On 7/13/07, Charles Haynes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
But the various kingdoms traded with and invaded each other as well, so was there actually any "inside" there?
That there was never a coherent India even remotely resembling the modern nation state of is more or less accepted as fact. The Brits once they were finally well inside and in control declared with contempt that there was never any unity and only the Brits could provide any semblance of modernity and unity. The various strains of nationalism - Gandhian, Nehruvian, Savarkarite, and countless others, *emerged in response* to this "insult" in part, and in part to the immediate need for a basis for action around the time of Independence. Beyond acknowledging obvious threads of civilizatonal bonds running through the country (like existence of important vaishnavite and shivite shrines across the length and breadth of the subcontinent, similarities in art and language etc.) attempts to force western or 'outside' views of nationalism and unity is to completely disregard the uniqueness of India. As Shashi Tharoor likes to say, if America is the ultimate melting pot, India is the definitive Thali. And as Nehru liked to say, "India is like the an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously" A book that explores some of these themes extremely well is "The Idea of India" by Sunil Khilnani. I'll leave you with a quote: <quote> India, this historical and political artifact, a contingent and fragile conjunction of interlinked, sometimes irritable cultures has been since 1947 continuously subject to a common political authority. The notions of territorial integrity and national unity, fundamental to both Hindu and Indian nationalism, are, as in all nationalism everywhere, illogical fictions, fabulous myths - this applies equally to the Indian Union and the idea of Bharatavarsha. But it also applies to the more fragmentary imaginations of those aspired-for lands, Khalistan or Tamil Eelam, Kashmir or Bodoland. The demands of culture, the claims for recognition, are against large federal states, but the pressures of economics are towards interconnection and expansion of scale. The idea of India has been constituted through struggles to balance these contrary pulls in a coherent political project, to respect the diversities of culture with a commitment to a common enterprise of development. After fifty years of an Indian state, the definition of who is an Indian is as passionately contested as ever. </quote> -- Sriram Karra Back in Madras; and what a relief THAT is.
