Meghnad Desai writes: India doesn’t need a single story of nationhood

Bhagwatji says that he was warned against using the word nationalism while in the UK, as this was an unwelcome word for the locals. The fact is that the United Kingdom is a Kingdom, not a nation. Over the last 50 years there has been a rise of Scottish Nationalism and Welsh Nationalism, which have secured devolution of power. But the English have a peculiar aversion to nationalism. The main allegiance is to the Monarchy, which is the fulcrum of the Constitution. The UK is after all the oldest continuous kingdom in Europe, going back to 1066. The main parties do not endorse English nationalism. English nationalism is an extreme right-wing movement which is nostalgic about the lost Empire, is White Supremacist and opposed to all non-white immigrants.

The UK has never needed to be a nation. But after 1857, the imperial historians developed an argument that India was not a nation, but just a collection of races and regions and linguistic groups. The English Clergy had argued that Hinduism was not a proper religion as it had no single Book or God. Hindu Renaissance led by Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda gave priority to defining what it meant to be a Hindu. Stories or histories of Indian nationhood were created by political movements.

The Indian National Congress in its early Loyalist phase had a syncretic story. India was a nation because by securing its boundaries and giving an administrative unity, plus English language, it was the British who had created a nation where there was none before they came. The Bengal Partition gave a fillip to Hindu nationalism as Anushilan Samiti was a religious nationalist movement, as was Abhinav Bharat in Maharashtra. Gandhiji used religion but in an ecumenical fashion. The Khilafat cause sought to combine Hindus and Muslims against the British suspected of planning to abolish the Khalif’s position. Gandhiji’s suspension of the movement after Chauri Chaura led to a major Hindu-Muslim split.

India is a civilisation. It does not need a single story of its Nationhood. India is large enough to accommodate many stories of Nationhood. Indeed each linguistic region has its own story of Nationhood. That is its strength. The task is to weave these multiple regional stories into a rich garland that is India.