Nation and Nationalism

Nation and Nationalism….what are these concepts? Are they some abstract concepts which do not need any further explanation, thought or analysis?
I delved into my conscience. And found some answers. I analyzed it just like I analyze any other feeling or intuition which comes naturally to me.

Suppose tomorrow, children are taken from different parts of the world, and are assembled in a hypothetical non-national area, say a hospitable part of Antarctica. They are to lead their lives there. They are provided all facilities there. All the apparatus necessary for the functioning of a STATE such as a judiciary, a constitution, a government, legislature, law enforcement agencies, and army are provided. In schools their teachers, and guardians at dormitories, constantly keep on telling them, that they are a part of a new nation. They are nationals of a newly formed nation with no history whatsoever. Will they develop a feeling of nationalism towards their newly formed nation? There will be some feeling of togetherness and companionship, but will they form a nation?

Answer should come naturally. No, a resounding no.

Now let us compare our situation with the above mentioned entity.

Are we an entity which was formed 60 years ago when the British left this part of the world? Did its "formation" start when a certain alien tribe from central Asia, referred to as Mughals, established a mammoth state on this territory? Is India only a geographical entity, a mass of land which does not constitute a nation? Churchill said that India is as good a nation as the equator is. (He meant that India is just a mass of land which can be ruled by anyone since it does not constitute a nation). Or was it a nation in making, as our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, thought? (He authored a book with the title- India- A Nation in making. He was a fantastic personality who believed that providence has chosen his "able" shoulders for the task of creating a nation of India.) Is it a loose confederation or amalgam of different nationalities, masquerading as a nation, which will sooner or later fall apart, as our Communist friends believe and hope?

Can nations be really made? That too in so short a time as the Indian freedom movement was, or the time for which Nehru expected to remain in the Prime Minister's chair? For the Indian freedom movement, and Nehru's reign, despite its nature and implications, constitutes a miniscule fraction of time, in history.

Nations cannot really be created artificially. The ones which appear to have been created artificially are not nations. And in reality, nations cannot be organized on values, such as democracy, secularism, socialism, contrary to claims made by many of them, however good these values may be for humanity.

There are principles of natural law which contribute to the existence and continuation of nations, which if looked carefully appear deceivingly simple. Nations are formed on common grounds of ethnicity and culture. Only people who share their genes and mindsets can form viable nation.

A nation is a people as a body, the natural resources, chiefly land, as the physical infrastructure which is essential for the survival of that body, and a culture that animates the body as its soul. The extremely close and complete association of these three factors constitutes a nation. And it is evident that these factors cannot be created out of thin air, or in fact cannot be "created" at all.

We can look all over the world for the validity of this argument. Quirks of history have created completely strange combinations of these factors. Israel, or the Jews, is a nation, which was dissociated with one of its principal components, land, for centuries, and now that it has been restored, it is one of the strongest examples of a nation presently. Artificially created states, primarily former colonial possessions from where the natives has been completely eliminated, have two factors, ethnicity and culture, but not an association with the land they live in.

India……………………………………………………………………………..

How is it a nation?

We form a distinct ethnic group. The sixth ethnic denomination in the world.

(Although there is no need to prove this, but a seemingly unconnected experiment, which was for the exploration of the genetic cause of commonly seen health disorders in Indian men , such central obesity and heart trouble, proved it again that we form a distinct ethnic group. The experiment results were published in many reputed Indian newspapers, and Hindustan Times even carried an editorial in response to the outcome, exhorting Indians to pay heed to the results and forget the artificial caste boundaries. But, these results, as any other good news, quickly went into oblivion.) There is no need to prove this, since we already know it.

Common ethnicity results in the same biological brotherhood/sisterhood i.e. feeling of being in a family, which every living organism of fairly developed species, say mammals, have. This is just the biological closeness, and does not mean brotherhood in a human sense. (Since even immediate brothers fight lifelong court battles, and cubs of the same lion kill each other in a bloody fight). This is the natural outcome of sharing of genes, and we have a decreasing order of affinity when commonality of genes is concerned i.e. there is an direct proportion between affinity and genetic overlap. Normally we care for our parents and immediate siblings the most, and then come the rest of family and then community, linguistic or caste-based, and so on.

Our land.

The stretch of land from Hindu-koh (or Hindukush, as it is presently referred to as) to the Arakans, and from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean has been the home for our people since time immemorial. A cursory look at the physical map of South Asia, can explain everything.

And finally our distinct civilization and culture.

This point can take whole encyclopedia only to cater to each one of its facet, hence I better not dare venture into explaining it. I am afraid of my capability and whether a lifetime would be enough for me to do that. But I sincerely believe that no one would disagree with me on that.

It has been a product the distinct environment of our subcontinent and thousands of years of uninterrupted human evolution in it.

It is amazing that an average Indian mind has abstracted this huge information into a very simple term, a nation called as India.

She/he instinctively knows what is "Indian" and what is not. She/he can instantly recognize whether one is an "Indian" or not. She/he instinctively knows that we have a history that goes back to hoary antiquities of time, even without actually knowing the details.

We constitute a nation, and of the best available quality.

Why is that not reflected in our day to day lives then? Answer is simple; we have forgotten who we are.

We have forgotten that we have a glorious uninterrupted tradition that no other nation in the world has.

When most parts of the world were still in total darkness, without any civilization, our forefathers built great cities, with great engineering marvels built with mathematical precision embedded in them.

When humans elsewhere consumed raw meat, wore animal hides, spoke in grunts; our ancestors were busy creating a huge body of literature which is still intact today.

True, we had contemporaries like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but where are they today?

We have survived great onslaughts through millennia and reached at this point of time, starting from the point when the Indian tectonic plate was formed a distinct land mass.

Although we know all this, this knowledge is dormant, hidden somewhere in our genetic memory.

We are being made to believe that we were formed in 1947 and many such other theories, which are not true and are contributing to our ignorance of our true nature, the knowledge of our identity.

Let us create such a situation in which our people know who they actually are and what they are capable of doing. Let them know that they are the posterity of a great people, inheritors of a great culture and civilization and children of a great nation.

So let us strive to wake up our people, reignite the flame. When we come out this self imposed delusion, no power in this world can prevent us from our rightful position.

Vande Mataram!!