74. COUNTRY AND NATION
Country and Nation- do these words mean the same? Not at all, though in practice we may use them as interchangeable. These are problems for us who have to use a foreign language, without understanding how the words originated. In our Indian languages we say DESAM or DESH/ Rashtra. Tamil purists will say Naadu. நாடு (The last 'u' is only half pronounced!). National Tamil poet Subramanya Bharati used both, as in பாரத தேசமென்று பெயர் சொல்லுவோம், பாரத நாடு பழம் பெரும் நாடு, etc.
Making of a nation
Political pundits make fine distinctions between the two expressions. For them, country is more of a natural, geographical designation, distinguished from others. Nation on the contrary is a more artificial, contrived arrangement; people even say it is an abstraction, a myth. When inhabitants of a place share some values, habits etc in common, in spite of differences in other areas, we have a nation. It often has a marked political significance, based on civic ideas.
In the olden days countries were part of huge empires which contained many ethnic, linguistic and religious groups. We thus had the Austrian empire, the Kingdom of France, kingdom of Hungary, the Ottoman empire, the Russian empire, etc. In the past, we had the Roman empire which was a multi-ethnic, multi linguistic and multi religious outfit, where every one could pursue their own affairs provided they honoured the State and its conventions. This was disturbed by the Christians who persecuted people of the older religions. It was again the Christian Europe which practised ethnic intolerance as under Nazism and Fascism. The idea of nation state is usually traced to the second half of the 17th century. Scotland and England formally united in 1707 to form Great Britain. It is thus fairly recent in history. The Ottoman empire which had existed since 1299 disintegrated in 1922. The middle east since then has been in crisis.
Arab flag being raised during the revolt in 1916-18.
All modern nations are called nation-states. Their unity is based on some political arrangement. Thus the USSR was made into a nation by brutal force and suppression. With the fall of the Soviet Union, it has broken up into 15 countries! But there are internal conflicts in all of them so that we can't really say they have become nations. There is nothing that unites the people of these countries as a whole.In the olden days countries were part of huge empires which contained many ethnic, linguistic and religious groups. We thus had the Austrian empire, the Kingdom of France, kingdom of Hungary, the Ottoman empire, the Russian empire, etc. In the past, we had the Roman empire which was a multi-ethnic, multi linguistic and multi religious outfit, where every one could pursue their own affairs provided they honoured the State and its conventions. This was disturbed by the Christians who persecuted people of the older religions. It was again the Christian Europe which practised ethnic intolerance as under Nazism and Fascism. The idea of nation state is usually traced to the second half of the 17th century. Scotland and England formally united in 1707 to form Great Britain. It is thus fairly recent in history. The Ottoman empire which had existed since 1299 disintegrated in 1922. The middle east since then has been in crisis.
Post-Soviet states (alphabetical order)
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Historically, no country has been the sole bastion of a pure race or ethnic or language group.[ Indonesia, a group of many islands, has 300 ethnic groups and 365 languages!] Some one language might have dominated, but that group did not suppress or eliminate all others. Even that one language was not uniform- it had many strands. I had four Englishmen as teachers in college; they came from different parts of England , a small country; but they spoke in distinct ways, though two of them were Oxonians! It was a pleasure to interact with them! The tendency to eliminate or suppress others is a characteristic of modern dictatorships, like those of Stalin.
Rising Hindi Imperialism
In India too, we find that under the spreading Hindi imperialism, the various dialects of the North, each rich in its own way, are simply called Hindi, so that they want to show that Hindi is the language of the majority in India! Goswami Tulasidas wrote his Ram Charit Manas in Awadhi, not what is called Hindi! Listen to it as recited by people who speak Awadhi, and you will know how beautiful and different it is from the so called Hindi. Imperialism has a tendency to suppress others. In this all imperialisms are alike.
See the richness of languages in one state, Bihar alone below!
