"You acknowledged the fragility of a unifying pan-Indian emotion, and knew what caveats to heed and precautions to take. You recognised the divisive tendencies which lay at the heart of India’s communal Partition. You knew, too, that we, your progeny, must protect ourselves against these. Yet, we faltered."
Posts tagged as “indian nationalism”
India must go much further than just survive this pandemic. A political culture of communalism and vengeance led to opaque governance and misplaced policy priorities. Many Indians voted for false communal pride, but as the pandemic hit, they found that they needed oxygen instead.
Countries that run on manufacturing can afford linguistic nationalism in education. Folks in factory jobs don’t need to transact with people from foreign cultures on a daily basis. But in recent years, even the Chinese have begun to drop their English phobia. For India, English is vital.
The creation of Pakistan was more a secession from India’s multicultural freedom movement than a partition of Indian territory into two states on the basis of religion. The ruling political ideology in India has now pledged allegiance to the ideals of the secession of Pakistan.
If foreign citizens of Indian descent return home to be in politics or government, they are more likely to do so in order to fix many of the developmental challenges that forced their migration, rather than to serve any ‘grand designs’ of foreign sabotage in India.
Many people from the non-Sikh community made heroic efforts to save the lives of several Sikh men and women during the violence. As the violence of 1984 was an attempt to sabotage the multi-ethnic nature of Delhi, many saw protecting the Sikh population as a way to defy forces of communalism.
The cause of Indian freedom inspired people around the world because it was a cause of universal values, rather than a struggle for ethnic supremacy or cultural domination. The cause was not the assertion of an ethnic or cultural identity of Indian-ness; it was for the realisation of fundamental human rights.