The Oxford English dictionary defines Nationalism as “Identification with one’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations”. However, in today’s India, the word nationalism is fast warping into something where a person who is not wearing a particular brand on your sleeve you are being deemed as anti-national. More importantly, if you are a person whose intellect compels you to question the norm then for sure you are an anti-national.
So let us look at nationalism with a little better intent. Nationalism for sure roots from a nation, a body of people united by descent, history, culture, and language among other things and inhabiting a common territory. So some of the keywords in this concept are common, decent, and history. India is a macroscopic amalgamation that can be broken down into micro-nations based on territory language and religion which all can be merged into a shared descent and history intermingling to make us what we are today. So while we may have certain elements of language that separate Bengali from a Marathi religion and common history would unify, just as an element of religion might separate a Kashmiri Muslim from a Kashmiri Pandit but territorial affiliation and common history would again unify them. Building all these elements up into the common fabric of India shared over millennia of rulers of Aryan or Moghul creed or of fighting the oppression of the Britishers. It could as much be the fabric of the culture that has been woven together by the splashes of colour of each region or religion. So today India is a khichri- a pot luck of all the ingredients of individual community ethnicity language to make what it is today
Now while we have created a unique Vibgyor of all the colours blending into one we need to appreciate the brilliance of the red as also the fire of yellow blend into the cool blue individually as much as the all-encompassing white. For when we fail to see them in their own individual hues and only focus on the collective we miss out on so much beauty. I am sure we will all agree, the beauty of nature in white would be serene but incomplete without the brilliance of all the colours that mother nature commands. Our nation today is going through a crisis when we are probably focusing on the encompassing rather than the individual elements, where the demand identify with the whole is becoming too much of a cacophony for the individuals. It is becoming an urge that is being forced down rather than welling up from within. What is more disturbing probably is that these desire to brandish one’s nationalism is becoming so overwhelming that if we have a voice of dissent it feels like a tune off harmony for the nationalism brigade and it needs to be silenced. In this quest for harmony in nationalism, we are slowly losing out the harmony that has made our nation what it is
If we look at our nation closely we will say that it is the diversity that we have that helps us become so distinctive. It is our varied human resource that gives us a good mix of smart and hard toilers along with the creative thought process that is so envied in the world market. So if we try to break that blend I am sure we will have a situation that will be detrimental for us even economically in the world market. It is with this perspective that we need to consider the necessity of chest thumping nationalism that borders or crosses the border into jingoism. Because in trying to force blend what we are essentially creating is lots of clumps that are reluctant of being forced into the blender, which in itself is leading to further dissonance instead of resonance to the nationalist anthem.
The need for resonance to the nationalist anthem is so strong today that any questions seem to be anti-national and is matched with such vitriolic rhetoric that it seems a question is akin to a declaration of sedition that needs to be met not with an answer but retribution that is exemplary. When we talk of nationalism we need only look at the symbols of our nation to really understand that this false cacophony is uncalled for. The serene white of our national flag is evenly matched by the discordant passion of saffron and verdant green. So how can there be discord between a saffron-clad ram and green-clad Rahim? If we read the words of our national anthem it calls on every element of our vast and diverse country as rousing in the hearts of the people, as resounding in the hills and vales. Then how can Punjab be different from Dravidas or from Banga? If we look at the man who penned these words then in another of his writings he prays to the Lord that “……Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action. In to that heaven of freedom, my father, LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE!”. If Tagore was alive today, his prayer for the mind being led towards thought, or the bidding that dead habit does not strangle our thoughts would for sure be construed as an act of sedition, for how dare he talk of thinking independently beyond the yoke of nationalism that calls for ram and Rahim to be together. For Tagore had the gumption to tie a rakhi on Muslims when Bengal was being partitioned. In today’s India would such an act of solidarity be taken for that or misconstrued as an attempt to threaten the nationalist fabric that is being so desperately woven with the blood of its citizens. Would Tagore revered as the man who has sired our national anthem then be marked as an anti-national. Would the departed souls of Ram Prasad Bismil and Asfaqullah hanged on the same day also have to bear the burden of being called anti-nationals in today’s nationalism charged India, for they bled together in spite of being devout in their own religions an aberration to the flavour of nationalism being bandied today? Indeed many of the inspirations out of our history books would probably be anti-nationals in Nationalist India
