34 Nation in Popular Cultures (Case Study)

Dr. Vijayalekshmi R.

What is a Nation?

Nation is a major political, communitarian, and social order. Even as a nation may be said to have geographical boundaries or political legitimacy, these alone would not make a nation. For instance if an Indian travels to Africa and resides there for a period of time, she does not cease to be an Indian. She carries an Indian nationality with her. At the same time, the connection between any individual who belongs to a nation and the nation itself could be intangible. The individual’s connection with the nation is forged through a number of conscious and unconscious practices carried out at various levels, ranging from the personal to the governmental. All communities other than those where face-to-face contact is possible are in a way imagined. However, the imagined nature of communities such as the nation does not take away from their significance, as it is not the truth value or the falsity of such imaginings and existence that are important here. An understanding of the nation as a po litical, communitarian and social order underscores the significance of the values, symbols, practices, institutions, and laws that go into the making of a nation. Such an understanding of the nation does not limit it only to the rules and statutes or boundaries and injunctions by which a people and their territory of inhabitation are confined within ‘narrow domestic walls’ as famously said by Rabindranath Tagore, but take into account the everyday practices as well as long-distant networking, all of which contribute to the idea and reality of the nation.

Religious communities, linguistic communities, and ideological communities share a sense of belonging to their respective communities not necessarily because they know in person the other members of their communities. The implicit knowledge that there are others who share the practices that one participates in is knowledge enough to reinforce such sense of belonging. So is the case with national identity even as it is difficult to capture and confine the concept within definitions. Benedict Anderson who expanded Ernest Renan’s theory of the nation propounded that nations are imagined political communities. However, the nation cannot be imagined as infinite. Even for the largest of nations with billions of people inhabiting it, there are boundaries, geographical and otherwise, that set it off from other nations. However, generous our imaginings are, a nation cannot be imagined as equivalent to the entire humanity. Nation is a limited entity. While there are some ideologies and faiths that envision a global collectivity of fellow participants or followers, the conception of a nation does not permit such amorphous, unmanageable contours. A nation is a sovereign or autonomous entity too because it symbolises the freedom of a people from various forms of external domination. However, owing to the free flow of corporate capital among other things (such as labour) in the late 20th century’s globalized era, the sovereignty of the nation is almost becoming a non- issue.

The Nation, its origin and its very conceptualisation has always been subject to debate. While the majority of modern scholars such as Ernest Gellner and Sudipta Kaviraj among others have argued out that nation is a modern invention/creation, there are a few other scholars such as Anthony D. Smith who claim that nations existed in premodern times too. There are scholars who argue that ancient Israel was a nation in the olden days. The Bible makes references to nation when it refers to the people of a place. However, nations in the Bible are not modern day nations, but refer to both large and small geographical areas where a race or people of a certain ethnic heritage live such as Asia, Assyria, Arabia, Samaria, Scythia, and so on. The nations that appear in the Bible and such texts of an ancient past are indeed fuzzy communities. Historiographers have more or less tried to deal with the problem of whether all such places and people merit to be called ‘nation’ by assigning such terms as ‘premodern nations’ or ‘fuzzy communities’ for the old constructs. This is because modern day conceptions of living as a nation cannot be easily equated with ancient modalities. Even as nations might have existed in ancient times too as some kind of a political formation, nation as we experience now is a modern setup and phenomenon. Partha Chatterjee’s work on the history of nationalism in India during colonial times is seminal in understanding concepts such as nation, nation state and nationalism that have developed in a non-Western matrix. Participation in the nation and its institutions might not have been accessible to all during ancient times, but limited to a select few, who were the elite by way of merit or might or birthright. However, in modern times, participation in the making of the nation and the entitlements and enablement that such participation ensures accrue to all the citizens at least in spirit if not in letter.

