The Beatles, maybe just a little high (hey, it was 1967), told us “There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be/It's easy/All you need is love…”
Perhaps. I do admit to being a fan of flower power. But today, aren’t we as a people, socially and politically, rather more into hate than into love? Just a few hours spent scrolling through social media comments suggests that we’re a nation of trolls and haters. And politically, it’s been apparent for the last several years that we are polarised by hatred -- a nation of nationalists versus anti-nationals.
Famous scholars like Benedict Anderson used to debate the role of powerful emotions like love and hate within ideas of the nation, nation formation, and nationalism. And decades prior to these academic debates, India had its own vibrant, rival conceptions of the nature of the nation, forwarded by leading intellectual political practitioners from across the full breadth of the political spectrum, from anarchist to totalitarian.
Of course, we’ve long heard encomiums to the love-lofted ideas of Gandhi on the nation, and, given its totally unfulfilled promise, the last decade has rightfully elicited increased attention to the less utopian — but still fraternity/maitri-centred — vision of Babasaheb Ambedkar. But there are other authors and positions that our leading intelligentsia have tended to altogether ignore, or have only evoked in scorn. The thing is, it seems to be exactly these academically marginalised conceptions of the nation that grab and hold the political imagination of a majority of our fellow citizens. We are inevitably going to have to hold our noses and dwell alongside some of their ideas as well.
We could cite the example of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya here. Upadhyaya obviously has his champions on the right, but he has never been absolutely assimilated into the saffron nationalist pantheon where the likes of V D Savarkar and M S Golwalkar rest. If the latter two are like the OG haters, the founding-fathers of polarisation politics — for with them you are either loved or hated, friend or enemy — with Upadhyaya, things are less about in-grouping and out-grouping.
Upadhyaya anchored participation in the nation within the vague realm of ideas, and ideas always remain subject to legitimate debate. While still largely reactionary, Upadhyaya’s conception afforded a certain flexibility with respect to national inclusion that remains unavailable to more polarising nationalist thought, grounding national membership in exclusionary categories like ethnicity, region, religion, or language — what the Nazis liked to refer to as ‘Blood and Soil’.
What cements the national bond between us today? Ordinary Indians continue to lose their lives on account of exclusionary categories like caste and religion. Sometimes from individual suicide, other times from mass pogrom. Every such incident makes us wonder anew: will we never be able to achieve consensus about inclusive national belonging?
Hatred is hot; it rallies crowds, and it tends to motivate more people more passionately than love and other such positive, but colder, concepts. Similarly, religion rallies more vehemence, and weaponisable obedience, than secularism ever will. Just the same, nationalism is hotter than constitutional patriotism, a truly frigid notion. The real challenge that faces us is this heat, this passion, emotion, which always falls naturally towards the right. We thus find ourselves fighting against the currents of natural passions when we seek to ignite mass support behind inclusive constitutional ideas as opposed to exclusive ethno-nationalist ones.
Can cold constitutional values such as fraternity or secularism ever quell the rage that hatred and nationalism have fomented in our politics and society, and chill the propensity towards violence?
Liberal-minded scholars often posit that constitutional patriotism can promote the interests of everyone. But any random WhatsApp group belies that claim. What we need, by contrast, is to imitate the affective capacity of the exclusivist orientation of nationalism with an equally affective enthusiasm for the welfare of our fellow citizens. And yes, what that basically means is -- love: “Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time/It's easy/All you need is love.”
The only problem is that you may have to be as psychedelic as John Lennon to believe it.
Peace out.