It was the day India created history. The nation was elated as the Indian shuttle badminton team won the Thomas Cup 2022 for the first time. Being India’s first Thomas Cup title, a tournament which is touted as the world cup of shuttle badminton, the men’s team emerged victorious after they crushed 14-time champion Indonesia into defeat in the final held on Sunday.
Goosebumps!
— Aritra Mukherjee (@aritram029) May 15, 2022
Indian players chant “Bharat Mata Ki Jay” after winning historic #ThomasCup gold.
Only the sixth country in the world to win the prestigious tournament. pic.twitter.com/zw9deBO7D9
In a widespread display of emotion, spirit and elation, the celebratory videos of victorious Indians including Kidambi Srikanth, Lakshya Sen, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, Chirag Shetty and others emerged from the contested court. One of the videos which were circulated highly on social media was of the Indian team giving chants of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ in enthusiasm. Moreover, when the tricolour rose above everyone while the national anthem was being played, left everyone watching the ceremony teary-eyed.
When the young lads carved a smashing victory at the Thomas Cup, it was no longer their individual victory. For them to have represented a nation, it was a 1.30 Billion people to participate in the achievement and preserve the moment in their collective memory. After all, what are nations per se – extended societies of Individuals coming together to share a common goal and a common idea of who they are? Indeed, the unassailable victory at the badminton open final was one such common goal.
But it was a politician who landed himself in Udaipur on the very same day, daring to rethink what the idea of a nation is. The stage was set. The ailing Congress party which championed dynastic politics like no other had called for a convention to ponder over its fading existence as a political entity. Rahul Gandhi, completely aware of his party’s diminishing national stature thought of playing a regionalist card yet again. This time, it was for him to directly question the very character of India as a nation.
“Some days back, I made a speech when I said, India, Bharat is a union of states. That is the line that is written in our constitution. India is not described as a nation but as a union of states. The states of India and its people have come together to form the union. And it is critical for the union of this country that the states and the people are allowed to have a constitution,” Rahul Gandhi struck a chord in his speech.
He went further to state, “The conversation that should happen between the people of India, and the states of India are the institutions that the congress party, that your leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Maulana Azad and Ambedkar have helped us create. These institutions do not belong to any political party, any individual but they belong to the Union of India.”
What Rahul Gandhi tried to suggest here is often touted as ‘The Idea of India’ by intellectuals patronised by the Congress ecosystem. According to the Congress’ view of India, India was formed in 1947. It was a jigsaw puzzle of several independent post-colonial entities that had to be stitched together as one country. Congress claims to have done so, by singlehandedly participating in the freedom struggle and thus founding a nation by bringing the principalities and presidencies together. Hence, Gandhi and Nehru become the ‘founding fathers’ of the nation who invented ‘India’ – as Shashi Tharoor claims in the title of his book.
Of course, while taking the credit for India’s ‘creation’, the Congress party does not hold itself accountable for the partition that followed with the creation of a separate nation for Muslims called Pakistan. Moreover, Rahul Gandhi’s quote from the constitution derives from the Article 1 of the Constitution which says, “India, that is Bharat shall be a Union of States.” However, in a clear sentiment to fan separatism, Rahul Gandhi willingly missed the context in which such words in the Constitution were chosen.
When B R Ambedkar was asked why ‘Union of States’ was preferred to a ‘Federation of States’, he had two reasons – “One, the Indian Federation is not the result of an agreement among the states like the American Federation. Secondly, the states have no right to secede from the federation. The federation is a Union because it is indestructible. The country states such only for the convenience of administration.” Rahul Gandhi’s wordplay categorically dismisses the fact that India is a ‘nation’ that does not hold much water when it has already been identified as a ‘republic’ in the same constitution itself.
The Congress’ Idea of India has always been about the party and its erstwhile stalwarts stitching together geographical entities with distinct identities together through administrative institutions. With this grand story to tell before the country, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty stayed the course until 2014. Ever since the rise of Narendra Modi, however, the nation has been trying its best to throw off the shackles of this diminished sense of identity. With the advent of Narendra Modi at the centre stage of Indian politics, the consciousness of being a Civilizational State has rekindled.
Contrary to the Congress’ party-centric ‘Idea of India’, India for ages, has seen herself as a continuing civilization. Many thinkers have made the case for India as a ‘Civilization state’ than being a nation-state. Authors Harsh Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri in their book ‘The New Idea of India’ say that India is an age-old continuing Civilization transforming into a young nation. The primary basis of this view of India is that it was not invented as yet another post-colonial entity after Independence from the British Empire, but has always existed historically as a singular cultural unit with a diverse geography.
The debate between these two ideas of India is not about India’s origins as such, but more of its continuum as a civilizational entity. The problem arises when leaders like Rahul Gandhi conflate the concept of a nation with that of a State. While the State is a set of institutions which run the nation – which Rahul Gandhi referred to in his speech; a nation is a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular territory.
As back as we dive into the Vishnu Puran, we find that Indians, though living under the rule of different kingdoms, have always had a notion of living together as a nation. A shloka in the Vishnu Puran goes –
“उत्तरं यत्समुद्रस्य हिमाद्रेश्चैव दक्षिणम् । वर्षं तद् भारतं नाम भारती यत्र संततिः ।।” which means, ” The country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharatam, and there dwell the descendants of Bharata.”
Throughout our history, one would find many such examples that state the diverse cultural, linguistic, spiritual and religious expressions in India emerging from one common cultural continuous that is timeless or ‘Sanatan’.
Later in the early 20th century, of all the Gods and Goddesses that existed in the Hindu cosmos – a new entrant paved her way into the consciousness of our independence struggle. She was ‘Bharat Mata’ -the feminine personification of a force who stood as a solidified testament of this civilization. India’s geographical boundary was now being identified as a feminine entity. Alike many of the Hindu deities, she was being revered with many epithetic names. Some called her ‘Hind Devi’ while some recognized her as a visual depiction of their ‘Matru Bhoomi’. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar referred to her as ‘Svatantryajanani’ or the Mother of Independence.
The invoking of Bharat Mata at the Thomas Cup finals was not just a mere chest-thumping exercise in patriotism. It was symbolic of India as a feminine divine being, which has been an omnipresent driving force that binds our nation, through the ideals of Dharma. Here is where Rahul Gandhi’s diminished sense of India’s identity of the ‘union of states’ conflated with the larger idea of India as a nation. His statement should kindly remind us, that why India needs Nationalism even more.
For a party which goes with the name Indian ‘National’ Congress and identifies its stalwarts as founding fathers of the ‘nation’, Rahul Gandhi’s reduced self-worth scores a self-goal while Congress seeks to reinvent itself on a national level. Moreover, Congress’ Idea of India has trapped itself so intense, that the party no longer identifies India as a nation.
