Institutional Attempts to Build a “National” Identity in India: Internal and External Dimensions
2005; Routledge; Volume: 4; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14736480500302175
ISSN1557-3036
Autores Tópico(s)Philippine History and Culture
ResumoAbstract Katharine Adeney is Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield.Marie Lall is a principal researcher at the Institute of Education and a visiting lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Marie Lall is a Lecturer in Education Policy at the Institute of Education and a visiting lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Notes The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees whose challenging and constructive comments improved this paper immeasurably. We would also like to thank Andrew Wyatt and Andreas Behnke for detailed suggestions and the participants at the Heidelberg European Modern South Asian Studies Conference in September 2002 for their feedback. 1. Oliver Zimmer, “Boundary Mechanisms and Symbolic Resources: Towards a Process-oriented Approach to National Identity,” Nations and Nationalism Vol. 9, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 173–4. 2. Robert Hayden, “Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics,” Slavic Review Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter 1992), p. 654. 3. Pierre Van den Berghe, “Race and Ethnicity: A Socio-biological Perspective,” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 1, No. 4 (October 1978), pp. 402–7. 4. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 12; Anthony Smith, A National Identity (London: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 19–42. 5. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1983), pp. 2–7; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991) pp. 5–7. 6. Erik Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 14–45; Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974). 7. Ernest Gellner, “The Warwick Debate,” Nations and Nationalism Vol. 2, No. 3 (November 1996), pp. 357–65. 8. Gellner, Nations, p. 5. 9. Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 96. In 1971 he identified only 9.1% of states as nation-states. 10. Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth, 1971), p. 23. 11. The term is Hayden's. He defines it as “a constitutional and legal structure that privileges the members of one ethnically defined nation over other residents in a particular state.” Robert Hayden, “Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics,” Slavic Review Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter 1992), p. 655. 12. Greenfeld, Nationalism, p. 11. 13. Hayden, “Constitutional Nationalism,” p. 672. 14. Katherine Verdery, “Transnationalism, Nationalism, Citizenship and Property: Eastern Europe since 1989,” American Ethnologist Vol. 25, No. 2 (May 1998), p. 292. 15. Alexander Motyl, “Inventing Invention: The Limits of National Identity Formation,” in Ronald Suny and Michael Kennedy, eds., Intellectuals and the Articulation of the Nation (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 59. 16. Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 16. 17. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 16. 18. Zimmer, “Boundary Mechanisms,” p. 174. 19. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), Introduction. 20. Zimmer, “Boundary Mechanisms,” p. 176. 21. Verdery, “Transnationalism,” p. 294. 22. Amitai Etzioni, “The Evils of Self Determination,” Foreign Policy Vol. 89 (Winter 1992–93), pp. 21–35. 23. John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, “Introduction: The Macro-political Regulation of Ethnic Conflict,” in John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, eds., The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation: Case Studies of Protracted Ethnic Conflicts (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 18; Michael Kenny, The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemma of Difference (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), p. 24. 24. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 25. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, Chapter Two. 26. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood. 27. Verdery, “Transnationalism,” p. 296. She notes that 40% of the residents in the Estonian election of 1992 were ineligible to vote because they were Russian, and therefore de‐nationalized. 28. For an analysis of the projection of nationalism through stamps see Andrew Wyatt, “The Indian Nation on the Front of a Postage Stamp,” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association (Leicester, 2003). 29. Gabriel Sheffer, Modern Diasporas in International Politics (New York: St Martin's, 1986) and Diaspora Politics, at Home Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 30. See R. Radhakrishnan, “Ethnicity in an Age of Diaspora,” and Lisa Lowe, “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian-American Differences,” in Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, eds., Theorizing Diaspora (Malden: Blackwell, 2003). 