A Muslim legislator has been suspended in Maharashtra for saying he prefers Jai Hind (Victory to India) to Bharat Mata ki Jai” (Victory to Mother India). What the difference between these two I am not really sure, but clearly it is enough to merit punishment. On March 19 came a report that Urdu writers have been asked to guarantee they are not writing anti-India material. The National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) under Smriti Irani is asking Urdu writers to sign forms which have the following declaration:
“I ___ son/daughter of ___ confirm that my book/magazine titled ___ which has been approved for bulk purchase by NCPUL’s monetary assistance scheme does not contain anything against the policies of the government of India or the interest of the nation, does not cause disharmony of any sort between different groups of the country, and is not supported by any government or non-government institution.” This is what an English newspaper has reported. Those of us hoping that the manufactured debate on nationalists versus anti-nationals would end soon have been disappointed. It seems the only thing this government is making in India is disharmony.
Also, it is a different sort of nationalism that our Hindutva nationalists are promoting. It is not the same as Europe’s nationalism, which was defined as a feeling those in one nation had towards another nation. The First World War happened because Serbians were hated by Austro-Hungarians, who were hated by the Russians, who were hated by the Germans, who were hated by the French. I cannot remember now why the Italians joined the war but it is true that the British hated everyone. When the fuse was lit everyone fell on each other, pulling in other nations, like the Turks, the Arabs, the Indians and eventually the Americans.
The damage their nations did to themselves because of their two wars made Europeans lose their parochialism. It later produced the EU. This union was a group of those nations which wanted to be denationalised. In today’s India, on the other hand, our “nationalism” is not against another nation. It is against other Indians. This is why it is different. Our great Indian nationalists are rousing passions against their own people. Our nationalists go after their own citizens for their religion or their views. Their concern is the enemy within. It is hatred.
Persecution of Indian Muslims and Indian dalits is not nationalism. This word we use so easily as an accusation, “anti-national”, is not really current in European languages. Only primitive people use it. It means opposition to the things a nation stands for. But who is to decide what positive nationalism is? JNU has been organising a series of open lectures on nationalism. These are available as videos on YouTube. They are scholarly but accessible to the layperson. This is a noble effort but I am afraid that for the most part it will be wasted on Indians. It does not matter how terribly you behave, as long as you loudly say Bharat Mata ki Jai. Yet another story in the papers is about two Muslims, one of them a child of 15, tortured and lynched from a tree, just like African-Americans in the United States. They were herding buffaloes so it is not clear what their crime was.
Is this making the government pause? Not at all. The BJP national executive is meeting over this weekend and it is calling for yet more “nationalism”. Do the people in the BJP know what effect this has on India’s reputation? Pick up any foreign magazine and most of the news about India is negative. Why? Because, as many of us here and the rest of the world have concluded, avoidable incidents of similar nature are coming with such regularity that it is not easy to escape the suspicion that these are deliberate. For those hate-filled, fraud nationalists here, achche din have arrived.
Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist
