Perils of a one-size-fits-all nationalism
After 70 years of
officially promoting diversity, an attempt to manufacture a narrow
brand of nationalism will end up breaking India
There’s been a rise recently in Kannada-oriented subnationalism. Photo: AFP
It took several decades and as many lifetimes for India to win
independence in 1947. But the journey was all the more exacting for
having to marshal Indians together for a common cause, above multiple
identities and layers of difference. Despite romantic memories of
civilizational unity expressed in our ancient epics, the stark
historical reality was that Delhi had more in common with Kabul than it
did with the south, and that Kerala was more familiar with Arabia than
it was with fellow “Indians” in Karnataka. Brahmins, who learnt Sanskrit
and venerated the same texts, knitted some common threads throughout
the subcontinent, but in Varanasi alone there were dozens of varieties
of this class, and their everyday practices mutated from region to
region—while most Tamil Brahmins grew their tuft of hair at the back,
the Malayali Brahmin wore it in the front; where Iyengar women saw white
as the colour of widowhood, the Namboothiri bride wore nothing but
white to her wedding pavilion. [ . . . ]
