Indiaandtheindian

India and the Indian: We're lulled to think that citizens control the narrative, writes Palash Krishna Mehrotra

At present, the nationalism of pitting one against the other seems self-indulgent. Can a poor country afford the luxury of toying with an ideology which is neither taking us back to the intellectual positives nor leapfrogging us to a sky-scraping neon future?

India and the Indian: Watch Fat Mama, Rafeeq Ellias' poignant film on Chinese-Indian émigrés

This is the story of Steven Wan, a Chinese-Indian. It is also the story of several thousand Chinese-Indians who were arbitrarily rounded up in Bengal, Assam and in the hill states of the Northeast and interned in Deoli in the aftermath of the India-China war in 1962.

India and the Indian: New nationalism has put inclusive Hindutva on offer, writes Makarand Paranjape

The new nationalism of the Modi era is actually quite far from trying to foist the idea of a Hindu Rashtra upon an uncompromisingly and explicitly defined secular by the Constitution.

India and the Indian: At the heart of resistance to Vande Mataram is the context of its writer's opinions, writes Pragya Singh

Demands that Indian Muslims should chant Vande Mataram put them in exactly the same situation as Indians who'd be asked to consider awarding Rudyard Kipling, the man who wrote The White Man’s Burden, a poem advocating racial superiority as the justification for colonialism.

India and the Indian: I hope my daughter inherits a country unbound by caste, linguistic strictures, writes Pa Ranjith

Nationalism cannot be sustained by identities like that of the Hindu or the Tamilian. It is about how you can still be united, despite the elements that keep you divided. It is a measure of basic democratic structures

India and the Indian: Hinduism, caste act as unifying forces in the country, writes Shrikanth Krishnamachary

The Hindu nationalist argument transcends mere constitutional patriotism. This view, with its roots in 19th century Hindu renaissance, is keen to personify the Indian nation as “Bharat Mata”.

India and the Indian: Genes are the root of nationalism but don't determine our destiny, writes Praveen Swami

Animal impulses drive powerful nationalism, but their triumph is far from inevitable if humans are willing to carefully reflect on why we behave in the ways we do.

India and the Indian: Western theories of nationhood don't capture country's complex realities, writes Samrat

The Indian of today includes the unknown woman from the uncontacted tribe of the Sentinelese in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands but it also includes the actress Kalki Koechlin, who is an Indian of French origin. Neither of them is the stereotypical Indian, but both of them are equally Indian

India and the Indian: My nationalism competes with China, not Pakistan, writes Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Our political life, lived around only village panchayats before 1950, is now connected to a larger constitutional democracy. In the future, this nationalist view will gain more prominence. The RSS nationalism will slowly but surely wither away.