Patriotism Versus Nationalism

THE issue of hardcore, virulent nationalism has jumped center-stage once again as the ruling BJP has elevated the countrywide ongoing anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protests as the number one danger to India’s unity and integrity.

Party campaigners have made it their main election plank in the Delhi assembly polls, even going so far as to publicly berate political opponents as terrorists; Shaheen Bagh, where thousands of peaceful protesters have been reading the Preamble to the Indian Constitution and waving the Tricolour and singing the national anthem, has been described as a mini-Pakistan; Arif Mohammed Khan, governor of Kerala, has in an unprecedented and brash political gesture, publicly criticised the anti-CAA stance of the state government. The state has warned it will brook no opposition to its authority.

The intent of this essay is not to debate the merits of the CAA-NRC-NPR initiative or its constititutional propriety but rather to examine the difference between the “patriotism” of the anti-CAA flag-wavers and the “nationalism” of the ruling party’s unabashed statist attitude which, according to at least one BJP minister campaigning for the party, would justify “shooting the bloody anti-nationals”.

In November 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron, in what was widely recognised as a jab at America First Trumpism, stated in Paris: “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism...

Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.” He added: “In saying, ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others’, you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great, and that which is most important: its moral values.”