The Great Indian Political Debate - 2

[acharya]

Nationhood and frequently unasked questions

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

Is there taking place in Indian consciousness a reorientation towards the paradigm of nationhood? What are the reasons why the way in which we relate to the past of nationalism is now highly contested?

NOW THAT the dust raised by the controversy occasioned by some remarks made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Oxford has settled, it may be useful to look back upon the whole episode. Many commentators rushed to the defence of the Prime Minister — though in retrospect it seems that he is abler than them in defending himself. The critics ranged from far Right to the Left but their reactions bore, at least superficially, some surprising similarities; where they differed among themselves was in respect of emphases — on the Right there was an emphasis on national pride and on the Left on the Marxian appraisal of colonialism. Looking beyond the ephemeral in the affair, after we forget tomorrow who said what he or she was expected to say, the question that will remain as a residue of the `national debate' The Hindu desired editorially, are questions which have not been posed as clearly by the contestants in the debate as they might have been. Is there taking place in Indian consciousness a reorientation towards the paradigm of nationhood? What are the reasons why the way in which we relate to the past of nationalism is now highly contested? And, to put it very simply, is it true that nationalism is no longer what it used to be?

Arguably, globalisation has brought in its wake not only greater mobility of skilled persons, greater flow of capital and commodities across national borders, outsourcing, and what have you in the economic domain — perhaps globalisation has also brought about among its votaries an altered perception of national identity. With globalisation there has now emerged a kind of trans-nationalism, vacuous at times in terms of validation of its intellectual premises but drawing its strength from the materiality of objects of consumption globally available if you can pay for them, jobs for the professionally skilled anywhere in the world, access to a world wide web of electronic communication, opportunities of service under multinational corporations and new inter-national civil services connected with global non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations, etc. These are some of the material rewards for allegiance to globalisation on the part of members of a limited class in countries such as India.

We are not concerned for the present with other aspects of this scene: what matters for the present is that nationhood as perceived earlier is possibly inconsistent with the sensibilities of that class. Nationhood to them is something to be imagined primarily in cultural terms. A purely culturalist definition of national identity has had an interesting consequence. That stance sometimes slides into a sort of indigenism, a cast of mind which falls back on ethnic or religious definition of identities — which tends to be exclusivist, indeed at times communalist (in the sense in which the term is used in the Indian sub-continent). This seems to be a notable trend in, among others, some segments of the communities of `non-resident Indians' abroad. Concurrently a paradoxical thing has overtaken us. While a globally dirigiste regime of capitalism (with ample armoury in the hands of the multinational corporations aided by the World Bank, the WTO, the new international protocol for protection of patents and proprietary rights over knowledge, etc.) undermines the autonomy of nation states, a supposedly radical critique of the idea of the nation state indirectly subserves the same end today. The latter may be a trend limited to a small intellectual circle but it does pose a definite challenge to the unquestionability of old fashioned nationalism.

The process of re-thinking nationalism had begun earlier when decolonisation and the passage of time over five decades made the encounter of the colonised nation with its `other' a thing of the past. The farther did the memory of that overwhelming encounter and of imperialist rule recede, the weaker became the passion that inspired the `national feeling.' At another level, one might say that in the latter half of the twentieth century Indian historical vision was informed with the memory of the colonial past and this deeply influenced the effort of independent India to position herself at the head and front of an anti-imperialist Third World bloc — that too now is part of history, an almost forgotten history.

This diminution of the political role of the new nation states of the Third World that Nehruism had aimed at also reduced the salience of the polarity which that paradigm posited between the erstwhile predators and the prey in the age of imperialism. There is now a tendency abroad to soft-pedal the antinomies of the colonial past, inspired by the notion that the erasure of the ex-colonial self and softening the conflicts that lie in the past would ease admission into the comity of nations as of now. This may be a delusion. One is reminded of the instance of Japan, a country regarded by the West as on a par with the colonised Asian countries until Japan showed her armed might in Manchuria, causing barbarous havoc in the conquered country. Thereafter the Western states began to treat Japan almost as an equal. A Japanese diplomat said: "As soon as we show our capacity in barbarous force we are readily admitted to the comity of civilised nations. It is a lesson to us." Getting soft is not always the way to get the key to the club. Be that as it may, there is a notion abroad that harping on the colonial past is not a nice thing to do.

