The Brave New World: India- a Nation in Transition.

The Brave New World: India- a Nation in Transition.

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD: INDIA- A NATION IN TRANSITION.

One of the most influential doctrines in Western Europe since the late eighteenth century is that all humans are divided into groups called ‘nations’. India is one such nation where multifarious ethnicities converge into a unified psychological consciousness. A nation is both a cultural and political phenomenon. Moreover, we now realize that the ‘nation’ is not a primordial category, fixed and unchanging, rather it is the product of a specific historical moment. Anshuman Mondal in his book Nationalism and Post-Colonial Identity defines the nation “as a bond ‘embedded in history’ through common myths, symbols, narratives and other cultural forms, all of which enable ‘a people’ to recognize itself as a commonality as opposed to others who do not have access to this fund of historical memories”. The modern nation in fact is a politicization of the cultural community. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “a nation, in the sense of the political and economic union of a people, is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose.” Therefore, the coinage of the term ‘nation’ is both inclusive and exclusive as those opposed to this aspect of commonality becomes ‘the other’ or the threat.

For many years the British Empire was perceived as this ‘other’ by common knowledge. It was the tyrannical colonizer who oppressed the natives and occupied the central position thereby marginalizing the natives. It was in and around this time that our countrymen rose up in arms to challenge the centre thereby finally destabilizing the entire power structure. But surprisingly, even sixty years after the attainment of our Independence absolute freedom or purna-swaraj has turned into a distant dream. Though free from the clutches of the colonizer, India today is a cluster of nations within a nation. It is a nation which is threatened by extreme forms of communalism, corruption in politics, and a...

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