Understanding Nationalism

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INDEX

Introduction 5
Understanding Nationalism 4
 Understanding Nationalism

W hen one of the earliest martyrs of India’s freedom struggle,

Khudiram Bose, embraced the hangman’s noose, his countrymen bid
him farewell and sang ‘Hansi Hansi Porbo Phansi, Dekhbe Mor
Deshbashi’ (my countrymen will watch me as I go to the gallows with
a smile on my face). Bhagat Singh’s call of ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ inspired
a whole generation to resist British rule in India. They rose up as one
against the inhumanity heaped on Indians by the then mightiest imperial
power, with Bhagat Singh’s words ringing in their ears: ‘The sanctity of
Law can be maintained only so long as it is the expression of the will
of the people’. The youth of India joined the struggle against British
Colonialism remembering Chandrashekhar Azad’s immortal words:
‘If yet your blood does not rage, then it is water that flows in your
veins. For what is the flush of youth, if it is not of service to the
motherland’. When young Indian ratings in service in the British Navy
turned the guns on their ships towards the Bombay harbour, workers
across India downed their tools in solidarity. Our struggle for freedom
united the entire country, chasing a dream that had to become a reality.
In the words of the poet-revolutionary Ashfaqullah Khan ‘There is no
dream, and if there is, there is only one to see you my children struggling
for the same and for which I am expected to be finished’.
While the dream of a free India united its people against colonial
rule, it was not a dream in just one colour. The rise of Indian nationalism
under colonial rule was not just about freeing our land, it went much
5 .................
beyond. Indian nationalism was imbued with the colours of the
rainbow, where the dreams of people who inhabited the land converged
into a vision that was to become the vision for India – free, proud,
fully in control if its own destiny as an independent nation. A nation
that would have place for all – women and men, poor and rich, workers
and peasants, people of all faiths, indivisible as a nation beyond caste,
religion and gender. The rise of Indian nationalism was also a struggle
to free its entire people from shackles that prevented them from leading
lives that were free of exploitation and injustice. In the words of
Rabindranath Tagore, the dream was of an India awakening in a land
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, Where
knowledge is free, Where the world has not been broken up into
fragments, By narrow domestic walls”. Note how Tagore’s vision of
the Indian nation is not just about its territory, it is also about social
justice and dignity, about freedom to acquire knowledge, and about
respect for all communities and nations.
The bedrock of Indian Nationalism was, thus, freedom from
exploitation in any form – in Gandhiji’s words: ‘Our nationalism can
be no peril to other nations in as much as we will exploit none, just as
we will allow none to exploit us’. Gandhiji here, was already demarcating
the idea of Indian nationalism from that of imperial nations of that
time like Britain, when he said: “It is not nationalism that is evil, it is the
narrowness, selfishness, exclusiveness which is the bane of modern
nations which is evil”. Babasaheb Ambedkar further argued forcefully
that nationalism can be an empty slogan if it does not include the
emancipation of those who are most exploited. He argued that: “…it
may be possible to consider a nation as a unit but sociologically, it
cannot be regarded as consisting of many classes. Freedom of the
nation, if it is to be a reality, must vouchsafe the freedom of the different
classes comprised in it, particularly of those who are treated as the
servile classes”. Sarojini Naidu declaimed in the same vein: “Until you
have acquired and mastered the spirit of brotherhood, do not believe
it possible that you will ever cease to be sectarian... you will ever be
national”.
This, then, was the larger vision of a free India, a nation free of
exploitation by foreign powers on one hand and one where all efforts
would converge to guarantee social, economic, and political freedom
Understanding Nationalism 6
and justice to its entire people. Not just a nationalism that defends the
physical boundaries of the nation but one that raises its voice against
injustice and exploitation within society.
It is important, at the same time, to remember that the broader
vision of Indian nationalism which incorporated the idea of freedom
in all its dimensions for the entire people, did come into conflict with a
much narrower idea of nationalism that was based on religious or
ethnic identity. During our struggle for independence, the struggle against
the British played a very important role in developing our ideas of
nation and nationality. But during this period of our history the above
two contrasting ideas about the Indian nation were advanced. Let us
explore, first, the roots of these very different ideas, which lie in
eighteenth century Europe.
