Indian politicians and ill-informed Indians follow the line of scholars used to the modern definition of a nation-state and declare that we were ‘never a nation’. The idea that India is somehow the creation of the West has a significant and continuing intellectual history. The resistance to ideas of India’s unity embeds itself in post-colonial thinking too, unfortunately. Standard western theories (Hobsbawm, Gellener, and Anderson) trace the origins of nations through institutional, economic, and technological transformations. Apparently, the democratic state and its elite ‘create’ nations through cultural homogenization by invoking symbols and ‘inventing’ traditions like a national anthem or a national language. Industrialization through a homogenising educational policy and print media’ by uniting people into an ‘imagined political community’ are some other mechanisms for creating nations.
As Michel Danino says in his insightful essay, The Problem Of Indian History, “A consequence of the Aryan invasion theory was the myth of a “separate” Dravidian identity and culture. While the South and especially the Tamil land do have a stamp of their own, from the beginning we see them wholly harmonised with Vedic and Puranic elements. Nowhere in the Sangam literature (the most ancient in Tamil) do we find any hint of a cultural clash with the North or with Vedic culture…Nowhere can we spot a separate “Dravidian” culture, much less a civilization. On the other hand, the South has contributed much of great value to Indian culture in terms of music, dance, literature, poetry, etc., and the important Bhakti movement arose there. The South forms an integral part of India’s cultural continuum in time and space: distinctiveness is not separateness… But India’s greatest feat is certainly her cultural integration, made possible by a long organic interaction between Vedic culture and local traditions, based on mutual respect, the syncretic result of which is Hinduism as we know it. In fact, this cultural cement went beyond India and shaped much of Asia into one broad cultural entity.“
The atomized view of the country is because of Marxist models of Indian history, Danino continues, which tend to look upon India’s history as nothing but a history of invasions. The invaders (at a physical and intellectual level) thus receive more attention than the invaded. It ignores the military, social, and cultural ways in which India resisted the invasions sufficiently to preserve something of her original genius. The whole problem with Marxist dialectics is that it cannot comprehend the supra-intellectual spirituality peculiar to the Indian genius. It omits all deeper cultural and spiritual elements, replacing them at best by psychoanalysis (like Indologists ‘interpreting’ Sri Ramakrishna or Lord Ganesha) or giving a ‘grotesque overemphasis’ to caste. This hegemonical de-Indianized academic teaching of Indian history presents Indian society as retrograde, afflicted by a constant “class struggle” between castes, with no binding cement and no common identity; the logical outcome can only be the atomization of India. Unfortunately, even the most ‘modern’ views on India remain firmly Eurocentric with varying doses of Marxist interpretation.
Thus, our own scholars at JNU believe that India is incoherent, fragmented, and marked by foundational differences. Other dangerous indigenous narratives include branding as ‘right-wing’ (hence bad) any objections to love for other countries; attachment to the land of India as troubling; Kerala as not ‘really’ belonging to India; and ‘Tamil nationalism’ as resting on linguistic pride and official antipathy for Hinduism (though 88% of Tamil Nadu called themselves Hindus in the 2011 census); India as an oppressor occupying Kashmir illegally; and so on.
The dominant scholarship only enlightens us on the emergence of modern ‘governmentality’ to attain greater efficacy but not nations and nationalism, says scholar Saumya Dey (Narrativizing Bharatvarsha). The Greeks, English, and French were an ancient ‘felt community’ much before printing presses, democracy, or industrialization. ‘Nation’ does not do justice to India’s expression of oneness. Dey says that India, as a civilization entity, is an ancient ‘felt community’ because it does not emerge through deliberate cultural or linguistic systematisation. It functions and forms through a sense of belonging to the land disseminated through symbols. This process manifests itself as ‘culture’ working autonomously from the state. Thus, people could belong to the same set of meanings and land, despite differences in languages, by perceiving the same symbols (swastika, the lotus, the Devatas of temples, the tirthas, the Sanskrit language, and so on) as a great unity. Indians, denizens of Bharata, have been a ‘felt community’ for thousands of years, exactly like this.
Bharatvarsha clearly exists in the oldest scriptures as the land south of the Himalayas and north of the oceans. India was Sapta Sindhu, the land of seven rivers, in ancient times. The name appears in Zend Avesta too. The Greeks called the land India, or Indika, which also derives from the word Sindhu. India was Sindhu Sthana, which later became Hindustan. Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Vishnu Purana describe ‘Bharata’ Varsha with deep clarity in the various travels of its characters across the land. In fact, the Ramayana and Mahabharata became the major tools for integration. The references to the great epics are all over the country and even in places like Indonesia, where local traditions link in some way to the two great epics. A united India based on multiple traditions, rituals, mythology, and customs existed for thousands of years. A dense network of holy places and temples created a ‘sacred geography’ of the country and a strong tradition of pilgrimages in the country. The 12 Jyotirlingas, the 52 Shakti Mahapithas, and the 26 Upapithas spread over India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan became the defining points to draw the boundaries of the country.
There was perhaps no political unity in the European definition of nation, though there was early political unity, like the Mauryan Empire covering most of India. However, a united geo-cultural India existed for thousands of years, which we should all be rightfully proud of. One should directly reject the terrible narrative that the British ‘united’ us. That we were never a nation was a colonial construct (carried forward by post-colonial scholars) to break our country. What emerged as freedom in 1947 was simply the expression of an ancient ‘felt community’ and not an elitist or colonial construction. India is a civilization state, and this needs to be stressed to scholars subscribing to western theories of nationhood in a classic case of colonial consciousness.
As Michel Danino rues, “It (the explanations and understandings of India) finds no intrinsic or enduring value in Indian civilization or in its contributions to humanity, and has no use for the thoughts and vision of India’s Rishis and saints… It wants to study a skeleton, or at best a corpse, and is upset to find it alive.” Without India’s cultural integration and continuity, we could have never survived. Unfortunately, there is an increasing demonization of ‘cultural nationalism’ as an aspect of saffronization, ‘Hindutva’, and Hindu fundamentalism. Colourful single-word denigrations reject carefully articulated arguments. However, it is precisely this cultural nationalism that is the natural foundation of Indian identity and strength. It is also her best hope for the future, which either faulty or mischievous understandings want to undermine.
RANDOM MUSINGS 