Reflecting on National Questions
By Satya P. Gautam

The contributors to the issue on ‘NATIONAL QUESTIONS: TRAJECTORIES AND PREDICAMENTS’, Eastern Quarterly, Volume 3 Issue IV, January–March 2006, offer a stimulating critique of the official imagination of India as a singular or unitary nation. Manash Bhattacharjee’s essay, ‘In Nehru’s Shadow: Between India and Politics’, critiques Nehru’s
(i) construction of India in The Discovery of India,
(ii) ‘rhetorical game of politics’ during the negotiations on Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan,
(iii) shifting positions on the Kashmir issue, and
(iv) responses to the demands of Nagas in the Northeast. Bhattacharjee argues that Nehru’s vision and politics suffered from inherent tensions ‘between the language of demands and the language of the state.’

Nehru’s project of building India as a nation, a symbol of unity in diversity, was based on optimism about his vision of India. For Nehru, transformation of an abstract but a deep sentiment of India into a concrete living reality was to be achieved through the processes of modernization and development, by creating a democratic civil society founded on the values of human dignity, equality, liberty and social justice. In pursuing his agenda of nation building, Nehru was following the logic of liberalism. In a modern nation-state, according to this logic, dignity and freedom of individual citizens can be respected without making any reference to traditional group identities based on religion, region, caste, language and ethnicity. Bhattacharjee holds that an ‘individualist thrust in Nehru’s understanding of society together with his suspicious and restless attitude towards cultural groups’ resulted in Nehru’s ‘confused as well as harsh responses’ to ‘the challenges within the country during and after independence.’

Essays by A. Noni Meetei, Sajal Nag, H.Srikanth and C.J. Thomas provide informative accounts of the nationality questions presented by various political struggles that have been a part of the social and historical consciousness of the people of Manipur, Assam and Nagaland during the colonial and post-colonial period. These essays highlight the continuation of the colonial mindset in the post-independent era in dealing with peoples’ struggles for autonomy and social justice. The enduring legacy of the colonial approach in dealing with the democratic aspirations of the people is evident from the Assam Disturbed Areas Act of1955, followed by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958. It is an acutely disquieting fact about our political life and affairs that the political leaders, bureaucrats, police and armed forces of the democratic India are yet to learn how not to offend and hurt the sentiments and feelings of the citizens while addressing the so-called concerns of security and integrity of the nation.

The post-colonial Indian ‘nation-state’ and its ruling elite demand from the people a crude political and social commitment for loyalty and obedience as if they are subjects of a colonial state and not equal citizens of an independent democratic republic. Such a demand is asserted and enforced without any dialogical engagement with the people to convince them of its justification. During the post-independence era, the legacy of the old colonial policies of subjugation, oppression, exploitation, co-option and adjustments remains intact in the name of maintaining and safeguarding the structures and powers of authority inherited from the colonial masters.


The question of Indian identity, whether India is a plurality of nations or a nation in the making, raises questions about what it means for individuals and communities to identify themselves in terms of a nationality or a nation with a sense of belonging. Such identification is possible only when there are lived experiences, memories, perceptions and hopes of shared values, interests and traditions. Such identification is not easy to forge and sustain when a sense of belonging is lacking or weak due to various historical or/and cultural factors. Collective entities maintain their existence by establishing enduring institutions to constitute and regulate the public sphere in everyday life of their members. Training individual members to perform their specific roles within these institutions in accordance with definite practices perpetuate these impersonal institutions. Such collective entities do not face any crisis as long as there is a stable consensus among the members regarding the shared memories, aims, goals and interests of such collective entities. A threat to the continuation of such a collectivity comes when a significant number of its members cease to share the feeling of belonging due to perceived or an imagined sense of unfairness, humiliation and exclusion. Human history is full of instances which show that an established collectivity does not vanish simply because some individuals or groups of individuals disown their affiliation or membership of the collectivity.

A claim for an over-arching pan-Indian national identity has to address the issue of the common grounds or resources for such an Indian identity in some form or the other. Any such engagement presents many historical, political, cultural and ethical issues. A careful look at the construction and projection of a pan-Indian identity during the freedom struggle can be of some help to understand the complexities of the present situation. During the struggle against the colonial rule, the Indian National Congress challenged and rejected the view of the British colonial rulers that India was not a nation. Despite all the diversity, being an ‘Indian’ provided an ascriptive unifying identity to mobilise the masses to pursue the goal of political freedom from the colonial rule. However, communal, caste and regional identities were often invoked and used for mobilising the masses to participate in various social and political struggles during this period. The Congress Party had repeatedly assured the people through various resolutions that their regional, cultural and linguistic identities and aspirations will be respected. However, how the encompassing pan-Indian identity would be sustained (without threatening the other ascriptive collective identities) in the post-independent era was not given sufficient attention. Consequently, we continue to face the constant tension between the homogenising universalistic tendency, and the heterogeneous particularising tendency invoked to launch various struggles against the post-independence ruling elite by the newly emerging leadership of the various marginalized sections, victims of oppression and exploitation.

Many of the past and currently ongoing social and political struggles in India are mobilised and justified using the idiom of self-determination and emancipation from diverse forms of exploitation and subjugation. In projecting and championing the cause of distinctive identities, many pioneers and spokespersons of such movements do not hesitate from constructing a narrative of the past through selective reconstruction to suit their own vantage point and vested interests. Since independence and partition, we find two competing social and political discourses. On the one side, we find themes of domination, oppression, subjugation, exploitation, separation, secession, hatred, revenge and reassertion of the exclusionary collective identities. On the other side, we find themes of political freedom as expressed in democratic elections at regular intervals, peaceful transition of political power from one party or alliance to the other, freedom of the press, limited but encouraging efficacy of peaceful emancipatory struggles for social reconstruction. There is some grain of truth in both these discourses. Instead of seeing these discourses as mutually contradictory, it may be more useful to see how we can contribute towards strengthening the democratic struggles for social justice, economic equality and individual autonomy in a peaceful manner.