‘Religious’ Nationalism – A Threatening Blend

Abstract

Defining nationalism has never been an easy task. Several thinkers like Benedict Anderson, G. Aloysius, Partha Cahatterjee and others have tried to define nationalism in different ways depending upon the situation. Thus there has been a clear cut demarcation between Western nationalism and the Eastern nationalism. Though everyone is of the opinion that nationalism is an outcome of emotional feelings, the cultural, ethnic, linguistic, social, political and religious components which influence the construct of nationalism a lot cannot be bypassed. Further, nationalism can also be taken as ‘experience’. If for the West it was always the experience of dominance, for the east it was a feeling of subjugation and nationalism for the latter was the imitation of the masters.

India having a long history of colonialism, the nationalism for her was that of imitation as well as aggression which paved way to freedom struggle. The luminaries like Gandhi and others throughout spoke of the diversity of Indian nationalism there always hung a cloud of separatism which tried to ‘colour’ Indian nationalism. The postcolonial political developments in India clearly indicate that Nationalism in India is the religious game of a dominant group for political gain. This has posed and continues to pose a major threat to the diversity of India which has shaped the largest and strongest constitution in the world. “Can ‘Hindutva’ or any other religious ideologies in India claim to be Indian Nationalism?” is a question requiring immediate attention.

This question has disturbed many writers and they have tried to answer this question in different ways. Rohinton Mistry and Shashi Tharoor have largely discussed this question allowed in their writings. Mistry in his fiction has made an effort to speak the fear of Parsi community, which he belongs to and very clearly states that Indian Nationalism cannot branded by a single ideology. In his Trilogies he blames “Shiv Sena” for their sectarian kind nationalism. He was very much pained when Mumbai University dropped his novel Such a Long Journey from the syllabus as a response to the Shiv Sena agitation. Shashi Tharoor, who is yet another prolific writer, too has come down heavily upon the advocates of branding Indian Nationalism as Hindu nationalism. His fictional as well as non-fictional works discuss the question of Indian nationalism quite seriously.

The two novelists are referred here in the abstract just to show that in literature too the writers voiced their fear over religious nationalism. Though their novels have not been analyzed in this present paper the readers have a large scope to go into their works to understand the impact of such kind of nationalism.