Corrie Manigold

03-10-08

Post-Independence National Identity in India

In our readings in this course, we have been exposed time and again to the notion of the various and diverse identities of India. E.M. Forster referred to this when he wrote of a “hundred Indias” speaking with a “hundred mouths,” and we have seen this theme darkly recapitulated in the various points of view of the conflict, mayhem, and bloodshed during the 1947 Partition, as depicted in Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (Forster 149).  It is a notion that I have brushed up against before in an independent study intended to familiarize me with Indian literature, culture, and anthropology. It was here that I first became acquainted with the diversity of the subcontinent in terms of its many languages, religions, ethnicities, and castes. It was also here that I was first exposed to the the history--and horrors--of Partition and the sense of urgency for a unified national identity that followed it.  Despite some exposure to literature on the subject of India and its various political movements in this previous study, I found that the great sprawling and diverse continent of India for a long time was something of a struggle to wrap my mind around. Now, at this somewhat later juncture--and especially in light of the readings of this course--I find myself with slightly firmer footing, posing this question: What defines Indian nationalism, and how effective has it been in coalescing the “hundred Indias” into a more singular, unified identity?

In my search for answers I looked back at old reading lists, books purchased but not yet read, and performed various web searches. I discovered one useful source, still unread, but already sitting on my shelf: the slim, but quite dense volume by Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. The book is rather difficult reading because it deals largely with theories of nationalism, and, more specifically, with postcolonial, 'Eastern' nationalism. The text is quite useful, though, in that Chatterjee provides a broad, yet succinct, survey of the various theories of 'Eastern' nationalism as they have appeared over the years. He offers numerous insights into the historical development of the various kinds of nationalism, with special focus on India, while highlighting the more generally problematic nature of the concept. Another useful source with which I had already become cursorily acquainted was Chetan Bhatt's text, Hindu Nationalism. This book deals primarily with the Indian religious nationalism, with the greatest focus, naturally, on what is identified as 'Hindu nationalism'.  

It goes into great detail on the rise of revolutionary nationalism to the appearance of Hindutva, (a set of Hindu principles that strives to define the nationalist movement, while including diverse—non-Hindu—sectors of society).

After looking to already familiar sources, I turned to the Internet where further searches turned up an enormous selection of articles (both scholarly and not). Surprisingly, one source that I found helpful appeared to me in the form of a book review, which I found in Political Science Quarterly. In it the author of the review, Ainslee Embree, summarizes Anil Seal's text The Emergence of Indian Nationalism, and declares it to be a significant contribution to his field of scholarship. I found this article particularly helpful in that it not only aided in locating a source, but also summarized and identified it as an important and reliable work. Another series of searches led me to yet another book review, this one called Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secular Nationalism in India by Aditya Nigam. Interestingly, the reviewer of this title, K. N. Panikkar, is a prominent Indian historian who injects much of his own analysis into the review—a circumstance that I found advantageous for my purposes.

In the process of seeking an answer to the earlier posited question on Indian nationalism, I have found some of my confusion surrounding Indian nationalism cleared up. Previously I had only studied Hindu nationalism and Hindutva with regard to the country's history of nationhood, but given the great diversity of India, it only made sense that the political discourses would be more varied and diverse than just this. With added insight into the history and various analyses of Indian nationalism, I feel that I now have better informed notion of the political atmosphere that developed following Independence and Partition.

I also better understand the (almost) inherent limitations studying India as a Westerner. For example, even the notion of nationalism as it appears in India differs from that with which we in the West are familiar. As Partha Chatterjee explains, 'Eastern' nationalism differs from Western nationalism in that in regions previously occupied by a Western colonial force nationalism it is usually defined in terms of (as well as against) Western forms of nationalism (Chatterjee 2). In other words, the nationalism experienced in a place like India is at least in part defined by its reaction to the colonial forces that perhaps 'forced' the region into formal nationhood in the first place. To take this East-West comparison further it is argued that the cultural elements that produce nationalist sentiment in Western countries such as France or Britain are different than those in India. The 'brand' of nationalism seen in India post-Independence, is rather, directly linked to the rejection of and 'self-definition' against British colonial rule. 

Nationalism in India, though, has a significantly longer and more complex history than I might have thought; Chetan Bhatt explains that early forms, at least of Hindu nationalism, far predate British colonialism. He hints that that the development of nationalism might very well be “the continuation of precolonial primordial destinies” that already existed among Hindu populations, rather than “derivative discourses” stemming from colonial recovery, as implicated by Chatterjee (Bhatt 7). Rather than seeing nationalism in India as having followed a linear course of development into India's present state of secular nationhood, Bhatt, indicates that various disjointed forms of nationalism have arisen and petered out over a much broader course of time. He seems also to deny the sense of telos to such political sentiments that others freely ascribe. That is to say, he denies the claim that, on the whole, nationalism in India came into being for the purpose of facilitating the birth a free secular statehood. While there was a secular nationalist sentiment on the rise in India prior to Independence, there also existed various formulations of Hindu nationalism, Muslim nationalism, and a veritable mish-mash of political positionings spanning the spaces between.

All the same, India did become a secular state under Nehru, once British rule had ended. And the nationalist rhetoric that accompanied it was specifically secular. Some scholars have argued, though, that by and large the Indian secularist position is little more than a thinly veiled Hindu politics, although as Panikkar has posited that it may be more appropriate to say that the practice of secularism in Indian politics is somewhat weak (Panikkar). Aditya Nigam's Insurrection of Little Selves, looks at  what she calls this “crisis” of secular nationalism in India. The crisis, she speaks of is defined as a weakening of secular positions in Indian politics in the face of the “communal forces of represented by the Hindu right.” According to Panikkar's summation of Nigam's text, secular nationalism came into crisis in India in the 1980's and 1990's. This period of time was marked by an emergence of new discourses in India's political scene, including those belonging to the repressed castes, the women's movement and the antidevelopmentalist movement (fueled by the ecological discourses of the time). These various movements led to a “redrawing of the cultural boundaries of the nation” and it seems also to a decentering of the secularist discourse of the country's dominant political discourse (Panikkar).  Nigam notes that the ground ceded by secularist nationalism was quickly taken by a flourishing Hindu (nationalist) right.

So, what defines Indian nationalism, and how effective has it been in coalescing a “hundred Indias” into a more singular, unified identity? While this research endeavor has guided me into a better understanding of the history and circumstances surrounding the emergence Indian nationalism, it also seems to have only underscored the incredibly complexity and multivocal status of the nation. Anil Seal, put it very well in his analysis of the various political voices sounding in India just prior to Independence and Partition: “In so shapeless, so jumbled a bundle of societies, there were not two nations, there was not one nation, there was no nation at all. What was India?--a graveyard of old nationalities and a mother of new nationalities to be born” (Embree 183). While India has achieved a state of secular nationhood, the voices (including those of historical and political analysis) within that state are many—and at times they are discordant. The histories, like the political voices—and, indeed, like the nation itself—still speak with “a hundred mouths.”  

Works Cited:

Bhatt, Chetan. Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies, and Modern Myths. Oxford: 2001

Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Embree, Ainslee. Rev. of The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, by Anil Seal. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1968.

Panikkar, K.M.. Rev. of Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secular Nationalism in India, by Aditya Nigam.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.