 Hello, welcome to NewsClick. You are watching Present, Past and the Future and I am Neelanjan Mukhopadhyay. Twice a year, the Republic Day and the Independence Day are occasions when we are coaxed to flaunt our nationalism of patriotism by buying flags which are being sold in various red light junctions in different cities across the country. About 250 years ago, a very important scholar had said that patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels. In the contemporary world, especially in India, we might as well say that nationalism has become the last refuge of paranoid politicians. Why do I say it? Since 2014, nationalism has become some kind of a favorite tick of this particular regime that we are under in this country. Every time that there is a crisis or a challenge, the word nationalism is flaunted and anybody who disagrees with their version of nationalism is painted as an anti-national or somebody who is working against national interests. This is not the first time that it is being done in India. Almost 35 years ago, Indira Gandhi used to constantly warn people about the foreign hand whenever her regime was being challenged and toppled for various indiscretions of her own government. So, we do have a past where insecure leaders invoke the nationalist spirit to strengthen themselves to gain greater support. But this has become much more serious in the last few years, especially because it is increasingly being also used as an electoral strategy. Now, to discuss this very important question, especially at a time when we are getting into the election season, it is fairly certain that the spirit of nationalism is going to be denigrated and is going to be misused. I would like to talk about this and for this, I have invited Sukumar Mudlidharan, a very senior journalist who is also currently teaching journalism in the Jindal University. Sukumar, welcome to the program. My first question to you if I can actually put a question is that right from the beginning, we have had two strands of ideas as to how we define nationalism right from for almost more than 100 years in India from the time we had the freedom struggle going on. On one hand, you had an inclusive government, inclusive nationalism which was articulated by the Congress and by several others who were a part of the mainstream nationalist movement. On the other side, you had a sectarian or a non-inclusive kind of nationalism, also called Hindu nationalism. Basically, the point being that different kind of premises as to what kind of India, what is our kind of India, idea of India as we say it, that determined as to different forms of nationalism. It is continuing even today. We see it for the last five years under this present regime. That's right. Although I would disagree whether the inclusive form of nationalism was the exclusive property of the Congress. There were other strands of that and there were sectarian elements within the Congress also. But yes, nationalism is a distinctly modern idea and people try to reach back to distant recesses of history to discover the origins of nationalism. And nationalism are essentially on a futile quest or creating an artificial kind of sense of solidarity when it didn't exist. Nationalism is very much an artifact of modernization and industrial society. And I think these begin in India in the late 19th century and there were two strands as you say. There was one which was early on, it was difficult to articulate a kind of civic bond between Indians of all faiths and communal leanings. So there was a talk, an elite kind of nationalism which said that the educated Indian strata has proved itself deserving of equal citizenship in the British Empire. And there was the other which was associated with the five brands like Tilak, Lokman, Tilak and others, which spoke of revivalism of ancient cultures, of Hinduism and the Vedic civilization. Revivalism which Tilak articulated, that is what eventually gave the inspiration for what became the Hindu nationalism. That's right, yes. So he is left a very strong kind of bequest in terms of the Hindu nationalist stream. And of course the other stream also, these were continuously in contention and of course the Hindu revivalist stream of thought also triggered an equal and opposite reaction of Islamic revivalism. And there was a severe kind of contest between these in terms of capturing numbers because numbers suddenly came to be seen as key to political success. And with the census that the British started during the colonial times, it is very important to prove that you had numbers so that you could take a claim to political power. But if we talk in terms of an ideology, the ideology of nationalism, let's not look at the various streams. But under the colonial era, nationalism had one kind of meaning. That's right. The post-independence, nationalism had to evolve as an idea and not be used as a very dogmatic ideology which is what it is. That comes about over time. There's a slow process of evolution which of course you have Tagore, Rabindma Tagore during World War I, articulating a very serious kind of opposition to nationalism as an ideology because he sees the carnage of World War I all around him and sees that this is the consequence of nationalism which pits man against man, community against community. And there's a long debate between Gandhi and Tagore over how future Indian politics should be organized. But from about 1929, you have what is a sense of civic equality being seen as a foundation of nationalism. And key points in that evolution are 1929, the Purna Swaraj Resolution of the Indian National Congress which adopted Purna Swaraj as the objective. So, you know, because still then there had been a lot of wavering between Dominion status of Purna Swaraj and so on and so forth. So, 1929 under the... That you had a clear cut in 1920 and you had a clear cut objective. Right. So, what you are trying to get with the leadership of Pandit Nehru and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and so on, the Congress finally committed itself to Purna Swaraj. In 1931 in the Karachi Congress, the Resolution spoke of nationalism based on civic equality of all citizens, religious neutrality. That's right. There will be no kind of... There will be a strict separation of church and state and welfare orientation which would promote the well-being of all citizens, including the poorest with a special kind of emphasis on welfare. So, that 1931 Karachi Resolution is a Resolution of Historic Significance. And I think that essentially was the template for post-independence India. We, of course, didn't settle the issue there. That's also the period when the template of the other strand, the Hindu nationalist strand, is also set up. That's also the time by which the RSS has been formed. The RSS is actually in a quandary, head give or is in a quandary at that time, especially after Purna Swaraj, as to whether to support it, also whether to celebrate