India is tuning into a noisy debate on nationalism—and one that is being used by both sides to settle political scores rather than work towards a meaningful dialogue.

Political theorist Benedict Anderson famously described nations as imagined communities. In his book on the demand for Pakistan, B.R. Ambedkar had brought typical clarity to the nationalism issue, even as he anticipated some of the later insights of Anderson. Ambedkar wrote that two conditions need to exist for nationalism to emerge. First, the subjective urge of a people to live together based on some notion of kinship. Second, a territory which becomes the exclusive domain of a nation as well as its cultural home.

In other words, the Ambedkarite definition of a nation rests on the two pillars of exclusive territory and common culture.

Most strands of Indian nationalism implicitly accepted these two conditions, though with specific nuances. The Nehruvian project gives primacy to territorial nationalism, while the Hindutva project is better known for cultural nationalism. But neither school has treated the choice between territorial and cultural nationalism as a Manichean one. Even a cursory reading of his autobiography shows that Nehru was deeply aware of the cultural roots of our nationalism. And the Hindutva thinkers fully realized the importance of a national territory that has to be defended.

Another nuance that has been drowned out in the current noise is the important distinction between nation, nation state and the government of the day. The nation state provides the institutional backing to the desire of a people to live together as a nation; in other words, it converts a subjective desire into an objective reality. The Indian nation state is defined by the Constitution, which is rooted in liberal values. Most major political parties today accept the primacy of the document in our national life, at least in theory.

Every nation state is expected to defend itself—from attacks on its sovereignty from across its borders, from internal attempts to break it up and from armed revolutionary movements that seek to overthrow the constitutional order. A nation state has to use violence when it is challenged with violence. That can sometimes be a messy reality, but it is useful to remember that securing the “unity and integrity of the Nation" is mentioned in the very preamble of the Constitution.

However, attacks on the territorial control of the nation state are quite different from even the harshest criticism of the government of the day, or its leader. The constitutional rights of any citizen to speak up against the government or its policies are sacred. The restrictions on that freedom that were brought in through the first amendment to the Constitution need to be done away with. Too many of our current debates miss the distinction between attacks on the nation state on the one hand and criticism of the elected government on the other. Both sides are guilty of this obfuscation.

The ongoing debate on nationalism has become a shouting match fit for prime-time television. A saner dialogue needs to be reconstructed based on the triad of nation, nation state and government. The era before independence saw extremely insightful debates on these issues, though some of them were muddied by the growing communal tensions between the riots of the 1920s and the eventual partition of India. The current debates are of a poor quality in comparison to the debates before independence.

Nations are subjective as well as objective constructs. Make no mistake—they are as much about flag waving as about constitutional rights. The Indian national movement fully realized this, as is evident from its use of evocative slogans combined with lawyerly negotiations with the British, or its emphasis on both territorial nationalism as well as cultural nationalism. But neither were slogans the litmus test for nationalism, nor were attacks on national sovereignty taken lightly.

Our contemporary debates should take this into account. Ambedkar is a good starting point, as always.

Is the current debate on nationalism being used by both sides to settle political scores? Tell us at views@livemint.

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