Global Watch | Indian Nationalism is much older and better for the world than Western nationalism

India celebrated its 77th Independence Day on 15 August this year. Even as the whole world is watching India’s emergence as a global power under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there have been deliberate efforts by a number of opinion makers in the West to deride Indian nationalism as a Hindu majoritarian streak. These commentators term India as a nation in making and any attempt to rekindle the spirit of Indian nationalism by the Modi government is projected as a regressive approach. What ‘nationalism’ means for Indians is however vastly different from what ‘nationalism’ means for the West. The time has come for the West to look at Indian nationalism from an Indian lens and not through their own perspective which is deeply flawed because of the oppressive and colonial character of Western nationalism. Western nationalism The way ‘nationalism has been defined by the West and India are altogether different. There is a fundamental difference between the outlook and evolution of ‘nationalism’ in the West and in India. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, Nationalism means “loyalty and devotion to a nation; a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” The dictionary further mentions in an additional note, “intense nationalism leads to war”. Thus, nationalism, in the Western framework, is seen as an oppressive concept that leads to wars and conflicts. While the concept of ‘nationalism’ in Bharat or what we may call, ‘Hindu nationalism’ dates back to thousands of years, it is a very recent phenomenon in the West. The western concept of ‘Nationalism’ originated from the French Revolution in 1789. If you look at the map of mid-eighteenth-century Europe, you will find that there were no ‘nation-states’ as we know them today. What we know today as Germany, Italy and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies and cantons whose rulers had their autonomous territories. Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies within the territories of which lived diverse peoples. They did not see themselves as sharing a collective identity or a common culture. Often, they even spoke different languages and belonged to different ethnic groups. The Habsburg Empire that ruled over Austria-Hungary, for example, was a patchwork of many different regions and peoples. It included the Alpine regions — the Tyrol, Austria and the Sudetenland — as well as Bohemia, where the aristocracy was predominantly German-speaking. It also included the Italian-speaking provinces of Lombardy and Venetia. In Hungary, half of the population spoke Magyar while the other half spoke a variety of dialects. In Galicia, the aristocracy spoke Polish. Besides these three dominant groups, there also lived within the boundaries of the empire, a mass of subject peasant peoples – Bohemians and Slovaks to the north, Slovenes in Carniola, Croats to the south, and Roumans to the east in Transylvania. Such differences did not easily promote a sense of political unity. The only tie binding these diverse groups together was a common allegiance to the emperor. Noted historian David Sasson who earned his PhD under Eric Hobsbawm, one of the foremost authorities on Western nationalism, observed in his introduction to a collection of essays and lectures by Hobsbawm ‘On Nationalism’, “In Europe, nationalism was the product of the ‘dual revolutions’, the French Revolution and the British Industrial Revolution. Some, such as the historian Elie Kedourie (who defined nationalism as a political religion), suggested that the invention of nationalism could be traced back to German Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in response to Napoleon’s occupation of German territory.” John Hutchinson underlined the true character of Western nationalism in Nations and War as he wrote, “The ideology of nationalism, powerfully articulated in the French Revolution, emerged in late eighteenth-century Europe, out of the wars between European states. These generated new forms of war that welded peoples to states and an intensification of state-making that sought to cage populations in national societies. European warfare was responsible for the gradual development of an interstate system, first on the continent, and then worldwide as European nation states engaged in global imperial expansion. Post-war settlements such as the Treaty of Westphalia, the Treaty of Versailles, and the League of Nations, and finally the United Nations established the nation state as the planetary norm (according to the western concept of nationalism.” The rise of the ‘Western nationalism’ in Europe resulted in colonisation of large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, civil wars within the Western nation-states, countless military conflicts between nations, at least two world wars and ethnic cleansing of minorities in the Western countries by the dominant political powers who had captured the power riding on the wave of ‘nationalism’. That is why significant sections of the society as well as the academia, media and intelligentsia in the West are wary of ‘nationalism’. In the West, utterance of the word ‘nationalism’ brings back memories of loot, plunder, bloody wars and a quest for material wealth and military superiority. Indian Nationalism ‘Indian Nationalism’ is quite different from European or the Western Nationalism. In this context, it is important to bust this myth propagated by the colonial and Marxist historians that the rise of nationalism in India was an outcome of British rule hence it needs to follow the paradigms set by ‘Western Nationalism.’ The trajectory of Western nationalism and Indian nationalism are altogether different. Radha Kumud Mookerji, known for his monumental work on history and culture of India explained this difference in his seminal work, Nationalism in Hindu Culture, published in 1921. According to Mookerji, it is a mistake readily to assume that the origin of that remarkable social phenomenon of nationalism is to be found in the West; that it is a genuinely western product imported into the eastern countries long after their growth and development; that the eastern mind was completely a stranger to the very conception of the mother country, a sense of natural attachment to her, and a corresponding sense of duties and obligations which the children of the soil owe to her. Mookerji said, “Such misconceptions are due to a colossal ignorance of the culture of the East. Even in the dim and distant age of remote antiquity, unillumined by the light of historical knowledge, we find the underlying principles of nationalism chanted forth in the hymns of the Rig Veda embodying the very first utterance of humanity itself. That book, one of the oldest literary records of humanity, reveals conscious and fervent attempts made by the Rishis (seers), those profoundly wise organisers of Hindu polity and culture, to visualise the unity of their mother-country, nay, to transfigure the mother earth into a living deity and enshrine her in the loving heart of the worshipper. This is best illustrated by the famous river hymn, in which are invoked in an impassioned prayer the various rivers of the Punjab, which were eminently entitled to the nation’s gratitude for their invaluable contributions towards the material making of their motherland. As the mind of the devotee calls up in succession the images of these different rivers defining the limits of his country, it naturally traverses the entire area of his native land and grasps the image of the whole as a visible unit and form.” Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore had pointed out drawbacks of the Western nationalism in the early decades of the 20th century when he said, “The political civilisation which has sprung up from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies; it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness.” Tagore aptly summed up the attitude and understanding of the West about Indian nationalism, “To a Western observer our civilisation appears as all metaphysics, as to a deaf man piano-playing appears to be mere movements of fingers and no music. He cannot think that we have found some deep basis of reality upon which we have built our institutions.” _The writer is an author and columnist and has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect_Firstpost’<>s views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.