January 26 as the national celebration day. It also forces the RSS to agree to allow its corridor to participate in the civil disobedience movement, but as individuals, not as an organization. So, the contradictions really starts coming in. Let me also just read out, you know, I'm sure that you would know, but also for the benefit of our readers, you know, what Nehru wrote in the Discovery of India. He said that, Nationalism can only come out of the ideological fusion of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and other groups in India. That does not mean that extension of any real culture of any group, but it does mean a common national outlook to which other matters are subordinated. To which other matters are subordinated. So, definitely he is talking about a fusion, you know, something which is against the idea of this particular regime against the Sangh Parivar which this government represents, the ideology of Hindu nationalism which was first articulated by Savarkar and then later on worked upon by various other ideologues of the movement. Yes, indeed. There are two kinds of attitudes here again. There's one which speaks about an exclusion of our religion and faith from the public sphere so that you're essentially talking about privatization of all faiths. And there's another one which says that, okay, allow all faiths equal opportunity in the public sphere and if you have that foundation of civic equality, they can all have their say and you can achieve a kind of higher synthesis of all these faiths which will get you a kind of syncretic national identity that reflects the complexities of our history. So, those were continuously in play. They emerge even during the constitutional assembly debates and there are people who articulate the former viewpoints, a strict exclusion and there are people who articulate the latter viewpoints. But this has become much more sharp and much more crystallized in the last three decades since the emergence of the Ram Janam Hume movement. You know, really if you try to put it as a watershed, that's a time when the nature of Indian political discourse starts changing and there is greater acceptance for the Hindu nationalistic idea. It did, you know, be in, you know, as a contested idea for a long period of time but in the last 10 years or so, there's a greater amount of an acceptance of the ideology of Hindu nationalism. You know, you find various of the political parties also, even the Congress, we talk about soft Hindu. But if you consider this very carefully, you'll find that it has a shifting constituency. There are different elements which sign up for that ideology from one election to another and the key aspect of the Hindu nationalist Hindutva coalition, if you might call it that today, is the large scale entry of OBCs who used to be outside that consolidation at one time. You also have the non-dominant subcasts among the Dalits who are the influential. You have a very conscious strategy. So they have managed to put together a social coalition based on these calculations of what ensures best electoral success. So in a sense, they're playing upon short-term resentments that certain sections may feel at their exclusion from the ruling arrangement. Like, for instance, in UP, they have recruited the non-Jatav Dalits because the Jatavs achieved a lot of power under them. Even among the OBCs, you have the non-Yadav. Exactly. They already did it. So they have welded this constituency along with the traditional high-upcast constituencies to create this coalition. Well, that's stable and how far they can hold that constituency together, that coalition together from one election to another is still debatable. It still remains unproven. If you look at the evidence of the recent assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, even Gujarat. There definitely has been an erosion from the vote levels which the party had in 2014 and even in 2017, especially in Uttar Pradesh or in other assembly elections. If you look at the bi-elections in Uttar Pradesh. But the point is that if you actually try to plot an imaginary index of Hindutva, go back and look at the 80s and bring it now, we'll find that the index of Hindutva has been rising slowly. There are periods when there's a slump, but that does not mean that it is dying out. So it definitely has emerged as a dominant ideology in the country and it is acquiring, it has a huge amount of space in the public discourse. Well, what has changed is that the Congress leadership has kind of retreated from its commitment to oppose the Hindutva. And not just the Congress. It's not just the 80s, it's the 1960s. Also there was a strong revivalist movement when the Congress coalition was under some stress and they had successive electoral setbacks, 1967, 68, 69. What we are seeing in the way in which nationalism is being used as a stick to beat the adversary with, you know, we are talking also about the JNU charge sheet which has been filed very recently. The idea being, you know, this entire campaign again, this so-called tukde-tukde gang, the idea is that opposition to the government is also opposed to the nation. You know, if you are questioning government policy or anything, be it on the issues of minorities, be it on the issues of deprived communities or different neglect of regions, be it Kashmir or be it in Chattisgarh or various places, you know, where you have people's movements going on of different kinds. If you are questioning it, then it means that you are against the nation. So what is happening is that you have a very singular idea of nation and this is not happening only in India. Very recently the French President Macron, you know, while celebrating the centenary of the First World War, talked about that it was universal ideas which motivated the soldiers and not a narrow, parochial nationalism which might have motivated or rather, you know, what Donald Trump would want to present that occasion, you know, to celebrate American nationalism. So it is a part of a global trend. Well, there are global determinants for this in the sense of the increasing turbulence, the kind of globalization which has eroded a sense of belonging, a sense of identity. There are flows of manpower, there are flows of capital which nobody can control. Your lives are being increasingly determined by the rhythms of international capital flows which very few people understand. So there is a sense of loss of control that citizens all over the world are feeling and this is the kind of response to that, a reaction to that which is taking it along a direction in which the hazards are more because you are going to get into more and more of insularity and fail to see that the solutions lie in common pursuits, common endeavors across borders. So you are retreating into these national borders and creating artificial kinds of antagonisms within these borders and seeking a solution by disentitling certain people. Some certain categories of