31. E. Sridharan and Ashutosh Varshney, “Toward Moderate Pluralism: Political Parties in India,” in Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther, eds., Political Parties and Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 225–6. 32. Judith Brown, Nehru: A Political Life (London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 185 and 189. 33. Brown, Nehru, p. 194. 34. Steven Wilkinson, “India, Consociational Theory, and Ethnic Violence,” Asian Survey Vol. 40, No. 5 (September 2000); Katharine Adeney, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict Regulation in India and Pakistan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 767–91). 35. A. K. Damadoran, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Communicator and Democratic Leader (London: Sangam Books, 1997), p. 6. 36. For a discussion of this see Romila Thapar, “Interpretations of Ancient Indian History,” History and Theory Vol. VII, No. 3 (1968), pp. 318–35. 37. M Gore, “The Rise and Fall of Buddhism in India,” The Indian Journal of Social Science Vol. 4, No. 2 (1991), pp. 175–97. 38. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (London: Meridian Books Ltd, 1946), p. 112. 39. Nehru, Discovery, p. 41 (emphasis added). 40. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), esp. pp. 113–38 41. Brown, Nehru, p. 189. 42. Our argument is not necessarily antithetical to Khilnani's position that Nehru fully recognized the “depth and plurality of religious beliefs in India. It was precisely this point that convinced Nehru of the need to keep religious social identities outside the political arena.” Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1997), pp. 177–8. 43. Khilnani, Idea, pp. 177–8. 44. James Chiriyankandath, “Creating a Secular State in a Religious Country: The Debate in the Indian Constituent Assembly,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics Vol. 38, No. 2 (July 2000), p. 12. 45. The fact that the terminology would not have been used by Nehru or his contemporaries should not preclude us from using these conceptual categories. Such conceptual categories are essential for conducting comparative political science. 46. Jawaharlal Nehru, “A Circular to the Pradesh Congress Committees, 5.8.54,” in Sarvepalli Gopal, ed., Jawaharlal Nehru: An Anthology (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 328. 47. In 2003 the Supreme Court of India “regretted the non-implementation of a Uniform Civil Code.” Onkar Singh, “SC favours introduction of Uniform Civil Code,” Rediff.com, July 23, 2003, http://www.rediff.com. 48. ParthaChatterjee, “Secularism and Toleration,” in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus: A Possible India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 245 49. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, Chapter 2. 50. Katharine Adeney, “Constitutional Centring: Nation Formation and Consociational Federalism in India and Pakistan,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics Vol. 40, No. 3 (November 2002), p. 18. 51. Motilal Nehru, The Nehru Report: An Anti-Separatist Manifesto (New Delhi: Mickiko and Panjathan, 1928), p. 38. 52. Wilkinson, “India, Consociational Theory,” p. 774; Chiriyankandath, “Creating a Secular State,” p. 13. 53. Bhagwan Dua, “India: Federal Leadership and Secessionist Movements on the Periphery,” in Richard Sisson and Ramashray Roy, eds., Diversity and Dominance in Indian Politics (New Delhi and Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990), p. 193. The demand for reorganization was later re-couched in more explicitly linguistic terms, but it was not conceded until after Nehru's death. 54. This percentage rises and falls according to how Hindi speakers are classified. In the 1971 census Bihari and Rajasthani speakers were categorized as Hindi speakers. 55. Paul Brass, The Politics of India Since Independence (New Delhi and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 164. 56. Robert King, Nehru and the Language Politics of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997). 57. States Reorganisation Commission, Report of the States Reorganisation Commission (New Delhi: Government of India, 1955), p. 10. 58. Jawaharlal Nehru, “Statement Re: Appointment of a Commission for the Re-organisation of States,” Lok Sabha Debates Vol. X, No. 25 (1953), pp. 2841–2. 59. Swarna Rajagopalan, State and Nation in South Asia (London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2001), p. 14. 60. It was only after the 1967 (Amended) Languages Act was passed that the position of English was secured for use in parliament and for centre-state communications. 61. Adeney, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict Regulation. 62. Marie Lall, India's Missed Opportunity: India's Relationship with the Non-resident Indians (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 63. Government of India, Constituent Assembly of India (Legislative) Debates: Official Report (Delhi: Government of India, 1948), March 8, 1948. 