Warning that radical nationalism is totally against multiculturalism, Italian philosopher Sabrina Lei has said the identity of a nation, as well as of an individual, is never monolithic or static but is actually the outcome of an historical process of exchange, compromise and growth.
Dr. Lei, director, Tawasul International Centre for Publishing, Research and Dialogue, Rome, was delivering an online lecture on the theme ‘Religion, Culture, Identity and Nationalism’ organised by the Vakkom Moulavi Memorial and Research Centre in association with the Institute for Global South Studies and Research here on Sunday. “Radical nationalism is in most of the cases an answer to an internal crisis of a community or a nation, but this extremely dangerous answer de-personalises the individual as a person endowed with the capacity of thinking and choosing,” she said. Widely acknowledged for her Italian translation of Sree Narayana Guru’s Atmopadesa Satakam, the Upanishads, and several world classics, Dr. Lei said that religion, as part of the identity of an individual, group or civilization, should be inclusive and open to historical development.
Otherwise it would lose, in the long run, the capacity to inspire real and positive change in the society. She said that the notion of identity was widely used in this age in connection with the notion of ‘identity politics’, a concept extremely complex and dangerous from the political point of view and which some contemporary thinkers both in the West and the East use in an extremely uncritical way, maybe in some cases without being completely aware of its danger and pitfalls. The notion of identity politics was at the same time a product and a reaction to the notion of radical nationalism, Dr. Lei said. “In the extreme form of identity politics, others are by definition enemies; it is not contemplated within the possibility of their being in dialogue. Here, the notion of identity and difference are interpreted in a relation of necessary opposition, instead of complementarity. This paradigm suggests that the history of a civilization or a nation has reached the peak of its maximum level of development, when what is particular or contingent, namely the ‘different’, ceases to be something to be assimilated and becomes an element of disturbance to be eliminated,” she said. Ambassador K.P. Fabian who chaired the session said that an essential part of a culture was its respect for other cultures. However much one respects Indian culture and cannot respect other cultures, it definitely would send the wrong message and give room for wrong notions and understanding. “Even identities need not clash among themselves, though each identity has its constituency,” he said.
Warning about the dangerous trends in patriotism, he said that “one would love his or her country, but it should not be a worship. The very word religion has not been understood correctly and carefully. Even textbooks are generating confusing meanings and interpretations,” he said.
