Nationalism was violent then, it is violent now. It has always been like that. What has changed is that the Modi government has cleverly masked the violence and presented it as a way of living, says Soumabrata Chatterjee.
“Only those who are prepared to be killed themselves should kill others”
Lelouch Vi Brittania, Code Geass
The quote … it’s interesting, isn’t it? It comes at a time when this young imperialist chap decided to turn against his native country in order to emancipate Japan, which was reeling in servile bondage under England. This moment in the anime becomes significant in so far as it sustains this master-slave dialectic and introduces it into even minute power-play positions. The gift of commanding others to follow his will, narcissistically delicious as it may sound, bestowed on this young schoolfellow, contained within itself the impulse to lose control of oneself. In the process of commanding the other, you lose the sense of raw, untainted self that you boasted of at an earlier point. And then all hell breaks loose.
Nationalism has never been natural, ever in its history, and the writing of that history in paper pieces lost and found. It has always been a construct, not a fiction, but a construct nonetheless, prone to decay, rotting desires, revolting numbers and a mind-numbing silence.
I believe that the project of nationalism also brings with it such wonders and misfortunes bundled together in an inseparable chain of causality. Nationalism has never been natural, ever in its history, and the writing of that history in paper pieces lost and found. It has always been a construct, not a fiction, but a construct nonetheless, prone to decay, rotting desires, revolting numbers and a mind-numbing silence. Then its starts again, like an oft-oiled machine, stuttering at first and mumbling its way through infancy and then rising up its ugly head again to devour all those who shout out the names of their native Gods as they hack those that have forgotten and sinned. In its early history, in India at least, the pride of the nation put the woman’s question and rights far behind and right into the household where it served its time in quiet preparation for an outburst.
All these wars were fought under the banner of minority nationalism or the majority trying to push everything under the carpet or the effective delegitimation of self-determination movements in order to project an undivided India.
Next was the caste issue, which was never considered an issue after all. “Hush!” said them (who shall not be named and who I share a history with in terms of my lineage) and all questions were put to rest. The Hindi-Urdu debate was fought on unusual terms and both lost really. Two countries (one, Pak and the other, Mysore Pak!) were formed and apparently their histories created a buffer state called Bangladesh whom we took turns to intimidate and inflict pain upon. They did it in the late 60s leading up to the Bangladesh liberation war and our state government took immense pleasure in sanitising refugees which got hushed up under environmental humanism. All these wars were fought under the banner of minority nationalism or the majority trying to push everything under the carpet or the effective delegitimation of self-determination movements in order to project an undivided India. In fact, people like Markandey Katju still predict the rise of Hindostan with all its Pak components.
One thing that connects every kind of nationalistic project is the appeal to dissolve the civil society of its pungent, pack-a-punch flavour and transform it into a humble, stern, mobilisation-worthy component. All that is so cosy to the third world middle class pseudo-intellectual is the art of just being lazy, whiling our time away, thinking, writing and watching films that talk of desire and politics and the path between. The nationalist project differs from that self-indulgent laziness; it calls for definite action, a blunt-force trauma like affect cutting through multiple forms of defence and practicing self-control at the same time. Remember how Gandhi got angry after Chauri-Chaura?
Having said that, now nationalism has become an undesirable commodity of sorts, an un-leftist, an un-liberal (and therefore un-cool regarding one and many) impulse that just legitimises violence against minorities and makes the army into a sacrificial lamb of sorts whenever anybody tries to talk about civil dissent.
The recent verdict regarding the national anthem being played out with the national flag being displayed on screen reeks of the same impulse that drives nationalists to an ill-gotten orgasmic pleasure. But there has never been in the history of nationalism a complete disavowal of the public and its sentiments at large. It has been that the public, as a whole, has come up with newer forms of belonging, strategies of togetherness without dissolving their own community-based identities, and especially innovative ways of dissent. However, I have never been a fan of nationalism per se simply because it always entailed a process of driving disapproving voices to the ground in the name of a united blah-blah-blah! Having said that, now nationalism has become an undesirable commodity of sorts, an un-leftist, an un-liberal (and therefore un-cool regarding one and many) impulse that just legitimises violence against minorities and makes the army into a sacrificial lamb of sorts whenever anybody tries to talk about civil dissent. Personally I don’t mind nationalism to be considered as uncouth and I couldn’t care less. But I am interested in the right-left binary, which has come to be the face of such a politics.