This diversity and richness is killed by the official Hindi imperialistic juggernaut. As a journalist Deepak Parvatiyar says:Rising Hindi Imperialism
In India too, we find that under the spreading Hindi imperialism, the various dialects of the North, each rich in its own way, are simply called Hindi, so that they want to show that Hindi is the language of the majority in India! Goswami Tulasidas wrote his Ram Charit Manas in Awadhi, not what is called Hindi! Listen to it as recited by people who speak Awadhi, and you will know how beautiful and different it is from the so called Hindi. Imperialism has a tendency to suppress others. In this all imperialisms are alike.
See the richness of languages in one state, Bihar alone below!
“It’s not just the usage of Hindi but the new computer language is killing the regional dialects. Besides, as was the case of Magadhi (Magadhi was legally absorbed under the subordinate label of Hindi in the 1961 Census), such state and national politics are creating conditions for language endangerments.”
Nitin Chandra, a Bhojpuri film-maker recently wrote a letter to Radio Mirchi (Patna) chastising them for the fact that in other states they play the regional songs in the local language and asking them to play Bhojpuri and Maithili songs too.Tejakar, on the other hand blames modern education, “Today’s children find using English and/or Hindi to be a symbol of modernity. Schools also ask the parents to talk to the children in English or Hindi rather than the mother tongue. The children are not aware and at the same time discouraged to use these languages.”
from: hillpost.in/2012.
I have no hesitation in proclaiming aloud: Down with Hindi Imperialism.
All Indian languages/dialects are sacred and should be preserved.
Usually, only dictators attempt to enforce strict uniformity. People in the South may think that the whole of North India speaks so called Hindi language. It is not so. They speak distinct languages which are grouped under Hindi for political reasons. In this sense,even Tamil and Malayalam may be grouped together!
India is Unique
India is a unique example of a country which has been one geographically, culturally and lived as a civilization, in spite of having numerous language and ethnic groups. India had a unity which is not amenable to the straight jacket of 'either ,or' western categories, and their fanciful muck-racking theories. Our concept of nation was not political. No doubt we too dreamt of a Chakravarti - one who controlled the whole land. But our idea of nation did not depend on such notions. It was apolitical. Few western writers and their blind Indian followers are able to understand this.
One western writer who seems to have understood this is Diana Eck.(in spite of her other aberrations and typical western prejudices) In her book, "India: A Sacred Geography" she writes:
For many of the diverse people who might be loosely called Hindu, the unity of India is not simply that of a nation-state, but that of geographical belonging, enacted in multiple ways. Hindu pilgrims measure the span of India with their feet...
........a particular idea of India that is shaped not by the modern notion of a nation-state, but by the extensive and intricate interrelation of geography and mythology.
The fact that the people of ancient India...gave a single name to the whole of this diverse subcontinent is itself noteworthy. The name is Bharata, or Bharat....THIS IS AN INDIGENOUS NAME.
India, like Japan, China and Greece, links its modern identity with an ancient and continuous civilization.
In the past three centuries, India has been seen by traders as a source of riches, by rulers as a part of empire, by missionaries as a mission field for winning souls { ie, conversion}, by romantics and seekers as the sour
ce of something missing in the heart and soul of the West.
The resistance to ideas of India's unity is embedded in colonial thought and often in postcolonial thinking as well. Even the many books that address the idea of India in recent times seem to acquiesce to largely Western constructs.
What are some of the ways in which India has seen itself? Political analyses do not touch this question. Postcolonial studies do not reach very deeply into the premodern subsoil of India to inquire whether there have been alternative ways of imagining the complex collectivity of India in a distinctly Indian Idiom.
[From: India- A Sacred Geography by Diana Eck. Harmony Books, New York, 2012]
India is sacred
India is unique in this respect. For Hindus, India has been a sacred land, Shakti, Mother, It is not a piece of earth. The motherland is even higher than heaven.
Map showing the shakti peetas of India! The whole country is covered!
