In 2000, NDA
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, during a visit to Srinagar, came up with
the imaginative and bold promise that the Centre would resolve the Kashmir
issue, “insaniyat ke dairey mein,” or within the ambit of humanity. It
was an important and attractive departure from New Delhi's previous position
that the issue had to be resolved within the framework of the Indian
Constitution.
It raised some
eyebrows because it marked a change in the usual stance but it was greeted by
thunderous applause by the Kashmiris. I don’t think that Vajpayee was talking
of creating a separate country but then what exactly did he meant , how he
looked to accommodate the aspirations of Kashmiri people within Indian nation?
Similarly when in an interview Narendra Modi announced that
he is a Hindu and he is a nationalist and therefore we can safely call him as a
Hindu nationalist, the announcement was covered in the main headlines of all
the newspapers. While media’s obsession with Modi was understood what these
incidents did were to challenge our normal understanding of the concept of
nation and nationalism .It took us out of our comfort zone and forced us to
think what exactly is nationalism and gave us a chance to look back into
history and ponder upon the concept of nation and nationalism. How old are
these concepts and what the different sides to this are.
Nationalism
As per wikipedia
“The term nationalism was coined by Johann
Gottfried Herder (nationalismus)
during the late 1770s.Precisely where and when nationalism emerged is difficult
to determine, but its development is closely related to that of the modern state and the push for popular
sovereignty that surfaced
with the French
Revolution and the American
Revolution in the late
18th century and culminated with the ethnic/national revolutions of Europe, for
instance the Greek
War of Independence”
Nation
Again if we look into Wikipedia for the meaning of nation we
get the following definition” The
term nation is a complex concept that has a variety of definitions.
Factors such as time and location affect how people have to come to view the
term. There are two widely accepted explanations of a nation, as stated above.
To some nation refers to a shared cultural experience, such as the Nation of Islam; a religious organization that holds no physical
borders yet shares a common bond because of shared beliefs. Inter-wound in
those beliefs is also recognition of a similar homeland: Africa. Some refer to
one's nationality as their race or ethnicity; this often categorizes people of
similar skin color into the same nation that others do not perceived to exist.
Conversely, nation can be viewed as a legal state with internationally
recognized borders. Neither definition is incorrect, that is why it is so complex.
Each definition is valid and the definitions change over time. While the
conventional definition is a people who share a common territory and government
irrespective of their ethnic make-up, it is not the only explanation”
But where does
India fits in any of these definitions of nation or nationalism, a country
where we have different races, people with different religions, different
cultures and caste. We can obvious not be a nation of just legal boundaries.
This therefore requires that we here in India devise our own definition of nation
and nationalism and try to find out the threads which can bind people from
different religions, races, castes and color together. Any definition that we
come up with will always have to be keep reinventing with changes that time
will force but may be if we get our fundamentals right it could be used for a
very long time.
Indian Nationalism as
viewed by Tagore
When the concept of nationalism as we know today was shaping
up in late 18-19th century there were different opinions on what
should be the way for Indian nationalism. Would Indian nationalism be the way
we see nation and nationalism in west or does India with its different way will
have a more Indian version of this nationalism. To this concept there were
galaxy of leaders and thinkers who have made their contribution and I would
like to touch most of these ideas as we progress on this read but to start with
I will take with the idea of nationalism from gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. His ideas
on nationalism were one of the most radical. He was one of India’s greatest philosophers
and thinker of his time, Tagore’s work on nationalism divided in 3 essays outlined
his idea of nationalism. As Uma Dasgupta in her introduction to Tagore’s selected
writings on education and nationalism points out that “Tagore education work
and his own nationalism were rooted in an original vision of India’s history
amounting to deviation from both colonist historiography and the nationalist
ideology of that times…his reasoning was based on his historical understanding
of his country’s formation as a social civilization founded on a continual
social adjustment.” He totally rejected nationalism as understood in the
western sense.
In his essay on nationalism in west he defined nationalism
as a combination of politics and commerce whose end goal is to achieve success.
“A nation, in the sense of the political and economic union of a people, is
that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical
purpose”. His prophecies that to survive as a nation man has to give up moral in
his own words he said “That history has come to a stage when the moral man ,
the complete man is more and more giving way , almost without knowing it, to
make room for the political and the commercial man, the man of the limited purpose.
