India is having extraordinary Olympics at Tokyo. Whole country is celebrating the success of our players which is good to see. It is definitely a happy, proud and inspiring moment for all the citizens. I remember how I was inspired after watching story of Milkha Singh in his biopic. In fact, it still inspires me every time I watch. Please don't ask me what I have done with all that inspiration though!
Our Olympics performance might hopefully change the attitude towards sport in our country. Maybe from now children who show interest in sports rather than education (read engineering and medicine) and will not be criticized or mocked for doing so.
Out pour of national jubilation over winning of Gold Medal in Javelin Throw made me think about nationalism, what it means and its possible downsides.
Note: Winning a medal in Olympic track and field after 120 years, which is also the first ever Gold for India in Olympic track and field is an extraordinary feat, one surely worthy of celebration. If you think a deeper discussion about nationalism at this point is unnecessary, you are unlikely to enjoy the read and maybe you should look this up once done with the celebration.
Before we dive into the main point of this article, we can briefly go through some definition
Definitions:
Nationalism is individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests.
A nation is a group of people who see themselves as a cohesive and coherent unit based on shared cultural or historical criteria.
State, political organization of society, or the body politic, or, more narrowly, the institutions of government.
Nation-state, a territorially bounded sovereign polity—i.e., a state—that is ruled in the name of a community of citizens who identify themselves as a nation.
I will not go deep into definitions and history of nationalism here. There are very good resources online for these and can't really do it half as well good as them.
Current Scenario:
The concept of nation-states started 200 years back at the time of American and French Revolution, and has remained one of the most important ideas in political philosophy since then. It is currently the most dominant form of political organization though there are some exceptions where some nations don't have a state (Example: Tibet) and some states comprise more than one nation (Example: United Kingdom and previously USSR). State based on nation now have support of people more easily than states based on other ideas like religion.
Nationalism has been a very potent force throughout history. It is one of the major causes of the World Wars. Nationalism is running very high in current politics. Loyalty to one's own nation and hatred towards rest is usually expected. This is despite the fact that cooperation with other nations could actually be beneficial to the national interests in many cases.
Currently, it is one of the most powerful political currencies in almost all the nations including the United States, India, China. Whenever a politician wants to earn support of the people, they will project themselves to be working in the interests of the nation. The easiest way to defame someone is to say that the person is against the interest of the nation and is sympathetic to other countries instead. As influence of race, religion, caste etc had weakened in past few centuries due to scientific and industrial revolution,the concept of nation has become most powerful political idea.
Rigid national loyalties is one of the reasons we are unable to come up with effective global organizations. Yes, we do have global organizations in principle. But almost all of them are nowhere near effective. UNSC cannot stop any military move by powerful nations, WTO negotiations are at standstill and we have seen how ineffective WHO was last year when it could not investigate cause of coronavirus thoroughly.
What are the positive sides and negative sides of nationalism?
There are several upsides to it. It helps in unity, enables social and economic integration and allows for development by ensuring peace.
There are also downsides with it. Given the powerful emotion it is, it has a tendency to make people irrational. Debates become emotional outpour instead of critical analysis. Nationalism can become majoritarianism when diversity within a nation is not appreciated. It might prevent us from taking a global humanitarian view on certain issues.
Indian situation:
I will discuss nationalism in the context of India. We are so enthusiastic about feeling happy for the success of scientists, sports-persons, and artists of our country, on one hand, but are we as enthusiastic about addressing our shortcomings?. Are we equally forthcoming and interested about solving them? Probably not.
We are proud that India is the vaccine capital of the world and produces 60% of vaccines around the world, which is a good thing. But did we feel ashamed when the CEO of Serum Institute faced threats and had to fly off to London?
Don't our shortcomings deserve equal attention if not more?. I believe that hyper-nationalism of citizens, which is seen as a virtue most of the time, does not allow us to be critical of our own nations. Politics fueled by this makes things worse.
Below are some pointers as to where we stand on several subjects
Rankings:
1. India ranked 94 out of 107 countries in Global Hunger Index
2. India ranks 142 out of 180 in World Press Freedom Index
3. Rank 72 out of 74 in PISA - Programme for International Student Assessment
4. Rank 128 globally in GDP Per-capita based on Purchasing Power parity
5. Rank 140 among 156 in Gender Gap Index
6. Rank 113 in Global Child Rights Index
7. Rank 139 out of 149 in World Happiness Index
The usual reaction, especially of politicians, is to dismiss these reports saying they don't take into account the unique realities of our country. This is an invalid argument. Every country is unique in its own way. To say India cannot be part of a comparative analysis with the rest of the world does not make any sense.
What can a citizen do?
- Fixing most of the issues may seem beyond individual capacity which is reasonable. But at-least they should be part of our understanding of our own nation.
Below are the some of the things that are within individual capacity
- Do you pay taxes? Do you say no when people suggest you get tax exemption with fake bills?
- Do you inform yourself with your political rights and responsibilities?
- Do you take election process seriously and tell people how important it is to vote and do that for our future and not for money or some primordial loyalties?
- If you see people with caste loyalty, do you tell them that caste is an anachronistic and discriminatory institution?
- Do you tell people who discriminate and see women as unequal to men that their thought is wrong?
