Facing the Negative Portents of Nation Building

                                                                                    Saumitra Mohan

            The perceived crumbling of Washington Consensus has belied all expectations from the celebrated victory of liberal capitalism. Many feel that the ‘invisible hand’ of the laissez faire economy has been hiding long enough to notice any sign of a trickle-down effect. The stentorian call for rolling back the state as emerging in the wake of the end of the Cold War in the 1990s has itself been rolled back. Today, the entire world including our national economy is said to be reeling under an economic crisis of sorts and the resultant gloom and doom have started negatively affecting the social arena as well. The recent communal riots in Assam and the subsequent exodus of North East Indians from Bangalore and other cities literally threw them out of gear.

            The same happened in not so distant past to India’s commercial capital Mumbai when some elements raised Cain over emigrants and settlers from North India when these North Indian workers deserted Mumbai for their respective places of domicile. Mumbai and a large part of Maharashtra were truly crippled for quite sometime as reflected in closed factories, not to speak of many low-end services, which were also badly affected. The lungiwallahs/North Indians vs. Marathi debate has raged long enough in Mumbai for the same to get over. After all, the same also shows the weaknesses of our nation building process. We are still to come to terms with the India, which our founding fathers including Jawaharlal Nehru discovered through the grind of a long freedom movement.

            If we don’t strengthen and consolidate the foundations of our nation throughthe concerted efforts of all, we would be no different from many of the developing countries of the Third World. Many of these countries are still struggling to discover a semblance of sanity and unity in their state building process, not to speak of the nation building. The pride we have taken in the greatness of the civilizational entity called India shall dissipate in no time if we don’t resolve these petty but knotty issues dogging our polity.

            If the coming century is going to be the Asian century, we should ensure that India plays a principal role in the same. At a time when we should be training our guns to fight bigger problems at home and abroad, a negative and sick mindset seem to be in overdrive guiding and directing all the forces of darkness. This definitely shows us in a very poor light as a progressive society. In a year in which the European Union got a Nobel Peace Prize for sticking together through the thick and thin, we are showing a diametrically opposite sentiment forgetting the lesson Pakistan learnt the wrong way after Bangladesh separated over the issue of discrimination and deprivation of East Pakistan. We should not forget that such a mindset has always hurt the nation building process. We have much bigger problems at hand to resolve than to wrack our brains over such unproductive, meaningless but debilitating trifles.

            However, notwithstanding all-pervading negativities, there was a silver lining in all this, still giving hope. How can anyone forget the out of way initiatives and positive emotions shown by Indians including our politicos all across the country in the wake of the exodus of the North East Indians from some Indian cities?The state governments, responsible leaders from different political parties, NGOs and common citizens went out of way to woo these citizens back to respective cities.And why not? After all, the Constitution of India has given a fundamental right to the citizens all across to work anywherein the country as enshrined in the article 19 of Part III. If we break the social contract we all entered into on 15^th August, 1947, the same may actually portend ill for our beloved country. We would only hurt ourselves if we don’t accept and acknowledge the emergent reality of the ‘salad bowl’ that India has already become. We also have to accept and recognize the fact that a national division of labour has gradually emerged like the international division of labour. We shall only be shooting ourselves in the head if we ever try to interfere with such a process which is actually a part of the larger nation building process.

            What is sad is the fact that such intolerant feelings are not confined to India, but have found expressions all over the globe. The examples of Sri Lankan citizens being roughed up and bundled out of Tamil Nadu, the periodic paroxysms of revulsion against Pakistani actors in India, the killing of the US ambassador to Lybia at Benghazi and three other diplomats, the shooting of the young Pakistani child rights activist Malala Yousafzai and similar incidents in other parts of the world show the rise of the skinheads and militants. Analogousexpression of parochial sentiments in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East are already belying expectations from the Arab Spring. The reaction and outpouring over the English movie ‘the Innocence of Muslims’,the ‘unwarranted’ cartoons and paintings of religious figures, or the arrest of Assem Trivedi for misrepresentation of the national emblem under 124A of IPC do give an indication of the crooked priorities we have. Without going into the rights and wrongs of these incidents, one can definitely say that we have much better and greater issues to occupy ourselves with than these trifles.

            One finds these eventsshocking and surprising more so at a time when there are many agencies and governments across the worldlooking for alien life on other planets. While we still have not learnt to organize human life in consonance with our own norms and standards of civilized life, we are desperate about expanding the horizons of our epistemology and ontology beyond this planet. We definitely have no moral right to look for alien life on other planets when we stubbornly refuse to come to terms with the aliens (read foreigners and people from other castes, communities, regions, religions et al) from our own Blue Planet.

            At a time when we should be busy resolving our instant problems stemming from a weak economy, problems of illegal cross-border migrations, settling all intractable issues relating to our state-building, problems of chronic poverty and societal inegalitarianism, unemployment, illiteracy, female foeticide, environmental degradation, looming hydrological andenergy crisis and what not, we are preoccupied with completely negative and unproductive issues. The prophets of doom are already working overtime a la Selig Harrison to predict a balkanization of the Indian nation in no time. We definitely need to rethink our priorities otherwise we shall soon meet a fate that none of us would ever desire.

           

            One just hopes that it all turns out to be a passing phase. We had better first resolve thehydra-headed problems like poverty, illiteracy and unemployment otherwise we shall continue to receive the images of around 8000 men and women of Peoples’ Movement against Nuclear Energy and against Koodankulam nuclear plant in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu being booked under article 124A of the Indian Constitution on charges of sedition or the sightof a‘Jal Satyagraha’ in Khandwa, MP. As per the findings ofthe Pew Research Foundation, the confidence of the Indian public in the direction and future economic growth of their country has already declined compared to what it was just a year back. We definitely can do better than what we are doing as a state and as a nation, more so when we aspire to be a great power. However, with small mindset and petty thinking, we can never hope to play a larger than life role on the global stage.