40 "Presenting" the Past
nationalists elevated it to the status of a goddess, and nationalism became
their religion. Thus both the secular and communal worship of nation
have stood divorced from people and their interests. The humanistic
aspect has been relegated to a subordinate position, and the national
greatness has been realized in the glorification of certain symbols and not
the people.^104
The Nehruvian liberal nationalism marked by industry and economism
degenerated into an anxiety-ridden ambiguous nationalism under his
daughter and grandson when the "foreign hand" and the internal sus-
ceptibilities played an increasingly important role in national integration.
This degeneration of the liberal center and the dissipation of the Left gave
rise to a political vacuum and brought about the opportunity for the com-
munal nationalism to step in with their divinely guided course of his-
tory and heroism. The Hindu communalists reconstructed the nation "by
recombining living traditions and potent myths and symbols, an exist-
ing ethno-religious Hindu community as the basis of the modern Indian
nation." They did not invent the nation and the traditions, but "selected
one of several alternatives and recombined and reinterpreted its myths,
symbols, memories and traditions."^105 The totalizing ideology of Hin-
dutva combines nation, nationalism, history, and the communal narrativ-
ity quite effectively.
NOTES- Ronald Inden, "Orientalist Constructions of India," Modern Asian Studies
20, no. 3 (1986), pp. 440-42. - Anthony D. Smith, "The Nation: Invented, Imagined, Reconstructed?" in
Reimagining the Nation, ed. Marjorie Ringrose and Adam Lerner (Buckingham,
England, and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1993), pp. 9-11. - Arjun Appadurai, "Patriotism and Its Futures," Public Culture 5 (1993), p.
- E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Real-
ity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 10. - A. Raghurama Raju, "Problematizing Nationalism," Economic and Political
Weekly 28, nos. 27-28 (3-10 July 1993), p. 1433. - Ernst B. Haas, "What Is Nationalism and Why Should We Study It?" Inter-
national Organization 40, no. 3 (summer 1986), pp. 708-11. - Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 4, 36,46. - Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1-2,12,14. - Smith, "The Nation," pp. 20, 23.
- Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, p. 10.
- Geoffrey Bennington, "Postal Politics and the Institution of the Nation,"
in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London and New York: Routledge,
1990), p. 121.