Nationalism,
patriotism, is a hoax. There are historical reasons for its emergence
as a social force. Those reasons are not under dispute. But as an
attitude, as an ideal to follow and propagate, its fraud is pretty
apparent if one could look at its functionings without it playing in
one’s head.
An interesting
example to begin with is how easily it injects geopolitics in sports,
and food, and things like that. We have just seen a glimpse of this
in the two sports tournaments held of late: the Euro cup, which saw
massive riots between soccer fans of various countries, and the
cricket world cup. Having a more personal experience of the world
cup, I’d like to point out some telling examples from it. The first
most obvious, yet incredibly overlooked aspect is that patriotism is
a selling commodity, with highly inelastic demand. In a world where
food and other essentials are being kept away from so many,
nationalism is the stuff of mass spoon-feeding. Such drivel as put in
advertisements, devoid of wit, sense, or aesthetics, is still
accepted if it calls out to the patriot in us, much as god calls out
to the devotee in us. Commentators on radio and television chant on
and on the requirements “for India to win”, seven times often
between six balls bowled. The commentator’s purpose seems to be to
tell his audience what they must be bothered about. Had this been a
gladiator’s fight in a Colosseum, we couldn’t have told the
difference. Did we not see a flag representing the Indian Army in the
match against Pakistan waving in the crowd? A radio transmission of a
cricket match had its commentator suddenly losing his voice in the
middle of a sentence; when his co-commentator resumed after an
awkward gap of five seconds, we learned that a player of our beloved
team, “our player” had just been bowled out. As we understood
that our run-rate did not qualify us for the semi-finals, the cameras
in the TV transmission flashed to us constantly clips of the
supporters of Pakistan, sporting T-shirts of South Africa, since it
could now prevent our entry in the semis over theirs. If we took the
broadcast company’s bait – which many of us did – we would be
among those delusionals who refuse to clap at the rival’s shots
because we just cannot see they’re playing good, who feel that
those Pakistanis have no moral fibre because “they can stoop down
to wear another jersey”, “they are at it again, heckling us”,
and such other ruses, not for once recalling our bad mood a few hours
ago when they defeated a team we lost to.
The person who’s
patriotic – and today this mostly means chauvinistic – because he
feels the enemy is constantly scheming feels justified because he is
given so many examples, of which even if many are manufactured, many
still are true. However, even those examples are reflections of what
“the enemy” has seen in us. So even if there is a sense of
self-righteousness, but deceit from outside, this exists on both
sides. And when we would see the networks of industry and realpolitik
between the two sides, this illusion would be broken. Therefore, one
is shown as little of this as possible. The problem isn’t that they
are bad; the problem is that we aren’t very different from them,
and as they cling to their powers and terrors, so do we to ours.
Constraints
over entertainment industry, even if real and necessary, have some
looseness in application which seems “allowed” in some sense. So,
when cricket “analysts” question the Duckworth Lewis score system
when their team has lost, but look at it in askance in another hour,
we laugh at it but also know that it matters little. However, much
more is expected from news-broadcasting. Let us see what is
delivered: a radio broadcast on the day of Gandhi Jayanti
spoke about “tribals and local officials in the Andamans paying
eager homage to the father of our nation in a sarvadharma
prarthna (all-religious prayer
ceremony)”. This is a rare message from those faraway islands; what
is disturbing is that everyday there is an industry waiting to turn
those islands into a major tourism zone, even more disturbingly into
some sort of a “primitive man zoo”, very much with the permission
of the state. But, since “the tribals” have paid homage, they
must be “one of us”, so things cannot be bad for them. In
Gujarat, the same ceremony was held in the name of that vile rioter
Narendra Modi. Likewise, in a state that is liberal in principle, it
no matter of shame or oppression for a foreign minister to say
angrily, possessively “Kashmir is an integral part of India” at a
UN forum, much as one may say that a certain tree falls in my
backyard. Apparently, these reasons are adequate to ban the
consumption of gutka and liquor from the Andamans and Gujarat (“as
was Gandhi’s belief”), to deploy massive armies in “disturbed
areas” (an inheritance from colonialism).
