Defined as an ‘imagined community’ by Benedict Anderson, nation can be understood as a feeling of belonging to a common legacy and, at the same time, possessing commonalities in the present. And thus, nationalism should essentially mean loyalty towards one’s nationality. This was true when the nation-states first emerged in Western Europe, yielding a sovereign derived from a common consensus. The idea of nation can be said to have been premised on the idea of achieving cooperation and imparting a feeling of responsibility towards ‘others’ within a conscious boundary. It never implied a separation of this unit of cooperative-action from other similar or dissimilar units. Using the terminology of Hegel[i], it was meant to eliminate “universal egoism” from the civil society and replace it with “universal altruism”. Nationalism was a powerful idea which had the potential of transforming heterogeneous consciousness into a homogenous one. This power was overused and even misused by the edifice of a political party, which had a more or less contemporary emergence, to achieve a unified consciousness by creating a myth of a common legacy. This found an expression in the form of party-guided nation-building process in all state-nations where the party built a nation to suit itself. These nations are essentially guided by a political ideology which has achieved an authority similar to that of a legacy. This is exactly what we see in Hindutva-nationalism for example. The state-nations are a political unit founded on suppressed nationalities. The outcome of this adulteration in the concept of nationalism was a paradoxical understanding of the idea which was obviously not consistent with the original concept. The contradictions can best be seen in two by-products. Firstly, as pointed out by W.O. Conner[ii], nationalism now means loyalty towards the government and not your nationality. On a humorous note, you are actually anti-national if you are loyal towards your original nationality. Secondly, nationalism today separates one nationality from the other which was earlier absent. There is a need to highlight the original intentions of nationalism in order to protect it from unwanted distortions. - Aditya Nayak [i] Andrew Heywood- Politics. Publisher- Palgrave Foundation. [ii] Walker Connor, "A Nation is a Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group,…”
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Ambedkar explains the use of the term ‘Scheduled Tribes’ instead of ‘Adivasis’ or other suggested terms by asserting that “the word Adiwasi is really a general term, which has no specific legal dejure connotation, whereas the word ‘Scheduled Tribes’ has a fixed meaning, because it enumerates the tribes…”[i] his well-intentioned approach is clear from his rights-based negotiation for the tribals. But the problem lies in his way of perceiving the tribal existence. Ambedkar’s perception of tribals will qualify as racist and prejudiced as apparent from his arguments for “civilising the savages” and his impression of tribals leading the life of “hereditary animals”. Ambedkar’s ideas of ‘emancipation’ clearly had some roots in the Victorian morality or the attainment of it. He was also influenced by the western ideas of rationality and reason. Perceiving the tribals in such a manner, he was ignorant of the tribal genius of coexisting with nature. He was judging the tribal life with his prejudiced standards. While discussing the issue of proportional representation, Ambedkar says that “[T]he Aboriginal Tribes have not as yet developed any political sense to make the best use of their political opportunities and they may easily become mere instruments in the hands either of a majority or a minority and thereby disturb the balance without doing any good to themselves…”[ii] To some extent, Ambedkar, thus had a vision of incorporating the tribals in the rest of ‘India’. People have had disagreements with his vision as they argued for tribal autonomy, whereby the tribals would be at liberty to develop themselves according to their genius and culture. Moreover, he has viewed tribals as a potential instrument, thus demeaning the value of their identity as a group or even as a community. - Aditya Nayak [i] Madavi L. K., (marathi), swatantra bharatatil adivasinchi swaytate chi chalval, 1998, publ. Mul Nivasi Mukti Manch Nagpur [ii] Ambedkar B.R., “Annihilation of Caste” page-248; publisher- Navyana ; year-2014 |
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February 2017
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