64. Hugh Tinker, Separate and Unequal: India and the Indians in the British Commonwealth 1920–1950 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976), p. 320. 65. Charles Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh, A Diplomatic History of Modern India (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1971), p. 302. Nehru wanted to avoid any connection with the imperial past and saw India at the head of a third block – the non-aligned movement. 66. Tinker, Separate and Unequal, pp. 391–2. 67. Hugh Tinker, The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 124. 68. Government of India, “The Citizenship Act 1955,” http://www.indialawinfo.com/bareacts/citi.html. 69. As “defined in the Government of India Act, 1935, as originally enacted” Government of India, “Citizenship Act,” Article 2 1h. 70. The Constitution of India (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1949), Part II Article 8. 71. Heimsath and Mansingh, A Diplomatic History, p. 302. 72. Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 7. 73. The differences of societal development amongst the Indian diaspora in East Africa and South East Asia are described amongst others in Yash Ghai and Dharam Ghai, eds., Portrait of a Minority – Asians in East Africa (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1970); Colin Clarke, Ceri Peach, and Steven Vertovec, eds., South Asians Overseas – Migration and Ethnicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and I. J. Bahadur Singh, ed., Indians in South East Asia (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1982). For more details on the differences between the far and near abroad see Marie Lall, India's Missed Opportunity, p. 11. 74. See Brass, The Politics of India for more details. Interestingly, India has never had a “national” language – Hindi and English are “official” languages. This is because all the languages of India are seen as “national” – and Hindi should not be privileged in this regard. 75. Brass, The Politics of India. 76. Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 2000) and Brass, The Politics of India. 77. Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities, p. 24. 78. James Manor, “The Dynamics of Political Integration and Disintegration,” in A. Jeyaratnam Wilson and Dennis Dalton, eds., The States of South Asia (London and New York: Hurst, 1982). 79. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation (with special reference to Central India. (London: Hurst, 1996), p. 27. 80. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu (New Delhi: Hindi Sahitya Sadan, 2003). 81. Vernon Hewitt, “A Wolf at the Door? Politics, Ideology, and the BJP's Rise to National Power 1989–99,” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association (London, 2000), p. 3. 82. Sridharan and Varshney, “Toward Moderate Pluralism,” pp. 224–5. 83. Katharine Adeney, “Hindu Nationalists and Federal Structures in an Era of Regionalism,” in Katharine Adeney and Lawrence Sáez, eds., Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 110. 84. Emma Mawdsley, “Redrawing the Body Politic: Federalism, Regionalism and the Creation of New States in India,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics Vol. 40, No. 3 (November 2002), p. 36. 85. Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot, “Introduction: The BJP after the 1996 Election,” in Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot, eds., The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). 86. The Congress rather than the BJP won a majority of seats in the 2002 Uttaranchal State elections. In the 2004 general elections, the BJP failed to win more than one seat in Jharkhand although the BJP won ten out of the eleven seats in Chhattisgarh in 2004 and three out of five in Uttaranchal. 87. We are indebted to David Stuligross for this observation. As discussed in Adeney, “Hindu Nationalists,” p. 110, the BJP had lost support in the 2002 Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections and attempted to use the initiative to recognize Dogri as a means to win support in the 2004 general elections – ultimately failing to do so. 88. States Reorganisation Commission, Report, p. 246. 89. Mawdsley, “Redrawing the Body Politic,” p. 45; Adeney, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict Regulation. 90. The formerly Indian National Congress was slower to come to this realization, redressing this in the 2004 general elections. 91. Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India, p. 92. 92. The literature is divided over whether the BJP would seek to implement its Hindutva agenda in the absence of a coalition, or whether it would moderate itself to seek to gain as much support as possible. See Katharine Adeney and Lawrence Sáez, “Coalition Politics, Religious Nationalism and Public Policy: Theoretical Considerations,” in Katharine Adeney and Lawrence Sáez, eds., Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2005). For the moment, the question is a moot one; they are unlikely to come to power on their own in the foreseeable future. 