva dharma
sambhava. Secondly, it had to reassure the
minorities that their identities would be
protected in society and in the polity. “The
government of a country like India”, Nehru
was to state firmly, “with many religions
that have secured great and devoted fol-
lowing for generations, can never function
satisfactorily in the modern age except on
a secular basis”. At another point, he was
to say that – “We call our state a secular
one. The word ‘secular’ perhaps is not a
very happy one. And yet, for want of a
better, we have used it. What exactly does
it mean? It does not obviously mean a state
where religion as such is discouraged. It
means freedom of religion and conscience,
including freedom for those who may have
no religion.”
And Radhakrishnan was to state un-
equivocally that “we hold that no religion
should be given preferential status, or
unique distinction, that no one religion
should be accorded special privileges in
national life, or international relations for
that would be a violation of the basic
principles of democracy and contrary to the
best interest of religion and government...
No group of citizens shall arrogate to itself
rights and privileges which it denies to
others. No person shall suffer any form
of disability or discrimination because of
his religion but all alike should be free to
share to the fullest degree in the common
life.” Correspondingly, Pandit Nehru stated
on another occasion that “anything that
creates such an apprehension [majori-
tarianism] in the minds of any group in
India is to be deprecated. It tends to disturb
and is opposed to our secular ideal.”
Secularism was, therefore, designed to
regulate debilitating religious strife, to
assure the minorities of their safety, and
to set at rest any apprehension that the
country would align itself with the domi-
nant religion. The vision that underlay
such a commitment was that of civic
nationalism, inasmuch as people belong-
ing to different persuasions were granted
the right to their persuasions, and the
freedom to practice their religion even as
they were integrated into a democratic
national polity.
However, it is also true that Nehruvian
ideas were repeatedly challenged within
the Congress Party either explicitly or
Economic and Political Weekly May 1, 1999
implicitly from day one. Since the twen-
ties when the organisational activities of
the party expanded, the support base and
the political affiliations of sections of the
party overlapped to an alarming degree
with that of Hindu revivalist movements.
Chris Bayly writes that the Congress Party
at the grass roots level was sometimes
indistinguishable from the movement for
the protection of cattle or for the propa-
gation of Hindi. There was, according to
Bayly, “a sharp contradiction between the
secular, and non-communal, catch-cries
used in the Congress publicity or official
pronouncements, and the idioms shaped
by its orators”.4 Significant sections of the
Congress provincial committees were
pledged to the programme of the Hindu
Mahasabha. Leaders such as Madan Mohan
Malviya and Lala Lajpat Rai combined
a commitment to religious movements
with commitment to the secular credo of
the Congress. Above all the use of Hindu
symbols, slogans, and religious ideas to
mobilise people gave the activities of
the Congress a predominantly Hindu
flavour.
Under the surface, it is obvious that deep
disagreements on the shape of the future
nation permeated the Congress. Rhetoric
and beliefs about the virtues of a Hindu
nation continued to co-exist, howsoever
uneasily, with the ideology of the left
liberal leadership that gained ascendancy
over the Congress since the thirties. But
this uneasy co-existence extracted its own
price. Mushirul Hasan writes of the Hindu
centred view that came to be stridently
expressed in Congress circles. No two
Congressmen understood the meaning of
secularism in the same way.5 He cites the
words of a troubled Nehru who wrote in
the aftermath of the partition thus: “all of
us seem to be getting infected with the
RSS mentality. This is a curious finale to
our careers...If the present Hindu outlook
does not change radically, I am quite sure
that India is doomed”. Nehru is reported
to have complained that some of his
colleagues had forgotten one of the basic
principles and planks of the Congress, i e,
inter-communal unity. And he was to
dismiss those who spoke of the secular
state, as having understood it the least, and
having belied it by their own words and
actions.6
Nehruvian ideas triumphed for some
time, but the maturation of historically
constituted tensions gravely weakened the
commitment of the Congress Party to the
cause of the minorities. In the troubled days
following Nehru’s death, the Economic
and Political Weekly was to sum up the
political mood thus “[t]he rudest shocks
comes from the manner in which the
government and the country are allowing
themselves to be pushed off the edge of
secularism into the abyss of communal
reaction; falling back to the frightening
atavism of stagnant, dark and medieval
ethos of the Hindu speaking areas, the
Madhya Desa which had witnessed ages
ago the finest blossoming of Indian cul-
ture. It spells dark and dank reaction”.7
These fears were not unfounded, be-
cause later prime ministers of the Con-
gress Party were to openly play the Hindu
card, revealing thus the schism between
empty ideological protestations and rheto-
ric and practice. In fact, in sharp contrast
to Nehru’s own position and commitment
to the norm, the Congress has been re-
markably vacillating when it comes to
secularism. At times, individual members
of the party have flagrantly violated the
secular principle. The Congress has still
not been able to establish that its leaders
were not involved in the 1984 pogroms
against the Sikh community despite ample
proof to the contrary. And recollect that
in 1992, the Congress government at the
centre remained mute and inactive as the
Babri masjid was razed to the ground.