Though nation is an imagined community, primarily a political community, it is not the politica l aspects of its forging alone that make it a nation with all its citizens, migrants, and diaspora, who all may be sharing a sense of nationness, nationality, and belongingness. While becoming a nation, in addition to the governmental institutions, arms, the Constitution etc., the people who make up its social and conceptual world are equally or even more important. From a non- Eurocentric perspective, as Partha Chatterjee would have it, nation during colonial times, for example in India, was first spiritually imagined. Before the early nationalists locked horns with the imperial colonial powers, the work for a spiritual nationalism was already on. The fiery and passionate rhetoric of individuals like Swami Vivekananda was meant to spiritually enervate the people against domination in the material world. A nation is an idea made possible by the participation of its citizens. There are several arenas both in personal lives and the public sphere where there might be a constant invoking of the nation in terms of what is often termed national culture, however much contested the idea is. In spite of the invocation of a national culture, time and again, the idea of a nation does not proscribe any heterogeneous collectivity from representing it. A shared racial or ethnic heritage, shared language, shared religion, or shared territory would not alone make the people of a nation. At the same time all these constitute the major imaginaries that have constituted the idea of a nation. People may inhabit not just one but many of these identities at any given moment. They may also need to affirm some aspects of their identities while some others are sidelined. A certain amount of homogenisation becomes unavoidable and inevitable for citizens of a nation state.

Belonging to a nation entitles citizens with certain inalienable rights and benefits while requiring in turn from them, the performance of certain obligations and duties. For instance, being an Indian citizen grants a person with some rights and privileges enumerated in the Constitution of India. An example of such a right can be the right to vote or in other words the right to participate in the electoral process. It is one of the basic rights that an Indian citizen enjoys, owing to the formation of the modern nation state. Nationality has assumed importance as a modern frame of reference much like other frames of references, both ancient and modern such as religion, dynasty/ clan, organization, institution etc. Though a cultural system with its own constitutive elements, nationality is often taken for granted. While nationality is almost a natural given that happens through inheritance from parents, citizenship is conferred on individuals enabling them to become part of a nation’s political and legal framework, thereby ensuring them a certain status as persons in some kind of a contract. For instance, an Indian national can be an American citizen provided she fulfils some eligibility. New mobilities as well as old ones have helped in making communications, interactions and transportation easier, thereby impacting the ways in which people and places are linked.

In recent times increasing emphasis is laid on ensuring the rights of individuals as persons and not as citizens, owing to the currency of humanitarian rhetoric and ethical discourses. The sovereignty that is understood to be one of the key defining features of the nation in terms of exercising freedom and control is slowly being eroded due to the significance and visibility in the media for human rights. For instance, Amnesty International brought to light in 2003-04 the inhuman abuses perpetrated on Iraqi prisoners detained in the Abu Ghraib prison by the US A. In this case, as both the nations – the nation to which the abused prisoners belonged and the nation which perpetrated crimes on the victims – failed to ensure the rights of individuals, an international organisation intervened. There could be several such instances where a nation fails to safeguard the rights of its people, owing to various external and internal factors. Internationalism and transnationalism are concepts that refer to collectivities that connect people across nations and challenge the boundaries set, prescribed, and proscribed by the idea of the nation. While such concepts have been formulated taking into account developments the world over, their success in weakening the claims of the nation depends on their legitimacy to function as a facilitator or protector of the individual’s rights and privileges.

Nation and Nationalis ms: Concepts and Constructions

Even when futuristic concepts such as post-nationalism and trans- nationalism are gaining currency as realities evolve along unprecedented new lines, national identity continues to be important. Internationalism, universalism, post-nationalism and trans-nationalism exist more as concepts than as concrete realities. At the end of the day, nation continues to entitle its citizens with the required passport to international collectivities without which the gate keepers of internationalism would prohibit the autonomous individual from entry into participation. However, as abstractions, nation, nationalism and transnationalism could be conceived variously. The identity of a nation has a lot to do with the idea of a nation as it gets inscribed in the minds of the people. Nationalism can be a popular sentiment, belief and interest group. It can be the ideology of a people or the state ideology too. Nationalism can be forged along ethnic and religious lines, linguistic and cultural ones, or civic and ideological directions. In all forms of nationalism, the populations believe that they share some kind of common culture. There have been instances in history when nation states themselves assert strong nationalistic sentiments which have often clashed with the rights of individuals to exercise their liberty. An instance would be the erstwhile fascism in Italy. At the other end of the spectrum are separatists who often allege that the nation state enforces undemocratic state nationalism. Within a nation there could be uprisings of sub-nationalisms. Thus we see a resurgent Native American nationalism within America and an Aboriginal nationalism within Australia.

