Society and Business

Session 13

Salamah Ansari
 Module
Nationalism and its manifestations

• Defining nationalism
• The competing definitions of Indianness
 “Unity in Diversity”

or

“one nation, one people, one culture”

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 India…..
• Truncated colonial territories inherited by the Union
of India

• India’s sense of itself: political conception

• Self invention of a national community

• Reliance on British history of India

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 An exercise of self- interrogation

I. the explication of rules through codification

II. the existence of an overarching State

III. representation centered on individuals

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 I. Explication of Rules Through Codification

• Codification was necessary to explicate the rule of law.

• A “pedagogical tool” to fashion common norms of democratic

citizenship.

• A framework for self-rule among a citizenry that had been

colonial subjects.

• A “political instrument” to direct legislators and judges.

Territoriality of India.  6
 II. Centralized State Apparatus

• Establish clear external boundaries necessary to ensure

political sovereignty.

• Enable planned development.

• Reorder the deeply unequal relations that marked everyday

social life in the princely states and myriad villages of the
nation.

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 III. Representation Centered on Individuals

• Fundamental freedoms.

• Overcome the predefined collective identities of caste and religion, which

severely restricted individual freedom.

• Departure from pernicious colonial group identity used to rule the

colonies.

• Political identity vs religious identity (immutable).

• Rejection of reservation based on religious identity.

All three elements are parts of a puzzle, mutually supportive elements.

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• Indians are by definition a diverse set of people.

• Difference is taken for granted.

• Tolerance vs acceptance.

• Multiple identities: One Indianness

• Can we oversimplify ‘nationalism’?

How you stretch your hands out in prayer does not determine your
citizenship. 9