This aided by wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion
power, causing he upset of man’s moral balance, obscuring this human side under
the shadow of soul less organization”
While it takes some moment to realize that indeed what Tagore
said was critical but indeed the times when he said that nations were indeed
based on these very ideas? Britain was at its imperialistic best at that time
and the pride that men of that nation carried them with could have hardly been
morally acceptable under the normal situation. Even today those ideas remain
relevant as we see how way each nation follows its interest without a thought
about the humanity, and this then makes us think back has humanity become a causality
of nationalism.
The thought of Gurudev forces us to think in a direction
that is so unusual for us whose mind has been trained enough to think in one way.
During 19th century when nationalism actually took the shape that we
know today the world was pretty different, while we take proud that at that
time while Europe was one race without any color and India was an amalgam of
races each finding its own way to get to the ultimate truth, however today as
we see ourselves we see the west is changing and they have opened up to more
people and different races from different part of the world are earning their
livelihoods there. While in past our influence spread beyond mere boundaries of
the nation’s today west is also increasingly becoming borderless though within
their own area of comfort .Therefore the conventional definitions that we
looked above in coming decades may not find resonance even in west.
In his writing on nationalism for japan and the same equally
relevant for India Tagore said ‘you cannot with a light heart accept the modern
civilization with all its tendencies, methods and structures, and dream that
they are inevitable. You must apply your eastern mind, your spiritual strength,
your love of simplicity, your recognition of social obligation, in order to cut
out a new path for this great unwieldy car of progress, shrieking out its loud
discords as it runs”
The urgency with which Tagore push whole of Asia
to find out their own definition of nation and nationalism was based on the
fact that here in Asia and especially in India the problems with nationalism
were never the same as that in Europe especially at his time. While Europe was
mostly one religion and one race we had a plenty of both of them. In his own
words Tagore specifies the difference of problem between Europe and India “We
have to remember that in Europe, where peoples had their racial unity from the
beginning, and where natural resources were insufficient for the inhabitants,
the civilization has naturally taken the character of political and commercial
aggressiveness. For on the one hand they had no internal complications, and on
the other they had to deal with neighbors who were strong and rapacious. To
have perfect combination among themselves and a watchful attitude of animosity
against others was taken as the solution of their problems. In former days they
organized and plundered, in the present age the same spirit continues - and
they organize and exploit the whole world.
But from the earliest beginnings of history,
India has had her own problem constantly before her - it is the race problem.
Each nation must be conscious of its mission and we, in India, must realize
that we cut a poor figure when we are trying to be political, simply because we
have not yet been finally able to accomplish what was set before us by our
providence.” While some of thinkers of that age like Aurobindo tried to find
out a common origin to most different races in India considering that people
following different religions have mostly been converts from Hinduism and appealed
for a racial unity, Tagore accepted the diversity of Indian races and tried to
look how did India worked with multiple races over thousands of years. While a
lot of other leaders like Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Tilak openly suggested
that for India Hinduism was at the core of nationalism, it is surprising to see
Tagore who takes a different path and yet there are striking similarities in what
he sees a solution for India and Indian Nationalism.
“Once again I draw your attention to the
difficulties India has had to encounter and her struggle to overcome them. Her
problem was the problem of the world in miniature. India is too vast in its
area and too diverse in its races. It is many countries packed in one
geographical receptacle. It is just the opposite of what Europe truly is, namely
one country made into many. Thus Europe in its culture and growth has had the
advantage of the strength of the many, as well as the strength of the one.
India, on the contrary, being naturally many, yet adventitiously one has all
along suffered from the looseness of its diversity and the feebleness of its
unity. A true unity is like a round globe, it rolls on, carrying its burden
easily; but diversity is a many-cornered thing which has to be dragged and
pushed with all force. Be it said to the credit of India that this diversity
was not her own creation; she has had to accept it as a fact from the beginning
of her history. In America and Australia, Europe has simplified her problem by
almost exterminating the original population. Even in the present age this
spirit of extermination is making itself manifest, by inhospitably shutting out
aliens, through those who themselves were aliens in the lands they now occupy.
But India tolerated difference of races from the first, and that spirit of
toleration has acted all through her history.
Her caste system is the outcome of this spirit
of toleration. For India has all along been trying experiments in evolving a
social unity within which all the different peoples could be held together, yet
fully enjoying the freedom of maintaining their own differences. The tie has
been as loose as possible, yet as close as the circumstances permitted. This
has produced something like a United States of a social federation, whose
common name is Hinduism.