At the Panchmari session of the party
in 1998, the Congress president Sonia
Gandhi candidly admitted that the com-
mitment of the party to the minorities had
been deeply compromised. But despite
this admission, the Congress continues to
display ambiguity towards secularism.
Therefore, even though the highly
communalised situation in the country,
particularly the attacks on the Christian
minorities calls for unequivocal censure,
A K Antony at a meeting of the Congress
Working Committee on January 16, 1999,
is reported to have remarked that the
Congress should tread warily in the matter.
The party had, said the leader, been ac-
cused in the past as pampering the minori-
ties, it had, therefore, lost the confidence
of the Hindu majority (more pertinently
the vote of the Hindu majority).
The Congress now intends to re-appro-
priate the plank originally appropriated by
the BJP – Hinduism. The tolerant char-
acter of Hinduism is the best guarantor of
secularism, argues the Congress, and we
should tell the people what Hinduism really
means. Apart from the fact that Hinduism
has not precisely been known for its tol-
erance towards its own people, particu-
larly the so-called lower castes and women,
the strategy is deeply flawed. For surely
the instrumental use of Hinduism to re-
assure minorities who subscribe to differ-
ent religions is highly paternalistic and
patronising. Notwithstanding the fact that
1043
religious minorities are as much a part of
the body politic as the majority, notwith-
standing the fact that they are the equal
inheritors of and participants in the nation,
they are being told that the majority group
tolerates them because that is the nature
of the majority religion. What could be
more condescending? What could be more
alienating? What could testify more to the
victory of the BJP set agenda? And it
would be laughable if it were not so tragic
that the BJP has actually hailed the accep-
tance of Hinduism by the Congress. This
acceptance completely and utterly repu-
diates the insistence by Jawaharlal Nehru
that the term Hindu and Hinduism should
not be used to describe the country. Nothing
could illustrate more starkly the gap be-
tween the present party and the original
Congress leadership that dreamt of a
democratic secular nation. What is more
important is that despite all its rhetorical
statements that it is committed to the cause
of the minorities, the historical ambiguity
that the Congress displays when it comes
to secularism, cannot but feed into the
hindutva project that openly visualises
and defines the nation as predominantly
Hindu.