Emergence of ‘Modern’ Nations: Civic Nationalism vs.
Blood and Race Nationalism
The modern definition of the ‘nation’ emerged in eighteenth
century Europe. Before that there were kings and rulers, there were
kingdoms and they had their boundaries, but there was no nation. If
you take Europe for instance, you had the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
the Ottoman Empire, which had almost half of central Europe under
it, the British Empire, which spanned a large part of the world outside
England. You had the French and Germans who fought over Europe
repeatedly. There was no concept of a nation. Each empire had as its
boundaries, and various religious groups who fought each other –
Catholics opposed Protestants, Protestants opposed Catholics. Both
opposed the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Ottomans oppressed
everybody. The concept of nations, as we understand it now, emerged
in the eighteenth century, as a part of the process of defining what Karl
Marx called the economic boundary of the market under Capitalism.
This is the basis of the modern nation-state.
The nation-states organised themselves around certain common
cultural parameters, which people in the nations could identify with.
Most commonly, it was language, which emerged as a part of the
process of the consolidation of a national identity. The languages, by
which we identify most countries in Europe today – English, French,
Italian, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. -- became dominant
7 .................
in a particular country through a long history of struggles and conflicts.
A number of languages were lost or were termed as dialects of the
(what emerged as) the dominant language. For example in Spain the
people in Catalonia (surrounding Barcelona) argue that the Catalan
language is different from Spanish, yet, it continues to be categorized
as Spanish. Thus the process of the making of the nation was not a
simple one by which, suddenly, a national identity emerged. The nations
emerged as part of a much larger cultural exchange and, quite often,
violent conflicts. Side by side with the establishment of the capitalist
market, we also saw the establishment of a language and a ‘national’
identity.
But the definition of what we mean by a nation, and nationalism,
was understood in two different ways. While both versions were defined
by a territory or a geographic boundary for the nation, one focussed
on the people, the other focussed on the land. The idea of civic
nationalism draws its inspiration from the French Revolution, and define
that all people who live within the boundary of the nation are full
citizens of France: the nation essentially is its people . Hence all citizens
were seen as equal before the law, therefore the slogan – liberty, equality
and fraternity. Any citizen of the French State was a full citizen. The
French revolution not only overthrew the ruling aristocracy, it also gave
full citizenship rights to all people residing in France, including, for
example, for instance Jews who were persecuted in most of Europe.
In this period of European history, another concept of the nation
was also emerging. This was the ‘blood and race’ concept of the nation
that arose in Germany. This was intimately connected to the land –
those who belonged to the land were the ones who belong to this
nation. It introduced the concept that the original inhabitants of the
land were the true inheritors of the nation, and all others would be
viewed as being outside this nation.
Those who advanced this notion argued for a Germany nation
composed only of those who drew their ancestry from people who
lived in the imagined past of Germany. It was based on an imagined
past as we know that no country in the world is populated by just one
kind of people, as for tens of thousands of years people migrated
across the face of the earth and mixed with existing populations. This
concept of the ‘pure’ German nation was based on the myth that it is
Understanding Nationalism 8
possible to identify a particular ‘race’ with very similar 'racial
characteristics' as being the original inhabitants of a nation. This is
exclusionary nationalism: it includes one set of people based on some
arbitrary characteristic while excluding all the others.
The last three hundred years of European history has been a
reflection of these two contentious ideas of the nation. The effort to
create such homogenous blood and race nations led, for example, to
expulsions of Protestants from France, Catholics from Denmark and
Norway. Europe went through hundreds of years of war to try and
create such “homogenous” nations. This is the bloody history of
European nationalism: wars, massacres, ethnic cleansing and mass
deportation of minorities.
The ‘blood and race’ concept of a nation led ultimately to fascism
in Germany. Whoever does not belong to the ‘pure’ German nation,
defined by their supposed ancestry, will have no place in Germany --
this was Hitler’s basic position. On this basis he proceeded to kill the
Jews and gypsies in Germany, and we all know about the horrendous
effects of the rise of fascism in Germany that culminated in the Second
World War.
