One, then, needs to ask the Indian left a difficult question at this hour. And, that question is, why do the Indian leftists, who have, so far, predicated their politics upon interrogations of mainstream Indian nationalisms, during this specific historical moment, feel this deep urge to showcase their patriotic credentials by embracing nationalist symbols? One can possibly guess. The manner in which the tags  of “anti-national” and “sedition” have been used by the current regime, to hound and put the leftists behind bars, has thrust the leftist critique of nationalism within a precarious position. Indeed, it puts the onus of dispelling the charge of being “anti-nationals” on the left itself. In doing so, what the rhetoric of “anti-national” and “sedition” also does is to draw strictly circumscribed spaces within which popular politics, including those of the left, continue to get encircled. The resistance politics of the era, thus, remain strictly tied to a “national/anti-national” dyad, foregoing the other more burning political questions, writes Nandini Dhar.

For much of my adult life, I haven’t really cared about days like August 15 and January 26. They seemed inconsequential to my life and politics. By and large, I considered such dates to be by-products of a state-sponsored nationalism, imposed from above, a state attempting to impose its own calendar of a contentious nationalism, without caring for the opinions of the majority of its people. Such attempts by the state to fashion a “national” and “nationalist” calendar, I would have argued, was antithetical to my own political beliefs. In some ways, my indifference to dates such as August 15 and January 26 has mirrored the radical-left apathy to such state-stipulated dates, when patriotism needed to be mandatorily performed. Such political sentiments probably had their genesis in the 1940s slogan coined by the Indian left, “Desh abhi tak bhukha hai/Yeh Azadi jhoota hai” (The country is still hungry/ This independence is a sham). Although, its own relationship to the more “mainstream” Indian nationalism remained contentious, the Indian left of the 1940s, was, by no means, unique in such formulations. The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, too, after all, had characterized the political state of the nations’ acquiring their “sovereignty” from European imperial nations such as England and France, “flag independence.” In other words, if the period between 1940s and 1970s in global history was dominated amongst other things, by the decolonization movements, those very movements also brought with them vigorous debates about nationalism. In none of these newly-independent nations, nationalism was a homogenous formation. And, India was no exception. Beginning from the mid-nineteenth century, the Indian political formations have almost always been constituted by complicated debates on nationalism, too many of which would probably earn their proponents the epithet “anti-national” today. It is impossible to go through such debates in any depth within the space of this single essay. Neither is my objective here to do so.

However, even without any political critique of the state-sponsored Indian nationalism, and the ways in which the latter is performed in state-sponsored events on those two days, the people, by and large, had spent those two days and other significant “national” days as holidays, as time marked by leisure, as a respite from one’s busy work-schedule, without much political meaning attached to them. To put it simply, the political edge of those dates had been lost within the Indian mainland. The nationalist calendar, through its deep insertion into our lives, had lost their meaning in any deliberate, conscious kind of a way. It had become normalized. Of course, this is not at all the case in regions such as Kashmir and the Northeast. Where both August 15 and January 26, come with increasing everyday security, surveillance and terror, and are looked upon with trepidation by the inhabitants.

However, the coming into power of the Modi-Shah regime has transformed that culture of nationalist normalization in the Indian political landscape. For the last two years, beginning with the anti-NRC movement, the “national” days – such as August 15 and January 26 – have gained a kind of renewed significance. For example, now two years in a row, January 26, the Republic Day of India, has witnessed huge popular mobilizations. In 2020, huge crowds had organized assemblies almost everywhere in the nation, demanding repealing of the NRC-NPR-CAA, a tradition that was continued by the declaration of the Tractor Rally in Delhi by the protesting farmers on the Singhu and Tikri borders in 2021. It is not impossible to claim that for the first time in the nation’s history, the Republic Day is being claimed by the people, a phenomenon that demands both attention and analysis.

