Writer and critic Sunil P. Ilayidom on Wednesday said that Indian nationalism, which was not based on language or religion during the freedom movement, has now transformed into cultural nationalism which is Brahminical.
“Today the portrait of Savarkar, an accused in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, stays next to Mahatma Gandhi’s portrait in the Parliament. It is shocking that Godse is now called Mahatma. It has become a country where Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is being told not to utter the words ‘Gujarat’ and ‘Hindutva’,” said Mr. Ilayidom while speaking on nationalism and the foundations of fascism at Samanwaya, the ongoing arts and cultural event organised by Kerala Lalithakala Akademi.
He said nationalism had no meaning in history. National borders kept changing. Looking at mythology, Gandhari, a character in The Mahabharata, was from Gandhar or Khandahar, now in Afghanistan. When Palestine was divided and Israel was formed, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said the door to an eternal hell had opened. And, today, the same Israel had become India’s strategic partner, he said.
Gandhiji, who said in the 1930s that politics without religion was immoral, corrected himself later. That was when he realised that mixing religion and politics would be disastrous. A nation that declared unity in diversity as its motto, now seemed to say that all diversity should follow a single norm or face the music.
While nation, nation state, administration and government remained different entities, these had now been fused under one name – the government, and speaking against the government made you anti-national, he rued.
