When I wrote about the ‘notional boundaries’ in the context of the Arundhati Roy speech, I was reluctant to push the issue further. But while reading ‘The Argumentative Indian’, I came across a section called ‘Critique of Patriotism’ under ‘Tagore and his India’, in which the author – Amartya Sen – mentions that Tagore had once written ‘Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity.‘
Tagore also apparently used characters in his novel Ghare Baire (The Home and the World) to hint at how nationalistic sentiments could easily turn sectarian. Amartya Sen ends the section with the words of Bertolt Brecht “…of the corruptibility of nationalism. Hatred of one group can lead to hatred of others….” you can read the section in entirety here)
And that started a thought on nation states. If we consider attributing more than a functional (say economic, political, administrative etc) importance to it (despite its ‘freedom’ being earned after much effort and sacrifice), how can we logically dispute a demand for separate states intended on the basis of say religion or language, especially since these might be older than the boundaries of the nation state and could prove a better cohesive force than the idea of a country?
This is not to say that I’m in favour of this kind of a line or line of thought, but I would like your help in finding a logical conclusion.
until next time, line of reasoning 🙂
my line of reasoning too ends here. But I can talk about Manipur. There are more than 10 insurgent groups functioning in the state and all of them seem to want independence. All of them demand money from everybody. Every government employee pays a certain percentage of their salary to these groups every month. I have gone away from the topic, but wanted to share it here. you complain, you are killed just like that. Police commandos also kill you for money. so, whom do we go to?
wasn’t familiar with Manipur, but when I read Anjum Hasan’s “Lunatic in my head”, there were similar stories about Shillong too. Ditto some posts by Pallavi (http://www.pointofreflection.com/) and even Kiran Desai’s ‘The Inheritance of loss’. so yes, back to a dangerous question – if the nation state and its laws don’t offer protection and stability, what is its function?
meanwhile, for starters, have you considered writing more on this? at least people will be aware.
Nation states are very transient things, but most people view history through a temporal lens that is severely limited by their own life span. The definition of “India” has varied quite a lot of times in the last millennia. In fact, just over a 100 years ago, most people swore allegiance to several princely states.
Most people who get aggressive about patriotism (and I don’t mean personal aggression of the kind that brave soldiers exhibit) are either ignorant of history OR are using patriotism as a political tool.
If we respect an individual’s right to not believe in a particular god (or any god), I don’t see why we mustn’t respect someone who disagrees peacefully about the notion of India as a nation state
absolutely right you are. had written about the temporal aspect in the earlier post. in both cases, (religion and nation) it takes a level of maturity to respect the pov you’ve mentioned. The ignorant ones, I think can be reasoned with, it’s the other set that is dangerous.
I was here looking for the show Whose line is it anyways….but instead i got redirected to this…and i am glad for that…..because these are the basic thing that one should know of….:)