To begin with, one needs to note, through this popular construction of the nation’s Republic Day as the chosen day for exceptional, spectacular performance, the nationalist symbols, which had historically become the almost exclusive property of the state, are being popularly defined, re-defined and claimed. One can even state, a battle is being lodged here over such symbols between the people and the state, the people and the current regime. However, such a phenomenon also puts a kind of political pressure on the Indian radical-left imaginary, whose relationship to such symbols of nationalism had predominantly been one of rejection, alienation, conscious distancing, often, translated into apathy in everyday life. Yet, during this current moment of anti-state popular political mobilizations within the nation, there is no space for such apathy. Since almost all of the anti-state mobilizations have depended heavily on their deployment of the symbols of nationalism and the rhetoric of national belonging and loyalty to the nation, participation in these movements means one has to align oneself with their purported nationalism too.

For example, the radical-left in India, or the left at large, did not necessarily ask, why January 26^th has to be the day for the spectacular Tractor Rally this year, especially since the movement is ultimately about economic and food security issues. Couldn’t have any other day sufficed? As such, no one should be surprised at the fact that January 26 had been chosen by the protesting farmers as the day for a kind of intensified action. The planned tractor rally, to be precise, was a performance. A counter-performance, so to say. A counter-performance as against the state’s performance of might, the one we witness every year as ordinary citizens. If the state’s Republic Day parade is meant to inspire awe in the minds of the ordinary citizen, the Tractor Rally by the protesting farmers was meant to inspire awe in the mind of the state and the regime. It was supposed to be a spectacle of resistance, to be precise. A spectacle which initiates a debate, a counterclaim. A spectacle which asks, whose nation is it, whose nationalism.

But, it would be wrong to limit this spectacle, this performance only to a war between symbols. Beneath this war of symbols, as we have come to know as a nation, for the last two months, is the question of lives and livelihoods. Beneath this theatre of warring spectacles, is the question of corporate monopoly over food grains. Beneath this clash between performance and counter-performance, is the question of the World Bank and IMF dictats. And because this is not merely a battle over symbols, we have also witnessed the two-month long claiming of space. What are we to call the two-month long assemblies at Singhu, Tikri and Ghaziabad borders? Spectacles? Yes, they are. Popular assemblies? Yes, they are. A new form of emerging anti-fascist politics? Yes, it is. And, the warring community of this popular assembly, in spite of being formed through economic demands, has not chosen the historic red flag of the left, which, as we believe, is the flag of the toiling masses. Yes, there have been red flags in the assemblies at the borders, but they have existed alongside the tri-colour and in some instances, the farmers’ own yellow and green flag. But, by all means, the tri-colour has dominated the assemblies, a phenomenon that should lead the leftists to observe that there is an excess here, that does not quite follow the familiar leftist language of protests.

One might conclude, such excess represents a form of desperation. The desperation that makes almost everyone in a community – children, women, elderly – to leave the comforts of their homes, and squat on the roadside in the deadliest of the winters, while continuing to bathe in cold waters, and shit in makeshift toilets.  In this desperation, there is a continuity. A continuity that one might describe as a new form of anti-fascist continuity that is emerging in India. The assemblies and tents of the farmers from Punjab, Haryana and UP at the Singhu and Tikri borders, then, need to be seen as a continuation of the Muslim women’s sit-in protests, beginning from Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, which had stirred the imagination of the country only a year earlier, and had succeeded to inspire similar kinds of protests throughout the nation. The issue, then, was citizenship – the right to have access to one’s home, land and political rights. The issue, now, is livelihood and right to food security.

