An Alternative Nation

A look at nationalism as it stands today. “Is it possible that politics

itself – the conception, the domain of institutions and activities that
we call politics – has contributed to the perpetuation of the colonial
framework?” 7 Are we truly united or did the British modus operandi
of divide and conquer leave a lasting chasm? What exactly is the
abstract idea called ‘the nation’ in the form it is most commonly seen
in today according to some thinkers and how does this compare to
Gandhi’s idea of nationalism.

Pratyangira Kashyap

Elective : A “Possible” India

Professor Vivek Dharmeshwar

March 13th, 2021

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I would like to preface this paper with my reason for believing why the ideas expounded in it

hold importance to the individual. Presently, we inhabit a world where foreign oppressors and

racial segregation sound like dystopic muddied snapshots relegated to an antiquated chest

marked history, only to be brought out a few times a year whilst watching the republic day

parade or preceding a movie. The British’s presence in India shaped her path irrevocably at

every fundamental point, leaving us with far more altered than merely a parliamentary

system, western education, and industrialization. Indians pride themselves on what looks like

a preservation of Indian traditions paired with a more contemporary blend of accommodating

her menagerie of people and cultures, captured perfectly in Nehru’s slogan “Unity in

Diversity”. This we consider the essence of the country, united under age old culture and

religion yet tolerant of our differences under newfound secular law. We’re often ignorant

amidst our liberated, busy days, that our notion of the concepts ‘nation’ and ‘independence’

are highly subject to the light they’re cast under across various mediums, thus born hollow

and impressionable. We’ve greatly taken for granted the importance of knowing, deciding,

and holding close our own rudimentary understanding of what makes a nation. Why, our

ancestors did all the hard work for us when they drove out the colonialists! Yet just how the

various crossroads of our lives halt us to configure and calibrate what sin and virtue is into

each of our individual moral compasses (lest we stumble upon a similar fork in the road only

to be confounded again), it is vital to do the same for our understanding of the term ‘nation’

in the face of modern politics. At the core of the panoply of its definitions lies one common

attribute – Unity. Whether uttered through the lips of a monk to his disciples or a war

mongering dictator to his subjects, Unity in itself is a fundamental ideal that no human being

can argue against. Ergo it’s vital to perceive, and even more so to acknowledge, from whom
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it is coming from. The absence of this critical awareness creates the vacuum for third party

narratives to swoop in and steer the masses. To end my preface I quote Noam Chomsky,

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

It has been undisputed since Indian independence that the role of Gandhi and the other

national leaders and freedom fighters of the time was instrumental in winning India

back from her colonizers. The call for swaraj or self-rule ran strong amongst the

people who in response to it newly identified as a nation, propelled by Gandhi’s ‘truth-

focused’ movements of non-violent non-cooperation and civil disobedience. The

Gandhian concept of Satyagraha repudiated the call for arms and violence against the

governing class, enabled participation from any and all members of society willing,

and is the buttress of civilian peaceful protest which catalyzes change across

democratic societies today. Though many a modern Indian has grown up on

academics detailing the Indian freedom struggle, hardly any curriculum truly expanded

on the philosophies that made Gandhi’s Satyagraha so immeasurably popular across

such a large people, many of whom lacked what we today consider a “proper”

education. A good starting point is by questioning independence itself. The idea of national

independence cannot be understood without first attempting to understand ‘nation’. Gandhi

discourses heavily on both concepts and his notion of them in his book titled ‘Hind Swaraj’,

which I shall expand upon along with Satyagraha later in the course of this paper.

The concept of ‘nation’ which seems most apposite today (although nations would paint it as

anything but) is the one explored in Tagore’s essay titled ‘Nation’. In it, he writes that the

people are living beings whilst the nations are organizations of power.
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“When the spread of higher ideals of humanity is not held to be important, the hardening

method of national efficacy gains a certain strength; and for some limited period of limited

period of time, at least, it proudly asserts itself as the fittest to survive. But it is the survival of

that part of man which is the least living. And this is the reason why dead monotony is the

sign of the spread of the nation. ” 1

Indeed, this view is reflected by Gandhi in the ‘Hind Swaraj’ when he only praises the good

deeds of lawyers and doctors by acknowledging that it was due to their work as men and not

as professionals.

Tagore says that the professional man is hardly elastic, specializing in his knowledge,

organizing his power, and mercilessly elbowing others in his efforts to be at the front. He

deems professionalism necessary but a force that shouldn’t be allowed to exceed its healthy

limit and take over the personal in its relentless pursuit of success at the cost of one’s ideals.

This growing emergence of the professional entity coalesced together is what we spectators

of the global platform today associate with a “powerful” nation.

“The Cult of the Nation is the professionalism of the people. This cult is becoming their
greatest danger, because it is bringing them enormous success, making them impatient of the
claims of higher ideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are the conflicts of
interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused into in men’s minds, thereby making it
more and more necessary for other peoples, who are still living, to stiffen into nations.” 2
Tagore also argues that the duties which were once discharged by communities, thereby

keeping society intact even after the decay of monarchy, are now handed over to a foreign

entity, the state. In the days of yore, Indians looked to the common man for the highest praise

and honour. This was incentive to strive for the people and factored the unanimity with one’s

countrymen that built a strong society.