Contrary to what Hitler and other fascists in Germany proposed,
it is important to understand that nations as we know them today did
not have their origins in a mythical past. They have been constructed,
over hundreds and thousands of years through interactions between
people. It has led to the emergence of a shared culture, a shared language
(or languages in many countries) and a shared purpose as a nation. The
interactions leading to the emergence of of European nations was
largely accompanied by bloody conflicts.
Defining the Indian Nation during the National Movement
During India’s freedom struggle, when the Indian nation, as we
know it now, was being shaped, the same two contradictory ideas of
what constitutes a nation were put forward. The debates in that period
of Indian history were influenced by debates and practices regarding
nation and nationalism in Europe. If we look at the writings of Savarkar,
Golwalkar and Hegdewar, on the one hand, and those of Nehru,
Ambedkar and Gandhi, on the other, we can understand the debates
about different concepts of the Indian nation. Before we proceed it is
9 .................
important to understand one significant difference between India and
modern European nations. There are very few countries left in the
world today where there still exist, like in India, so many languages, so
many religions and so many cultural identities. The history of many
parts of Europe is actually a history of how diversity of religion,
language and culture was brutally suppressed to create nations that were
usually formed by people speaking the same language and following
the same religion. Nationalism in Europe was accompanied by far
more violence, it was far more exclusive than in India. We should be
very proud of the fact that India is perhaps the only country in the
world, which has such a diversity of languages – major languages, not
minor languages – and major religions. In that sense it is a unique
experiment.
In the early twentieth century Nehru spoke of ‘unity in diversity’.
Nehru’s position was also that of the Congress Party. The attempt was
to define the Indian nation on the basis of its economic boundary. The
concept of ‘swaraj’ was built on the idea that India as a nation would
prosper, along with all its citizens, only if we are free of the chains of
British colonialism. In this vision of India, everybody was a part of
the Indian nation, united in the resolve to be free from British rule. In a
sense India was the birthplace of twentieth-century nationalism – not
based on blood and race but on economic and political sovereignty.
The concept of the Indian nation was to be developed on the basis of
the struggle against colonialism and imperialism.
While the above concept of Indian nationalism prevailed, it stood
in direct contrast with the ideas of Savarkar, Hegdewar and Golwalkar
on one hand and that of Jinnah on the other. The position of Golwalkar
and others, adopted by the RSS and other allied groups, suggested that
only religion could form the basis of nationalism (not very different
from what Jinnah proposed). This concept of nationalism drew from
certain ideas about nationalism in Europe. Thus Golwalkar aligned
with Hitler, on the question of ethnic minorities being massacred and
‘cleansed’, which Golwalkar felt was an expression of the ‘highest form
of racial pride’.
That this brand of nationalism is a derivative of exclusionary
European nationalism is clear in the way Golwalkar defines the nation:

Understanding Nationalism 10
"Thus applying the modern understanding of ‘Nation’ to our present
conditions, the conclusion is unquestionably forced upon us that in this
country, Hindusthan, the Hindu Race with its Hindu Religion, Hindu
Culture and Hindu Language, (the natural family of Sanskrit and her
offsprings) complete the Nation concept.. “(Ref: We or Our
Nationhood Defined). Both Golwalkar and Savarkar were looking at
how to build a “modern” nation using religion as its core element. This
involved also the glorification of a mythical ‘Hindu’ past. Golwalkar’s
concept of nation is defined in terms of five “unities”: geography,
race, religion, culture and language. Plurality had no place in such a
nation. It is interesting that this vision of nationalism was very close to
that proposed by Jinnah, with the latter substituting Muslims for Hindus.
The striking feature of Golwalkar’s variety of nationalism is not
just what it claims as its basis but also what it does not. It nowhere talks
about the economic basis of nationalism: the right of a people to
control its economy, market and its resources. It is not surprising
therefore that the RSS did not fight the British: their main focus was
against the enemy of the “Hindu” nation the “secularists” and the
Muslims. Similarly Jinnah’s Muslim League was content to collaborate
with the British as long as it was willing to grant them a ‘muslim nation’.
