What is the 'idea behind India or Idea of India'. The idea that defines the identity of India. The thought that comes to my mind is that of a pluralistic jamboree where all revel and survive with the eclectic languages along with the sub-cultures. Or it may be said as a mega culture where many sub cultures flourish. If we start thinking behind the creation of this mega identity called India we realize that this is a sort of phantasmagoria or a metaphor for diversity.In a thoughtful article, Historian Ramchandra Guha articulates this idea as " articulated by Tagore, Gandhi and the Indian Constitution, the idea of India contains within its capacious borders more social diversity than any other nation. It privileges no particular religion, does not enforce a common language, and does not promote patriotism by identifying or demonising a common external (or internal) enemy." This concept of pluralism or Indian unity was basically a product of medieval India. This fact was shared by both Gandhi and Tagore.
To understand this idea of India, we have to understand its differences with the European idea of 'nationalism' which was rejected fervently by Gandhi and Tagore. Gandhi and Tagore seemed united in thwarting the concept of nationalism but they were heterodox thinkers in many issues. Here a basic distinction between nationalism and patriotism has to be made clear. Patriotism is a sort of a sentiment whereas nationalism is an ideology. As Nandy has argued that patriotism doesn't define any specific territoriality (sort of a naturalism) whereas nationalism "is more specific, ideologically tinged, ardent form of “love of one’s own kind” that is essentially ego-defensive and overlies some degree of fearful dislike or positive hostility to “outsiders”. It is egodefensive because it is often a reaction to the inner, unacknowledged fears of atomisation or psychological homelessness induced by the weakening or dissolution of primordial ties and growing individuation, alienating work and the death of vocations, in turn brought about by technocratic capitalism, urbanisation and industrialisation."
Gandhi's idea of India or view of nation was/is considered utopian by many as he talked about an 'enlightened anarchy'. Gandhi was a firm believer of universal equality and considered armed nationalism as a sort of imperialism. Nandy in one of his brilliant essays 'Gandhi after Gandhi' dissects the idea behind Gandhism. Of the four distinct Gandhi's that he describes the first one is an avowed anarchist and anti-modern who doesn't believe in the concept of the nation state. He is patriotic and doesn't subscribe to the nationalist boundaries of private vs public, religious vs secular etc.
"After Independence, the political presence of the Father of the Nation, his memory and his writings were proving very problematic to the functionaries of the young Indian state and to intellectuals who had already begun to specialise in hovering, like so many flies, over the State’s patronage-structure. Not merely the strong anarchist strand in his ideology, but even his peculiar denial of clear-cut divisions between the private and the public, the religious and the secular, and the past and the present, were proving to be a real headache. These intellectuals were as disturbed by him as his assassin was. Nathuram Godse, a self avowed rationalist and modernist, in his last statement in the court that sentenced him to death explicitly claimed he had committed a patricide to save the nascent Indian State from an anti-modern, political neophyte and a lunatic. After independence, Gandhi’s own associates would have liked to bury Gandhi six feet under the ground, while keeping his image intact as an icon of the Indian nation-state. Not because they disliked Gandhi, but because he looked such an anachronism in the post-World War II atmosphere of centralised states, social engineering and ‘realist’ international politics.Since then, Indian statists of both the right and the left have never acknowledged their enormous debt to Mr Nathuram Godse for imposing on the Father of the Nation a premature martyrdom that straightaway gave him a saintly status and effectively finished him off as a live political presence. Their brainchildren still hold it against Gandhi that he has occasionally refused to oblige them and has defied the saintliness imposed on him, presumably as a strategic means of neutralising him. "
In another excellent essay in EPW, "Nationalism, Genuine and Spurious' Ashis Nandy scrutinizes the Tagorian view against nationalism. Tagore was against the masculine European nationalism. It might seem paradoxical that a person who wrote and composed India and Bangladesh's national anthem and also scored Srilanka's national anthem disgusted the idea of nation state. This dislike was powerfully put by Tagore in his novels. As Nandy argues " In Gora, Tagore gives a powerful psychological definition of nationalism where nationalism becomes a defence against recognising the permeable or porous boundaries of one’s self that the cultures in his part of the world sanction. He in effect argues that the idea of nationalism is intrinsically non- Indian or anti-Indian, an offence against Indian civilisation and its principles of religious and cultural plurality. Ghare Baire is a story of how nationalism dismantles community life and releases the demon of ethnoreligious violence. It destroys the “home” by tinkering with the moral basis of social and cultural reciprocity and hospitality in the Indic civilisation."