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 “Today, it does not delight our hearts if we are praised by the people of our country,
Therefore, our efforts no longer naturally flow towards our country. Today we have to beg or
press the government. Today the government has to urge the people to remove water scarcity,
because the natural remedy for this social distress is gone! Our rich men no longer relish
public applause.” 3
Man in his thirst for selfish advancement has become his own species’ greatest enemy. To

combat the aggressive conquests of steely professionals and safeguard one’s own interests,

one must amalgamate with other like-minded individuals whilst adopting the cold sheath of

professionalism. The Nation is encouraged by fear of its status quo being threatened by the

hypothetical existence of forces outside its imagined borders and interests. Whether these

forces are truly hostile or not are a matter of inconsequence to both the Nation as well as

Gandhian philosophy for diametrically different reasons. The Nation benefits from its

constantly induced hatred of “others” and excessive pride in one’s “own”. It harnesses this

crowd psychology and trains it into turning people into machines of power, power which it

uses to serve its own special purposes. Dissenters of this narrative are met with punishment in

the law-courts, or social ostracization and the way in which this is done is explained through

an American media propaganda technique hatched in 1937. The Mohawk Valley Formula is a

strategy where media is used to bust a strike. If the workers at the time had a problem with

mistreatment by a corporate policy and used their new power of organization to strike against

it, the Mohawk Valley Formula was designed to align the motives of the strike with a

message that had nothing to do with it or the policy in question in order to diminish the

support that the workers would get from the public. At the time it was popular to paint

striking workers as Anti-American. The motives of the laborers were depicted as against the

interests of America and its future. Thus the conversation was switched away from anything

about specific policies that were being protested and turned it instead into whether the

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individual was for the interests of America or against them. Framed besides India’s current

political climate, the semblance paints a grim picture.

How the Nation also keeps people in elected positions of power in check is explored in the

theories of Walter Lippman in the early 20th century. Lippman lays out a democratic society

as 3 parts – the people in real positions of power, the specialized class, and the bewildered

herd (the masses). People that hold the real positions of power have ways that they control

and direct the behavior of the other two classes. The bewildered herd cannot be allowed to

think for itself and left lacking authoritarian directive is dangerous to their interests. They are

also prime resource for conversion into machines of power in order to perpetuate the grip of

the Nation’s identity. I begin to use people in positions of real power and Nation

interchangeably in order for their link to be made obvious. The "specialized class" is

controlled by controlling the parameters of their lives as elected officials. Theoretically in this

way a politician with all the qualifications and best intentions in the world cannot survive for

very long or even win an election unless they're willing to play by the rules of the people that

make them. Inevitably what follows is tacit indoctrination into a system of getting things

done politically. If one doesn't rub elbows with the right people in the existing government,

their elbows aren’t going to be around for very long. The Indian National Congress, India’s

first organized political party, was formed under the existing British government and it would

be fallacious to assume exemption of them from having sought their establishment via the

methods stated above. This is the basis for my speculation to leave the reader with on

whether us Indians who pride ourselves on our sovereignty so have truly ever rid ourselves of

colonialism.

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To summarize, the collection of observations above on what the Nation exists as today is a

characterization by its lust for success at the cost of faith in higher ideals and its treatment of

those who reside in it en masse as weapons lacking proper autonomy whose consent and

subscription to the ideology of the Nation is to be manufactured by keeping their fear of

troublemakers artificially alive. There are few individuals who hold the reins of power and

the ways in which to achieve this power have remained at their root unchanged since the

British. All of this evokes a rather barren landscape of India today, complete with rampant

panic of foreign conspirators trying overthrow the Indian state aided by their internal “anti-

national” insurgents - the Khalistanis, Kashmiris, liberals, leftists, feminists, students,

farmers, and religious minorities. As we stand, it would be a grave mistake to call India

united from any angle.

Here is where I offer Gandhi’s gentler but sound idea of a nation explored in his book ‘Hind

Swaraj’ as an alternative to what we know already. Nationalism to Gandhi is when a nation is

so secure in itself that it doesn’t see foreign entities as a threat but rather assimilates them

into itself naturally. British India was rife with communal conflict and religious differences

yet Gandhi recognized religion as a diverse subjective lens unique to every individual. He

believed religions to be different roads converging at the same point, that we shared common

ancestors and that our gods may not be different. As long as we met at the same point, the

differences in our roads should not be cause for quarrel. A country is one nation only when

the condition of assimilation (Samas in Gujarati) prevails in it. There are as many religions as

there are individuals and those who are conscious of the spirit of nationalism do not interfere

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with one another’s religion. If they did, they weren’t fit to be considered a nation. If the

Hindus believed India was for the Hindus then, according to Gandhi, they were living in a

dream land. Nowhere was one nationality and one religion synonymous. This view extended

beyond just religion however, to all those who chose to make India their country. They

became compatriots who had to live in unity even if it were just to safeguard their own

interests. Gandhi preached the paragon of tolerance towards all and the reason for this

tolerance is to allow one’s focus to be directed inwards at one’s own journey on the path to

realizing their higher self. The ‘true knowledge’ or ‘truth’ Gandhi speaks of is embedded in

the core of Vedic culture as spiritual exaltation and enlightenment, known as Moksha.