Hindutva has consolidated itself recently
in civil society in India, but its origins go
back to the 1920s. In 1923, Savarkar
constructed the political category of
‘Hindus’ and the Hindu nation, by deny-
ing to other religious communities their
rightful place in India. The Hindu, he
wrote, “inherits the civilisation of the
country as represented in a common his-
tory, common heroes, a common litera-
ture, a common art, a common law and a
common jurisprudence, common fairs and
festivals, rites and rituals, ceremonies and
sacraments”.8 India for the Hindus, he
argued, is pitrabhumi and punyabhumi,
both fatherland and holyland. Therefore,
though the Christians and the Muslims
have “inherited along with Hindus a
common Fatherland and a greater part of
the wealth of the common culture – lan-
guage, law, custom, folklore and history,
[they] are not and cannot be recognised
as Hindus...Their holyland is far off in
Arabia or Persia”.9
And M S Golwalkar was to narrowly
conceptualise Hindustan as the land of the
Hindus – “this country, Hindustan, the
Hindu race with its Hindu Religion, Hindu
Culture, and Hindu Language completes
the Nation concept”.10 These ideas were
to inspire and propel the movement for a
Hindu India or a majoritarian India both
in colonial and in postcolonial times. In
pursuit of this project the minorities tar-
geted as they were, in brutal and soulless
1044
stereotypes as ‘hostile’, ‘menacing’,
‘threatening’, or ‘demonic’, were mar-
ginalised from the very construction of the
nation.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the sangh
parivar kept a low profile. It occupied the
right wing fringe of Indian politics; the
centre space was occupied by the
hegemonic Congress consensual system.11
It were the events of the 1980s and 1990s,
which were to bring notions of undiffer-
entiated citizenship, majoritarianism, cul-
tural nationalism, the concept of a strong
nation-state, an attack on secularism and
minority cultures, and the development of
chauvinistic, narrow, even fascist concep-
tions of the nation to the fore.12
The reasons for the success of hindutva
in substantial sections of civil society are
admittedly large and complex. What is
important is that the hindutva brigade seeks
to restore what it sees as the jeopardised
unity of the nation, by proclaiming itself
as wedded to the oneness and integrity of
India, and by harping on the need to build
a strong nation. The ideology has found
ready resonance among large parts of civil
society – a deeply frustrated civil society
that was looking for explanations, quick
and ready solutions, and more importantly
scapegoats, for the quagmire the nation
found itself in.
As India’s position in the world has
receded, as Indians are seeing other coun-
tries of Asia and increasingly China,
outstrip their country, as Indian society is
mired in caste and religious wars, as the
state has to devote more and more of its
energy to these cases as well as to cases
where people demand self-determination,
as integration into the world market through
globalisation underscores India’s under-
development and powerlessness in the
global arena, the response of large sec-
tions of the Indian middle class has taken
the form of aggressive intolerance.13 This
intolerance that puts the blame on readily
identifiable scapegoats – the religious
minorities for instance – provides fertile
ground for the seeds of communalism and
majoritarianism. The net result is that the
nation has been narrated in a new mode
– that of majoritarianism that serves to
exclude rather than include, marginalise
rather than integrate, and keep out rather
than embody large sections of its own
inhabitants.
The BJP may have formally modified
its position on secularism and on minori-
ties once it attained power at the centre,
but the harm has been done. For one, the
triggering off and the consolidation of a
mood – that of Hindutva, has bred its own
consequences in the shape of unleashing
Economic and Political Weekly
open fascist forces. The gruesome murder
of a 59-year old missionary and his two
sons, one aged seven and the other nine,
is the direct even if an unintended, out-
come of the triggering off and consolida-
tion of this mood. For once people’s
energies have been harnessed to the project
of building a Hindu state – whatever that
might mean – and once the party that leads
this mobilisation in civil society acquires
state power, such acts take on the veneer
of reasonableness, they may even seem
natural. Even if technically speaking the
party is not involved in specific crimes
against the minorities, it certainly is respon-
sible for unearthing nefarious and dis-
tasteful trends in the polity. For undeni-
ably the party along with the affiliates of
the Sangh parivar has been directly im-
plicated in whipping up hate campaigns
against the religious minorities for the past
decade or so. Under the umbrella of soft
Hinduism practised by the central govern-
ment, a fascist Hinduism finds full expres-
sion in hateful and virulent pogroms of
the religious minorities. As far as the
minorities are concerned, the discourse of
hindutva at best reeks of paternalism; at
worst, it reeks of fascism.14 And this is
passed off as patriotism!
If the consolidation of a mood is respon-
sible for the destruction of the Babri masjid
and now the crimes against the Christian
minority in Gujarat and Orissa, it is equally
responsible for the spread of a fairly
generalised belief that the rightful inheri-
tor of the nation is the majority com-
munity. Otherwise perfectly well meaning
people now subscribe to the formulation
that the minorities have been pampered
through the Nehruvian concepts of secu-
larism and minority rights – the letters to
the editor columns of any newspaper or
news magazine will testify to this. That
these rights have been granted by the
Constitution, and that they flowed out of
historically constituted debates is glossed
over, even challenged. The overthrow of
history has never been more complete, and
the shortsightedness of this overthrow has
never been more obvious.