citizens are now being disempowered. If you see this kind of... Beyond that, you know, this other problem is that especially in India what we are seeing is that there is a very consistent use of hate. Yes, exactly. And that is a prelude to the actual disenfranchisement of people, the disempowerment of people because when you have this kind of a campaign directed against certain categories of citizens basically saying that they are not deserving of civic equality and they are not deserving of citizens' rights, that's the first stage towards an active disempowerment in terms of the constitutional rights. So that is a danger that we are seeing all over the world. Everywhere the new nationalism is built upon definition of the other which is threatening the security of those who are truly deserving. So in India it is the illegal migrant which is a kind of coded reference to a certain religious faith because everybody from that faith is regarded in some sense as undeserved. And you can see the conflict coming up over the citizen bill, you know, citizen chip. Exactly, exactly. And the imposition of the other criterion for availing of certain citizens' entitlements. Now that cuts across the religious fault lines and potentially disempowers large sections of our Dalits and tribal communities also. So there are all these kinds of stratagems at play which mean that we are moving further and further away from an inclusive nationalism based on civic equality. How can this be countered because the mainstream political parties, even those who are in opposition to the dominant political force of today, they are not willing to tackle it ideologically for pragmatic electoral reasons. We saw that as to how very important minority-related issues were not articulated by the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and in Rajasthan. Last year we saw that even in Gujarat they were not raised issues which are critical not just to minorities but to the secular fabric of this country do not get raised. There is a general kind of sense that we should not be seen to be stating too much for the minorities. Sonia Gandhi made a public speech last year in which she said that unfortunately the Congress has got the image of being a pro-Muslim party. So there is a conscious attempt to move away from a commitment to safeguarding minorities' status in this country. Which is probably the most unfortunate thing that's happened since independence because so far we have, at least the Congress has chosen never to adopt that idiom of political discourse of identifying people by religion and targeting particular people on the basis of their faith. Now that they have, you have to really wonder if this rightward shift of the political center of gravity is going to finally culminate in the disempowerment and disenfranchisement of entire sections of people. But what I do believe is that the political costs of this will prove more than they can bear at some point because you cannot have too accurate a targeting of people based on religious faith alone. It becomes a process by which along with this category of people you begin to exclude others also from other social strata, from other social sections. And then you create a potential for consolidation of those who are threatened by exclusion, who could exercise their franchise and reassert some of their electoral strength and then regain some of the ground that they're losing. So it's a complex game and I don't think there's any party which is willing to risk the entire loss of say 13% of the national electoral constituency, national electoral vote which is people of the Muslim faith except for the BJP. BJP has built a strategy on excluding them altogether. BJP strategy is what we call reverse polarization that you try to, you do not, you target the Muslims so that you can go back to the Hindus and say that. In Uttar Pradesh they had a clear strategy of what is called 60 to 40 because they identified 40% of the population as people who would be averse to their appeal. That includes the Muslims, the Yadavs and the Yadavs and a few others who are aligned with these categories. So the other 60% is where they directed their entire focus, their entire attention and they managed to win that substantial number of votes. That BSP and the BSP coming together, if you speak to leaders of the BSP and the SP individually, they do confess that there is actually no certainty that their loyal voter base is going to rebate with them and not get swayed away by a last minute Hindutva wave in favor of the BJP. Their worry is that there may be certain kind of reasons as to what happened in 2013-14. You had a criminal riot in Muzaffarnagar and that impacted the elections all over the country. Those kind of events can sway voter loyalty at the last minute but finally, I think they will make a calculation about how far will this particular political formation safeguard my interests in the next five years. So that they are, I think, better aware of than most parties give them credit for. I think they will make the decision based on a fairly sound calculation. So to counter it, do you think that there is a necessity to point out that their version of nationalism is different from the kind of patriotism which should be encouraged and allowed to thrive in this country? How can it be argued upon? Well, yes, patriotism and nationalism, there have been periods in history when these have been in contest. Patriotism, the origin of the term is in the Latin, but patriotism is also a common root for patrimony. There was a notion that only people who have a stake in the land, the owners of the land, are capable of patriotism. Patrimony is being property. So there was a disenfranchisement of all those who were labored on the land but didn't have ownership interests in the land. So nationalism became at some point a popular form of mobilization by which they managed to recruit even these people without property into the common shared political quest. So in India, again, you could say Tagore was not a nationalist, but he was a patriot in the sense that he believed that everybody should have a stake in the political... I think on that note that it's possible it's time for us to go back to the kind of patriotism which was articulated by people like Tagore to go back and say that that is patriotism and this false nationalism which we are pursuing and which is... Tagore and Gandhi in his own way? Yes, it is. Many several others also. Ambedkar also has one specific understanding of this. So a kind of patriotism or a kind of nationalism which is not unitary, which is not inward looking is the kind of idea which we should go back. Thank you, Sukumar, for coming and joining me on this particular program. And thank you for watching. We just hope that we do not really become a people who start living in very small boxes and instead of being a great nation, we become a nation of very small people. Thank you very much for watching this.