That nationalism is a powerful force has been known since long; what
truly reinforces this fact is that it is so effective still, in spite
of the many indications of its harms to those very people who have
espoused it. It is a tribunal for those who are presented with it:
the next time you see someone swearing by the nation, do observe if
you can see traces of his being coerced into it by our situation. At
the same time, it distracts beautifully. Our Prime Minister recently
made a strange comment: he equated the opulence of the few rich,
“our” economy, to matters of “national security”; apparently,
he has faith over the garbing properties of the phrase “national
security”, much as this term invokes memories of terrorism,
amplified by predatory media that has silenced everybody in its
noise. The biggest advantage that nationalism has is that it is like
a capsule that can be doled out by a small clique of people, and then
spreads on its own. That’s why the state wants to be seen at its
fountainhead, and also those nationalist movements that emerge from a
large chunk of people eventually tend to statism. We would find
plenty of examples: Gorkhaland, Telangana, so on and so forth. Even
those “revolutions” that are anti-nationalistic in their outlook
– many of the Communist states formed in the 1900s – bear
notorious marks of branding as “betrayal” or
“counter-revolutionary” any activity that seeks to differ from
what the high-command has in mind.
Nationalism takes the place of other tendencies that are not so
emotional, so irreflexive, and so inflexible as it is. All sorts of
movements where people have raised protest over legitimate demands
have known, often have been stunted by, the heavy hand of patriotism
of some kind which tells them what they think is unimportant compared
to what the powers have planned. Or else, they are co-opted by it. We are seeing this in Koodankulam
and Kalapakkam, where even the judiciary believes the real question
is not what the people think about the plant, but whether the nuclear
plant is safe or not. We saw this in the case of the Maruti Suzuki
Workers’ Union struggle in IMT-Manesar, Haryana, where the state
unambiguously supported the management in every way possible, first
in apathy towards a management’s high-handed and violent attempt to
break the workers’ right to organize themselves, and then in
hounding them with greatest judicial speed possible. Moreover, when
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. showed signs of moving out of Haryana,
Narendra Modi (an icon of today’s nationalism) sprang up to invite
them, saying he could build a bigger garrison for them to set up
their factory in, to exploit cheap, desperate hands, and keep them
under the leash of hired muscle-power of the same class of men. The
truth is that everyone is well aware of these things: demolition of
shanties, rural distress, casualization of labour, all these are
tied, eventually, to the fingers of the state. However, there’s a
veil of nation and allegiance to nation (hence to state) that makes
these seem legitimate state of affairs.
Today, Indonesia is added to all those places in Africa, Arabia,
Europe and the Americas where people have discarded questions about
whether the nation is important or not, and asked if power must be
entrusted to the state. In Indonesia, millions of workers have
entered the streets denouncing their casualization. Even this list is
not exhaustive: there are many other places where protest is the norm
of the day. Meanwhile, how we can look above the questions of nation
would decide what we can do for ourselves as autonomous people.
There’s definitely a lot to be done.
2.10.12
Loved the first line. Great post, but the opening steals it.
ReplyDeleteI have previously expressed my distaste at the crass display of patriotism on two occasions: when India won the World Cup and when Anna Hazare took to stage. Both times I was accused of being "anti-national", "unpatriotic", and a "Cognress-sympathiser" even (w.r.t. to the Hazare spectacle).
It was...amusing. Worrisome, too. It was then that I realised the fluidity - and potency - of nationalism/patriotism as a strong political force; it exists in multiple discourses, it's appropriated by the administration, by radical fundamentalists, Internet Hindus and cricket fans. And the rhetorical power that a discourse like nationalism holds is, I think what makes it such a potent political force.
As for the scope of us being autonomous people, I think it will always be countered by this nationalist discourse - because autonomy is something which would threaten the very foundation of an idea which is based on conformity, something within which our individual identities are subsumed. While I am equally skeptical of anarchy, as I am of democracy, I can't think of a trajectory how this dialectic - if I may call it so - would pan out.
Looking forward to more posts. Cheers.
The question of autonomy has been pointed out to me by others too (in context of our being bound to our class position), so I hope I can clarify it. To your concern, I don't take autonomy to be an individualist position. Just because a group of people agree over something - less euphemistically, 'conform' - they do not lose their autonomy. By autonomy I simply mean the ability to feel independent, and know that others feel similarly.
DeleteI didn't get what you referred to by your last comment. I have said that nationalism vigourously opposes autonomous tendencies, but does that mean those tendencies cannot thrive?
Yes, it's an illusion that nationalism must be anti-congress today.
By my last comment I meant a similar idea; of a sort of dialectical relationship between the discourse of autonomy and that of nationalism. Surely, I am not suggesting that the autonomous tendencies would not thrive; I am curious to see how they would, though.
DeleteI don't think I meant autonomy as something individualistic; forgive me if that impression did come across. Thing is: when you speak of autonomy (or, let's say, a political ideology like anarchy), I am somewhat skeptical of an implicit ameliorative idea that I find embedded in it (not necessarily one visible in your post). I am operating an a hunch mostly; I don't think I am well read enough on the matter. But your posts are enlightening in that respect. I hope I am able to respond to them better in the future.