What is important is that all this poses
a threat to the doctrine of secular and civic
nationalism based upon a commitment to
religious freedom, the distancing of the
state from all religions, and the grant of
citizenship rights to all people irrespective
of their affiliation, that the Indian nation
had begun its post-independence life with.
This causes some sadness when we re-
member that at one point, the Indian nation
had been constructed juridically and
politically. It stood for political liberation,
for universal human rights, for secularism,
May1, 1999
and for plurality. Today an aggressive
national consciousness calls for homo-
genisation and sameness. Appeals to
ascriptive identities are louder than ap-
peals to political norms. And pungent
notions of the volk replace the community
of rights bearing citizens.
Unhappily, whereas, the liberal leader-
ship under Nehru designed secular and
civic nationalism to assure the minorities
of fair play and justice, today hindutva has
been substituted for secularism. An un-
easy reminder of this is the formulation
on hindutva in a judgment of the Supreme
Court of India.15 The court ruled that the
concept of hindutva, which incidentally
had been used to garner votes in an elec-
tion, is not a religious doctrine but a way
of life. The use of the term does not amount
to corrupt practices during an election. No
interpretation ruled the court, can confine
the meaning of hindutva to the narrow
limits of religion alone, or equate it with
fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry.
Hindutva, stated the court further, denotes
the content of Indian culture and heritage.
It is a way of life for the people in the
subcontinent. This is a deeply flawed
judgement as various commentators have
argued, institutionalising and legitimising
as it does discriminatory practices and
provocative oratory.16 What is more
important is that it simply indicates the
dissolution of the national consensus on
secular nationalism that was at one point
adopted to manage intergroup relations
among communities.
These developments need, I suggest, to
be countered strongly if we want to pre-
serve our democratic credentials. In other
words, we have to pool our collective
energies to formulate a democratic narra-
tive of the nation. For only a democratic
narrative will allow us to dream of a future
where people belonging to diverse and
perhaps incommensurable persuasions will
be able to live together in peace and civility.
III
Attempting Some Recovery of a
Civil Narrative of the Nation
As a prefatory point let me suggest that
nations find feasible narratives for them-
selves, only when those narratives that
represent the nation to and for its inhab-
itants, manage to connect them through
ties of belonging to each other and to the
nation. A nation can only prosper when
its members feel that their lives and their
dreams are incomplete without each other.
And it can flourish only when its inhab-
itants feel that their fates are inextricably
intertwined to that of the nation. This is
the essence of nationalism, the very pur-
Economic and Political Weekly May 1, 1999
pose for which the nation is brought into
existence through representations that
serve to create and consolidate feelings of
connectedness. A nation, in effect, can
only harness the collective emotional
energies of its people when it manages to
establish such connectedness and corre-
sponding feelings of belonging.
Certainly, nations construct themselves
around objective factors such as territorial
borders, shared traditions, common his-
torical memories, rituals, practices, and a
common language. But the presence of
objective factors is simply not enough.
These factors have to be invested with rich
symbolism and meaning so that they evoke
deep sentiments of identification and
belonging. It is only then that a group can
be called a nation. Therefore, I suggest that
whether a group of people can be termed
a nation, depends largely on whether they
consider themselves as belonging to one,
and whether they consider themselves dis-
tinguished from others by this fact. It is
simply not enough to depict a nation in
terms of its institutions, structures, and
ideologies; it has to be depicted in terms
of structures of feelings.
These structures of feelings may well
be unexpressed, they may well be sub-
terranean, they may well be for the most
part unrealised, and unarticulated – this
is not important. What is important is that
people experience confusion, bewilder-
ment, or incompleteness; they feel that
they have little understanding of who they
are, where they come from, and what they
should do in identifiable and not so iden-
tifiable situations, if they are denied access
to their national community – think of
refugees or of exiles. What is the best thing
about migrants and seceded countries?
wonders Salman Rushdie in Shame. “I
think it is their hopefulness...And what is
the worst thing? It is the emptiness of our
luggage...We have floated upwards from
history, from memory, from time.”