Nationalism gains importance in the context of the right to self-determination that a nation gains upon achieving sovereignty from colonialism. In popular culture nationalism very often becomes a romantic notion. However, popular culture is one area that irreverently negotiates with the idea of a nation vis-à-vis its citizens or the individuals who carry the tag of nationality as belonging to a particular nation. Popular culture has always been the site where notions of the nation have been projected. An example of how the print medium has been instrumental in forging the idea of a nation and in inspiring sentiments of nationalism would be the circulation of folktales and picture books such as the Amar Chitra Katha which had helped children of all ages connect to an idea of a nation from early age on. The Amar Chitra Katha has been alleged of projecting a particular kind of nationalism called religious or Hindu nationalism with the tales and pictures unknowingly inculcating racist ideologies in the kids. In Germany, Grimm’s Fairy Tales serve as an example of the relationship between popular culture and nationalism, or to be more precise, ethnocentric nationalism. The Grimm brothers were staunch German nationalists and they wanted a united Germany and a pure racial German identity so much so that Hitler was impressed by the racist and nationalist instincts that characterised the tales unwittingly. However, in a country like India not all regional folklores have displayed national feelings or identity. On the contrary. For instance, Tamil folklore in print medium from the nineteenth century on only helped advance the local interests, and not the national ones.

Nationalism has been variously typified as civic nationalism, state nationalism, cultural nationalism, liberal nationalism, ethnic nationalism and so on. Some of these types of nationalism have been used pejoratively to refer to the more militant varieties of nationalism. Nationalism assumes the name and form of romantic nationalism during periods of revolution and struggles for independence. Thus in Europe during the nineteenth century romantic nationalism became a religion, as public faith in the nation as a site of moral and spiritual values increases. Such periods of romantic nationalism would often inspire writers to extol a national hero in their works. For instance Mahatma Gandhi (or characters that remind the readers of him) becomes a heroic figure or presence in many novels such as Na Chhutke (1948) by Pannalal Patel and Kanthapura (1938) by Raja Rao among others that were written during and before 1947. Nationalistic spirit comes to the fore during times of threats or occurrences of invasions from other groups. Those who are fiercely nationalist do so in bad faith while those who decry nationalism also never escape a national identity. During times of struggle for a people’s independence, nationalism is not a bad idea. However, extreme forms of nationalism often pose a threat to the greater common good. ‘Third World nationalisms’ is the term used to refer to the rise of nationalisms in erstwhile colonised countries. Haitian revolution, Indian nationalist movement, and African nationalism are examples of such anti-colonial nationalist uprisings. In some Latin American countries the spirit of nationalism grew with the Mexican revolution.

Comparison and competition also are responsible for the emergence and subsequent safeguarding of national interests. Big nations such as the Unites States of America are seen to adopt strategies that bolster a spirit of nationalism during times of political crisis. Latin American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pablo Neruda had taken upon themselves the responsibility to represent their nations in their writings and the highest literary prizes conferred on them were honours to their nations as much as to them. In the arena of sports, literature, and the cinema (popular modes of entertainment), a spirit of nationalism is fostered by the nation state, the sponsors, and the participants. Advocates of liberal nationalism believe that nationalism is not necessarily a totalitarian and homogenising ideology but can be an enabling mode that fosters such values and rights as freedom of the citizens, equality, fraternity, unity, and tolerance. National identity, accordingly, should endow individuals with autonomy, citizenship rights, and certain kinds of empowerment and opportunities. Civic nationalism gains its legitimacy by involving the citizens in a contract with the nation whereby duties are expected of the citizens while their rights are ensured.