Nationalism is no longer what it used to be for other reasons as well. The nationalist cause was bolstered by arguments which began with the interrogation of the colonial rulers' record of governance. M.K. Gandhi in his first polemical work Hind Swaraj, wrote how he had tears in his eyes reading Romesh Chandra Dutt's historical account of the economic impact of British administration. To Dutt, after having served in the Indian Civil Service, the question of questions was, `qui bono, for whose benefit'? And hence his indictment of British administration, mild though it was in the hands of a `moderate' Congressman like him. When you make a fetish of administrative efficiency for its own sake, and fail to ask the question who benefits, you are likely to end up with a fetishism of good governance. Here is another obvious disjuncture between old nationalism and the new philosophy.

That is not to say that those in India who make a positive evaluation of some aspects of the British Indian administrative system are necessarily `anti-national'. The point is to underline the newness of the world outlook which makes such positive assessment acceptable to a great many people. Observe, for instance, the recent comments by readers of The Hindu in the correspondence column. The man in the street (if the reader of this newspaper may be assumed to be such) seemed to recognise that while on the one hand there was an exploitative side to colonial governance there also came other things which appear to be necessary ingredients in the recipe for building India as we know her today. Now, this came pretty close to Karl Marx's assessment in the oft quoted New York Daily Tribune articles, subsequent debate about the `destructive' and `regenerative' aspects of British rule notwithstanding. (Even ten years earlier, in German Ideology, Marx had arrived at a similar assessment in the light of his understanding of `world history' under the capitalist system). An essentialist approach to the intervention of world capitalism and the British Indian administration is not consistent with a dialectical understanding which Marx had posited. Perhaps in the popular perception there is a similar perception of an interplay between dialectical opposites. Essentialism will reduce all historical reality to one-sided characterisation, while a dialectical approach seeks to analyse the complexities of the reality with its apparent contrary trends and tensions. An essentialism had at one time characterised Europe's so-called "Orientalist" perception of the East, a reduction of whole peoples and civilisations into stereotypes; to build a similarly essentialist picture of the West was a natural reaction in the early stages of the growth of political consciousness in many Eastern countries. The Marxian approach marked a departure from both these perceptions in positing a dialectical as opposed to an essentialist approach.

Nationalism as a shield

If we infer from the trends briefly touched upon above that the days of nationalism are over we shall be probably mistaken. The ascendancy of the transnational fraction of capital vis-à-vis the fraction in the lower reaches distant from transnational engagement is not yet a foregone conclusion of the contest that is on-going. Disputations on admission of FDI (foreign direct investment) to certain sectors bring this fact to the fore. Even if the old nationalist passion is replaced by calculus of self-interest, effectively nationalism serves as a shield. To those who are in principled opposition to multinational capital, needless to say, preservation of the nation states' autonomy acquires a new urgency, whatever be the differences among themselves about the class character of the state. They will surely also take into account the entry of capitalism into a new epoch quite different from the stage Rudolf Hilferding looked at in the beginning of the twentieth century; then the national states advanced the interests of national corporations in the international and colonial market, whereas now very often the national states are almost bypassed by supranational agencies of global capitalism and footloose capital. That relocates the old nation state in a different place in strategic thinking on the part of the Left: shoring up the nation state exposed to external infringements helps towards keeping the wolf at bay.

Among the frequently un-asked questions about the attitude to nationhood are also questions about the non-state interventions to defend the self-governance and autonomy of the relatively new nation states, fragments of the erstwhile empires. Curiously enough, the agenda some politicians of those states have abandoned has been taken over by some social activists' movements, international in scope and organisation, to restore to the countries of the South their autonomy. Fiestas and protests beautifully coexist in demonstrations of such activists wherever the masters of the world in WTO, G8, etc., meet at Cancun or Mumbai or Edinburgh — that too, ironically, is an offshoot of the globalisation process. These endeavours perhaps give expression to the opinion of those who are persuaded neither by the proponents of chauvinist ethnic fundamentalism nor by the flag waving of those who instrumentalise age old patriotism for their own purposes, and yet react against what they perceive as the impact of globalisation on their life. These are the unheard voices of common citizens.

(Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, formerly Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, is President of Indian History Congress, 2005; the views above are personal.)