Note Ban: It’s High Time We Indians Junk Pseudo-Nationalism

Raking up nationalism in the name of demonetisation will divert attention from real issues, writes Subhasish Ray.

A senior citizen sits as others stand in queue outside an SBI branch to exchange old notes in Amritsar, 19 November, 2016. (Photo: PTI)

Just about the only thing that comes through clearly in the vitriol that Narendra Modi’s supporters spew on those who disagree with them is the notion that somehow cow vigilantism, surgical strikes across the border, and now, demonetisation, will add up to great power status.

Let us reflect for a bit on this idea and ask: What would a claim to great power status in today’s world look like? When the world’s most powerful nation, and its oldest democracy, is cracking up under the cumulative backlash of populism, racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and every other base political instinct that you can think of, what should the message going out from the world’s largest democracy, and a future aspirant to great power status, be? Simple, one would say. Stand up for regionalism, diversity, tolerance. In short, stand up for precisely those values that are most deeply embedded in your cultural ethos and actually have some traction for the people of Kashmir or Tawang, those who are hanging on to you by the thinnest of threads.

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Villagers queue outside a bank to deposit and exchange 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in Hanuman Ganj village on the outskirts of Allahabad, 19 November, 2016. (Photo: PTI)

Imposing Misconceptions About Demonetisation

Instead, what is the message being sent out? ‘Indian-ness’ is a cloth that is cut out of even more bigotry than all the bigots of the West taken together can amass. How else are we to understand the hardships that ordinary Indians are being made to suffer in the name of curbing black money when it is hard to find a respectable economist, even of the neo-classical persuasion, who has endorsed demonetisation? How else are we to understand the false dichotomy that is being forced between “inconvenience” and “anger”?

Which ordinary Indian can afford to show “anger” at a regime that feels no compunction in launching an FIR against Nandini Sundar for standing up for the constitutionally mandated rights of Bastar’s tribal population? If demonetisation is not a display of morality for India’s middle classes, then what is? If this is not a revolt of the middle classes against the poor in one of the most unequal countries in the world, what is? And how unempathetic does that make them look to the rest of the world?

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Ignoring Climate Challenge

Few among those who consider themselves sensible, would disagree with the observation that climate change poses a direct and immediate threat to our collective existence like nothing before in human history. No country that claims greatness in the modern era can get there without having something useful to say about how to tackle climate change.

Indeed, that is the crux of a recent proposal to expand the Nobel Prize to include the discipline of ecology, which lies at the intersection of the traditional disciplines. In light of this, imagine the utter bewilderment of the brave people of the Sunderbans – whose fight for survival in the face of nature’s unremitting fury ought to be projected to the rest of the world as a cultural achievement – as they have to learn to survive all over again. Only, this time, as reports of a cash crunch in Ghoramara in the Sunderbans attest, the fight is not against nature, but the fury of a demonetising state!

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Patronising Pseudo-Nationalism

To summarise, just when the world needed to see a BIG IDEA emerge from India, our elites have contrived to hedge their bets on jingoistic nationalism, an idea that belongs to the museum of twentieth century, nay nineteenth century intellectual relics! Future generations, who will be much better schooled in humanism and environmentalism than we are, will look back to this moment and see it for what it is – a grand opportunity for asserting India’s relevance in the global stage squandered by the very people who wore patriotism on their sleeves!

(The writer is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses, nor is responsible for the same.)

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