It is important to note that neither Savarkar nor Jinnah, were
never interested in promoting religion, but rather in looking at religion
as the basis of building national identities. Neither Savarkar nor Jinnah
were religious in their personal lives but for both, religion had a political
role.
Rise of Exclusionary Nationalism under Globalisation
Those who wanted to build the nation on religious lines could
never come to the forefront of the National Movement because they
did not want to fight the British. Why is it then, that today a brand of
nationalism is again gaining ground that is based on the exclusionary
nationalism of Savarkar and Jinnah?
To look for an answer to this we need to understand the deep
influence of what we loosely term as ‘Globalisation’ on economic and
political process in almost every part of the globe. Let us first try to
understand what we mean by Globalisation here.

11 .................
 A few hundred years ago, Western capitalist countries began their
plunder and conquest of the rest of the world — Asia, Africa and the
Americas. The British, for example, colonised India 250 years ago. The
motivation of the western countries was greed. The capitalist “free
market economy” has only one goal—profit. This colonial loot was
helped by the Industrial Revolution (with its development of machine-
based production), which began in Britain about 250 years ago. The
new factories produced steamships and guns, which made imperialist
conquest unequal, easy and bloody.
Today we hear the term ‘globalisation’ used to describe the
expansion of the global capitalist economy. In India, Pepsi, Coca-
Cola, Western TV shows and movies, and foreign clothes like Nike
have become common. India is opening up even further to the global
market economy. But the history of the last 300 years shows us that
globalisation is just another word for the continuation of capitalist and
imperialist exploitation. It is a word that has been deliberately coined
to raise false hopes among the poor of the world: that the current
processes in the global economy will allow them to approach the
standards enjoyed by the rich in North America, Europe and Japan.
While selling this false dream, these countries have mounted a fresh
offensive on the resources of poor countries.
The globalisation that we are talking about does not mean that
national boundaries have receded in the world. Globalisation means a
special integration of markets, where the entire world is one market
that is available for exploitation, in which capital (money) and
commodities (goods) and services can move freely. National boundaries
stay. But they stay to see that people don’t travel. You would be asked
whether you are a citizen or not but money, goods and services would
face no such questions. The integration of the global market has
significantly reduced the ability of nations to take sovereign decisions
about their own economies. Money flows in and out based on where
it is most profitable to invest, meaning where it is possible to exploit
labour in the most extreme form. Trade rules are set in international
forums like the WTO, where the rich imperialist countries dominate.
Global institutions, again dominated by the imperialist countries of
North America and Europe, such as the World Bank and the IMF,
police the globe’s economic architecture. They deny individual nations
Understanding Nationalism 12
the sovereign right to regulate and protect their own economies, and
thus the livelihoods of their citizens.
What we are witnessing is the return of almost colonial forms.
Under British colonialism, there were restrictions on Indians travelling
to England, but British capital could flow in and out of India quite
freely. When England sold any of its goods in India it paid no or
minimal duty. Foreign capital was entitled to loans, but Indian capital
was not. So it could capture the Indian market completely. All these
things are recurring in India today. Under financial liberalisation, trade
liberalisation, the way barriers are being taken down, what we are really
seeing is the re-creation of what happened under British colonialism
minus the white man being physically present with an imperial army.
What is the effect of loss of control over our economy under
globalisation? Nationalism in India, as we see earlier, was built on the
idea of economic sovereignty -- the endeavour to control and prevent
exploitation of our labour, our markets and our capital by foreign
countries and foreign companies. In the current ear of globalization
the nation has to be redefined minus the economic space, that is minus
sovereign control over economic activities that take place within the
boundaries of India. The way we had conceived the nation on an
economic basis, protecting it from foreign control – if that is taken
away then how do we define the nation? Further In this game, we see
the increasing collaboration of ruling elites, even in developing countries
such as India. These ruling elites, are the only real gainers from imperialist
globalization, and are content to hand over control over national
economies to foreign corporations, foreign banks, and global agencies
controlled by imperialist countries. Who are the real anti-nationals in an
India, where the ruling elites are every day, every hour, collaborating
with foreign capital to sell our national assets?
