India Today – August 19, 2019

38 INDIA TODAY AUGUST 19, 2019

INDIA’S SYNCRETIC ETHOS IS NOT AN

ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCT BUT A PRODUCT OF

CENTURIES OF SHARED EXPERIENCES OF

HINDUS AND MUSLIMS. IT IS IN DANGER TODAY

OUR

INDEPENDENCE,

NOT YOURS?

BY SALMAN KHURSHID

W

E LIVE IN THE AGE OF

REBORN NATIONAL-

ISM even as old dreams

of an enlightened world

government fade. The

United Nations Organi-

zation (UN) just about

survives, though it is

difficult to imagine our

world without it. The wars that scorched the globe also gave the UN

its commitment to lasting peace. It is far from perfect, and yet we

have no better substitute. As time goes by, the agency’s imperfec-

tions are becoming more apparent but also the need to fortify the

platform where friends and foes gather to seek peace and accom-

modation, find difficult paths to contain bellicose elements and re-

duce the threat of a nuclear holocaust. But as the threat of a nuclear

winter recedes, the world encounters other unsettling issues such

as water scarcity, climate change, eco-degradation, terrorism and

migration. There are many who live on the edge.

It is no surprise then that having been unable to secure the

peace dividend, the countries of the world are retreating into the

past and the comfort zone of exclusivity. Sovereignty, long qualified

by the emerging global rule of law, is clawing back to dominance

and its companions, self-professed virtue

and nationalism, are reconfiguring the

nation-state and global relations. Even

as nature continues to define the global

village, its inhabitants are busy digging

moats and building walls of separation.

Our generation rejoiced at the fall of

the Berlin Wall and the reunification of

Vietnam. Our successors will watch in

confusion the building of the Mexico wall

and the dismantling of once promising

trade blocs, the loosening of the European

Union and god knows what.

As the new world order comes apart

or at least is stretched beyond safe limits,

what do we former world citizens turn

to—Americans, Europeans, South Asians,

Africans, Southeast Asians, former Soviet

Union comrades? To each his own; to each

for their own. Nations above interna-

tionalism. But what does it mean to be a

nationalist, particularly when the nation

you belong to is not under existential