Why should nationalism be a bad word?

Two statements lit bigger-than-usual bushfires of outrage on social media this week. A web poll by Outlook magazine started one by asking readers - right in the middle of an outstanding World Cup campaign so far by India - "Should India win the World Cup?"

It would have been shrugged off as an imbecile hack's handiwork had it not quoted sociologist Ashis Nandy saying: "Winning the World Cup might just make India's macho and hyper masculine nationalism more intense…the fear is that majoritarian nationalism will become more aggressive."

Anti-Indian

The second statement was by Ujjwal Nikam, the public prosecutor in the 26/11 Mumbai attack case. He admitted that what he had famously said during Ajmal Kasab's trial on the terrorist asking for biryani in his prison was not true. What appalled the nation as brazen appeasement towards a community by serving the worst anti-Indian the delicacy of the nawabs was, in fact, a lie. The two unrelated statements of Nandy and Nikam have a strong, underlying theme: Nationalism.

No word has lately been more magnetic to many and disturbing for some. Narendra Modi has changed the nation's political course uncorking the genie sleeping inside this one word, while those opposed to him did not know how to banish the word or reclaim it. Is nationalism a bad word? In his books and essays, Nandy has maintained that it stems from a deep sense of inferiority and fear and that is a western construct unfit for us, but which we blindly emulate. Both it is not.

Modern nationalism may have originated in Europe, but Asian nations have drawn and grown from it. In fact, nationalism transformed 18th- and 19-century Europe from a set of religious and dynastic allegiances to proud, prosperous, developed nations.

Nationalism

Not inferiority and fear, but the pride of a people bound by culture and the ideas of Rousseau, Hegel and Herder drove the chariot of nationalism through Europe. Not to mention the revolutionary Code civil des Français or the Napoleonic Code, which took away privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion and underlined merit in jobs.

Just as nationalism, in Hegel's words, cemented modern societies in Europe, it was bringing together societies from America to Asia. What would China without Mao or Singapore with Lee Kuan Yew and their aggressive nationalism look like? Why shouldn't India be proud as a nation, use that tremendous force to shape a robust economy and a more just society?

Which brings us to the nature of nationalism we must choose and why Nikam's lie is disturbing. It whipped up nationalism by innuendo. It led the majority to believe that the state - already facing some very real and some imagined allegations of minority appeasement - was soft on Kasab because Muslims identified with him.

That is dangerous. That is why Muslims like Farzana Versey are saying on Twitter: "Finally, we can heave a sigh of relief and dissociate from the perennially lusting for biryani Muslims." Or journalist Prayag Akbar who tweeted: "No one saying Kasab was innocent. But a public prosecutor deliberately used an anti-Muslim trope to generate hysteria."

There ought to be checks on the nature of nationalism, and intellectuals must have the space to speak out against it. Else we will have the Germany and Italy of the 1930s. But those intellectuals should have the courage to be honest. They can't keep targeting and preaching to one group and look the other way with others when it is dangerous to tell the truth or fashionable and rewarding to not tell it or lie.

Outrage

Our intellectuals have failed us in this. Which is why the virulent outrage against them on social media, mainly from the "nationalists". Much of hyper-nationalism is a reaction to dishonesty of India's public intellectuals. And so, the cricket team's win is not the danger (interestingly, the finest Indian bowler this World Cup is a Muslim, Mohammed Shami, and the nation is hysterically celebrating that). The balkanisation of our minds is.