Lord Rama says in the Ramayana:
"Janani Janma-bhoomi-scha Swargadapi Gariyasi" (Devanagari: जननी जन्मभूमिश्च स्वर्गादपि गरीयसी, IAST: jananī janmabhūmiśca svargādapi garīyasī) is a Sanskrit shloka uttered by Lord Rama in the Hindu epic Ramayana. It is also the national motto of Nepal. It means one's mother (janani) and motherland (janmabhoomi) are dearer to him/her than heaven (swarga)
There are nearly 100 crore Hindus in the world. But today they do not have a mother land! This is the Constitution that free India has given itself! Shame on the Hindus! Double shame on the Hindus!
This is so far removed from any Western idea of nation and nationhood. Brain washed Indians who get their political ideas from Western writers do not understand this.
How did India achieve this? This is the genius of India. Superficial observers, both Western and Indian, call this unity in diversity. This is bullshit. This is the diverse expression of Unity which is divine. It is not a convenient political arrangement, or some clever concoction. If one walks through the land of India, its length and breadth, one will realise this. Every part of India has this feeling.
Evidence from ancient Tamil literature
For instance the ancient Tamils occupying the extreme South were fully aware of this, no less than the others. In a poem in Puranaanooru, a poet sings, while praising a Chera king:
தென் குமரி, வடபெருங்கல்
குணகுட கடலா எல்லை
குன்று மலை காடு நாடு
ஒன்று பட்டு வழிமொழியக்
கொடிது கடிந்து கோல் திருத்திப்
படுவது உண்டு பகல் ஆற்றி
இனிது உருண்ட சுடர் நேமி
முழுது ஆண்டோர் வழி காவல!
The poet is praising the Chera king Irumporai. He says that this king comes in an ancient, rich tradition. What is that?
This country has Kanyakumari in the South and the great Himalayas in the North. There are the two oceans in East and West. Within this, it has mountains, hills, forests, lands divided into units.. This united land was ruled by the kings under their single command. Their rule put an end to all evils. It was righteous, with the king collecting as revenue one-sixth of the produce, as laid down. The kings did not swerve from justice. O King of the Cheras, , you have come in the line of such great kings!
This was sung by a Tamil poet 2500 years ago! There are many such passages.The Tamils were not only aware of the national boundaries,they were fully integrated into that structure, as when we find a Chera king feeding the armies of both sides during the Mahabharata war.( Puram, 2). And there were Tamil kings who were feared by the rulers of the Northern parts. (Puram 31) Yet our present day Dravidian advocates pretend as if such poems do not exist, as if Tamilians have been aloof, separate, special!
The ancient Tamil-speaking area was divided into 3 main kingdoms and many subdivisions. The existing literature of at least 1500 years speaks of continuous warfare among the Tamils- each king fighting with the others for glory! This and the accompanying mass destruction of land and people, which are rather graphically described, are praised as bravery! Such was their chauvinism!
Colonial distortion
We have been taught by the colonial masters that they made India one. In one sense it is true: they did not recognise the fundamental unity that already existed and spoke of the creation of a nation state in the modern sense. That was made possible because the Muslims who were aliens had not identified themselves with this land and its ethos. Nor did the Christian missionaries or their converts accept this. The Muslims think of the land of the prophet; the Christians dream of heaven ! Only Hindus say their very birthplace is higher than heaven! So long as the Muslims and Christians do not accept this idea, they will remain alien- ie un-Indian in spirit. A common citizenship may keep them united,but not for long, since their real agenda is different.
The USA: unique modern phenomenon
The United States of America provides a marvellous contrast. The Anglo-Saxons occupied a vast continent , which was in pristine condition . The Native Indians had respected the land, and all natural systems, lived on and off it but did not exploit or rape it as the Westerners did. But soon, people poured in from all over the world: all ethnic, language and religious groups. Out of this emerged the United States. How did they do it?
The best explanation I have read- the real secret- comes from Peter Drucker who is primarily regarded as a Management philosopher, but who is a much greater personality , as we will understand when we read his works as a whole.