Now these sentiments of belonging can
only arise and consolidate themselves in
the imaginations and in the emotional
energies of its inhabitants if the nation
speaks to all sections of its people. To the
inhabitant it should promise belonging, to
the refugee or the immigrant the memories
of belonging, to the aspirant citizen the
promise of belonging. But at all times it
has to above all things speak the language
of belonging. This is important for people
to feel intuitively that they are at home,
that the nation is theirs, and that, therefore,
they have a sense of roots and of rootedness.
People must feel that wherever they are,
whatever they are doing, they always have
something and somewhere to come back
to, and that if they do not have this some-
thing they will be lost, that they will ‘float
upwards’ without anything to hold them
to the ground. If this is true, then lack of
belonging inevitably leads to alienation
and deprival. And homelessness as any
refugee or immigrant can tell us, can
perhaps prove to be the most enervating
and tortured experience of human beings
because there is nothing within hailing
distance.
Sukrita Paul Kumar writes about a noted
poet R Parthasarthy who migrated to the
west, because as he confessed, “I became
hypercritical of everything Indian. Indian
society was, I felt, deeply neurotic, it feet
chained to a grossly exaggerated past.
India was a nation of sleep walkers”.
Fascinated by an England he had created
in his mind in the twilight of the Raj, he
was unprepared for the alienness and the
bareness of the country of his adoption.
It was then in his poem the ‘Exile’ that
he was to write.
He had spent his youth whoring
After English gods.
There is something to be said for exile:
you learn that roots are deep
That language is a tree, loses its colour
under another sky
....
However, the most reassuring thing
about the past is that it has happened.17
But then there cannot be one feeling of
belonging, or one ‘reassuring thing about
the past’ – in a society that consists of
various linguistic, religious, and cultural
groups. For people belong to the nation
in different ways – through their own
languages, cultures, and religions. Belong-
ing is always plural in its ties, its imagi-
nation, memory, sense of history, and
perception of the present. Therefore, we
call any attempt to impose one sense of
belonging on diverse groups, each of which
relate to the nation in their own way,
through the imposition of one language,
or religion, or culture – fascism. In other
words, people must in a democratic nation
at least be free to belong to the nation in
their own ways. The crucial term here is
freedom. Freedom in turn involves two
propositions. One, that groups should be
free to follow their own religious and
cultural practices within the ambit of what
is democratically permissible. Secondly,
groups should not be targeted on the
ground that they subscribe to a religious
persuasion that is not that of the majority.
A failure to do so, it is evident, leads to
alienation, estrangement, and withdrawal.
The narrative of the nation in such an
event negates the possibility of its own
existence – that of belonging.
1045
 Therefore, any narrative of the Indian
nation in order to fulfil the conditions of
its own existence has to recognise as well
as appreciate the fact of plurality. The
recognition and the appreciation of plu-
rality is good for various reasons. It is, for
instance, good for every society to be
exposed to different ways of life. This
widens social horizons, because people
learn from each other different ways of
negotiating the world. Societies acquire
toleration and open-mindedness even as
the boundaries of society are broadened
and expanded. This is the best guarantee
to prevent societies turning inwards upon
themselves, from becoming chauvinistic,
or intolerant. But above all we need to
recognise pluralism because this is the
best guarantee of a viable nation – a nation
that speaks to all the language of belonging.
However, in the currently surcharged
atmosphere of intolerance towards reli-
gious minorities, a commitment to plural-
ism may not be enough. In fact, pluralism,
let me suggest, may be essential but not
sufficient to serve as a constituent feature
of the body politic.
Let us, for instance, examine a situation
where three propositions are on offer. The
first proposition is that a commitment to
pluralism implies acceptance of the fact
that a society consists of various groups,
each of which subscribe to different and
perhaps incommensurable ways of life.