- Do you make effort to inform yourself of the current situation of our society?
- Do you make effort in ways possible to help people around you?
In my opinion, if your answer is yes to any of these you are helping in progress of your nation and performing a national duty.
If things similar to the ones above doesn't inform our understanding and are not subjects of our public debates, then our understanding of nationalism is deeply flawed.
Conclusion
I don't mean in any way to say that we should not celebrate the success of our fellow citizens. My argument is that our nationalism should not stop there. We should share the distress of victims of Hathras and Unnao, who have lost several family members in their fight for justice and are still fighting years after the incident, as much as we share the success of Neeraj Chopra.
The concept of nation-states started 200 years back at the time of American and French Revolution, and has remained one of the most important ideas in political philosophy since then. It is currently the most dominant form of political organization though there are some exceptions where some nations don't have a state (Example: Tibet) and some states comprise more than one nation (Example: United Kingdom and previously USSR). State based on nation now have support of people more easily than states based on other ideas like religion.
Nationalism has been a very potent force throughout history. It is one of the major causes of the World Wars. Nationalism is running very high in current politics. Loyalty to one's own nation and hatred towards rest is usually expected. This is despite the fact that cooperation with other nations could actually be beneficial to the national interests in many cases.
Currently, it is one of the most powerful political currencies in almost all the nations including the United States, India, China. Whenever a politician wants to earn support of the people, they will project themselves to be working in the interests of the nation. The easiest way to defame someone is to say that the person is against the interest of the nation and is sympathetic to other countries instead. As influence of race, religion, caste etc had weakened in past few centuries due to scientific and industrial revolution,the concept of nation has become most powerful political idea.
Rigid national loyalties is one of the reasons we are unable to come up with effective global organizations. Yes, we do have global organizations in principle. But almost all of them are nowhere near effective. UNSC cannot stop any military move by powerful nations, WTO negotiations are at standstill and we have seen how ineffective WHO was last year when it could not investigate cause of coronavirus thoroughly.
What are the positive sides and negative sides of nationalism?
There are several upsides to it. It helps in unity, enables social and economic integration and allows for development by ensuring peace.
There are also downsides with it. Given the powerful emotion it is, it has a tendency to make people irrational. Debates become emotional outpour instead of critical analysis. Nationalism can become majoritarianism when diversity within a nation is not appreciated. It might prevent us from taking a global humanitarian view on certain issues.
Indian situation:
I will discuss nationalism in the context of India. We are so enthusiastic about feeling happy for the success of scientists, sports-persons, and artists of our country, on one hand, but are we as enthusiastic about addressing our shortcomings?. Are we equally forthcoming and interested about solving them? Probably not.
We are proud that India is the vaccine capital of the world and produces 60% of vaccines around the world, which is a good thing. But did we feel ashamed when the CEO of Serum Institute faced threats and had to fly off to London?
Don't our shortcomings deserve equal attention if not more?. I believe that hyper-nationalism of citizens, which is seen as a virtue most of the time, does not allow us to be critical of our own nations. Politics fueled by this makes things worse.
Below are some pointers as to where we stand on several subjects
Rankings:
1. India ranked 94 out of 107 countries in Global Hunger Index
2. India ranks 142 out of 180 in World Press Freedom Index
3. Rank 72 out of 74 in PISA - Programme for International Student Assessment
4. Rank 128 globally in GDP Per-capita based on Purchasing Power parity
5. Rank 140 among 156 in Gender Gap Index
6. Rank 113 in Global Child Rights Index
7. Rank 139 out of 149 in World Happiness Index
The usual reaction, especially of politicians, is to dismiss these reports saying they don't take into account the unique realities of our country. This is an invalid argument. Every country is unique in its own way. To say India cannot be part of a comparative analysis with the rest of the world does not make any sense.
What can a citizen do?
- Fixing most of the issues may seem beyond individual capacity which is reasonable. But at-least they should be part of our understanding of our own nation.
Below are the some of the things that are within individual capacity
- Do you pay taxes? Do you say no when people suggest you get tax exemption with fake bills?
- Do you inform yourself with your political rights and responsibilities?
- Do you take election process seriously and tell people how important it is to vote and do that for our future and not for money or some primordial loyalties?
- If you see people with caste loyalty, do you tell them that caste is an anachronistic and discriminatory institution?
- Do you tell people who discriminate and see women as unequal to men that their thought is wrong?
- Do you make effort to inform yourself of the current situation of our society?
- Do you make effort in ways possible to help people around you?
In my opinion, if your answer is yes to any of these you are helping in progress of your nation and performing a national duty.
If things similar to the ones above doesn't inform our understanding and are not subjects of our public debates, then our understanding of nationalism is deeply flawed.
Conclusion
I don't mean in any way to say that we should not celebrate the success of our fellow citizens. My argument is that our nationalism should not stop there. We should share the distress of victims of Hathras and Unnao, who have lost several family members in their fight for justice and are still fighting years after the incident, as much as we share the success of Neeraj Chopra.
Clinging to identities and the urge for belongingness is definitely causing exclusion, ethnocentrism and one is loosing a sense of becoming rational, humanistic. These are the core problems which you have clearly mentioned. Apart from this, prescription of duties seems the need of the hour, mere preaching won't do justice to the cause at hand. Well done.
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