From the Peter Drucker archives.
He says:
All along it has been good American political manners to talk dollars and cents when we really mean political decisions.
.....the great themes of American history have all along been moral and constitutional: slavery, the industrial versus the agrarian society, and federalism in the nineteenth century; racial equality, the role and function of the central government and America's place in an international society in this century.
In our American experience, however, economics is the conventional shorthand and the lingua franca for issues and decisions which are not economic, but political and moral.
.....they saw in economic conflict their means to prevent the more dangerous ideological conflict....the economic conflict was the one clash within the body politic that could be managed.
If economic interests had not been available as the political organizer, it would have been necessary to impose the most rigid authority on the population or else pluralism would have organized itself against the nation and its unity- with every imported tradition of religion and culture, every imported political value and belief, the focus of an ideology alien, if not hostile, to American nationhood.
The convention of economic interests has not only tended to prevent ideological issues from arising. It has forced the American political system into a nonpartisan approach to noneconomic problems.
This is fantastic analysis. America became a nation by making people focus on the economic issues, so that the other , deeper influences which tended to divide people were pushed out of consciousness, or at least frenzied public discourse.. America emerged as a pluralistic society where the great political issues assumed an economic form! The "American dream" united the people ! The American genius discovered that ideological conflicts could not be bridged; but conflicts could be mobilised and managed by giving them an economic form! However, Drucker felt that this kind of solution might not hold in the future.
[See:Men, Ideas and Politics, by Peter Drucker, Harper Collins, 1971. The above excerpts are taken from chapter 13.]
The United States is the only example in modern times of a new Nation emerging out of diverse elements. In Latin America, in the Middle East, in Africa, and in the nations which broke away from the USSR, we see how the attempt at creating a nation is not succeeding.
But in a sense the US was lucky in the kind of immigrants it got! Those who came were heterogeneous but they were not politically active. And most of them were not even well to do. Above all, they came mainly from Europe, which had had a history,however chequered. They were absorbed into the great economic experiment, as America was expanding. The American spirit did not believe in any constraints, as old Europe did. The Americans had immense self-belief. They could absorb the immigrants and weld them into a nation within a few decades.
Problems in modern Europe:
Nations upset by Islamic influx
We witness a different spectacle now in Europe. After the second World War, many immigrants entered Europe. They were mostly Muslims of different ethnicities. They too were not well to do. They were mainly oppressed in their own lands, and entered Europe as refugees,seeking fresh pastures. They entered a better administered, economically superior area. But in country after country, they have refused to weld into the mainstream smoothly. They defy local laws and conventions, even while enjoying the fruits of stable civil society and better economy!
During the freedom struggle in India, separatist Muslims advocated a 'Two nation' theory- that Hindus and Muslims are distinct in so many ways that they can never live together in peace! Islam is not only a religion, it is a political arrangement. When Muslims conquer a land, the only choice given to the native people is: either convert or get killed!. This is a fact of history, proven in nation after nation conquered by the Muslims. Gandhi failed to understand this. To day we see all over the world that wherever Muslims are present in sizable numbers, there is conflict. And every Muslim country is also torn by internal strife! Islam cannot build nationhood!
Europe has a very severe Muslim problem, how they deal with it will likely determine it’s collective future.
For many years now, the Muslim population in England has been swelling and expanding. As they do in all countries where they have a large number, Muslims there are demanding that England follow Sharia Law. Incidents of Islamic terror attacks in England have skyrocketed, English politicians have already started to give concessions in the pathetic hope of appeasement. The spirit of Neville Chamberlain is a hard one to get past, apparently. Things have gotten so bad there, that patriot groups like Britain First have been formed to do what the English Parliament refuses to do. England is in a battle for it’s very existence, and they refuse to recognize it. In Germany, a group called PEGIDA is sounding the alarm against the creeping Sharia that has begun to bloom there.