Nationalism is in a sense against the idea of freedom of the 'self'. These two great thinkers understood the fallacy behind it and provided an idea of India which was unique and sound. But we are now living in an age where there are forces which are trying to redefine and eliminate the multicultural 'Idea of India'. Ram Guha suggests that we are facing three enemies against this pluralistic idea of India. The first he argues are the domestic nationalists. As Guha puts "To the “theoretically untidy, improvising, pluralist approach” of Gandhi and Nehru, Khilnani wrote, the Sangh parivar offered the alternative of “a culturally and ethnically cleaned-up homogeneous community with a singular Indian citizenship, defended by a state that had both God and nuclear warheads on its side”. In another piece Nandy also has argued "The various brands of religious and ethnic nationalists have done one better. Modelling themselves on European nationalists, they have actually tried to subvert the organisational frame of the Indian heritage and reconstruct it according to the needs of a modern nationality. If the record of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh looks abysmal in the matter of India’s freedom struggle, it is because Hindu nationalism discovered early that silence, if not direct collaboration with colonialism, paid handsome political dividends. Such collaboration left it free to pursue its agenda against the minorities on the one hand and non-modern and non-modernisable Hinduism on the other." The second challenge that he poses is the Maoist issue and the third is the separatist movements.
Gandhi's idea of India or view of nation was/is considered utopian by many as he talked about an 'enlightened anarchy'. Gandhi was a firm believer of universal equality and considered armed nationalism as a sort of imperialism. Nandy in one of his brilliant essays 'Gandhi after Gandhi' dissects the idea behind Gandhism. Of the four distinct Gandhi's that he describes the first one is an avowed anarchist and anti-modern who doesn't believe in the concept of the nation state. He is patriotic and doesn't subscribe to the nationalist boundaries of private vs public, religious vs secular etc.
"After Independence, the political presence of the Father of the Nation, his memory and his writings were proving very problematic to the functionaries of the young Indian state and to intellectuals who had already begun to specialise in hovering, like so many flies, over the State’s patronage-structure. Not merely the strong anarchist strand in his ideology, but even his peculiar denial of clear-cut divisions between the private and the public, the religious and the secular, and the past and the present, were proving to be a real headache. These intellectuals were as disturbed by him as his assassin was. Nathuram Godse, a self avowed rationalist and modernist, in his last statement in the court that sentenced him to death explicitly claimed he had committed a patricide to save the nascent Indian State from an anti-modern, political neophyte and a lunatic. After independence, Gandhi’s own associates would have liked to bury Gandhi six feet under the ground, while keeping his image intact as an icon of the Indian nation-state. Not because they disliked Gandhi, but because he looked such an anachronism in the post-World War II atmosphere of centralised states, social engineering and ‘realist’ international politics.Since then, Indian statists of both the right and the left have never acknowledged their enormous debt to Mr Nathuram Godse for imposing on the Father of the Nation a premature martyrdom that straightaway gave him a saintly status and effectively finished him off as a live political presence. Their brainchildren still hold it against Gandhi that he has occasionally refused to oblige them and has defied the saintliness imposed on him, presumably as a strategic means of neutralising him. "
In another excellent essay in EPW, "Nationalism, Genuine and Spurious' Ashis Nandy scrutinizes the Tagorian view against nationalism. Tagore was against the masculine European nationalism. It might seem paradoxical that a person who wrote and composed India and Bangladesh's national anthem and also scored Srilanka's national anthem disgusted the idea of nation state. This dislike was powerfully put by Tagore in his novels. As Nandy argues " In Gora, Tagore gives a powerful psychological definition of nationalism where nationalism becomes a defence against recognising the permeable or porous boundaries of one’s self that the cultures in his part of the world sanction. He in effect argues that the idea of nationalism is intrinsically non- Indian or anti-Indian, an offence against Indian civilisation and its principles of religious and cultural plurality. Ghare Baire is a story of how nationalism dismantles community life and releases the demon of ethnoreligious violence. It destroys the “home” by tinkering with the moral basis of social and cultural reciprocity and hospitality in the Indic civilisation."
Nationalism is in a sense against the idea of freedom of the 'self'. These two great thinkers understood the fallacy behind it and provided an idea of India which was unique and sound. But we are now living in an age where there are forces which are trying to redefine and eliminate the multicultural 'Idea of India'. Ram Guha suggests that we are facing three enemies against this pluralistic idea of India. The first he argues are the domestic nationalists. As Guha puts "To the “theoretically untidy, improvising, pluralist approach” of Gandhi and Nehru, Khilnani wrote, the Sangh parivar offered the alternative of “a culturally and ethnically cleaned-up homogeneous community with a singular Indian citizenship, defended by a state that had both God and nuclear warheads on its side”. In another piece Nandy also has argued "The various brands of religious and ethnic nationalists have done one better. Modelling themselves on European nationalists, they have actually tried to subvert the organisational frame of the Indian heritage and reconstruct it according to the needs of a modern nationality. If the record of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh looks abysmal in the matter of India’s freedom struggle, it is because Hindu nationalism discovered early that silence, if not direct collaboration with colonialism, paid handsome political dividends. Such collaboration left it free to pursue its agenda against the minorities on the one hand and non-modern and non-modernisable Hinduism on the other." The second challenge that he poses is the Maoist issue and the third is the separatist movements.
There are myriads of other forces also operating against this 'idea of India' such as corruption, economic inequality and criminalization of politics etc. It requires a rethink on our side the common folks to preserve the 'unique' pluralistic idea of India that our founding fathers had given and nurtured.
