Hindu nationalism…is a self-description used in the post-Independence period by the main political embodiments of Hindu revivalism, the Hindu Mahasabha…the Jana Singh…and the BJP…in India, “nationalism” doesn’t have the negative connotations which it has in Western intellectual circles. On the contrary, the term is hallowed by its assocation with the freedom movement. It is also of little use trying to catch this nationalism in one of the proliferating “models” of nationalism. For the people concerned, it simply means “love of one’s country,” and in all other respects its meaning can vary: it is not a bourgeois or petit-bourgeois movements (as Marxists would have it)…
– Excerpted from Dr. Elst’s book
However, a nation state requires a nation and an ideology of nationalism. Simple, old-fashioned, non-ideological patriotism is not enough for it. More so if it is a republican state, led by new, insecure, nervous political leaders worried about its diverse, ‘ungovernable’ citizens and psychologically not yet closely linked to the state.
That is why V D Savarkar, despite being an avowed atheist and dismissive towards Hinduism as a religion, had moved towards the idea of Hindutva, which redefined the Hindu as a nation and Hindutva as their national ideology. This was years before Muhammad Ali Jinnah spoke of Hindus and Muslims as separate nations.
Excerpted from a newspaper column by political psychologist and alleged social commentator, Ashis Nandy.
As I’ve noted earlier, Ashis Nandy is endowed with the rare gift of writing pieces, whose titles are completely disconnected with the content. This piece is titled Partition And The Fantasy Of A Masculine State. What follows is state-of-art gibberish with selective quoting of history and heaping scorn on everything in the world except focusing on the issue. That the Slimes calls it a “top article” means that the Slimes deserves serial therapy in psychoanalysis.
Despite all his claims and “fame” as a psychologist–now a “political” psychologist, which is quite apt–Nandy remains at heart a true Communist. We’ll see this in a bit but before that, we should only marvel at Nandy’s banality. Compare for instance, the clarity of Elst’s grasp of Hindu nationalism. In a line, Elst sums it up as a love for one’s motherland. But Nandy is compelled to equate nationalism with unmitigated evil because his definition of nationalism is derived from the concept of nation states of 19th and 20th century Italy and Germany, which caused two world wars. As an esteemed “analyst,” doesn’t it occur to him that a phenomenon, an idea, an issue has at least two sides? But he insists otherwise because a changing India continues to deliver fatal blows to his central thesis.
India is getting globalised and the urban, modernising, middle class is expanding. A pan-Indian, media-based political consciousness is crystallising and it includes a packaged theory of history. A large middle class bent on avenging historical wrongs could be a dangerous vector. It may opt for a nationalism that will not see the partitioning of British India as a tragedy because millions Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs suffered from it. Nor will it care that partition devastated myriad communities, cultures and inter-religious bonds. It will remember partition, as some already do, as a humiliation of the Hindus and as a loss of real estate. I look at the future with apprehension and fear that we may have already lost a part of our selfhood.
It takes only an Ashis Nandy to not recognize the Partition and consequently, Pakistan for what it is: a permanent sore that continues to fester because it remains committed to the unfinished Arabic/Mughal dream of Islamizing India. Not facing this reality directly won’t make this sore go away. The Acorn’s post in a related context nails it well:
Instead of reconciling with Pakistan, he says, Indians want to “teach Pakistan a lesson” and put them in their place. Now assuming this is true, does Mr Bhagat pause to examine why? Is it perhaps because Pakistan has devoted itself to damaging India right from the word go? Reconciliation is not a rational response towards Pakistan until the time it unequivocally transforms itself into a country that is at peace with itself and its neighbour. Yet, the story since 1998 at least is one where India has made repeated attempts to reconcile-at political and popular levels-and on each occasion received a dagger in its flesh in return. So yes, bashing Pakistan might be considered patriotic and make good politics, but for good reason.
Whether the Partition was good for Hindus is quite debatable but it certainly showed that the Islamist dream was partially realized; it was realized because of a lack of united and decisive Hindu action–or capitulation to one man’s unbendable will if you will. The “loss of real estate” is only incidental compared to this. The continued attacks against the Indian state are both, repeated reminders of this Islamic dream and wake-up calls to set Pakistan–and India–right. The happy stupor of our political class and the likes of Nandy is astounding to say the least. When Pakistani terror outfits carry out these attacks openly in the name of Islam, quote the Koran as justification, and use the names of medieval Islamic conquerors for inspiration, our intellectual runts actually hear the exact opposite. There’s no bigger instance of internalizing the fear of Islam than this. The fact that some of these runts opt for selective deafness owing to other, selfish agendas is purely incidental.