[Incidentally, Lutz Bachmann, the co-founder of PEGIDA was fined by a German court two days ago for spreading hatred against refugees in his Facebook posts! This is curious indeed: the courts can do nothing against refugees demanding Sharia, but they can fine people for writing against it! However, in this instance, Bachmann had called the refugees 'scum'. and 'cattle'.]
Muslims, unlike any other group of people, never seek to simply quietly assimilate into the lands in which they travel. They build their numbers, and as soon as they do, seek to exert their will over their host country. I cannot think of any other group of people who do that. There are millions of Jews living in America, I have yet to see a rally or protest where they demand anything. My grandfather, an immigrant from Ireland, came here in 1923. The Irish arrived by the millions and helped to build this nation to what it is today. When did the Irish demand anything other than fair treatment?
Europe has a very serious Muslim problem, and it’s not going away any time soon. Expect many more to be slaughtered to the satanic taunts of Allahu Akbar! as the blood runs in the streets.
To our brothers and sisters in France, all of America mourns with you. Fight for your nation, or expect to lose control of it.
The above is taken from:www.nowtheendbegins,com . This was written after the Paris killings.
Many people naively think that such attacks are the works of terrorists and we should distinguish terrorism from peaceful Islam. This is a view held by people who do not know or admit the historical record of Muslim expansion. Muslims cannot live peacefully with any other group for long. It is because their religion, as interpreted by their own authorities, demands of them to assert their separateness and control.
Mahatma Gandhi sincerely believed that Muslims could be pleased by some means. He did not realise that Muslims did not believe in nationalism. The secular European nations and even the US is making the same mistake now! Those who do not read history are fated to repeat it!
In a way, this is the way of Providence. It was Britain which facilitated the creation of Pakistan. It is the West which propped up Pakistan against India, with military and economic aid. They have been preaching to us, forgetting that India has faced Islam for a thousand years. One 9/11 has unhinged the US. Let us see how they face Islam for a thousand years- if they last that long.
In a way, this is the way of Providence. It was Britain which facilitated the creation of Pakistan. It is the West which propped up Pakistan against India, with military and economic aid. They have been preaching to us, forgetting that India has faced Islam for a thousand years. One 9/11 has unhinged the US. Let us see how they face Islam for a thousand years- if they last that long.
This is what refugees from Syria and Iraq demand in Europe!
from:www.teapartytribune.com.
I write this only to point out that nationality is a concept overarching all other narrow loyalties. Where a group asserts its separate identity and refuses to subordinate it to larger identities and merge with the other groups, nations cannot emerge. No Muslim accepts any other ideology as being above his religion. In practice, every non-Muslim country where Muslims are present in large numbers is a two- nation! They are so many Pakistans in the making!
There is no doubt that there are many sober elements among Muslims. But they are powerless against their organisation.Which political/social scholar in the Western tradition from the Islamic fold will dare to criticise the Sharia- in the same way as many Christians criticise their theology?
This is something the average Indian does not understand. Colonial rule and education has conditioned him to view everything from a Western perspective, to adopt Western standard as the one true mark of modernity. The Indian seeks that label. The Muslim is taught to regard his faith as unique, as the sole truth and as such, superior to all others. How will he agree to compromise?
The problem of the West is that it depends on Arab oil and cannot afford to be be seen as offending the Muslim! Here, economic interest is cutting at the roots of nationality! This is the reverse of the American experiment!
The problem of the West is that it depends on Arab oil and cannot afford to be be seen as offending the Muslim! Here, economic interest is cutting at the roots of nationality! This is the reverse of the American experiment!
Nations are not created in a day. The US experience is exceptional. It cannot work today with Islam. India too is facing this problem, even after the creation of Pakistan. But in the name of secularism, we are refusing to see it.
The ancient foundations of Indian unity have been shaken and uprooted by the invaders. What remained has been undone by our secular government. They have tried a mainly political route to forging a fresh nationality, but it has not worked so far mainly because of Muslim resistance ( eg. common civil code, national anthem, national song ). India is consequently now in a limbo.
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