What the Congress has chosen to ignore while joining Omar Abdullah in disallowing the hoisting of the Tricolour at Lal Chowk in Srinagar on Republic Day by nationalist youth is that nationalism is the spirit that unites the people of this nation, it symbolises India's sovereignty. Tragically, politics has been allowed to triumph over nationalism and the nation will pay the price for this folly
The UPA Government supporting the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir to prevent nationalist youth from hoisting the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar on Republic Day amounted to political bankruptcy. On February 22, 1994, a Congress-led Government had a unanimous resolution passed by Parliament that Jammu & Kashmir, including Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, has been, is and shall be an integral part of India and any attempts to separate it from the rest of the country will be resisted by all necessary means.
Surprisingly, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as well as most of the media ridiculed the intention of the youth as mischief meant to disturb the peace in Jammu & Kashmir. All these people cannot be unpatriotic and hence the conclusion must be that there is widespread ignorance that the celebration of Republic Day is a reminder of the country's sovereignty. This year's Republic Day has shown that New Delhi does not consider the country to be sovereign. It concedes that the Government's writ does not run in Jammu & Kashmir. What if in the coming years other States follow the example?
Let us put on record that no country can remain integrally united without nationalism. True, 20th century Europe set a poor example with its extreme swings against and for nationalism. It was the same continent which innovated nationalism as a political ideology to replace monarchy, beginning with the French Revolution in 1789. Yet it was on the same continent where the Russian Revolution took place in 1917. It established a communist state which was the very anti-thesis of nationalism.
Karl Marx believed that the nation state was an instrument of exploitation of the poor in the hands of the rich. Little wonder that Leo Trotsky, the first Soviet Defence Minister, pursued the goal of world communist revolution as a priority over the welfare of the Soviet people. The Constitution, directed by VI Lenin, allowed any of the Soviet Republics to secede from the Union. After Lenin and Trotsky, Josef Stalin ensured the country's unity by diluting the Marxist prescripttion. His policy was 'socialism within one country', a mild version of nationalism. Since the break-up of the USSR in 1991, Russia has reverted to building a nationalist state.
The reaction to the Russian Revolution and the spread of communism in different parts of Europe led to the rise of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany, both of whom proved to be maniacal. The European pendulum again swung after World War II and gradually the European Union has sought to replace the sovereignty of individual countries. The European Parliament at Brussels is progressively taking over, the effects of which on the nation states is yet to be fully seen.
The economic melt-down, however, is severe in several parts of Europe compared with the rest of the world. The economies of Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy are already facing serious financial crises. France is not far behind unless the current efforts at economic reform succeed. Implicitly, these countries hope that Germany will help rescue them. Had they been entirely self-dependent as before the European Union came into being, these nation states might have been much more alert. Some experts feel that the dilution of sovereignty could spell the decline of Europe.
Incidentally, it should be noted that in the absence of nationalism, the communist states led by the Soviet Union have collapsed. North Korea is the only country that has remained wedded to communism.
The point is that nationalism provides a unique bond similar to that provided by an extended joint family with common property. Take the national spirit out and a country or a society loses this bond and citizens tend to look upon everybody's business for the nation as nobody's business. Everyone continues to be ready to consume but no one is accountable for producing. Poland, which had between 1772 and 1795 disappeared from the map, emerged as an independent country again, only because the lamp of national spirit had not gone out.
Without an understanding of these historical factors, the Congress leaders as well as other self-styled leftists loosely talk about the virtues of pluralism. Unity in diversity is a contradiction. Yet, diversity being the reality of India, it is united by a common cultural thread. The Hindu ethos is a bond across the country, whether in Jammu & Kashmir or in Kerala, in Kamrup (Assam) or in Kathiawad (Gujarat).
The Abdullahs of Jammu & Kashmir are playing a game which the UPA leaders are unable to see through. They want autonomy but not independence because the former ensures enormous funding from the rest of the country. The State of Jammu & Kashmir pays no taxes. To that extent the separatists are more straightforward; they openly say that they want the State to break free of India.
Six decades is a short time in the history of a country and yet how is it that the Congress has conveniently forgotten that in 1947 the land was divided on the basis of religion? Mohammed Ali Jinnah said that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together and the latter voted almost wholesale for him and his Pakistan in 1946. Whether independence or autonomy, these are Kashmiri euphemisms for another partition. That is the impulse behind the assertion that the national flag being hoisted at Lal Chowk in Srinagar will disturb the peace in Jammu & Kashmir.
The Labour Party under Clement Attlee was socialist. Winston Churchill was a diehard nationalist who had fought Hitler and Mussolini tooth and nail. He expressed an apprehension on the eve of our independence. The way our country is being governed at present should make us pray that his apprehension does not come true. The apprehension was that Attlee was handing over India to men of straw of whom in a few years no trace would remain.