Benedict Anderson refers to the nationalist sentiments of diasporic communities as long-distance nationalism. Diaspora refers to people who are dispersed in places away from their real or imagined home land. War, famine etc., have been the historical reasons for people living in a country to leave their homeland. Jews spread across the world after their exodus from Jerusalem, the Irish in America, and Indians across the world are all diasporic communities. Even as they might homogenise themselves in their domicile land, diasporic communities often experience a sense of connection with the lands they or their ancestors left behind. Diaspora literature which is a sub-genre in Indian Writing in English captures the many dilemmas, joys and issues of the diasporic communities mostly in the West. The long distance nationalism of the diasporic communities has resulted not only in fostering a sense of national belonging but also has had other effects/ uses such as social remittances. Migrants and diasporic communities when they get back or get in touch with home not only share financial capital or make investments on the monetary side; they also share social and cultural practices either during their periods of visit back to the nation or through such communications and interactions as telephone calls, online chat sessions, emails, shared audio/video files and clips, and letters. These are called social remittances. Therefore, the practices of diasporas and immigrants in creating new forms of nationalism cannot be overlooked. Such groups create social fields that link them back with their home land. These social fields become sites of exchange of ideas, thoughts, emotions, money and various kinds of resources and shareable things that are termed ‘social remittances’ by Peggy Levitt.

In Black Nationalism, the shared experience of being a black has resulted in the formation of a kind of nationalism that respects blackness, but does not respect the geographical boundaries of the nation. Now since it is plausible that nation need not have any physical boundaries, the term nation can be understood as signifying an experience that is both concrete and abstract. Though nation is an organisational principle, xenophobic and strident forms of nationalism are condemned as unhealthy for the citizens, the neighbours, and the nation itself. Nation can survive as one among the good ideas and the best practices of civilisation only with the involvement of the people in terms of both resistance and support to the idea. Nation is not at all a final formation either in physical reality or in discourse. The definition of nation as a fully realised political aspiration or social space would be as debatable, utopian, and even intolerant of the unruly multitudes as the Platonic Republic is. Without individuals’ experience of what a nation is, the existence of nation as a concept becomes insubstantial. Without conglomerations and networks of the multitude of people there is no nation. Some of the factors that help in constituting a nation such as its laws, institutions and symbols, are instituted in/by popular culture.

Nation in Popular Culture

Nation also exists, to invoke Anderson, as a “language of ‘continuity.’” Nation has become an enduring presence in modern times and exists in public memory as a continuity through popular recounting of the past as also present reiterations and constructions of the category. In popular culture, nation represents a framework of constant reference. Video games such as Utopia: How to Construct a Nation are designed more to develop the engineering and organisational skills of children or gamers, young and old, rather than to instil love for the nation in them. Nation often becomes an original imitating its copies. The idea of the nation survives through such imitative practices that are provided by mediums such as the cinema, advertisements, the print media, and so on. Some of the images that have helped disseminate nationalist sentiments during the early days of independence struggle have stayed on. Slogans that have helped keep alive the nation as a continuity include “Unity in Diversity” and “Hum Sab Ek Hai” (We are all one). Invocations that were serviceable during the days of the nationalist struggle to enlist more numbers into the struggle for independence as ‘Mother Cow’ (Go Mata) and ‘Mother India’ (Bharat Mata as in ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’) also have persisted in popular memory and use. At the same time, they have now become symbols that many prefer to distance themselves from, as they are perceived as symbolic invocations of the nation drawn from majority religio ns.

