CHENNAI: In a country that hosts two different worlds, not necessarily in harmony, the spirit of patriotism and nationalism takes on very different expressions. In one world, it’s hardly indistinguishable from jingoism; in the other, it’s a means to escape the ‘anti-nationalist’ tag that’s thrust upon them from the first. It’s these forms of nationalism that scholar and parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor studies in the context of India in his latest work The Battle of Belonging: On nationalism, patriotism and what it means to be Indian.
This, after he offers a tour d’horizon of nationalism and its different faces across the world, and a personal taxonomy of nine distinct variations of the phenomenon. Ten months after its release, the book gets a ‘Chennai launch’ — thanks to Nanditha Krishna and the CP Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation. Participating in the event on Thursday, Tharoor debated these very ideas of nationalism, the fundamental flaws in the version we live with today and our future.
While reviews have already pointed out the number of personalities who Tharoor has drawn from in the book — from Kautilya and Rabindranath Tagore to Benedict Anderson, and Yuval Noah Harari, the author offered insights into the inspirations all these veterans had to offer — be it Tagore’s perspective that saw nationalism as a poor substitute of humanity and global humanism or George Orwell’s claim that nationalism was patriotism gone wrong. In the book, he also presents his vision for India — a civic nationalism rooted in constitutional liberalism and the values of India’s freedom struggle. While he reiterated the theory of this possible future, Supreme Court advocate and author J Sai Deepak (who had been called in for the discussion) focussed on the part of the book that dealt with Hindutva nationalism as championed by the BJP.
Deepak argued that ‘Bharat’s’ experience with colonialism is being approached with a blinkered vision and that Tharoor’s book completely missed the scholarship of decoloniality. “The idea that Hindu nationalism is fundamentally exclusionist and comes to the detriment of religious minorities in the country is to impose the guilt as well as framework of Bharatia consciousness. Every mistaker, folly, massacre or genocide perpetrated in the name of European nationalism is somehow transposed onto Bharatia reawakening,” he lamented, giving Hindutva the moniker of Bharatia Dharmic Civilisational Reawakening.
Taking particular offence to Tharoor remarking in his book that India could become the Hindu Pakistan if it were to become a Hindu Rashtra, Deepak declared the country has done such a great job of taking care of its minorities. Later in the argument, he also pointed out that the rage inspired by atrocities against Dalits and Muslims does not seem to translate to atrocities against Kashmiri Pandits or the Hindus in the aftermath of the recent West Bengal elections and the very contested grounds of North East India.
Tharoor, who isn’t particularly new to these arguments, referred to his earlier books and his many many speeches in the Parliament to address Deepak’s claims. He fell back on his learnings from Swami Vivekananda’s work to offer an answer to Deepak’s Dharmic Civilisation premise. “Most of us have studied that tolerance is a good thing...but, in fact, it is a patronising idea. It essentially says I have the truth, you are an error but I will generously indulge you in the right to be wrong.
Whereas acceptance — if you like the Vivekanand view — says ‘I believe I have the truth, you believe you have the truth, I will respect your truth, please respect my truth’. This inscription is what Hindu religion and Dharma has taught him and me. From that premise, I go to a different conclusion. I don’t believe a young Muslim boy being beaten up in the name of Love Jihad is Dharmic. I don’t believe that three Dalits being whipped within an inch of their life because they were skinning the carcass of a cow is Dharmic,” he remarked. There debates about the supposedly hallowed status of the Constitution and the definition of our secular identity and many other provocative subjects, including — surprisingly — the Moplah rebellion of 1921.
Concluding the discussion, Nanditha called for the constitution of a truth and reconciliation commission, going as far as referring to Nelson Mandela’s vision of the same. What Tharoor had to say summed up the entire debate. “The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission related to misdeeds within the lifetime of those complaining. Our problem is those who are trying to undo the injustices of 500 years ago and 1,000 years ago.” The very selective audience in attendance, however, didn’t seem to agree with him.