Cultural nationalism premised on religious majoritarianism is against accepted philosophy of liberal nationalism: Vice President

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IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, Feb 15: “The existential reality of modern India is a plural society of immense diversity…but some “want to modulate or amend it and espouse instead an Indian version of ‘cultural nationalism’ premised on ‘religious majoritarianism’”, said Vice President of India Mohammad Hamid Ansari adding that it would be against the philosophy of liberal nationalism.

“The existential reality of modern India is a plural society of immense diversity devoted to the realisation of the objectives and ideals enshrined in the Preamble of the Constitution. It is premised on the individual as the basic unit of citizenship on terms of equality with every other citizen. It therefore aspires towards a form of citizenship that is marked neither by a universalism generated by complete homogenisation, nor by particularism of self-identical and closed communities’ The operative principle for this is ‘national-civic’ rather than ‘national-ethnic’ though a segment of opinion today would want to modulate or amend it and espouse instead an Indian version of ‘cultural nationalism’ premised on ‘religious majoritarianism’. This would be in contrast to the hitherto accepted philosophy of liberal nationalism that ‘celebrates the particularity of culture together with the universality of human rights, the social and cultural embeddedness of individuals together with their personal autonomy,’” said the Vice President.

He said that the challenges posed by this approach were summed up by a political scientist:

‘In the semantics of functional politics the term national integration means, and ought to mean, cohesion and not fusion, unity and not uniformity, reconciliation and not merger, accommodation and not annihilation, synthesis and not dissolution, solidarity and not regimentation of the several discrete segments of the people constituting the larger political community… Obviously, then, Integration is not a process of conversion of diversities into a uniformity but a congruence of diversities leading to a unity in which both the varieties and similarities are maintained’.

The Vice President said threat to social cohesion is also an issue of internal security.

Threats to social cohesion “emanate from sporadic instances of caste, communal or other sectional instances of social disharmony. The underlying cause of these is a failure at individual or group levels to give shape to the requirement of fraternity enjoined in the Preamble of the Constitution and the duty imposed on every citizen by article 51A(e). It is only through fraternity that the discussion, and practice, moves beyond tolerance to acceptance,” said Hamid Ansari.

“It needs to be said that many if not all of these instances of social strife also portray a failure of the state agencies to undertake timely preventive or corrective action,” he added.

He lamented on the prevalence of social and economic disparity in the country even seven decades after the Independence.

“Seven decades after independence there is widespread unrest, discontent and conflicts among sections of population. There are threats emanating from regional and social imbalances, which have given rise to and fuel insurgencies, terrorism, sub nationalism and communalism. Economic disparities have created social tensions, urban unrest, rural upsurge and youth disenchantment. Problems of deprivation, unemployment, poverty, hunger and food shortage, lack of housing, over-crowding, and degradation of basic amenities have given rise to anger and crime. The problem is aggravated by increasing numbers. 201 of 535 districts in India are affected with one form of violence or the other. As a result, many in the public are losing faith in the system, in the ability of the law enforcement agencies to maintain order and enforce the rule of law, and in the ability of the judicial system to provide justice,” said the Vice President.

Talking about internal security threats he said, “We face multifaceted internal security challenges which include left wing extremism, an ongoing proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, insurgencies in some states in the North East and organised crime.”

“The focus of internal security is, and should be, the society. Issues of individual liberty and Society’s security often appear at odds with each other. The key to dealing with internal security is to keep the focus on both the people and society, and on the Rule of Law that, regrettably, ‘has been undermined by the rule of politics’. Some years back a constitutional authority had depicted the Rule of Law as being under siege on account of ‘cancerous developments eating into the fabric’ of the three organs of the State – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary,” he said.

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