The second proposition is that that these
ways of life are of such overwhelming
importance for their members that they
have a right to them. The third proposition
is that if perchance these ways of life are
under attack or if they are decaying be-
cause they are subjected to benign neglect,
they should be protected through the
institutionalisation of supportive environ-
ments or through minority rights.
Now consider that there is no logical
connection between the three propositions.
(I) We accept the value of pluralism for
a number of reasons. We, therefore, accept
the first but not the second proposition,
so we feel that there is nothing so sacro-
sanct about these ways of life, or that they
become an good of such overriding im-
portance that we have to grant or institute
a right to them. People, we can say, have
access to an infinite number of com-
munities in a democratic society, and there
is no reason why one community should
be privileged over others. People can relate
to the world through a myriad of com-
munities, and become deep and completed
individuals. On the other hand, to confine
our notion of the good to the community
of the first instance – religion for instance,
is to limit and truncate individual epistemes
1046
and systems of value. Communities of
the first instance, whose membership is
involuntary, we can further say, possess
the power of tyrannising their members,
and limiting their perceptions and
worldviews. We should take every step
we can to break the hold of the community
over its people.
(II) Or we subscribe to the first two of
the three propositions on offer. Therefore,
we can allow that communities of the first
instance are of such overriding impor-
tance that individuals should be given the
right to them. But at the same time, we
need not necessarily believe that we have
a commitment to the maintenance of these
communities. If they are decaying, it must
be that they are not viable enough, or
because the members have not invested
sufficiently in them.
Therefore, there is no necessary connec-
tion between the three propositions on
offer.
However, note that if we subscribe to
the first of the three propositions, but not
to the second and third, or if we subscribe
to the first two but not to the third, we
may land up with a principle but we may
lack a constituency. For, this constituency
may have been destroyed either through
deliberate targeting or through benign
neglect. Because we have neither under-
stood that people have a right to their
religious community, and that this com-
munity has a right to maintain and re-
produce itself, we may be subscribing to
pluralism at the very time that these plural
communities are decaying. These groups
may simply have been hammered into
either non-existence or into non-identity
by the majority.
Therefore, the proposition that India is
a plural country and that this fact should
be accepted is by itself essential but not
enough as a constitutive principle of the
body politic. For we may have a principle
to gloat over, but we may not have a
plurality of groups on our hands. A com-
mitment to pluralism is just not sufficient
in our current situation, not if we remem-
ber that people are being denied the right
to their religion, and that religious com-
munities are being targeted mercilessly.
We, it is obvious, have to look further than
pluralism to establish the right of minority
religious communities in the nation.
(III) Suppose we were now to reverse
the order of the three propositions made
above. The order was that pluralism
allows us to understand that people have
a right to their religio-cultural communi-
ties, and this in turn prompts us to commit
ourselves to supporting these communi-
ties. This by itself, we saw, is not enough
Economic and Political Weekly
to secure minority groups the right to their
identity. But assume we begin from the
perspective of the individual rather than
that of society. Can this build up a logical
relationship between the two? Let us see.
(IV.1) The first proposition is that we
assume that cultures/religion and religio-
cultural communities are of overriding
importance for the individual, because
human beings acquire the evaluative ca-
pacities that help them to map out and
assess the world from these communities.
Without such access, individuals are di-
minished. Note that this statement – with-
out access to the religio-cultural commu-
nity that provides them with evaluative
resources, individuals experience dimin-
ishment, is not something that can be
measured in the same way as we can
measure socio-economic marginality for
instance. This is a speculative statement,
which falls within the realm of morality
inasmuch as it announces a stand – this
is what is important for human beings.
This stand need not be justified by refer-
ence to empirical considerations, such as
the statement that we have so many poor
people in the country, because we measure
poverty with reference to some empirical
consideration – the poverty line for in-
stance. We cannot empirically prove that
human beings are diminished without their
religious community, just as we cannot
empirically prove for instance that human
beings possess rights by virtue of their
capacity to be moral.
