nation as god

much of last month went into one of those ridiculous promotion related courses that we lecturers have to do. now i am not going to rant about that course. as such all my friends have heard enough and more about it, and were looking forward to its end much more than me. but i wanted to share this.

now the first half hour of each day was called a review session, where we were to elect a chairperson among ourselves, observe a two minute silence, review the previous day's sessions and also come up with a 'thought for the day', to top it all. and one thought school was over. a prayer was optional and the first day we had some chanting of mantras. a few of us decided that we needed to do something about this and managed to convert the silence into a prayer thereby managing to avoid any prayer. so a secular victory? yes, but we couldnt do anything about another mandatory ritual- ending the day's proceedings with the national anthem. its logic never even came up for discussion.

what was also striking was the number of speakers who managed to assert their pride as Indians no matter what subject they were dealing with- teaching methods, respect for teachers, clothes of students, india's foreign policy, the actions of indian courts. and for even a mildly critical query, they felt the need to re-assert their Indian-ness, as no answer can better national pride. if someone persisted with the questioning, they aggressively retorted with - 'i cant help it if you dont feel proud as an Indian'. and if any of these starlwarts were doing the last session of the day, their chests puffed a little more while singing the national anthem.

so the nation has become our god, that which cannot be contested. even for a generation which is understood to be over the nation and for a profession considered to be woefully archaic in the liberalised era, nationalism exists as a convenient and reassuring marker of identity and its symbols are constantly invoked. this everydayness of nationalism is tougher to counter than the omnipresence of religion.