Very often the images that are propagated through posters and billboards tend to essentialise the identity of the nation’s citizens. Thus, the Muslim pictured in posters that are meant to promote national integration is invariably seen to sport a Turkish beard or a Muslim marker of identity. Such representations do not leave space for a modern secular Muslim. While the posters project the differences, the images are often far from the reality of the ordinary Muslim on the street. The popular imaginings of the nation have moved away from the religious symbolic to a secular rhetoric. In the modern social and political space of the nation, the practices of both the nation state and the populace are often in the secular mode. Science and technology have been instrumental in creating new spaces for the nation to talk to its people without the necessity to resort to the old nationalist practices of invoking religious identities and demands. However, as exemplified by the Indian nation, there are no full stops to the irony that the nation represents in terms of the use of the past and the present to invent and re- invent itself. Chat shows, websites, advertisements, cooking sessions, family serials on the television, music videos and satellite channels are all vehicles that have served time and again nationalist ideals. Every year patriotic fusion songs and remixes are produced by the CD industry. Even as old models are no longer in use, old sentiments are still invoked with the help of new models. The idea of the nation is reproduced in new mediums, in newer formats. The public sphere is often filled with representations and invocations of the nation. Modernity thus has not only enabled newer ways of imagining and effecting the nation, but also helps tradition re- invent itself. Another interesting feature is that the emergent cyber world too joins hands with the nation in creating the national citizen. For example, Indianness becomes usefully portable with Mobile Portability becoming a reality owing to revolutionary advancements in networking technologies.

Gandhi had effectively assigned Indian identity to the use of handloom. The use of Khadi as an emotive symbol began during the Swadeshi Movement. Initially it was conceived to combat mill cloth and represented the self-sufficiency of Indians. It became a symbol of purity and all chaste virtues which were considered as appropriate for and required of a servant and son of the nation. Khadi has stayed on, though it has lost its clean sheen image. Rather, since a ll politicians are found wearing Khadi at all times for all functions, the cloth has additionally acquired some other meanings too. Anyone seen wearing K hadi is immediately identified to be an “Indian” regardless of whether he/she really holds fast to such an identity or not. Besides, these days, the Khadi cloth worn by all is not pure handloom but is mixed with silk and other exotic fabrics. As Khadi continues to be worn by the modern day politician, it assumes importance as an emergent site of India’s search for modernity in an alternative space untouched and un- ushered by the Western model of modernity.

National Games, Pastimes and Projects:

While in the past, icons, stories and narratives served as symbols of nationhood and national belonging, in modern times one can witness the appropriation of many activities and practices as symbols that bear a national status. Sports and games represent one such area. People experience the nation through games and sports and pastimes such as reading and travel. The novel and newspapers are two of the popular mediums and sites that play a major role in the construction of a nation. Some of the sustenance-giving as well as leisure-time indulgences such as food and beverages too serve as active sites where the identity of the nation is projected and promoted. Hobsbawm and a host of others have spoken about how sports got linked with nationalist sentiments. For the modern Indian, cricket is a big time national game. Periods of international cricket matches are periods of feverish excitement when the cultural heart of the masses beats for the nation. Cricket had emerged as a national sport by sidelining football and hockey. The national media comprising the newspapers, the television and advertising have been responsib le to a large extent in whipping up national sentiments in favour of cricket. Cricket offers an almost voyeuristic pleasure and generates pride in modern Indians because the Indian team frequently wins at international levels. Given the fewer number of countries participating in international cricket matches, owing to the imperial and colonial associations of the game, India gains an additional advantage as a power in this international game.

The game is important not because it connects the people of the nation or because it fosters any value of fraternity, equality or liberty within the nation. The national importance of the game is owing to the international visibility and victory that it fetches to the Indians. Cricket is an opium for the masses and while the nation watches the match almost everything is seen as coming to a standstill. In India it is not only a game but a peace-time fodder for the warring instincts of men. Movies such as Lagan and bestsellers such as The Three Mistakes of My Life and The Zoya Factor show how cricket is closely associated with nationalist passions while at the same time how the game has to do with a sense of feeling of the local communities.

