Nationalism as a cultural construct

The two words, civilisation and culture are often used synonymously. Thus civilisation is defined as “the quality of excellence in thought, manners and taste; intellectual refinement; generosity and civilization". And, culture is defined as “the totality of socially transmitted behaviour patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought”.

Ernest Gellner, the late Cambridge professor of social anthropology, argued that in empires, power and culture are disjunctive and billow in different directions. This is because the cosmopolitan culture of the rulers differs sharply from the myriad local cultures of the subordinate strata. On the other hand, a ‘nation’ according to him is a legitimate political unit in which the rulers and the ruled share a common culture. The ideal of the national or the ‘nation-state’, conceives of the nation essentially in terms of a shared culture linking all members. Therefore, according to Gellner, political propriety demands that the rulers and the ruled both should belong to the same culture. (Gellner 2006)

Across millennia, we see in India, an underlying cultural unity in an unbroken continuum from epoch to epoch, from the Saraswati Valley Civilisation and Indus Valley Civilisation to the present time. The invasions and colonisation of the last millennium might have blunted but had not broken its spirit. The excellence that the continuum achieved in intellectual refinements such as arts, science, beliefs, institutions and spiritual enlightenment is unparalleled in the cultural history of any nation.

Sectarian undercurrents

India’s ancient civilization has had many interpretations based on the beholders’ worldview. The term worldview is derived from the German word Weltanschauung meaning, "look onto the world". The original German philosophical and epistemological construct, worldview, was a “framework” through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it. Educationists and psychologists agree that the “framework” is a product of the socio-cultural milieu and can be shaped under controlled conditions. Toffler calls this the covert curriculum of mass education. The objectives of the covert curriculum are to teach the pupil punctuality, obedience and conformity. (Toffler 1983:43) This explains the Marxists’ zeal to write and re-write history to suit their current political exigencies.

The British colonial worldview mis-labelled India a sub-continent meaning that it was not a single national entity but a motley crowd of irreconcilable and ungovernable nationalities. The colonial worldview might have had an ulterior sub-stratum, but the epithet has become a part of the nation’s cultural lexicon oblivious to its divisive antecedents. The former USSR, although nobody labelled it a sub-continent was a motley crowd of nationalities artificially held together by a doctrinaire philosophy, which broke free at the first available opportunity.

Many leftist writers objected to the concept of the ancient cultural grandeur as the backbone of Indian nationalism. They even went to the extent of describing attempts to rejuvenate India’s ancient cultural pride as Hindutva narcissism trying to reconstruct a glorious past. The political exigency of “Comintern” determined the Marxist worldview of India. To what extent Mill’s elitist definition of public as “that miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals” (Mills 2001:22) influenced the conception of “Comintern”, we do not know, but that its progenitors have a skilfully camouflaged contempt for democratic institutions, is easy to gauge. As nations across the world scramble to reconstitute their cultural pride, the never-had-been concept of “Comintern” became defunct.

The worldview of the nation’s invaders from the ninth/tenth century onwards was to loot, conquer, destroy all symbols of indigenous civilisation, to subjugate and convert the infidel by force.

The worldview of the latter proselytisers was to present the nation’s ancient advanced civilisation, as not indigenous but alien and imported. The concept of the Vedic civilisation as an alien infusion by invaders has neither historical nor archaeological sanction but based on specious linguistic interpretations. This candid admission by Burrow puts paid to the lofty intellectual yarns spun by self-styled Indologists and Marxist historians (emphasis added): “The Āryan invasion in India is recorded in no written document, and it cannot yet be traced archaeologically, but it is nevertheless firmly established as a historical fact on the basis of comparative philology.” (Burrow 1975:21).

Dr. N.S. Rajaram’s review of literature on the disputed theory exposes even this sleight-of-hand approach to disavow the splendour and grandeur of an ancient civilisation (emphasis added): “…Then there is the issue of linguistics. Ever since the discovery of Sanskrit by European scholars in the eighteenth century, the Indo-European homeland of the hypothetical ancestors of the Indian and the European speakers of this great language family has been the Holy Grail of historical linguistics. Unfortunately, unrestrained speculation and its recent politicisation by Indian Marxists has placed the whole field in some disrepute. As an extreme case one can cite a Marxist scholar completely ignorant of Sanskrit invoking something she calls Old Indo-Aryan to 'prove' that Aryan speakers could not have been native to India. It is not surprising that such appeals to non-existent languages by non-linguists should have brought some discredit to the field...” (Rajaram)

These sectarian interests, buttressed by a number of prevailing social factors eclipsed India’s civilizational grandeur and made its citizens lose their civilizational pride. Therefore it is necessary to educate and enlighten Indians about the grandeur of their ancient culture, to rejuvenate their cultural pride and to disseminate Indian cultural values. The objective is not just to chronicle past glories. It should play a part, however humble, first, internally in unifying the nation based on a glorious common cultural heritage; in inculcating a strong sense of patriotism against external aggressors, cultural or geographical; in shaping current thought for the advancement of society by focusing on issues concerning development, equality, strengthening democratic institutions, and in the deployment of science and technology for achieving better standards of living and security for all its citizens. In other words it is to anchor the nation’s civilizational pride as a source of strength and motivator for its advancement.

Bibliographic References:
Burrow, T. The Early Aryans. A Cultural History of India. Ed. A. L. Basham. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1975 p 21.

Gellner, Ernest. Empire and English nationalism. Nations and Nationalism. 12 (1), 2006, 1-13. ASEN 2006.

Mills, John Stuart. On Liberty. Ontario. Batoche Books Limited. 2001. p 22.

Rajaram, N.S. The Aryan Invasion: New Light on an Old Problem.
(Review of) The Problem of Aryan Origins.
http:// members.tripod.com/~ramkumaram/book.html

Toffler, Alvin. The Third Wave. London. Pan Books, 1983, p 43.