National Identity — Is it time to discard the concept?
Oh, I have no doubt that the headline, and the article, may seem controversial. But I’m not trying to make any claims or stake out any positions — I’m merely questioning the status quo, and I ask only that you read this with an open mind.
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Why this topic, and why now? Across countries, we’re experiencing some political kerfuffles relating to the concept of nations. In the US, athletes taking a knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice are being called disrespectful and patriotic by some. On the other side of the world, in India, people critical of the government are being labelled as anti-national, along with more creative titles such as libtard (if you’re liberal), sickular (if you support minority rights), and presstitute (if you’re affiliated with the media).
There seem to be strong undercurrents of anger, in these and other countries, and national identity is increasingly coming to be intertwined with the concepts of race and religion, leading sometimes to violent outcomes. Ask Gauri Lankesh, Jagmeet Singh, Salil Chaturvedi, the Rohingya, or the people in the US who’ve been told to go back to their countries.
Without getting into a discussion on the historical causes of these sentiments, I want to air some of my thoughts on the perceived sanctity of patriotism, flags, governments, and national anthems. Especially in the Indian context.
Why are these abstract ideas held so sacred, deemed more valuable than another human’s life?
Part of it comes down to people’s need to belong.
Humans are a social species. In our earliest days, we used to form tribes as a way of surviving. This enabled us to flourish, protecting us against real threats, but it seems like it also helped solidify an us-versus-them mentality. Our need for social acceptance and a sense of belonging feeds the concept of groupism based on characteristics that ‘we’ possess and that the ‘others’ don’t have.
Except that that makes no sense in a place like India — a nation of 1.2 billion very different people; we constantly tear each other down based on differences in caste, language, culture, religion, race, and every other divisive line we can imagine, only coming together in unison when we perceive aggressions from neighbouring countries.
A sense of community makes sense when we talk about communities of relatives, friends, and neighbours — but what kinship can a Delhiite claim with a Tamilian, for instance, aside from being ensconced within the same geopolitical boundary? A Delhiite might easily have more in common with someone from Lahore than someone from Chennai.
Part of it is people’s misplaced pride in their cultures, heritages, and languages.
I personally do not believe that national identity is synonymous with cultures and languages. On the one hand, there are examples of single languages being spoken across multiple countries (English in the Anglo-American world, Spanish in much of Central and South America). On the other hand, there are examples of single countries with multiple languages, such as India.
So I am not by any means suggesting letting go of these aspects of society. Cultures and heritages are meant to be cherished; they serve as a living, unbroken record of our collective history. But they — like languages — have evolved throughout our history, and there is no reason to try to freeze them in place now. Which is why this overzealous emphasis on preserving cultures and ways of life, to the point of attacking people that might bring about change, baffles me.
Part of it is conflated with people’s admiration for their armed services.
The strangest thing I saw was in the US, at a Washington-based airport, I don’t remember if it was IAD or DCA. The flight I was waiting for announced the start of the boarding procedure. A military person stepped forward to board, in uniform, and at the encouragement of the airline staff, all the civilians queuing to board burst into applause for him. Naturally, the armyman boarded first.
I get that they’re defending the borders, and it is not my intent to disrespect them in any way. I just don’t get what these borders are, or what external aggression they’re defending against. From the perspective of the ‘external aggressors’, they’re also serving their people, so they’re also the good guys — right? It’s too easy to demonize the other side — maybe let’s just not have sides.
Servicemen are to be respected, for the risks and efforts they face. But the whole idea of the armed forces arises from the concept of borders. So maybe they are a symptom of the problem? Signing up to defend the country at all costs — these costs are human lives. We shouldn’t be so quick to buy into propaganda and aggrandize the military-industrial complex, to which our war mentality is a profitable enterprise.
Part of it is reinforced, through the current system of global cross-border movement.
This is one of my pet peeves. Living the life of an expat, I often meet people from other nations whose first question to me is about where I’m from. And I wonder — why, how does my response matter? Do you want to fit me into my national stereotype? Does my nationality fully and solely capture my personality, shaped as it is by my Indianness, by my many years living overseas, and my countless other travels and experiences? Or are you trying to form a deeper social bond by talking to me about my country? To that, see point 1 above.
Citizenship is a lottery system — we aren’t in control of where we’re born. We certainly shouldn’t be defined by it.
All of it is exploited, to demand unquestioning loyalty from the masses.
The virtues of patriotism and pride in country are often used to distract from other socio-economic problems or mismanagement by governments. Complaining about demonetization? That’s anti-national. Criticizing hurricane response efforts? Look instead at those kneeling before the flag.
But this is how I see it: we have governments at the city level, state level, federal level, and all things in between. Boundaries serve to determine a government’s jurisdiction. And there is not even a historical basis to them — India’s boundaries changed, from the Mauryan through the Mughal to the British empires. What we are today is what we’ve been for only 70 years, not the 5000 since the earliest days of our civilization. Yet we are asked to swear our allegiance to the nation, mistrusting others that sprang from the same civilization, when the nation is merely the largest administrative unit of government, delivering to us services that we are entitled to expect and that we pay for through our taxes.
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Playing the national anthem is mandatory in movie theaters in India (which makes absolutely no sense to me — there’s nothing patriotic about watching a movie, especially one produced in Hollywood). And when someone doesn’t stand up to show their respect to it — as one disabled man was unable to do — they are assaulted by those with misplaced loyalties. The national anthem is, at the root of it, just a song. India’s was composed as a poem by Tagore. Most of us don’t even know what it means, aside from a general message of unity in our diversity. But even if it represents an idea, why are we expected to swear allegiance to ideas? Are we not undermining that very idea by attacking our fellow man over it?
A nice idea it may have been, but it’s been twisted into a political tool to further impose a fiercer brand of nationalism, ingrain unquestioning loyalty, and stifle dissent.
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We claim as a species to be civilized, to be rational. But when we value archaic ideas over actual lives, do we have a leg to stand on?
The pros of a concept such as national identity are clear — it helps foster a sense of belonging, of togetherness, of community spirit. I argue, rather aspirationally, that we should possess that spirit for our fellow humans everywhere, and not just within our nations. And when I look at the cons, when patriotism is mutated into nationalism, when wars are fought over identity differences, I’m not sure this concept is worth retaining.
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* Disclaimer: I speak about the society that we should aspire to be, but I still do feel pride in our scientific and sporting achievements, and do enjoy the sounds of our national anthem. Rationality does not easily triumph over emotions
** With inputs from Ekta Srivastava