India: A Geographic expression?

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India: A Geographic expression?

 

"India is just a geographic expression. It is only the British who

united us. We aren't even one nation - for a nation must have one

language, one religion, one race." How often we hear that hurled at

us!

 

Of some 180 countries in the world, notes Eric J. Hobsbawm, one of

the world's foremost scholars on nationalism, not many more than a

dozen states can plausibly claim that their citizens coincide in any

real sense with a single ethnic or linguistic group."

 

Little do people know that the expression - "a geographic

expression" - is Count Metternich's (1773-1859) description. Not of

India, but of Germany! It is only in 1871 that 300 separate and

practically independent feuding states and principalities were

welded into one "Germany." Today "geographic expression" is a

country and its reunification is hailed by our intellectuals as the

erasing away of an artificial partition. But we, Indians have no

business continuing as one!

 

A nation is one the people of which are from a common race? The

Kings and Queens of England are a symbol of the oneness of that

country - most certainly for the educated Indians. They would be

surprised to read, that "...there has not been an 'English' dynasty

ruling in London since the 11th century to read that Prince Albert,

Victoria's consort, wrote to the King of Prussia as a German...,"

that it was only the anti-German sentiment which swept England

during the First World War which forced "the British royal family to

change the venerable dynastic name to Guelph for the less German-

sounding Windsor"

 

Is a nation one the people of which have a common religion? Again

the criterion does not hold. Christian states have been fighting

each other since they adopted Christianity. The umma of Islam are

killing each other to our day - West Pakistanis killing the Mohajirs

in Pakistan, the Iranis and Iraqis killing each other, the Afghans -

all of one religion.

 

Is a nation one whose people have one language? Again Hobsbawn gives

a number of examples. Philippines we learn is "a land of hundred

tongues but not a single language." The new nation of Pakistan - did

not have a common language - it had Urdu, Pushto, Baluchi, Sindhi,

Punjabi, Bengali. It did not have a common history. Its people did

not constitute a common race.

 

And yet we are told that Indians have no business to continue as one!

 

(source: A Secular Agenda: For saving our country, For welding it -

By Arun Shourie p. 3-7). (please refer to E. J. Hobsbawm - Nations

and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth and Reality Cambridge

1990).

 

Note: There has been an often repeated prediction of

the "balkanisation" of India, and that India was an artificial

nation created by the British and that it would inevitably break up.

But India is still intact and has celebrated 50 years of freedom

because of its democracy and pluralism. Till recently, American

foreign policy agencies made no secret of their designs on India's

unity. When she was US ambassador to the UN, Mrs. Jean Kirkpatrick

once said that "the break-up of India is one of the goals of the

American foreign policy." Patrick Moynihan, who had held the same

job, said more recently, "After the break-up of the Soviet Union,

the artificial state India is also bound to break up."

 

(source: Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar - By Koenraad Elst

p. 59-60).

 

Neither Britain nor the USA wanted the creation of a large state

like India. Nor were they in favor of a strong and powerful India.

Look at the reaction of the white members of the Commonwealth to

Pokhran II! And let us not forget that both the USA and the UK

supported the independent movement of the Nagas and Sikh separatism.

Even as late as 1995, the Labor Party passed a resolution in which

it spoke of Kashmir as separate from India and supported a UN

plebiscite. Gujral was so enraged that he called Britain "a third

rate power."

 

(source: Cut the cord that ties India to Commonwealth - By M.S.N.

Menon - TribuneIndia.com).

 

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) scholar and late curator at the

Boston Museum, has observed the following about Indian Nationality:

 

Two essentials of nationality there are - a geographical unity, and

a common historic evolution or culture. These two India possesses

superabundantly.

 

The fact of India's geographical unity is apparent on the map, and

is never, I think, disputed. The idea of social unity has been

grasped more than once by individual rulers, - Chandragupta, Asoka,

and Vikramaditya. It was recognized before the Mahabharata was

written; when Yudhishtira performed the Rajasuya sacrifice on the

occasion of his inauguration as sovereign, a great assembly was

held, and to this assembly came Subala (King of Gandhara), etc...and

others from the extreme south and north (Dravida, Lanka and

Kashmir). No one can say that any such idea as that of a Federated

States of India is altogether foreign to the Indian mind. It is for

nothing that India's sacred shrines are many and far apart; that one

who would visit more than one or two of these must pass over

hundreds of miles of Indian soil? Is the passionate adoration of the

Indian people for the Ganges thrown away? How much is involved is

such phrases as 'The Seven Great Rivers' (of India)!

 

Om gange cha yamune chaiva godavari, sarasvati

narmade, sindhu kaveri jale smin sannidhim kuru

 

"Hail! O ye Ganges, Jamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada,

Sindhu and Kaveri, come and approach these waters."

 

(source: Essays on National Idealism - By Ananda K. Coomraswamy

Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.1981 p. 7-8).

 

The most mischievous statement we have of the claim that India has

no unity, it is not a nation, were made by the British. However,

later, Sir Ramsey Macdonald, at one time Premier declares that India

is one in absolutely every sense of the word.

 

"Political and religious traditions have also welded it into one

Indian consciousness. This spiritual unity dates from very early

times in Indian culture."

 

There is no greater uniting force known among people and nations in

the world than religion. This applies with pre-eminent emphasis to

India.

 

(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - Rev. Jabez T.

Sunderland p. 238-289. For more please refer to chapter on European

Imperialism