Yet, conspicuously, both the movements – the movement against NRC and the movement over the newly-introduced Farm Laws – have been fought through the languages of nation and nationalism. The fact that these battles have been, and are being, fought over the issues of nation and nationalism, have been manifested in the overt visibility of the tri-colour in almost all of the movemental venues. Rallies have been organized where the participants have walked with the Indian Constitution in their arms, and have performatively held it up in front of the camera. Organizations whose politics have historically been predicated upon questioning the very political foundation of nationalism, and who would have earlier waved the red flag, have waived the tri-colour in rallies and political assemblies with vengeance. The movemental counter-spectacles, beginning from the anti-NRC movement, and continuing, up till this very moment, have, then, depended upon popular reclamation of the symbols of the nation, whose ubiquitous presence, have before, marked predominantly the state-sponsored events.

The spontaneity with which this reclamation was done, is remarkable. I have, for example, personally, walked in rallies in Kolkata in the Park Circus area, where following the sit-in protest by the women, an extremely spectacular human chain was organized on January 26, 2020. I have to concede, in the four decades that I have spent in this city, on and off, I have never seen any such spontaneous assembly, attended by such huge numbers of people from all walks of life. The guiding tone of the assembly was decidedly secular, yet there were also huge numbers of attendees who had come to attend with visible embodied religious markers. The protest venue inside the Park Circus area was adorned with tricolour flags, there were balloons in saffron, white and orange, and children and women dressed in tri-colour salwar-kameezes, dupattas , burka and stoles. One can easily claim, the event unleashed a kind of popular creativity, and attained almost a carnivalesque nature, which is difficult to find in our urban radical-left events.

Undoubtedly, events such as this one marked a watershed moment in the history of the Indian nationalism. One can also possibly say, in the post-Emergency period, such popular claiming of nationalism had never happened. Yet, even as one recognizes the democratization of the nationalist symbols through such mobilizations, one has to stop and breathe and look into the phenomenon a little bit more deeply. Especially if one claims to be a leftist.

2.

There are reasons for national symbols gaining such pivotal presences in these movements. To any observer of contemporary politics in India, it becomes obvious that the current regime had used the very rhetoric of nationalism and “loyalty” to the nation to consolidate its own politics. It had carefully crafted a specific political language to institute such rhetoric within the Indian civil society. Terms such as “tukde tukde gang” and “anti-national” have been devised and unleashed within the nation’s social, political and cultural spaces to de-legitimize any of the voices that have attempted to criticize and critique the regime’s politics and policies. The RSS-BJP politics, which, as it is, thrives upon a serious political ethos of otherization, has created its political other in the figure of the “anti-national.” While, often times, the “anti-national” is a politically articulate, young, vocal Muslim person, as in the case of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and Gulfisha, it can also include anyone from a human rights activist, lawyer, feminist, liberal, Marxist, or a labour leader. Really, after a point, it does not matter.

Such a strategy, obviously, had the effect of stalling certain debates nationally. But, the impact of such a strategy had even more of a far-reaching result than a mere stalling of discussions. The rhetoric of the anti-national of the current regime has led to the imprisonment of several activists, lawyers, journalists and students, through the deployment of the draconian laws, such as UAPA. Of course, one can’t blame the RSS-BJP combine solely for the existence of such laws. After all, these draconian laws and measures are all the brainchildren of the erstwhile Congress government, yet, the frequency with which these laws have been applied to the regime’s critics, is somewhat unprecedented in the nation’s mainland. The articulations which have often led to such deployment of UAPA, in most other circumstances, would not have amounted to treason and sedition by any means, if looked through the prism of legality. If you want an example, listen to the “incriminating” speech by Umar Khalid, which led to his arrest.

Simply put, the marking of certain individuals as “anti-nationals” and the successive handing out of the UAPAs have become the sites upon which the current regime has constructed its own version of fascist spectacularity. There is nothing surprising in this per se. Beginning from the Ratha Yatra that pre-dated the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, a significant element of the RSS-BJP politics had always been predicated upon the creation of spectacles.