Now, the problem that arises is, if we have defined the nation in
terms of economic space and if we let that go, then how do we define
the Indian nation? What we are seeing today is a redefinition of
nationalism because successive governments have given up on economic
sovereignty. Nationalism is being projected not as an expression of
our endeavour to protect our economic space and thereby as a way to
protect the livelihoods of our people. The current definitions of national
and anti-national seek to reverse the consensus of the national
13 .................
movement. It seeks to resurrect the concept of nation proposed by
Golwalkar and Savarkar. ‘Cultural nationalism’ is now being primed
to replace the idea of economic nationalism that emerged from the
national movement. When you talk of cultural nationalism you have to
define culture. And when you define culture you will have to leave out
certain groups. Therefore, the cultural nationalism being currently
promoted defines the nation as a Hindu nation.
Fake Nationalism dressed up as 'Make in India'
Economic policies being pursued in India since the 1990s, as we
have seen earlier. have been designed to hand over control over our
economy and the livelihoods of our people to foreign companies and
foreign capital. We can argue that this is the true danger that we face
from 'anti-national forces' -- the danger of losing sovereign control
over our own destiny.
The current campaign of the government titled 'Make in India'
is a clear example of this. The campaign involves inviting global capital
to come in and exploit India's cheap labour, while foreign companies
are provided tax breaks and subsidised land. They are also free to back
profits that they make in India, using our resources and our labour; not
very different from the practice of British capital during the colonial
period. This is in contrast to how self reliance and development was
conceived in the national movement, where developing knowledge
was seen as integral to the process of developing the country and its
people. This is the difference between 'Made in India' and its
indigenisation vision, as opposed to inviting global capital to 'Make in
India'. India's policy of self reliance grew out of the belief that if
India had to grow, it must invest in its people. Even when global capital
was invited, it had to transfer knowledge and technical capability. The
difference between 'Made in India' of the post independence years
and the current slogan of 'Make in India' lies here. One involved
transfer of knowledge and building upn that knowledge, the other is
simply handing over labour, land and the Indian market to foreign
capital.
The difference between the vision on development, of the
national movement and of those who propose a 'pure Hindu nation'
is related to differing notions about nationalism. In the inclusive view
Understanding Nationalism 14
of nationalism that grew out of the anti-colonial, national movement,
the nation is its people. In the current exclusionary view of nationalism,
it is the land that is the nation; it is the land that is pure: the punya-bhumi
and pitri-bhumi. But global capital is free to enter India, plunder its
resources, and those who allow this are seen as pro-development and
nationalists!
Founders of the National Movement knew who the real
enemies were
The early nationalists such as Dadabhai Naroji were clear that it
was colonial rule that was bleeding India and enriching Britain. His
'drain' theory, in which he attempted to show the role of colonial rule
in creating poverty in India, was one of the earliest in trying to understand
the economic costs of colonialism. Indian nationalists knew that British
as conquerors were different from the earlier conquerors. Babur
understood that once he was ruling India, there was no way he could
go back to his beloved Farghana. India absorbed the Mughals, as it
absorbed earlier conquerors. They became as much a part of this land
as any others. Not so with the British.
The colonial conquerors looted, enslaved, massacred the people
of Americas, Africa and Asia on a grand scale, and finally built a system
that continually created wealth in the their own countries while
impoverishing their colonies. That is why, as we can see from Angus
Maddison's classic work in the graphic below, India and China, which
till the 18th century, produced about 50% of the world's GDP, came
down to less than 10% within the next 200 years.
Source: More than 2,000 years in single graphic
The effect of colonial rule was not limited to the draining of
wealth from the colonies or semi colonies. Imperialism was creating a
system that lead to the continuous development of productive forces
by harnessing science and technology, while bleeding the colonies. Along
with the increasing production of goods unleashed by the industrial
revolution, it transferred raw materials from the colonies. It also
destroyed the manufacturing industries in the colonies, converting them
to captive market for selling of goods from its own factories.

15 .................
