Concept of India as a nation

The recent hullabaloo over the February 9 incident in what is referred to as the country's "premier and prestigious university" has kicked off a ruckus on social media. The print media which is not as fast- paced carries its own share of views but the television media is where a sharp divide on what constitutes nationalism is being debated vociferously. What really is sedition? Today the line is blurred. Those of us who have been living in the region labelled as a "conflict" zone because of the earnest desire of some tribes to govern themselves outside of the "Indian" nation-state (constructed only in 1947), now feel utterly confused.

Supporters of the JNU cause have argued cogently that asking for azadi (freedom) from the Indian Union or the right to self determination does not constitute anti-nationalism or sedition. Veteran lawyer Soli Sorabjee explained to the anchor of a news channel that merely uttering anti-national slogans without resorting to violence against the state does not amount to sedition. To that extent sympathisers of the Kashmir homeland or any other contested homelands are not seditious. So why was Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Students' Union, booked for sedition?

Now we wonder if the Naga struggle for independence from India is not as important as the Kashmir angst for self-determination is. And as far as violence is concerned, it was not the Nagas who fired the first bullet or burnt down paddy fields and entire villages. It was the Indian State that termed them "insurgents" although the Nagas still consider all those who have lost their lives in the 50-year struggle against the Indian State as martyrs. Those Nagas never went anywhere near Parliament House nor did they plot the assassination of elected members of Parliament. They fought within their own homeland for a cause they believed in. But the Indian State clamped down on their freedom to express dissent and counterpoint to the nation-state narrative by enforcing a colonial act - Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) that gives the security forces unbridled powers to shoot and kill anyone suspected to be an insurgent or aiding and abetting such insurgents. If the Nagas are today looking for a solution and talking to the Centre it is not because of the AFSPA but because they see the futility of waging war with a nation that is capable of trampling on all their rights with its military power. The same is the story of the PLA in Manipur, Ulfa in Assam and the NDFB or the BLT in Bodoland.

Not a nation

In trying to understand the meaning of nationalism, I waded through several academic pieces but found this one - Nationalism and the Mind by Liah Greenfeld the most appropriate to unravel some sense out of the incoherent cacophony of social and television media. When the culture of nationalism is imported into a traditional society, it necessarily undermines the rigid stratification, with its status based on birth; the family rather than the individual as historical agent and as a consequence the illegitimacy of social mobility. It can therefore be stated unambiguously that India in 1947 was a country that was not a nation since it imported the caste system into the new scheme of things which nationhood defies.

Nations are created on the foundation of relative egalitarianism, not from a social condition that created sharp markers of identity based on birth rather than on one's merits. The caste system in India is what identifies people as being mainstream (if they belong to the dominant Hindu Brahmanical order) or tribals and Adivasis if they live closer to nature and are born to the lowest caste shudras or are indefinable forest dwellers or primitive tribal groups - a term which many non-mainstream citizens of India consider pejorative, but which still is a part of the Constitution. India is therefore not a nation because a nation is not divided by caste hierarchies. India is something else, but we do not know what it is. It qualifies to be a democracy only because we have an election once in five years and because we enjoy certain levels of free speech and expression, but only in hallowed precincts of universities where there are loud, powerful and elite voices that can claim those rights and protected or be protected by their teachers and peers when the right to free speech is ostensibly violated. Try giving a free speech of the kind that happened in JNU in a public platform outside an unprotected space and see if anyone tolerates that speech.

Ascriptive status

Many have pooh-poohed the Naga claim to sovereignty as being baseless. Why and how is it baseless when several Naga tribes never signed an Instrument of Accession to the "Indian nation state?" This is a nation replete with double standards. What is good for Kashmir is not good for the states of the Northeast which are racially many mind-spaces apart from the "mainstream" culture, thought, practice and world view.

Greenfeld argues further that only in nations are children asked what they want to be when they grow up. This question, she says, is inconceivable and even subversive in a traditional society where one's future is determined by birth. While in the US, I stayed with an Indian family with two very smart daughters. While the parents were in the process of getting their green cards, the two girls were already US citizens by birth. Both kids would listen to Barack Obama and say to their parents, "We can also become the US President." That's what a nation does!

Can we say the same of India? Rohith Vemula is a classic example of a Dalit who was adopted into a higher caste but was constantly shown his place and traumatised by that inability to belong to any of those two spaces. One can only imagine the mental storm and stress of having to slog for an education and then to not know if his caste could become the final hindrance to his occupying a pace of pride in any of the country's institutions which are entrenched in caste prejudices.

One can dream of becoming a great scholar or multi-millionaire or seek self-realisation in any of the areas one chooses to, but these dreams Greenfeld states are only made possible by the egalitarianism of nationalism. And this precisely is the problem with India where attempts to flatten the caste hierarchies by the process of reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are viewed by the dominant mainstream citizenry as undeserved entitlement. We have seen institutions that prevent the SC/ST community from accessing those rights by meddling with their marks and creating in them a sense of utter frustration. Some like Vemula give up in the process of breaking out of the trap of caste through social mobility by empowering themselves economically. There are many like him who don't get the publicity he got because he belonged to an academia where ideas and events are amplified than if they happened in the backwaters of the Northeast or some obscure district of Tamil Nadu.

There are many problems with Indian nationalism and these ought to be debated before people are booked for being anti-national.

Let us first understand whether India qualifies to be a nation.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia.mukhim@gmail.com)