India and National Identity

A NATION OF INTERESTS

India, the land of thousands years of history, hundreds of millions of people, a myriad of cultures, numerous religions and languages is also home to an puzzle of great importance, the Indian national identity. The quest for Indian national identity has set its mark in the Indian history for the last one hundred and fifty years. Think-thanks of both Indian and Western origin sought an answer to the question whether India had a unique nation. Often the differences between their arguments boiled down to their ideological differences, subsequent ways they defined the nation and treated the history of India. The intellectual debate as well as the very experiences of the people of the lands showed that India is a state without a nation. India does not have a Staatsvolk. The duality and the resulting inconsistency between Hindu and Hindi mean that Staatsvolk even in its crudest term cannot be applied here. Hindu, being a religious identity is exercised by 80% of the population where Hindi, the supposed language of the Hindus, is only spoken by 40% of the total population. An examination of the ideologies that surround the Indian national identity and ways in which these ideologies were exercised throughout history will prove valuable insights in understanding what makes the puzzle of Indian national identity so unique.

As the British settled in India unofficially in 1700s with the establishment of the East Indian company and then officially with the dissolution of EIC and the foundation of the British Raj, India’s fate in the years to come were to take a rather dramatic turn towards what would ultimately be the Indian republic in 1947. The physical presence of the English was further enhanced by their institutions and perceptions. The interaction between the English, who represented the Western line of thought, and the Indian, who in turn represented his own culture, largely shaped the Indian cultural and political life from then on. One of the results of the interaction between the Indians and the English was the emergence of a class of elites educated in Western tradition among who were Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi, and some of the most eminent Hindu nationalists. “The key to all India leadership ultimately lay however with those who through their moral authority could transcend regional affiliations and link disparate communities together in a common national cause.”(Talbot, 16). It is under the light of the thoughts of these prominent figures that one can understand the Indian state and the communities that make up India.

The emergence of Hinduism as a sound, viable concept and the Hindutva, Hindu nationalism, was greatly facilitated by the British census conducted first after the rebellion of 1857. Pre-colonial Hinduism was far from unifying the constituents of the mosaic that made it up (Frykenberg, 237). The purpose of the census was mainly to identify the exact nature of the discontent the British faced in India, a general outcome of the late 19th century modernism (Metcalf, 113). The census classified the resident people into distinct groups often sorted by caste, religion, and in the absence of known traits, by hereditary occupations. (Talbot, 9) Hindus were defined to be the ‘Other’, which meant that anyone who “was not able to define his creed or described it by any name other than that of some religion was held to be classed as Hindu” (Talbot, 14). The most important aspect of the British census lay within the fact that the British perception of Indian society was largely adapted by the indigenous Indian people. Having accepted the definition of Hindu, people who belonged to the “Other” category came together to defend their collective rights against the British and the Muslim, towards whom their antipathy and hostility grew more each day. The census, the emerging Hinduism and the deteriorating relations with Muslims caused the crystallization of the concept of Hindu as an embryonic national identity, and led to the emergence of the Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist movement. Savarkar, along with Tilak, Aurobindo, was arguably one of the major master minds of the Hindutva. Savarkar’s conception of the Hindu was based on four properties; homogeneity, religion, race, and the holy land on which all Hindus live. A Hindu had all of these properties in common with other Hindus, thus rendering the Hindu cohesion, according to Savarkar, along with that of the Chinese, the most powerful in the world (Savarkar, 292). Not only did Hindu come to mean a common heritage and culture but also a common sacred land. Savarkar reasoned that the free Indian state must be predominantly Hindu and that the Hindus must therefore be the “Staatsvolk” of -the soon to be free-Indian state. (Savarkar,294) He and most of the other Hindu nationalists believed that there was an Indian state with a unique nation and that was the Hindu nation. However, it must be understood that this view was purely based on how Hindu and the Indian state was defined.

The Hindu nationalist was neo-herderian, with one important exception. It did not totally reject the Muslim community but required the Muslims to convert to Hinduism and adopt the ideal Hindu culture for inclusion (Varshney,66). For the Muslim community, which also possessed a herderian identity, this was not a possibility. While the mere exclusion of Muslims by their demonization through the use of historical myths, and their depiction as rapists and marauders of the Hindu holy land, created a rising tension. The standoff concerning the protection of cows, deemed holy by the Hindus, regarded as a food source by the Muslims, caused an immense polarization and resulted in outbursts of violence (Talbot, 48). The cow, while acting as a unifying element among Hindus by bringing the different factions together under a common goal, served for the opposite purpose in relations with the Muslims. In the 1880s, cow slaughter was prohibited in districts such as Allahabad, and Lahore, where there were a Hindu majority to support the prohibition (ibid, 47). Muslims seeing their rights violated, grew apprehensive of the Hindu conduct and sought to protect themselves by crystallizing their society, and tried to protect their rights both in the political scene and in daily conduct by the creation of the Muslim league. The separate electorate system was the recognition of the separate communities in India and the complexity of bringing the communities together under the flag of one nation-state.

The rise of Hindu hostility towards the Muslims brought about the emergence of a Muslim initiative. Jinnah and other Muslim nationalists found the solution in a confederacy where Muslims would have autonomy in places where they were in majority and separate