The ideas of India - Shashi Taroor

The ideas of India - Hindustan Times

So Indian nationalism was not based on any of the conventional indices of national identity. Not language, since our constitution now recognises 23 official languages, and as many as 35 languages spoken by more than a million people each. Not ethnicity, since the “Indian” accommodates a diversity of racial types in which many Indians (Punjabis and Bengalis, in particular) have more ethnically in common with foreigners than with their other compatriots. Not religion, since India is a secular pluralist state that is home to every religion known to mankind, with the possible exception of Shintoism. Not geography, since the natural geography of the subcontinent — framed by the mountains and the sea — was hacked by the partition of 1947. And not even territory, since, by law, anyone with one grandparent born in pre-partition India — outside the territorial boundaries of today’s state — is eligible for citizenship. Indian nationalism has therefore always been the nationalism of an idea.