The idea of a nation is invoked by such institutions as the armed forces too. During war time or when threats of war loom large over the national horizon, nationalist sentiments often reach a peak. Patriotism is spread through social networking sites and soldiers are extolled for their sacrifices to the nation. Interestingly, nationalist sentiments spread like wild fire more through the visual media and social networking websites rather than through the traditional print media. The consumers and producers of the traditional print media are more often than not people in their middle ages who display a laidback attitude towards nationalist ideologies while the youth who mostly constitute the consumers and producers of the digital media get easily and quickly swayed by nationalist sentiments.

The Nation and Cinema:

With almost half of the Indian population yet to achieve literacy, the cinema has served as the most major vehicle of popular culture for conveying ideas on the nation. The cinema has been employed during the early days of nationhood to instil hope and faith in the people with relation to the dream of a free India where the citizens could live in a sense of brotherhood. Even commercial cinema has served the national interests. National identity, individual identity, and cultural practices are intertwined to produce and reproduce myths and metaphors related to the making of the nation. The film industry represents a major site where the dreams and aspirations as well as the long-distance nationalism of the Indian diaspora get played out. Very often Bollywood combines nostalgia with a sense of national tradition and culture. Starting from the Sunil Dutt – Nargis starrer Mother India (1957), there is a long list of movies that could be considered patriotic. Ashish Rajadhyaksha speaks about movies such as 1942: A Love Story (1994) as built on the theme of techno- nationalism, which later becomes a theme in very many movies.

Even as NRI investments have helped the huge growth of the movie industry in India, the role of the nation state in these developments cannot be downplayed. From the earlier days of anti- colonialism and nationalism the nation under the leadership of some of the political parties started upholding the concept of cultural nationalism. Slogans such as ‘I Love My India’ have helped revive the idea of the nation for the common people and also for the youth. Though Bollywood refers only to the Bombay film industry, it has come to represent Hindi cinema and even Indian cinema. Bollywood embodies the aspirations of not only Indian diasporic communities but consumers of the culture industry from almost all parts of the world. It is after World War II and Partition that the Indian cinema became a major participant in the public sphere. The Indian cinema’s claim to being a popular medium for the people is also because it had always tried to resist global capitalist organisation. The nation state too had helped the cinema emerge as a people’s medium by doing away with entertainment tax. The nation state gives away national film awards besides offering financial assistance for making movies.

For the cinema to emerge as a major national culture industry in India, there are econo mic and political reasons too. It was in the 1940s that the film industry began to become a national industry. Productions eyeing a national market and forms such as nationalist sentimental melodramas that would appeal to the majority of the masses were seminal in this development of the film industry into a national industry. The emergence of the cinema as a national industry in the popular public sphere of India had to do with an array of factors such as NRI investments, long distance nationalism of the diasporic communities, global capital flow, cultural nationalism of certain political parties, and active state involvement. It is not any purportedly innate feature of these entertainment modes that have catapulted them on to their national status in the p ublic sphere.

The film industry has bartered away its independence, however, by seeking validation from the nation state in the form of annual state and national awards and also tax exemptions. At the same time, while Bollywood movies export nationalism, the presence of global capitalist products make their presence felt in the movies, trailers, and advertisements in the form of Swiss watches, Coca Cola bottles, and beer. Nevertheless, the space that movie theatres offered to the emergent modern secular Indian citizen cannot be discounted. Being able to buy tickets and watch movies inside the theatres sharing a sense of togetherness with a large crowd of fellow movie goers was an experience that had gone in a big way into the making of the modern Indian citizen. Thus the cinema helped create a cultural insiderism for the spectator in the physical space of the theatre and the imaginative space of the nation.

National Festivals and National Integration:

National festivals are a very popular form of celebration. Though many national festivals have a religious backdrop to it in the form of a story from one epic or the other, many of the festivals often coincide with seasonal changes and crop- harvesting. Whether it is an agrarian, seasonal or religious festival, the youth approach it as an occasion for celebration and shopping, as national festivals are also occasions of national holidays. However, national festivals served another purpose during the days of the struggle for independence. Many of these festivals underwent some sort of a cultural and even regional migration to assume a national character, as the nationalist leaders of the struggle used these occasions and even the stories behind such festivals to organise the people of the country on nationalist and rebellious lines. The Hindu festivals which were in practice occasions for family get-together, eating sweets, serving feasts, lighting lamps, wearing new clothes, and performing benign worship in the family shrine, were soon converted into large communitarian events attended by lot of fanfare, dancing and singing on the streets, and so on. The aspect of victory in the stories was highlighted by the nationalists. Thus Dusshera and Diwali soon came to represent the victory of good over evil. The evil was often considered to be the coloniser.