There is a section which reads Marx and Ambedkar and Foucault (maybe for comic relief because they never seem to understand how much this guy cut through traditional Marxist ideologies and the idea of history itself) and drop in on discussions regarding polity and culture as this underground entity rising up to the surface as molten lava-esque ideological force and for them ‘patriotism’ is probably a more beneficial word because it contains the seed of dissent. And then there are these moronic, ‘Vedically’ impaired bhakts who keep on talking about the motherland as if she were an object herself. Anything that’s labour-related and working class struggles is the former. And the capitalist stooges and Chetan Bhagat readers are the next. I am not saying that such a divide exists, but that such a divide has been given impetus. If you disagree with such a divide look into the interviews of Ram Madhav, Harvinder Kaur Chowdhury, or even Subramanium Swamy, Madhu Kiswar or Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga. Not that they are quite informative but well you can gauge some things out.
But let’s not even think about the lower middle class, the refugees who do not have bank accounts, the small businesses, and the mothers who keep money away from their alcoholic abusive husbands, or even daily labourers. Let’s think about the fact that anytime the government wishes to do anything good it expects the populace to go through hell and back. It’s a poor example of what a welfare state should be.
A few days ago, I went with my father to the passport office in West Bengal to get a new passport done and all the way I kept on bothering regarding questions about demonetisation and stuff. Since I am a fairly stereotypical armchair wannabe political analyst (most are, others just look different in nice Facebook photos) I wanted to query how the common man was reeling under the pressure of such an ordeal. It was mayhem in a small
mofussil like Serampore where the cashless economy goes so far as our
para Santa Claus’s decrepit body. Now he made a weird point that he had heard at the
adda in the chaiwallah store.
The point was that people need to understand and acknowledge this pain and suffering in order to accept the larger good that’s going to come out of demonetisation. This is a weird Greek tragedy kind of argument where you can easily imagine a person like Anurag Kashyap making a film out of it with people moving around in dark mock-sunglasses and no make-up and EDM-inspired background music. That is truly astonishing, right? But let’s not even think about the lower middle class, the refugees who do not have bank accounts, the small businesses, and the mothers who keep money away from their alcoholic abusive husbands, or even daily labourers.
Let’s think about the fact that anytime the government wishes to do anything good it expects the populace to go through hell and back. It’s a poor example of what a welfare state should be.
The cinema halls and this new rule can be read under such circumstances. I happen to frequent one of the few single screen theatres (in Kolkata) during a Salman Khan film release or even a SRK film in Serampore where the seats are often riddled with tiny ants and I remember how interactive those sessions used to be. Even though they bordered on the patriarchal domain most of the times, there used be these hordes of people shouting, clapping, whistling and even sometimes dancing at the most inane, sexist or ludicrous moments on screen. It was like an uninhibited performance of the body where the cultures of popular cinema found its resonance. While those might not be affected completely, there is always the eagerness before the start of a film which will be destroyed by this statist intervention which wants us to stare at the national flag in stern, disciplined union when we just want to sit and talk sweet nothings into our partners’ ears or look at people around and make gaudy jokes if we are in a huge group of friends.
While the multitudes yet rise another time to the clarion call of defending (actually not) their pride of being an Indian they forget to learn that the attack on the ‘other’ often result in the destruction of the self.
Watching a film at a multiplex has already taken away most of that privilege, to now overburden that spirit of cheap, rowdy, naughty fun with the idea of being a proud citizen of India is too much really. It’s overkill basically. And then people get arrested for it and we have to read status updates regarding how people didn’t stand up for the anthem and yet got away with it. That is too mundane I guess to my argument but if you look at the early 90s when this whole resurgence of nationalism happened you would understand that right from the force of liberalisation to this demonetisation we haven’t really changed that much. The 90s politics ranged between the Ramjanmabhoomi movement and the Mandal commission implementation whereby the former led to the Babri Masjid demolition. The nationalism was violent then, it is violent now. It has always been like that. What has changed is that the Modi government has cleverly masked the violence and presented it as a way of living (Read Art of living!) While the multitudes yet rise another time to the clarion call of defending (actually not) their pride of being an Indian they forget to learn that the attack on the ‘other’ often result in the destruction of the self.
Image via www.sachtimes.com
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