Nor should do we try to do so. Rousseau
could not prove that human beings were
born free and were yet everywhere in
chains. No one until now has to been able
to perceive the thickness or the length of
these chains, or indeed prove that when
humans are born they are not tied by
chains. So when Rousseau spoke of hu-
man beings being born free and yet having
being chained, he was accomplishing two
tasks – both of them being normative. He
was pointing out the illegitimacy of co-
ercion as well as the desirability of free-
dom. Therefore, the proposition – human
beings are diminished if they are deprived
of their religious community – can only
be justified in terms of morality. And
morality is so self-evident, that if someone
believes the contrary – for instance, that
religion is not important for human beings
– he should be asked to give reasons for
his statement.
(IV.2) The second proposition that is
intrinsically related to the first is that if
religio-cultural communities are a good
for the individual, this should be of enough
overriding importance to secure access to
them through the right to religion. How-
May1, 1999
ever, and this is the third proposition –
note that the effectiveness of this right
depends on the presence of a community.
We cannot give individuals the right to
religion when the community itself is being
destroyed. That will amount to sheer
mindless-ness. The existence of a commu-
nity, therefore, is a pre-condition for the
exercise of the individual right to religion.
Therefore, if we accept the first propo-
sition, we will have to accept the second
and the third one’s. We will have to realise
that since religions and cultures are a good
for the individual, if a religion is being
targeted, or if it is sought to be assimilated
into the majority culture, we have an
obligation to institute a supportive social
and political environment. It is only then
that we can secure the right of the indi-
vidual to his/her religion. This is the
objective of minority rights.
(V) Now consider that if diverse reli-
gions and cultures are allowed to flourish
in society, we will logically possess a
plural society. Note that if we begin from
the empirical fact of pluralism, this by
itself does not institute an obligation that
diverse and often incommensurable
ways of life should be respected, or that
vulnerable religions should be protected.
We may have a commitment to pluralism,
but we may not have diverse religions to
value and cherish (except the majority
religions), and logically a principle or a
norm needs a constituency, otherwise, it
is rendered redundant. Therefore, we are
obliged within a democratic narrative of
the nation to protect minority groups, and
among them, we have to protect those
who are the most vulnerable or the most
targeted.
It is time, I suggest, that ideas of plura-
lism and the accompanying premise of
toleration is strengthened by a firm com-
mitment of the rights of minority groups
to their religion and culture. This is es-
sential for the Indian nation to become a
flourishing viable entity, for the language
of nationalism as argued above has to
above all instil instinctive feelings of
belonging and home to all its inhabitants.
This it can only do when it accepts that
people belong to the nation through their
specific religion and culture, through their
specific language and ways of belonging.
Any attempt to wipe this out will lead
to the creation of homeless, alienated
citizens.
If the narrative fails to recognise this,
we can logically expect that the concept
and the institution of the nation will frag-
ment, shred, and dissolve. We cannot speak
of an Indian nation, when constructions
of this nation are built upon politics and
Economic and Political Weekly May 1, 1999
legitimations of exclusion and denials.
For viable nations are at all times build
upon the politics of inclusion that com-
bine respect for distinct identities with
democratic incorporation of these identi-
ties within the narrative of nationness.
This it seems to me is the only way in
which people belonging to diverse and
incommensurable persuasions can live
together in a nation. This is the only way
in which they can feel that the nation is
there, embedded in their memories and in
their imagination for the present and the
indefinite future. This is the only stuff out
of which a viable, flourishing, democratic,
nation can be constructed in times of
globalisation that have witnessed the
eruption of several distasteful cultural
identities.
Notes
[This paper was originally presented at a seminar
on ‘The Novel in Search of the Nation’, organised
by the Sahitya Academy. It is based upon my
forthcoming work Beyond Secularism: The
Rights of Religious Minorities, currently in press
(OUP, Delhi).]
1 Malini Parthasarthy, ‘Fascism on the
Rampage’, The Hindu, January 26, 1999.
2 David Harvey, The Condition of Post-
modernity Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989.
