On Friday 13 Jul 2007 7:08 pm, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote:
> That is a ridiculous contrived analogy.
>
> You said that people being able to travel on pilgrimage meant that there
> was some concept of a nation, even if split up into various kingdoms. I
> pointed out that barriers to travel of a certain kind existed; but also
> that they were the same kind of barriers that "outsiders" travelling to
> the subcontinent encountered, and *also* the same kind of barriers that
> "insiders" travelling outside the subcontinent encountered.
>
> My contention, therefore, is that pilgrimages cannot be used as you are
> doing to infer something about awareness of nationality.
>
> (Can you cite any notable historical examples where outsiders were
> entirely forbidden from travelling to or within a country?)
You are asking me a question based on YOUR interpretation of my post. I will
rephrase and repeat my reply to Charles Haynes' question of whether there was
an "Inside" versus "outside".
"Outsiders" typically had no wish (at least none that have been recorded to my
knowledge) to visit Badrinath or Kashi. People outside this virtual nation of
sacred geography did not consider the Indus or Ganga sacred and typically did
not undertake pigrimages.
The fact that there existed a group of people within ("inside") a particular
geographic area ("India", "Bharat") who felt in some way connected (by
literature, art, poetry, religion) with the geographic areas I mentioned as
opposed to "outsiders" who had no particular connection of that kind was one
point that defined a vague existence of a nation of sorts. That nation was in
fact identified as Bharatha, but was not given the trappings of a modern
nation state which is the paradigm used nowadays for defining a state and
making it a member of the UN for example.
Certain other things tend to get sidelined and forgotten when discussions such
as these sink into rhetorical point-making.
"India" was defined by an accident of geography. It is a huge area that can
only be approached on land via one route from the North West. Mass migrations
into India (whether by peaceful movement or the much publicised "invasions")
necessarily had to take this narrow corridor to enter India. This geographic
quirk created a pooling of people within India with certain social,
linguistic and cultural practices.
Did these people feel and know that they were unique and different from the
outside. In many areas away from the land corridor, they probably did,
considering that there is evidence of sea trade with places as far afield as
Rome. Did they have a feeling of being "inside" a nation? I have already said
what I think about this above.
At best the concept of "India" among Indians was a loose and tenuous concept,
but the point is the concept was not absent. It was utilized, as I said, by
both Vivekananda and Gandhi, and is still a unifying factor. It confounded
the British, who did not manage to account for such skeins of unity,
distracted as they were by divisions and differences. They found it easier to
recognise the social structure of the Islam they defeated rather than the
loose unifying links within the social structure of India.
Those links are not seen by "outsiders" who if I may say without meaning to be
nasty or impolite, ask questions like "Is the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka a
Hindu versus Buddhist affair?". That question (with profound apologies again)
reveals a deep ignorance of both Hinduism and Buddhism and the relationship
between the two.
All opinions mine.
shiv
