Nationalism in the 21st

century
(Sampreeti Kar)

English project
2022-2023

The Mother’s International School, New Delhi

 Declaration by student

I, Sampreeti Kar hereby certify that I had

personally carried out the work depicted in
the project titled, “Nationalism in the 21st
Century”

SIGNATURE
 Certificate

This is to certify that Sampreeti Kar of the

Mother’s International School has
successfully completed the projected
entitled ‘Nationalism in the 21st century’
under the guidance of Mrs. Milan Mala
Sarin
 Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my

English teacher Mrs. Milan Mala Sarin for
providing this golden opportunity of writing and
researching this project
I would also like to extend my thanks to my
grandparents, Mrs Banadevi Maiti and Mr
Shashanka Shekhar Maiti, who helped to make this
project rich in information and provide powerful
insights.
 CONTENTS

1.Introduction

2.Nationalism vs Patriotism; two sides of the

same coin

3.Rise of nationalism in India

4.Interview (conversation with Mr.

Shashankar Shekhar Maiti

5.Nationalism vs Globalism

6.Students’ reflection

7.Bibliography
Interview
(Interview with Mr. Shankar Shekhar Maiti. Mr. Maiti,85 years old, is a retired
school headmaster who had witnessed the India Pakistan partition firsthand.
The partition was an incident where nationalism took an ugly turn back in
1948)

Sampreeti- It’s been over 70 years since the blood bath took place in 1947.
Could you tell us a brief description about what you remember of the chaos
that unfolded then…even though you were probably quite young to
understand what was going on?
S.S maiti: Yes. I think I was about 10 years old. Quite young true but we did
understand a bit of what was going on because that was all anyone could talk
about. I had gone to visit my uncle in a small village in Punjab. It was I think
June, 1948 ..the dates are a bit blurry but I remember it was a sunny June
afternoon when some people gathered and argued loudly with each other. After
that they all went home, and it was no big deal. I remember this part because my
cousin brothers and I usually roamed around the markets at that time. However,
that day my uncle refused to let me out of the house and for some reason I was
very upset. That upset did not last long because it soon turned to real fear. I was
told that that a few days later the crowd had grown and soon people were
running around, screaming with bleeding heads as stones were being pelted.
People were trying to beat the other party with sticks, hammer, sickles, stones,
literally anything they could get their hands on to. The shops were uprooted,
few shops were burned down too. The agitated mass ripped apart the entire
market to shreds in just a few days. That was the closest I had been to one of the
tens and thousands of violent encounters that erupted in India in 1947.My uncle
with his family and me returned to Bengal as soon as possible because we all
knew this was only the start. After this I only heard horrifying news and stories
of people on the radio and paper. They were being uprooted from their homes
and tortured, killing others and being killed and the refugees moving in
thousands to a safer place is still a very haunting picture
Sampreeti- Did your family or known ones have any strong views on such
partition?
S- As far as I knew, my family was always against the partition. In fact, my
father had a very secular perspective. He was a village doctor and he had not
only treated Muslim patients but also worked with Muslim doctors. I think
because of his profession my father never saw Muslims as someone being an
outsider of India. He treated them in their sick state, so the empathy was
somewhere there.
My mother however was against the Islamic community. She would often
berate me if I came back from school with the Muslim children of our
neighborhood. Quite orthodox I would say but my mother never imagined the
disparity could scale up to this level
we had a neighborhood full of Muslim kids and we all went to the Naryanbar
Primary School. I had many friends from there, but I remember many moved
away during that time. It’s understandable now, for in a neighborhood full of
Hindus, Muslim families would have to live in fear and insecurity
S- Many people belief that the partition of India gave rise to the Hindu
nationalism which today is showing signs of being equated with Jingoism.
What are your views on that
I think we are very much right when we say that partition was the reason the
dark age of oppressive Hindu nationalism began. Britishers ruled for about 200
years, divided the country and left, ; not even knowing what immense damage
that did to out country. The violence and trauma of thousands of people dying
fueled anger and non-Hindu became outsiders. Today I think there is a slow but
evident shift from being secular to country of forceful nationalism. We all got
an unwanted idea seeded in our minds that the Hindu religion should be
celebrated and propagated. Sometimes these so-called Hindutva acts become
integrated with violence and things just go out of hand.
S- Nationalism is loyalty or devotion to one’s country leading to exclusion
of other people’s interest. However, we say that India became independent
due to the force of nationalism. What and who could have been responsible
for marring the meaning of this word as time passed?
If we talk about who, well there are some individuals who were responsible for
disasters like the 1947 partition, I personally hold Jinnah and his party
responsible for it. They were leaders whose decisions caused irreversible
damages. However again, you cannot put the blame on a single person that yes,
he was the one responsible for this for there were so many people who
supported him and are the reason why he became empowered to take such a
drastic step. Pre independence era was one of recognizing our country’s values
and beliefs, its tradition and culture and to just save it from the British. Indians
from al walks of life connected with each other as all suffered maltreatment
from the colonial government. Thus, it was a form of nationalism where people
only started to recognize and respect their land and demanded sovereignty.
What went wrong after that was the partition, the several religious agitations
that erupted afterwards and the Hindu idealistic government we have today that
is keen on transforming people’s thought process to a religiously inclined one
Religious identity, without a doubt is a sentimental issue. When one connects
with it, they feel their voice has been heard, like they are being supported and
represented. This why you can often see youngsters in violent protests,
propagating the Hindu religion with so much dedication. We have come so far
that today nationalism is taking pride in the country no matter what we do. If we
keep on imposing culture and morals or propagate the same through indirect
methods, we are doing nothing but going against our preamble

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