174 Conclusions
The late-nineteenth-century nationalism contested the colonial represen-
tations of Indians as "unmanly, disorganized, irrational and unworldly"
by writing the history of the Rajputs, the Marathas, and the Sikhs by high-
lighting their military valor, worldly struggles, and scientific achieve-
ments. With the end of the First World War, the emergence of Gandhism,
and the onset of Hindu-Muslim conflict, the national history of the 1920s
and 1930s started to move away to the common culture of Hindus and
Muslims and the Indian tradition of tolerance and syncretism. Ashoka,
Akbar, Kabir, and Nanak became the new symbols of national pride.^5
As Pandey puts it effectively:
Through the wide-ranging and continuous debates about the character of the
"real" India, through the variety of Indian histories constructed, through changing
emphases and arguments and perspectives, the nationalists of the later-nineteenth
and first half of the twentieth centuries established a sense of the Indian past as
plural, dynamic and greatly enriched by numerous and many-sided contacts.
Such a vision could speak of uniqueness, of the glories and achievements of Indian
civilization, but also of internal contradiction, of compromise and the acceptance
of differences, and with all that of "modernization" and "internationalism" and
"cosmopolitanism"—including the dreams of social and economic equality and
the advancement of all those who lived in India.^6
With the end of the national struggle in the early 1950s, it was assumed
that the national history, national culture, and national visions were all
consolidated and needed no more debate. The Nehruvian project of
nation building got in full swing with its preoccupations such as electoral
politics, industrial development, and so forth, and the question of cul-
tural identity and dignity was lost. The obscurantist elements, who were
once marginal in national politics, have usurped the question and tried
to rewrite and retell who "we" are, what constitutes "Indian" history and
culture, and where we go from here.^7 Thus, the "inflexible (and some-
what dated) scientism, based on an arrogant belief in the infinite power
of nineteenth and twentieth century 'man', has not only closed off many
possibilities of reflection and debate, but also opened up space for other
arrogant believers to stake their claim to 'authenticity' on the grounds of
attention to particularity: a concern with indigenous (or, as it is quickly
dubbed, 'national') culture, religious sensibilities and the rights of society
as against the individual and the state."^8
The concept of secularism deserves a special mention here. Western
secularism was born out of the Enlightenment, which sought to wean
humans away from the fetters of religion. This separation of religion from
the state and science came to form the basis for the industrial revolution
and Western civilization. Thus the nation-state, liberal democracy, parlia-
ments, modernization, development, individualism, free trade, hedonism
(often put as "our way of life" in the United States), and consumerism