Moksha is achieved by overcoming ignorance and selfish desires. It is a paradox in the sense

that overcoming desires also includes overcoming the desire for moksha itself. This state of

spiritual ascendance and higher being is often written about in other spiritual cultures which

go by similar methods of peace and renouncement, such as the Wu Wei (meaning non-action)

in Taoism and Nirvana in Buddhism, to name a few. It is what in Maslow’s pyramid would

be self-actualization, except the lower tiers of the pyramid aren’t chronologically necessary to

commence walking on the path towards it. In this manner, every individual has his own life’s

experience that shapes him differently and his own ideals to follow, but the understanding

that his journey will end where yours and everyone else’s will is at the heart of Gandhi’s

belief in the power of “truth-force”. This understanding and belief system puts a Gandhian in

a position where it is inconceivable to harm another for the sake of one’s own ideal. He

would rather bow and plead with the other as he would with a brother and should they not

listen, he would give himself up in order to persuade them. Swaraj to Gandhi was attained

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when every individual of a nation carried complete self-mastery through the realization or

discipline of ‘truth’. The journey to its attainment was a constant state of being.

“A student means one who is hungry for learning. Learning is knowledge of what is worth
knowing about. The only things worth knowing about is the atman. True knowledge is thus
knowledge of the self. But in order to attain this knowledge, one has to know literature,
history, geography, mathematics etc. All these are by way of means…It is not as if men of
knowledge without this equipment do not exist within our experience. One who knows this
would not go mad after knowledge of letters or of literature and other subjects; he would
become mad only after knowledge of the self. He will give up anything which proves an
obstacle in the pursuit of this knowledge and dedicate himself only to that which helps him in

that pursuit. The student life of one who realises this never ends and, whether eating,
drinking, sleeping, playing, digging, weaving, spinning or doing any other work, he is all the
time growing in this knowledge. “ 4

To explicate better I quote an excerpt from a paper that well articulates the philosophy:

“For after all what does the Gita – or the tradition of experiential knowledge from which
Gandhi drew his strength – teach: how to think about experience and action and not what to
think about. The Gita is not a description of the world; it does not contain propositional
knowledge about the world or beliefs about the world. No knowledge of the world or the
truths about the world helps in the performance of right action. Dharma can only be set by
examples; but exemplary action is precisely the one that does not exemplify anything.
Exemplary action is action without conception. The sthithaprajna or satyagrahi is the one who
knows how to perform action without conception. He needs selfknowledge, which is not
knowledge about the world and cannot be construed on the model of propositional or factual
knowledge. Self-knowledge, however, cannot be taught by examples; only dharma can be set
by examples or by exemplary actions.” 5

Nationality is being conscious of every individual difference and yet feeling as one. Gandhi’s

principles of nation are in direct opposition to ideologies like palingenetic ultra-nationality

and Aryan purity. The idea of the nation brought in from the west emphasizes on the

individual’s movement away from the spiritual path and onto the one relentlessly chasing

conquest/consumption and calling it success. India was never conquered by the British, she

had handed herself over to them during her princes’ greedy want to trade, do commerce, and

gain advantage over one another. They had allowed themselves to waver from the path

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towards ‘truth’ and in continuing to do so, were permitting the British to stay. Gandhi

believed that passive resistance and individual swaraj were enough to get the country her

own rule, and he practised this belief through his idea of Satyagraha. The way of Satyagraha

is constituted by 3 principles – Satya (truth), Ahimsa (non-violence), and Tapasya

(willingness to self-sacrifice for the cause in light of the first two).

“Gandhi clearly saw that without re-articulating the objective of swaraj, which is impossible

to achieve without experiential/spiritual knowledge, Indians were condemned to cognitive

enslavement.” 6

If the father of the nation were alive today, he would decry what he saw. The methods and

ideologies of the people in power today would swiftly place him under the banner of “anti-

national” for his dissent against what the nation has become. The reinforcement of the Indian

nation’s power to defend against “others” would be in direct opposition with Gandhian

philosophy, in which individuals on the journey to truth would not recognize “others” as

entities who required policing and war, or as “others” at all. I end with a reminder to the

reader of the insistence I discussed in my preclude. To thoughtfully observe, educate, and

consider what and who one identifies with the most as one’s idea of a nation. I hope this

offering of Gandhi’s vision, though difficult to obtain, is a powerful contender for an

alternative ‘nation’.

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1, 2
- ‘The Nation’ by Rabindranath Tagore
3
- ‘Swadeshi Samaj’ by Rabindranath Tagore, pg.400
4
- ‘Letter to Students, CW, 19, pp 199-200
5, 6, 7
- ‘Politics, Experience and Cognitive Enslavement: Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj’ by Vivek
Dhareshwar