Before starting my thought, let me seek a caveat here. When I say Nationalism I am using the word interchangeably with Patriotism – to my limited understanding they mean the same – my heart beats for India.
Having set to rest this debate, at least in my head, let me turn to the paradox. How do we identify a nation? Physically we do so with the help of longitude and latitude that describes the area defined on a map. Emotionally we describe it as a culture or their collection that envelops language, cuisine, attire, customs, beliefs, and many more variables.
What unifies us is the law of the land. In our case it is the Constitution. Actually it is the Preamble of the Constitution – document that lays out the ethos of the region called India. Based on this ethos a voluminous document was drafted laying out guidelines for a civil society. Those who drafted it knew that it was too big a document for individual consumption that is essential to lead a worthy life.
However commit to a life as defined in the Preamble is far easier, for obvious reasons. It has just four keywords – Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Adhering to these will automatically lead to a unified entity with a level of integrity that is never compromised.
Now comes the paradox. Claiming to know a bigger entity without first recognising its many smaller parts is not easy. It is a bit like learning a new recipe without knowing the ingredients. Or figuring out a complex math problem with little understanding of the numericals. Maybe learning literature without knowing alphabets.
So the first step and possibly easiest one is to start from the beginning. The house or home comprising four walls is the smallest unit of a democratic institution. Do we understand our family well enough? The next such unit can be our Street, then our Colony, our Ward, our Panchayat or its city equivalent, the State and then finally the Nation.
Without having a nodding knowledge of each of these units there is no way we can even claim to get the Big Picture. Even Gandhiji did an extensive journey of Satyagraha before he plunged himself into Nation building. And this is the paradox of Nationalism Paradox. To get to this point we must first seek to know all the smaller parts. Accept our ignorance for that alone leads us to knowledge. To seek light we must first accept darkness.
As we become aware of the diversity that is the sole indentifier of humanity, so will our ability to accept it as the ultimate reality or Param Satya. This acceptance would result in a broadening of our narrow horizons of being an individual to being a collective – smallest at first but growing all the time till it envelops the entire nation. And when we get to this point we may just begin to see other nations too as part of the same societal structure, eventually leading us to Vadudhaiva Kutumbakam.
And so it is that the first step to overcome the Paradox of Nationalism is to accept it. We are diverse, we are different, we are unique. And yet we are together. And together we commit to uphold the Preamble of the Constitution.
Jai Hind
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