However, as time passed, national festivals underwent further transformations. For the majority of people who were peace- loving and not interested in battles and victories, the stories behind the festivals were slowly losing value and enchantment. Soon more interiorised and spiritual versions of the stories started appearing in popular print media. The enemy was one ’s own self, the people were told, and the victory was to be a victory over the caprices of one’s own mind.

In present times, while national festivals are equally occasions for shopping festivals, and the verve that attends upon the celebration of festivals are seen to diminish a lot, many citizens of the cyber nation send e-cards to each other and celebrate the festivals with family and close friends, keeping the nation strictly out of the picture. Regional and local cultures refuse to get co-opted into the framework of the national festivals. However, very often there is an interface between the local festivals and the national media. The local proudly finds its place in the national space. At the same time, many of the Hindu national festivals are viewed by intellectual leaders from erstwhile marginalised communities and sympathisers as well as ideologues of formerly non- dominant constituencies as violent representations of the victory of the powerful over the disempowered and powerless.

Nation as a Contested Site

Nations never have had a smooth passage in the annals of history. Challenges to nationalism have been sounded time and again from various quarters. These include sub-nationalist groups who want to break away from the nation; groups that are discontented owing to their peripheral status within the nation; various subaltern groups; and extremist revolutionaries. Nation is experienced as oppressive by discontented and dissident groups who agitate against the nation and its policies. There have always been fears and anxieties consistently expressed by communities and collectivities that have felt that the nation has been appropriated by dominant groups and majoritarian forces. The imaginings of the nation by dominant groups have often been viewed anxiously by the historically and currently disadvantaged sections. Nevertheless, however contested a site the nation is, it survives as a space that offers a sense of belonging and enablement to the modern individual.

The attempts made by posters and billboards to create images of national integration in the minds of the public have often been seen as attempts at coercing members of particular communities into falling in line. Very often the signs that are used in nationalistic pictures and photographs tend to be stereotypes that fail to capture the complexities of ground realities. The pictures seem to be declaring loud and clear the otherness of many communities so much so that they feel coerced into wearing their identities as projected by others who represent them. Thus it becomes a case of the original forced to imitate the copy.

The Nation as a concept has had a passage from divine origins to modern man-made origins. The modern nation state is envisaged on the basis of such ideals as secularism, equality, liberty, etc. However the visual and other representations of such ideals have often drawn criticism as these are often far from the reality of the Indian national/ citizen out there on the streets. Very often representations tend to be stereotypical or coercive and prescriptive much to the discomfort of those who find their identity and representations of it by dominant Others, problematical.

Audio Visual Quadrant

1. National economies, crops, industries, beverages, and pastimes too are used to project an idea of a particular kind of nation. For instance, the Tata Tea advertisement tokenises Indian national identity by promoting anti-corruption policies and demand for better governance as well. The advertisement shows that over a cup of tea many things indeed happen. For instance, the sipper of the steaming cup of tea, a young man, is steaming equally with confidence and a self- righteous demand for a corruption- free tribe of politicians. The quality of the pure cup of tea accrues as an attribute to the young man’s purity of intention and demand. The partaking of the tea offered to him draws the politician also into an unwritten contract for ensuring a corruption- free and more accountable governance. Their punch line ‘jaago re’ is a direct reference to all citizens of India to rise up, eradicate corruption, and create an ideal ‘India.’ Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5ECJrnqPcI.

