Partha Chatterjee on the Myth of Ancient (Indian) Nation

[Sukla Sen]

Very true.

Regardless of the various fabricated (whether benevolent or malevolent) myths - mostly of modern origins, a nation calls for, at the very minimum, at least some degree of spontaneous emotional integration over and above, at least to an extent, a stable political administration and a unified market covering a more or less fixed geographical area and its inhabitants.

That's why India - once very much a part of the British empire, was nevertheless never a part of the British nation, nor was even neighbouring Ireland.

Moreover, as a nation - no eternal entity by any stretch, may come to be formed via a specific historical process at a given juncture of history, it's also perfectly capable of getting disintegrated or even dissolved in course of further developments.

Pakistan, the USSR and Yugoslavia are just three graphic illustrations.

That's, in this context, so very necessary to be kept in mind.

<<There are no ancient nations anywhere in the world. All nations (rāstra) are modern. Ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient China, ancient India – all of them may have had great civilisations whose architecture, art, and literature are objects of admiration. But they were not nations.

...

...I will show you that this is merely a conventional idea, a samskār. You take it for granted because everyone says it is so. In actual fact, it is not true.

...

The Indian rashtra as a nation-state has only been in existence since the middle of the twentieth century. If you want to push that history a little further back by claiming that the Indian National Congress as an organised political body was the Indian rashtra in waiting, even that would not take you beyond the last decades of the nineteenth century. The Indian nation would still be a very modern entity.

But, you may ask, what about the great kingdoms and empires of the past? The empires of the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Delhi Sultanate, Vijayanagara, the Mughals, the Marathas – were they not great states? They certainly were. But they were empires, not nations. The various parts of those states were held together by military force and tribute-paying arrangements.

That is not how the parts of a nation-state are supposed to be bound together. Even the Marathas held territories outside the Maharashtra region by the regular use of armed force and extraction of tribute from local rulers and populations who were looked upon as subjected peoples. The Marathas too had an empire, not a nation.>>

(Excerpted from: <https://scroll.in/article/1003389/partha-chatterjee-on-why-no-one-not-even-indians-can-claim-to-be-part-of-an-ancient-nation>.)

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Dr. Gohain,

Yeah.

Very rightly put.

Thanks!

May find relevant my own reading of the genesis of the Indian nation, as under:

Before proceeding further, it may be noted, in very brief, that in this reviewer's view, while the Indian "state"--with clearly defined territory and a stable, effective and unified administration to rule over it--was brought into being, for the first time, by the British colonial rulers; the nascent Indian "nation" would take off from that launching pad, being assiduously stiched up by the anti-colonial "Indian nationalist" movement--spearheaded by its leading elite informed with Western emancipatory ideas, rather paradoxically, via the exploitative and oppressive colonial rule, out of loosely interconnected disparate and widely divergent elements in terms of ethnicity, language, culture, creed, caste, class etc.

Mainstream "Indian nationalism", in the process, invented a romanticised, glorious and harmonious past to take this project ahead, by using the "myth" as the necessary glue, and also to counter the calumny of "civilising mission" propagated by the colonial white rulers.

The "Hindu" and "Muslim" nationalists, in contrast, glorified specific segments of the past and harped on--both real and imaginary, perennial conflicts between the followers of the two broad contrasting streams of faith, while deliberately ignoring/obliterating aspects of comingling and confluence.

If the, so to speak, chief priest of Indian nationalism, the redoubtable Tagore, had imagined--his imagination being highly coloured with Upanishadic idioms, an inalienable part of his own cultural heritage--"India" as the eternal bissful and welcoming confluence--over the ages--of diverse races, faiths, cultures etc.[4]; Jawaharlal Nehru, a foremost (and brightest?) spokesperson, would further airbrush the myth--in his celebrated 'The Discovery (read: Invention) of India', and transit from the notion of "confluence" to that of "palimpsest"[5]--in a far more prosaic, even if no less grand, style--shedding much of the spirituality infused idioms on the way.

One may argue, in terms of today's lingo, it was a small yet significant shift from the ideal of "melting pot" towards "salad bowl" nationhood.

The glaring contrasts between "Indian nationalism" and "Hindu nationalism" are captured all too graphically in the mythification, by the former, of two Muslim dynastic rulers--viz. (understandably, a good-for-nothing) Siraj-ud-daula and (rather extraordinarily endowed) Tipu Sultan--as two great "nationalist" heroes, fighting against the aggressive and expanding British imperialism in India.

"Hindu nationalism", on the other, visualises all "Muslim" rulers as villains and Tipu Sultan, in particular, a devil incarnate--standing next only to Aurangzeb, in terms of villainry.