There is, then, a material reason to hold onto the ideas of “nation”, “nationalism” and “national loyalty” within the current anti-fascist struggles in India. Nationalism, thus, almost becomes a site to be reclaimed by the masses from them – the evil fascists. Indeed, there is an uncomfortable reality behind this reclamation. The uncomfortable reality that will take us back to the foundational anti-Muslim communalism that constitutes one of the ideological bedrocks of this nation. The fact that even without the BJP in governmental power, the Muslims have been repeatedly asked to prove their loyalty to the territorial unit that constitutes the nation of India. The fact that such demands for Muslim loyalty, emerged in otherwise “benign” situations like a cricket match between India and Pakistan, watching of a Bollywood film, listening to a song, making it almost impossible for a Muslim person to resort to a comeback. That fact that such demands for Muslim loyalty, emerged in not-so-very benign situations, like wars between India and Pakistan, or when discussing the conflict in Kashmir, making a Muslim person forever grapple with the state-created fiction that every Muslim is, ultimately, a “jihadist” or a “terrorist.”

Such situations emerged within families and neighbourhoods. They reared their heads within otherwise innocent banters amongst friends and colleagues. It is also possibly not an accident that save and except the radical-leftists, the highest number of those arrested in India under UAPA, are indeed Muslims. In other words, what I am trying to say is this. The Hindutva fascist ideology in India, like fascisms elsewhere, has developed manipulating the social basis of discrimination and otherization embedded within the histories of a particular society. The Hindutva fascist organizations have consistently worked upon those bases, have intensified the biases and the contradictions thus created, have torn off all the bandages which otherwise often keep the social conflicts in check, and create a certain kind of hesitation in being openly and rabidly communal, racist or casteist. Social discrimination is also legitimized and legalized, making strategic use of the state institutions, as we have seen in India with the institutionalization of love-jihad laws in BJP-ruled states.

The difference between the state and the society is, thus eradicated. The state not only legalizes all forms of social discrimination, but also makes any resistance to such, a criminal offence. In doing so, the fascist state also creates a cultural and ideological circuit where even the language of political resistance continues to encircle the categories instituted by the former. There is, then, a monopolization of political language by the fascist regime, which, through its strategic creation of the figures of the criminalized, demonized “others”, makes it extremely difficult – almost impossible – to move the discussions and political rhetoric beyond a strategy of reclamation of what has been otherized.  Political efforts are made to paint whatever or whoever the regime has painted in negative light, to represent in “positive” light. Because, that is what the politics of “reclamation” often amounts to. In that effort, a certain kind of competitive nationalism has come to occupy a central place in contemporary Indian politics. Consider, for instance, this sentence in the statement issued by Samyukta Kisan Morcha on January 27, 2021: “Farmers are the biggest nationalists and they are protector of good image of nation.” Thus, even when class is being talked about, it is to be talked about in terms of who is the “biggest” nationalist.

I have no intention to pathologize this desire to do so. There is no doubt about the fact that the ability to wave the tri-colour or to read out aloud the Preamble to the Constitution in several of the anti-NRC protests and assemblies have made people so far excluded from the nationalism’s state-sponsored form, feel immensely empowered. It also remains the case that so far, popular struggles for rights are often lodged through a nation’s existing laws, and therefore, the category of the nation cannot be wished away. The extremely ambiguous and complicated relationship that the RSS-BJP combine possesses with India’s nationalisms, including its national flag, makes this popular reclamation especially evocative and empowering.

Yet, what is often lost, in this politics of “reclamation”, is the essential political content of whatever is being reclaimed. Should we reclaim everything? Shouldn’t human societies let go of certain ideas wholestock? Shouldn’t our efforts to “reclaim” certain ideas also involve complicated discussions about transforming certain ideas so that they can better serve the interests of the people?

Unfortunately, even as the anti-fascist movements in contemporary India, have attempted to reclaim nationalism, such discussions about nationalism have been, by and large, absent. Given the contentious history of the Indian left with the Indian mainstream nationalisms, one had hoped, the spaces of the leftist movements would be the “natural” spaces for such discussions to emerge. But, nothing like that has actually happened. Instead, what happened, is quite the opposite.