3 I am using the term reiterate for a specific
reason. In India, the Congress had asserted
the plural character of the nation as early as
1928. India, hold several theorists, was one
country that choose not to become a nation,
because the leadership recognised that the
country consisted of several relatively
autonomous groups who would logically
resisted being moulded into a nation state of
the kind that had been built in Europe. See
Ravinder Kumar, India: A ‘Nation-State’ or
a ‘Civilization- State’. Occasional Papers on
Perspectives in Indian Development, Centre
for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library. (Delhi, Teen Murti
House) no VIII, 1989. Also Bhikhu Parekh,
‘Ethnocentricity of the Nationalist Discourse’
in Nations and Nationalism, Vol 1, no 1,
pp 25-52, 1995.
4 Chris Bayly, Local Roots of Indian Politics:
Allahabad 1880-1920, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, p 142, 1975.
5 Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of A Divided Nation.
India’s Muslims since Independence, Oxford
University Press, Delhi, p 138, 1997.
6 Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of A Divided Nation,
pp 149-50.
7 Economic and Political Weekly , ‘Government
Abdicates’, November 5, 1966, p 476.
8 Savarkar, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? note 40,
p 81, 1949 [1929], 4th edition, Gokhole, Pune.
9 Savarkar, Hindutva, p 92.
10 M S Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood
Defined (Nagpur, P N Indurkar, Bharat
Publications) p 43, 1939.
11 On this see the first chapter of Tapan Basu
et al Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags, Tracts
For the Times, Orient Longmans, Hyderabad,
1993.
12 See Sumit Sarkar, ‘The Fascism of the Sangh
Parivar’, Economic and Political Weekly,
January 30, 1993, pp 163-66.
13 Thomas Blom Hansen, ‘Globalisation and
Nationalist Imaginations: Hindutva’s Promise
of Equality through Difference’, Economic
and Political Weekly, March 9, 1996,
pp 603-16.
14 See Sumit Sarkar, ‘The Fascism of the Sangh
Parivar’, 1993. For a response to this point
of view see Achin Vanaik, Communalism
Contested, (Delhi, Vistaar), chapter 5.
15 The Supreme Court had to decide whether
12 elected representatives to the BJP/Shiv
Sena government in Maharashtra, that
included the chief minister Manohar Joshi
and the Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray had
engaged in corrupt practices under the
Representation of the People Act. Section
123 (3) of the act makes the appeal to religion,
race, caste, community, or language, or the
use of or the appeal to religious and national
symbols, for the purpose of winning the
election or for prejudicely affecting the
election of any other person , corrupt practices.
Section 123 (a) of the act prohibits the
promotion of feelings of enmity or hatred
between the people on grounds of religion,
race, caste, community, or language for the
purposes of winning the election or for
prejudicing the prospects of any other
candidate winning the election. The court
found several of the accused, including Bal
Thackeray guilty of promoting religious
enmity and hatred. What is interesting is the
pronouncement of the court on hindutva
.Manohar Joshi v Nitin Bhaurao Patil, 1995,
7 SCALE 30, Ramesh Yeshwant Probhoo v
Prabhakar Kasinath Kunte and Ors1995.
7 SCALE 1, and ten others.
16 Cossman and Kapur delving into the historical
contexts within which the concept of hindutva
was articulated, state emphatically that
hindutva cannot be separated from its appeal
to religion, nor from its assault on the
legitimacy of minorities – ‘the courts
conclusion that there is nothing in the concept
of hindutva that promotes religious enmity
or hatred belies the fact that the attack on the
religious minorities is a constituent element
of hindutva’. Brenda Cossman and Ratna
Kapur, ‘Secularism: Bench – Marked by Hindu
Right’, Economic and Political Weekly,
September 21, 1996, pp 2613-30 in pg 2625.
Also see Anil Nauriya, ‘The Hindutva
Judgments: A Warning Signal’, Economic
and Political Weekly, January 6, 1996, vol 31,
no 1, pp 10-13.
17 Cited in Sukrita Paul Kumar, ‘The Changing
Mask of Indian Reality’ in Indu Banga and
Jaidev (eds), Cultural Reorientation in
Modern India, Manohar, Delhi, pg 141-42.
Economic and Political Weekly
available at
A H Wheeler Bookstalls
Western Railway
Borivli to Vile Parle
1047