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A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MULTI- Name*

DIMENSIONAL NATIONALISM IN
INDIA: HISTORIC APPROACH
By Arush Agarwal Email*
 APR 3, 2020  Nationalism, Oriya movement, reorganisation of states, secularism

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Introduction
The question here is simple and easy, however, it is one of the most complicated questions to answer in
the present time, what exactly constitutes as nationalism? Now, let’s understand why it is confusing to
understand the notion of nationalism. The term ‘Nation’ is an imaginary concept where territory is divided
by man and for nationalism to exist there is a pre-requirement of a nation. There are various definitions
of the term nation though it can be said that a nation is a culture-congruent sovereign political entity
existing in the political world and based on the politico-legal principle of recognition. Moreover, there is
no singular dimension to nationalism as it is a subjective term and no legal definition of nationalism is
provided.

At the onset, it is submitted that there are two levels of nationalism: At the macro level as a symbolism of
sovereignty derived by a political connotation and at the micro-level as a guardian of cultural values.
Nationalism first emerged in the 3rd world countries during the era of colonialism and acted as a
quintessential tool in the fight against colonialism as being an indicator of anti-colonialism to unite
people. However, the notion of nationalism has transformed with the passage of time and in this article, a
detailed analysis of historic nationalism in India will be done.

Nationalism in pre-independent
India
First, it is crucial to define the time-frame of the pre-independent India that is to be analysed. The
happening of the colonisation of India will be taken into consideration. India being a diverse country has
and had various cultural difference and the Britishers were an integral part of it.

The colonial rulers created provincial administrative boundaries. Now, the criteria for creating these
administrative boundaries were not based on the idea of cultural reorganisation which in turn created
huge issues for the pre-independent Indians. As the reorganisation took place of regions, the then British
Indians moved into a new territory where there was a domination of the cultural value of a group of
people over the other. This imbibed a factor of culturicide in them and their micro factor of nationalism
was in danger. The response to this action was predictable, at first, there started the struggle to preserve
their cultural identity. However, when it was evident that such domination of external cultural value can
not be curtailed there was a demand for a separate sovereign state. This broke down India into various
fragments at the very start though what Britishers did not fully account was that there were various
leaders trying to integrate the people as a nation to fight against colonialism.

It was stated that there are two factors to nationalism and they were categorised as macro and micro.
The Britishers attempted to create a divide in the micro factor though Indians were re-united by the
macro aspect. The freedom leaders of India showed the bigger picture and embedded the notion of
nationalism of the 3rd world countries i.e anti-colonialism. What happened next depicts the beauty of the
diversity of pre-independent India. Various people from various cultural groups came together through
the notion of nationalism to take part in the freedom struggle. The result is glorified in Indian history,
India that is Bharat was declared to be sovereign.
Oriya movement: Pre-
Independence
The above concept that stated how in British India there was a cultural divide in the people is clearly
displayed by the Oriya movement. The timeframe of this movement was in the 1900s At, first the Oriyas
were divided into two parts: Princely Orrisa and British Orrisa. The princely Orrisa was then fragmented
to even smaller parts, what this territorial disintegration did was to make the Oriyas a minority there.
They were highly dominated by the Bengalis and other groups. While the British Oriyas was having a
different problem, they were dominated economically by the Telugus and other Hindi-speaking
communities. This was due to the fact that higher education roles and opportunities were not provided to
Oriyas due to the long association of Britishers with other communities.

This conflict in both the regions transcended through time and then, there was the final nail in the coffin.
The replacement of Oriya as a language by Hindi in the central provinces took place. This sparked the
very cultural emotions of the Oriyas and then began the historic cultural nationalism movement. The
demand that was raised by them was to give them a separate state of their own. The reason for such
demand is that they believed that this is the only way to save their cultural and linguistic identity.

The result of this movement was reflected after the independence of India but before the
reorganisation(1956) of states. In the year 1947-48, 24 princely states were merged into Orrisa.

The strenuous task of the

reorganisation of states, 1956
The factor of the Indian independence system has to be given due consideration before taking into
account the strenuous task of reorganisation. India laid down a system where every person was equal, it
had parliamentary democracy, a strong system of autonomy and respect for all cultures. The
constitution of India legitimised cultural
pluralism by incorporating a total of 14 languages in the Eighth Schedule under Article 344(1) and Article
351. If we see the history, it is quite clearly stated that the reorganisation of states was done on a
linguistic basis though were we able to do that task successfully?

Whenever we talk about reorganisation there are various satisfactory grounds that have to be taken into
account and one of them is establishing parallelism between the politico-administrative unit and cultural
unit. If we go by this logic then both these principles of parallelism were violated on three grounds. First,
the administrative viability principle is disregarded in the matter of big territorial regions like UP and
Bihar. Second, all the Hindi-speaking linguistic regions should have been constituted in a state or broken
down to several states as per the various sub-sets but this was not followed. Third, there was a
categorisation made on the made of languages considered by the constitution but according to the
census of 1961, there were 1652 languages in India.

The reorganisation base was a linguistic approach though it was not followed properly. Moreover, some
other crucial factors like religion and tribal languages were not given consideration. In India, today, more
than language there is a cultural divide due to the differences in the ideology of religion that people
subscribe to.

Conclusion
Unity in diversity is a common phrase commanding strong power to integrate a nation with different
cultural backgrounds. An example of this was highly evident in the freedom struggle. There were some
flaws when it comes to the reorganisation of states though the supreme document, the Constitution
saved us all and it is quintessential to understand what the Constitution of India states.

When the constitution was adopted, secularism was not added in the preamble as a value, though
Article 14, Article 15, Article 25, Article 26 and Article 27 were there. It is very important to understand
why secularism was not added and how the meaning of secularism is changed. The term secularism
finds its root in late medieval Europe and it denoted there is no connection with religion or religious
beliefs or rituals and hence there is no religion whatsoever. This was a western concept and went
against every fibre of the Indian culture.
 However, with time the meaning of the term secularism has changed and we the people should
understand that notion. Secularism in context with India is a concept which promotes and ensures that
every religion is equally treated so that the state neither picks one nor demonstrates through its law-
making power, preference or prejudice of one religion over others. Moreover, religious rituals that come
under the microscope of essential practice are not touched.

The above clarification of the Indian view of secularism was provided to show how the Indian law has
tried to bridge the gap between the religious difference so that the people of India can co-exist under one
name called Bharat. It is a well-known fact that the majority of communities in India derive their culture
from religious beliefs and practices. Hence, if the spirit of the law is upheld, the true colour of the
nationalism will shine.

By Arush Agarwal

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One thought on “A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MULTI-DIMENSIONAL NATIONALISM

IN INDIA: HISTORIC APPROACH”
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April 10, 2020 at 2:57 am
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