3.

The reality is, the left activists and organizers, including those in the radical-left, by and large, have participated in this competitive nationalism with a certain level of enthusiasm. As a friend commented during a rally in Kolkata: “Modi r elem aachhe bolte hobe. Nakshalder haateo jatiyo pataka dhoriye dilo” (Modi, indeed, is efficient. Has made even the Naxals wave the national flag). Consider this statement by Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary of CPI (ML)-Liberation.

The very invocation of Republic Day reminds one of the parade in Delhi. But, that parade hardly ever brings up the issue of the republic itself, or the constitution. The parade is mostly an exhibition of military strength. On the other hand, in the last year or a year and half, we have seen how the mass-movements have brought into the forefront the issue of the Constitution. At Shaheen Bagh, at Singhu border, the protesting people are demanding to reclaim and rescue the Republic. This, I think, is extremely important.

A big mass movement always unleashes the creativity of the people. It is never just confined to a charter of demands. This is the first time that movements are being launched on the essence of the Constitution. Consequently, the Republic Day, too, has attained a new meaning. Before, the Republic Day was all about the paraphernalia of the event. At the beginning of our lives as political activists, much discussion used to happen around the flaws of the Constitution. And that was perfectly valid, and much-needed. But, now, the kind of state that we have, the kind of power we have on the government, who don’t even follow what’s already there in the Constitution. They are very, very keen on throwing apart the entire system. Consequently, the Preamble to the Constitution is being read aloud at many places like Shaheen Bagh. The Preamble has become the manifesto of the movement. And this is clearly a significant characteristic of contemporary times. If we fail to understand this, we would be making grave mistakes.

Note that I am not speaking about the entire constitution. I am speaking only about the Preamble. Those of us who are involved in Communist politics, who have rightfully and logically critiqued many other parts of the Constitution, have never critiqued the Preamble. The objectives that have been written about in the Constitution have become important weapons during these changed times. In reality, people are reclaiming their republic. Everywhere – from Shaheen Bagh to Singhu Border.

The same thing can be said about the national flag. In recent times, the national flag, too, has become an important symbol. On the one hand, BJP is welcoming the rapists with the national flag, rallying in favour of releasing the rapists, on the other hand, it is under this national flag that the ordinary people are assembling to protest. The farmers are entering the national capital while waving the flag from their tractors. At Shaheen Bagh, the women are waving the national flag with passion.

We leftists need to understand this phenomenon. Our classical dream would of course, remain. All the struggles are geared towards that. But, at the same time, we would also have to understand the demands of our times. We will have to be with the people in their demands, struggles and movements. That dream of changing the world has become surrounded by a nightmare. It is the task of the leftists to put a hold on this nightmare. Consequently, I don’t see this struggle as separated from that classical dream. In our human lives, there are highs and lows. The same is true for the life of a society. The Communists need to walk keeping pace with those highs and lows. They need to keep themselves relevant for the times.

(Courtesy: https://nagorik.net/…/26/republicday2021-dipankar-cpiml/). Translation from the Bangla original done by the author.

While there is much food for thought in this statement, missing from it is an actual, political discussion on nationalism. One can say, this is not surprising, given the fact that the Indian left, including those in the radical-left, have consistently failed to come up with sharp political analyses on anything really in the recent years, be it gender, caste, or even class, labour movements, trade unions, or capital. Yet, the situation in India demanded certain questions to be asked. And, the current moment, when so many ordinary people have assembled in the streets from regions one rarely associates with massive mobilizations, was the most opportune moment to ask politically difficult and contentious questions.

