We existed as a nation before British: Why Rahul Gandhi needs to stop rediscovering India
FirstpostIt was fashionable among the Western scholars, evangelists and Indologists to refer to India not as a nation but a conglomerate of nations. Articulating the British view, John Strachy wrote in 1880: “This is the first and foremost thing to learn about India that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India possessing, according to European ideas, any sort of unity – physical, political, social and religious, no Indian nation, no ‘people of India’, of which we hear so much.” To understand the view of Strachy better we need to take a look at another description of India done by JA Dubois under the auspices of the East India Company. The so-called political institutions of Europe might, indeed, hinder, instead of helping the growth of our national life; while under conceivable conditions, mere political subjection might not be able to touch even the outer most fringe of that life.” Regarding India as a country, as a nation and about Indian nationalism, Jawaharlal Nehru had also reached the same conclusion as Gandhi, Bipin Chandra Pal, and RK Mookerjee. To a somewhat bare intellectual understanding was added an emotional appreciation and gradually a sense of reality began to creep into my mental picture of India, and the land of my forefathers became peopled with living beings, who laughed and wept, loved and suffered; and among them were men who seemed to know life and understand it; and out of their wisdom they had built a structure which gave India a cultural stability which lasted for thousands of years… These seem to me something unique about the continuity of a cultural tradition through five thousand years of history.” In Nehru’s opinion, this cultural aspect of India is precisely the definition of India, the Indian nation and Indian nationalism. He says: “That vision of five thousand years gave me a new perspective, and the burden of the present seemed to grow lighter.” This is Nehru talking about the continuity of India as a nation, Indian nationalism, and Indian culture in terms of 5,000 years.