India had felt that diversity of races there
must be and should be whatever may be its drawback, and you can never coerce
nature into your narrow limits of convenience without paying one day very
dearly for it. In this India was right; but what she failed to realize was that
in human beings differences are not like the physical barriers of mountains,
fixed forever - they are fluid with life's flow, they are changing their
courses and their shapes and volume.
Therefore in her caste regulations India
recognized differences, but not the mutability which is the law of life. In
trying to avoid collisions she set up boundaries of immovable walls, thus
giving to her numerous races the negative benefit of peace and order but not
the positive opportunity of expansion and movement. She accepted nature where
it produces diversity, but ignored it where it uses that diversity for its
world-game of infinite permutations and combinations. She treated life in all
truth where it is manifold, but insulted it where it is ever moving. Therefore Life
departed from her social system and in its place she is worshipping with all
ceremony the magnificent cage of countless compartments that she has
manufactured.
The same thing happened where she tried to ward
off the collisions of trade interests. She associated different trades and
professions with different castes. It had the effect of allaying for good the
interminable jealousy and hatred of competition - the competition which breeds
cruelty and makes the atmosphere thick with lies and deception. In this also
India laid all her emphasis upon the law of heredity, ignoring the law of
mutation, and thus gradually reduced arts into crafts and genius into skill.”
We see how Tagore looks into past to come up
with a solution and he sees some merits in the caste system which was designed
to let people from different races co-exist and earn their livelihood from
trade and commerce however later that system became so rigid that it became a
bigger enemy of the nation. Today we can see the barriers of caste crumbling
down and India regaining the flexibility that was lost during the last millennia,
we need to remember that now we need to build back something original and
suited to Indian context. A copy paste job from west will have the effect of
jumping from one evil to another. We have to therefore find out what is the
common thread that can hold all of us together.
From the time of Tagore the west has now become
more multi-race and multi-cultural society, and may be now the west also needs to
search for answers that we have been trying for long. But while the situation
has changed from past the solutions that both may seek may be very different. West
has built upon nations with values of equality, liberty and rule of law
something that we are also trying to do but then that the west in pursue to
build the concept of nation has gone so far that it has removed all any space
for any soul, that the west has openly taught us that nation, and the govt
should be away from religion. But religion if that mean nurturing every soul ,
if religion means nurturing the moral of man and if religion does not mean an
inclination to a particular practice of a race and their beliefs then should we
not look to nurture religion in our the
conscious of the nation.
In this context it is interesting to hear what India’s
former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee
had to say on the European concept of "secularism" .He considered European
concept of "secularism" inappropriate for his interpretation of
Indian culture, He describes the Indian secular as follows:
“Mahatma Gandhi describes the correct attitude towards
religion as 'Sarva Dharma Sambhava', equal respect to all religions. The
concept of 'Sarva Dharma Sambhava' is somewhat different from European
secularism, which is independent of religion ... We may say that the Indian
concept of secularism is that of Sarva Dharma Sambhava ... Sarva Dharma
Sambhava is not against any religion. It treats all religions with equal
respect. And, therefore, it can be said that the Indian concept of secularism
is more positive”.It is probably around these concepts that he must have
thought to accommodate the aspirations of people from Kashmir to Punjab to
Kanyakumari.
Every time we start to look for a solution to Indian
challenge in an Indian way we stumble upon Hinduism and It is probably this
thread of progressive Hinduism which believes in welfare for all, free from
shackles of castes yet having a consciousness and soul of her own built upon
the modern values of west can become a base for now and for some foreseeable
future for all of us to hold together.
When you read Tagore you flow with his thoughts, he makes
you feel what lies beneath the layers and layers of constant abrasion that we
have learnt so willingly and have come to accept as the ultimate truth, his
concept of nation is so different and yet so beautiful is his way to describe
his thoughts that you don’t have a choice but to think and look back if what
you think was indeed the right way to see through things. He does not force you
to admire upon his idea by the sheer force of arguments or by manufacturing of
half-truths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and
culture of unfavorable sentiments towards them, He accepts the greatness of all
civilizations and the beauty of all, that what they have contributed to mankind
but then he touch upon you with the very vital of mankind which man has started
forgetting is his moral values. And when he touch upon that he tears apart any
shred of doubts that you may have allowed to rest your souls in , or when he
tells you how you have allowed your mind to vitiate our soul, that the western concept
of saying business is business , war is war , politics is politics is morally
so wrong. So relevant his words seems to be in current context , and when he
declares with all his moral authority
that man’s business has to be more than mere business, and so has to be
his politics and war all the dead that had stuck to your thoughts seems to give
way to the fresh and original in man.