2. The following clip shows how nationalism becomes a marketing strategy for industrial giants in the country. This is also an advertisement by Tata Tea, though the cup of tea takes a very peripheral and back seat here. The commercial could be part of the corporate social responsibility policy of the business house. The advertisement sounds some alarm bells for the Indian citizen. A number of scenes fade into each other at a fast pace, showing the various faces of a troubled nation. A finger keeps pointing at each of these visuals and news, a finger is put on each of the issues, and the finger is shown to have the power to decide against all the atrocities that the people of the nation face. With ‘jaago re’ as the punch line, the advertisement convinces and persuades the citizens to use their finger to vote and decide in favour of a better and safer future for the country. Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m07wELfHP_8 and decide.

3. The following picture is an advertisement by Amarsons Collections, a textile and jewellery brand based in Mumbai. The advertisement is used by Shahid Amin on the first page of his essay titled “On Representing the Musalman” that appeared in the Sarai Reader 2004: Crisis/Media. Nationalism is used by Amarsons to market its clothing as acceptable for the diverse people of the country, who as the symbol of the palm suggests, are part of an organic unity. In the background of the palm, writing in various languages says, “Ham Sab Ek Hei,” which means “we all are one.” However, Shahid Amin has different uses for the advertisement. He uses it to show how the different communities are stereotyped, essentialsied and reduced into certain religious and ethnic markers which may not after all help us in identifying, for instance, the common Indian Muslim on the street. The representative symbols used to indicate the diverse citizen population are far from the ground realities. Does a Muslim have to wear a Turkish headgear to become a Muslim? If he doesn’t, would he be considered a lesser Muslim or a lesser Indian citizen? If he does not wear it, would his loyalties to the nation and to his religion be called into question? Is there any scope for a secular Muslim? These are the questions that can be posed in the light of this advertisement. See http://preview.sarai.net/journal/04_pdf/12shahid.pdf.

4. The following print-audio- visual page on “Celluloid Patriotism” speaks briefly about how nationalism and patriotic sentiments in Hindi movies have come a long way since the 1940s and 50s. The enemy is no longer across the border as neo-nationalist heroes bring home brides from Pakistan. Listen and watch at:

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/history-of-nationalism- in- indian-cinema/141539-8-66.html.

5. The following is a 2012 lecture by the celebrated theorist on nationalism, Prof. Benedict Anderson. The lecture, as he says, is on how to “re- imagine” the imagined community of the nation. The lecture is titled “Nationalism and Time.” Here he suggests, among related things, how ‘simultaneousness’ play a role in the making of a nation, that is how people doing the same thing at the same time such as reading newspaper and sharing the same news could be said to belong to the nation by way of participation in simultaneity. Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pndcJMsIVR8.

6. The following “eye-opener” is another Jaago Re commercial by Tata Tea. The targeted audience of the commercial are the youth who do not care to cast votes on the day of the election but are out to watch a movie. The smart young chap in the visual offers tea for all those who are, according to him, sleeping as they do not exercise their right to vote. Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXWdhB1xYic and think.

7. The following is a link to a talk by Prof. Kancha Ilaiah on Hindu national festivals from a Dalit theoretical and caste perspective. According to him, the vanquished in all the stories tend to be Dalit Bahujans while the annihilator is invariably a Brahmin. Watch at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDVKOlzSuc8 and think.

8. The following is a short video on the Festival of Diwali taken by National Geographic. Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrrW3rO51ak. Look at their representation of the Indian festival and discuss.

9. The following is a commercial that connects cricket with nationalism. The video starts with words such as war and goes on showing Shankar Mahadevan singing a song, “Come on India!” The entire nation seems to be on fire with cricket passion. The old and the young are seen to be totally engrossed in cricket. It is as if India can assert its national identity and Indians their belongingness only by playing, watching, or cheering Indian cricketers. Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghs7-7fiy48.

10. The following are two links to a lecture on the rise of nation-states by an Indian political scientist. Listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFP6fUG0v8&list=PL6pZ_6XSxfjqN02Jk2GiuQr NFs5HcC4ak.

you can view video on Nation in Popular Cultures (Case Study)

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