The lack of a cold, reasoned, and concerted response from the Hindu leadership also helps these peewees. Hence the Nandys of the world thrive and peddle things like loss of real estate, etc. However, that has changed significantly. A good indicator is the absolute refusal to give opinion or editorial space to the Hindu viewpoint in the mainstream media. The Hindu revival movement in the ’90s exposed the powerlessness of defending the secular viewpoint in the press. Another indicator is how the ’70s generation of Indians refuses to accept bullshit even if it’s doled out for free by eminent psychologists packaged in any form. This generation isn’t really afraid of calling bullshit by its name. The most visible evidence of this phenomenon is the huge number of blogs critical precisely of such people as Ashis Nandy. Most significantly, this generation is drawn almost entirely from the middle class and is not affiliated to any ideology, or outfit . Which is why I called Nandy a Communist. An educated, travelled, prosperous, and self-aware middle class is Enemy Number 1 of any Communist because it keeps asking discomfiting questions. The likes of Nandy, Shekhar Gupta (recall his shamefully racist piece demonizing middle-class Gujaratis), Guha et al have continued to spite the Indian middle class because it is asserting itself in almost all spheres. If it questions the history it was taught, the subject itself is branded as “packaged.” If it questions economic policies, it is branded as “aggressive,” “materialist,” “consumerist,” and “uncaring.” If it insists on national security, it is branded as “fascist,” “brainwashed by militant ideologies,” and “warmonging.” The latest addition to these labels is “Masculine.”
But hasn’t Ashis Nandy been awarded some kind of a sarkari award?
That was a good point on the nervousness of communist-secularists vis-a-vis their middle-class bashing.
A right-wing writer also recently joined wings with his NRI-bashing writing.
But hasn’t Ashis Nandy been awarded some kind of a sarkari award?
Dont know about Nandy but Chetan bakbak has been or so it seems. And what’s worse, his face reminds me somekind of Rahul Gandhi meets Amit Varma!
It offends my sense of science everytime Ashis Nandy is described as a psychoanalyst. Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis and every one in the scientific comittee agrees freud was wrong on many counts. One of his enduring legacy has been to create a sort of “Free for All” in psychology so that there are as many theories as psycholoanalysts all of them fanatically advocating their theories
2) Another part of the great legacy that freud left behind is that theory need not be tested against evidence for replicability; infact the theory is evidence itself because of the subjectivity involved.
So of that great tradition of nebulous science? art?? are born theorists like Mr. Nandy and Mr. Kakkar who will pile a lot of opinion on frank gibberish and dress it like well thought out
there are well wriiten pieces by Dr. NC Surya who believed that western psychological(read analytical) models fail to account for the beliefs and practices of the hindus
No psycho analytical study has been able to explain why so many hindus are vegetarian though there are theories galore
Reaction formation etc..
Ghostwriter, thanks for that link. Somehow I keep thinking that Elst is still unwell and out of action. Good he’s writing.
I’m also happy that Elst seems the only person who refers to Dr. Ambedkar’s logical proposal to exchange population. That in 1940 itself. It would have given us at least 6 years of peaceful preparation.
Btw, this is where I lose “realists” like Shourie. How his anti-patriot could come up with the only real solution for a healthy Hindu nation certainly beats me.
All this confusion and indecisiveness is a bigger recipe for frustration and then fury amongst knowing Hindus. Shriman Bhagwat is not helping one bit. (I still worry about his conversation with the Muslim scholar who went away satisfied at the end of it)
interestingly Koenraad Elst has provided his thoughts on the partition and book banning by Gujarat (which my admiration for Modi notwithstanding is absolutely stupid)
<a href=”http://voi.org/20090829221/30aug2009/koenraadelst/column-koenraadelst/jinnah,authorofthepartition.html”http://voi.org/20090829221/30aug2009/koenraadelst/column-koenraadelst/jinnah,authorofthepartition.html
http://www.littlemag.com/faith/ashis.html
This is Nandy’s earlier article I referred to.
I see Nandy as a commentator who loves a perfect world but can see why it’s going so wrong. He also sees that common Hindu reaction is and can be severe in it’s form.
He’s frustrated that his fellow liberals are unable to or refuse to see the writing on the wall, when it’s so clear to him.
Instead of arguing against his views, I would argue with them in order to bolster my stance.
Btw, when was the last time professional secularists defended Nandy’s views?
Sandeep, I welcome Nandy’s assessment as desirable if not wholly representative of reality.
There is nothing wrong in owning what Nandy fears. What he fears is the consequence of an ideologically driven Nationalism that assumes vengeful proportions when provoked. He likes to call this “masculine” or muscular Nationalism. Nothing to get offended about.
If we don’t like this description we better be happy with MMS “nationalism”.
On another note, Nandy has written a fine and lenghty critique of secularism and why it should die in this country.
I don’t see anything that’s “communistic” in his article or earlier writings. Perhaps someone can point them out to me.
Hinduism aside, historically Communists have always targetted the physically weaker, but more educated/enlightened sections of society because:
1. we are easy/soft targets not capable of retaliating in kind and are easily intimidated by the slightest threat of physical violence a brand of which Communist dictatorial regimes have specialized in.
2. it’s easy to turn middle-class into a figure of hate for the “working classes” thus turning the heat and attention away from the really affluent, politically influential class of which the communists are also one part.
The only way to fix this anti-India, anti-hindu malaise is to get rid of such self proclaiming liberals, lazy, low IQ fit for nothing runts out of there cozy careers and replace them with young blood. Current generations should diversify their careers to take up responsible jobs and turn instead of sticking to technical and financial ones.