93. James Manor “Ethnicity and Politics in India,” International Affairs Vol. 72, No. 1 (January 1996), p. 474. 94. “‘We have no orders to save you.’ State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat,” Human Rights Watch Vol. 14, No. 3(C) (2002); Asghar Ali Engineer, “Communal Riots in 2002: A Survey,” Economic and Political Weekly January 25, 2003, http://www.epw.org.in. 95. Hewitt, “A Wolf at the Door?” and Partha Ghosh, BJP and the Evolution of Hindu Nationalism: From Periphery to Centre (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 1999), p. 236. 96. Hewitt, “A Wolf at the Door?” p. 6. Also see Marie Lall, “Indian Education Policy under the NDA Government,” in Adeney and Sáez, eds., Coalition Politics, pp. 152–69. 97. See in particular, Ministry of External Affairs, Annual Report 1985–86 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1986), p. 23 and the Lok Sabha Debates (Xth Lok Sabha) Session III, February 20–May 12, 1992, Question 6648 on April 8, 1992. 98. The Gulf remittances were not the first such monies flowing back to Indian states as it is anecdotally known that East African Gujarati trading families maintained financial links. However the visibility of remittances from the Gulf pressured the Indian government to create a legal mechanism for these financial flows. These remittances benefited the southern states more than the northern states – in particular Kerala. 99. Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogue with Sikh Militants (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), p. 254. 100. Benedict Anderson, “Long-Distance Nationalism,” in Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (London: Verso, 1998), p. 74. 101. This has been discussed in more detail by Brian Axel, The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 102. Swaraj Paul was a close friend of Indira Gandhi. In the early 1980s, exploiting a legal loophole and his friendship with Indira Gandhi, he tried to invest in prestigious Indian companies such as Escorts and DCM. The move was nationally seen as a takeover bid. He had to retreat due to the combined resistance of India's big business houses. 103. NRIs did not have more rights before the Swaraj Paul Scandal – his takeover bid was ousted in the existing legal framework. 104. Lall, India's Missed Opportunity, p. 144. 105. Robert Jenkins, Democratic Politics and Economic Reform in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 106. Marie Lall, “Centre–Periphery Tensions in a Globalizing World: The Case of India and the Punjab,” International Journal of Punjab Studies Vol. 8, No. 2 (July–December 2001), pp. 225–38. 107. Lall, India's Missed Opportunity. 108. Comment in the Financial Express, June 12, 1991. 109. Government of India Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, “Ready Reckoner for NRI Investment,” (May 1999), pp. 23–4, http://dipp.nic.in/. 110. An Indian is defined by having parents born in the territory of India. Female spouses were also eligible for PIO cards, even if they were not “ethnically” Indian. 111. Satadru Sen, “Border of Insanity: Deporting Bangladeshi Migrants,” Economic and Political Weekly, February 15, 2003. 112. A committee set up by the BJP government to discuss issues relevant to Indians abroad and to explore how NRI funding could be mobilized. 113. “Dual Citizenship to Indian Diaspora,” India Today, January 21, 2002. 114. “Dual Citizenship”. 115. “India forges closer ties with Diaspora,” BBC, January 9, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk. 116. “The USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, a large part of Europe and Singapore.” Ironically it did not include all the countries within the EU. “PM: Issue of dual citizenship resolved,” The Tribune, January 9, 2002, http://www.tribuneindia.com. 117. Although Nepalis are not eligible for dual citizenship. 118. Itty Abraham, “Dual Citizenship: of what and for whom?,” Himal: South Asia (February 2003), http://www.himalmag.com. 119. See also press articles such as “Cloud on dual citizenship offer,” The Telegraph (India), January 9, 2005, http://www.telegraphindia.com. 120. Private interview: Jagdish Tytler at the PBD in Bombay, January 9, 2005 with Marie Lall. 121. Sonia Gandhi's “Indian-ness” is highly controversial with people who claim to be Indian nationalists, including BJP politicians such as Sushma Swaraj (who threatened to shave her head and resign from parliament if Sonia Gandhi became Prime Minister) – see “Sonia Gandhi turns down PM post,” BBC, May 18, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk. It is noteworthy that Sonia Gandhi's Indian-ness is not a significant issue with the lower castes and classes, who in general are less likely to support the BJP and nationalist politics in general. This opens up a new debate on how far the Nehruvian concept of non-ethnic nationalism is more appealing to certain sections of society and not others.
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