One needed to ask, for example, what is nationalism, per se? What is the Constitution of a nation? What is the Preamble? Who possesses the right to formulate a national constitution? What does it mean to be upholding the Constitution in every single assembly, without necessarily critically reflecting upon its foundational class, caste and gender politics? What is the relationship between the Constitution and the state? What is the relationship between class and caste and nationalism in India? Can nationalism survive without its inherent gender politics that treats women’s bodies as cultural symbols of communities and nations? What is the relationship between nationalism and the military? Can this question of nationalism’s deep implication in militarism be avoided in India, where the tri-colour had long functioned as a symbol of violence and expansionism in the nation’s cartographic margins, such as Kashmir and Northeast? And, last but not the least, can fascism be resisted through falling back upon a notion of “good nationalism” or a “better nationalism,” as has predominantly been the case in the popular anti-BJP movements so far?

Asking these questions within the spaces of the current movements would mean, one is asking certain basic political questions. Is “empowerment” an end in itself? Shouldn’t we also ask, as leftists, what is one empowering oneself to? Can empowering oneself to be included into classist, casteist, expansionist and patriarchal institutions and ideologies be really considered to be empowerment at all? I understand, asking these questions would not be easy. Raising difficult questions that often go against the grain of the movement, involves a different kind of political-emotional labour that can often be too exhausting to undertake.

Questioning nationalism as a foundational site of anti-Hindutva politics is bound to be one such difficult arena. Yet, hasn’t the relevance of the left, so far, in history, has been founded upon asking the most difficult questions? The fact that the Indian left has stopped asking such difficult questions, can, indeed, be read as a larger symptom. A symptom of a larger left inability in India to do the difficult work of political theorizing, a symptom of a larger left incapacity to turn inwards, a symptom of a larger leftist political void. Yet, without such questions being raised by the left, popular movements, especially those predicated upon reclamation of nationalist symbols and the idea of nationalism, stand the risk of ignoring and bypassing certain crucial foundational political realities. One such crucial reality happens to be the fact that all fascisms, ultimately, tend to build themselves up from within the ideas of nationalism. Arguably, then, an anti-fascist movement, worth its salt, also needs to question the very basic foundational notions about nation and nationalism.

Questions about nation and nationalism are complex. Yes, they can mobilize huge sections of the masses, as we have seen repeatedly. Which, other categories, including class and economy, fail to do so. One can argue, this is because, questions of nation and nationalism call upon issues of “common” identity and culture. Yet, upon closer examination, nationalisms reveal themselves rarely to be mere ideas about “culture” and “identity,” but material questions, which determine distribution of actual material resources, and often, in that process of material distribution, deploy notions of culture in very specific ways. One of the tasks that the Indian left needs to take upon itself is precisely this work of demystification of nationalism to the masses. Yet, as we have seen, in the course of the last one year, the Indian left has refrained itself, by and large, from undertaking that difficult political work. Instead, they have themselves, by and large, adopted the deployment of the nationalist symbols and artefacts, a phenomenon that can probably be best summed up through an old adage, “tailing after spontaneity.”

One, then, needs to ask the Indian left a difficult question at this hour. And, that question is, why do the Indian leftists, who have, so far, predicated their politics upon interrogations of mainstream Indian nationalisms, during this specific historical moment, feel this deep urge to showcase their patriotic credentials by embracing nationalist symbols? One can possibly guess. The manner in which the tags  of “anti-national” and “sedition” have been used by the current regime, to hound and put the leftists behind bars, has thrust the leftist critique of nationalism within a precarious position. Indeed, it puts the onus of dispelling the charge of being “anti-nationals” on the left itself. In doing so, what the rhetoric of “anti-national” and “sedition” also does is to draw strictly circumscribed spaces within which popular politics, including those of the left, continue to get encircled. The resistance politics of the era, thus, remain strictly tied to a “national/anti-national” dyad, foregoing the other more burning political questions.

The historic task of the Indian left, then, rests on pushing mass politics beyond this “national/anti-national” dyad. Failure to do so, would launch the left into a larger space of political irrelevance than where it is today.

The author is a teacher, writer and social activist.