In stark contrast, the battles of Plassey and Srirangapatna would come to figure as two great tragedies--the former one in particular, in the "Indian nationalist" lores--evoking strong emotions.

The springing tiger--a logo reminding one of Tipu, would be adopted, by Subhas Bose[6], as his own--featured as the emblem on the tricolour shoulder-pieces on uniforms of the legendary Azad Hind Fauj that he was able to put together out of dispirited Indian soldiers of the British Indian army captured by the Japanese.

There obtained, nevertheless, some overlaps between "Indian nationalism" and the "Hindu nationalism", in particular, for a variety of reasons, just not in terms of ideas but organisational affiliations as well, which forced the Indian National Congress to finally close its doors to the members of the "communal" organisations--viz. the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS--apparently, in 1934[7].

But, all at the same time, the leaders were quite acutely aware that "India" was, in actuality, "A Nation in Making"--a phrase popularised by one of the very earliest vanguards of "Indian nationalism" by using it as the caption of his own autobiography, back in 1925[8]. Subsequently--almost two decades thence, in a much similar vein, Gandhi would come to be anointed as the "Father of the Nation", by none other than his principal, and only credible, challenger from within the mainstream "Indian nationalist" currents, at a very tumultuous juncture of Indian history[9]

Gandhi himself had earlier dubbed Dadabhai Naoroji[10], a Parsi gentleman and, arguably, the tallest of the earliest "Indian nationalists" and one of the two--the other one being R C Dutt--best-known, and also first, proponents[11] of the "Drain Theory"--an elaborate and cogently argued economic crtique of the exploitative colonial rule--that marked a tectonic shift from the earlier, in 1857, huge outburst of visceral native anger, anchored primarily in race, religion and the sense of humiliation at the hands of the alien rulers, as the "Father of the Nation".

Even on the morrow of Independence--marred, and considerably undermined, by the humongous bestial violence--brought in by the nightmarish "Partition" that came as a part of the package, perpetrated and suffered by followers of all the three major religions involved--the project would be looked upon as a "work in progress", to be taken ahead by the freshly minted independent Indian state. Hence the heavy insistence on a highly centralised state--to counter the possible, or rather likely, cetrfugal forces that would come to be generated in the coming days.

That, at least partly, explains the in-built penchant for a coercive state apparatus--more coercive than usual--in conspicuous disregard of the high "democratic" ideals espoused by the "Indian nationalist" movement.

The "Partition"--with all its bloodletting and bestiality--it needs be underlined, would make not only a rather humongous contribuition to the weponry of the "Hindu nationalists"--who'd be silenced (only) for a while as an aftereffect of the quake triggered by Gandhi assassination by those belonging to their ranks, but also leave its debilitating imprint on the subsequent evolution of "Indian nationalism"--by delivering a sort of crippling blow to the case for "composite nationhood" and, thereby, the "India", that would emerge post-Independence.

A careful reader, acquainted with the Indian scenario, can't fail to take note that this cataclysmic episode hardly ever figures--just one solitary fleeting reference in the follow-up essay as referred to above, in Vanaik's otherwise strikingly elaborate narrative.

Before concluding, it must be put on record that it is "Indian nationalism" that, exclusively, engineered and spearheaded the hugely heroic national liberation struggle--a vortex which would be able to attract millions and millions of Indians to itself--to throw off the stupendous yoke of colonial rule.

The "Hindu" and "Muslim" nationalists, by themselves, made hardly any positive contribution, if at all; rather, on occasions, explicitly opposed and collaborated with the colonial rulers. These two were far more concerned with ensuring their respective exclusive identities and domination in a future post-colonial scenario.

That's what they were focused on.

The pretty much oppressive colonial state apparatus--braved and suffered by millions and millions--left them largely untouched.

(Excerpted from: Indian Left in a Pit: The Way Out? Prof. Achin Vanaik Examines at <https://groups.google.com/g/greenyouth/c/Ttv7GI2zgz4/m/paAGT7XmCQAJ> and also: <http://mainstreamweekly.net/article10559.html>.)

Sukla

On Tue, 24 Aug 2021, 19:56 Dr Hiren Gohain, <hiren....@gmail.com> wrote:

Ramesh Chandra Dutta,ICS officer,translator of the Rig Veda in Bengali,author of a volume of Indian economic history that set out in detail systematic British plunder of India('the Drain theory),an undoubted liberal scholar,was also a pioneer of the idea of a Hindu nation.

He authored two popular historical novels significantly titled The Sunset of Rajput Life and Sunrise of the Maharashtra Life(literal translations of Bengali titles).

As Benedict Anderson pointed out,'nations are imagined communities'.Though there is much more than imagination at work.

H.G.