 It was slave trade from Africa, colonial plunder from India, and
other parts of the world that “financed”, or provided the necessary
capital for the industrial revolution. As Karl Marx noted “... capital
comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and
dirt.” While capital was and is extremely destructive, it also built
productive forces on an enormous scale. This is because it harnessed
science and technology for the production process. Development today
is not just the development of factories and machines but the knowledge
that is embedded in the machines.
The fight against British Colonialism shaped nationalism
in independent India
The national movement was clear that it would not be enough
to overthrow British rule in India. Independence would be meaningless
if people continued to languish in poverty. Independence meant not
only throwing out the colonial rulers but also development for its people.
That is why Subhash Chandra Bose, as the Congress President in 1938,
asked Nehru to head the National Planning Committee. Planning for
development was a core vision of the national movement. Developing
the capabilities of its people and removing poverty was integral to this
vision of a free India. This is why economic nationalism – making the
economy free of foreign capital – was central to the independence
movement.
Those who shared the vision of India defined by race and religion
proposed by Golwalkar and Savarkar, such as the RSS, did not share
this vision of a free India. For them, a sovereign economy was never a
of nationalism. When Golwalkar defined the nation, he talked about
land, race, religion, culture and language but never about the economy.
In this concept of the nation, economic freedom from foreign capital
was a non-issue.
After independence, the key challenge for India was to develop
its scientific and technological capabilities. It built the Central Scientific
and Industrial Research laboratories, the five Indian Institute of
Technologies (IIT's), the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and a host of
scientific institutions. It did not just build the public sector, but invested
in people. When Damodar Valley Corporation was created, more than
50 engineers were sent to Tennessee Valley Authority. They were the
Understanding Nationalism 16
ones who formed the core of the Indian power sector. In steel, again
a core set of people were sent to US Steel to learn about the steel
industry, who later on went on to lead the Steel Authority of India.
The Information Technology (IT) sector is viewed as an example
of the success of economic liberalisation. What is forgotten is the role
played by public sector bodies in its explosive growth. The key figures
in the IT sector – Naryana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, Sam Pitroda
(who built C-DOT), and a host of others came out of IIT's or similar
premiere institutions. Without the experience of building indigenous
computers, Indian software skills would never have been built. This,
coupled with the Indian skills developed in the public education system,
has provided the human power for the development of the IT sector.
After independence there was an agreement that development
needed infrastructure and only the Indian state has the capacity to
develop infrastructure at a scale that India required for rapid
development. This is what was embodied in its successive Five-Year
plans. At the time of independence, apart from railways, India had
very little infrastructure. The entire installed capacity of electricity
generation was less than 1,500 MW and restricted to only metro cities
and a few towns. Similarly, the telephone system. There were only a
few heavy industrial plants in the country. After independence, India's
industrialisation – from oil exploration, refineries, steel plants, power
plant equipment, machine tools, heavy engineering – was powered by
the public sector.
The proponents of nationalism based on race and religion -- the
RSS and its political front, the Jan Sangh -- were completely against this
path. They wanted India to be completely left to the mercy of market
forces and wanted free entry of global capital.
Progressive dilution of the national movement's vision
of self reliance
The vision of self reliance in the post-independence period was
conceived within a capitalist path of development. Even in the initial
years we sometimes erred by resorting to imports, resulting in
technological dependence in many areas. By not developing a strong
research base that would allow us to develop indigenous technologies,
India started lagging behind in areas that were seeing rapid technological
17 .................
changes, particularly in electronics. It must be noted that the current
abandonment of economic sovereignty has its roots in problems related
to the way self reliance started becoming, progressively, an empty
slogan. By the 1980s, as we discuss earlier, global economic pressures
were already pushing the country into the trap of a globalisation.
Successive governments did not actively resist the entrapment of India
into a global economic market that was governed by rich countries,
large corporations and capitalist banks. Later our governments became
collaborators in the process and are today willing partners of global
capital, ready to hand over the levers of our economy to foreign forces.
Here lies the contrast with China. China instead, protected its
huge internal market and forced foreign capital to fully transfer
technology to Chinese public sector firms. The electricity and telecom
sectors are examples, where India had a lead over China and yet it is
China that has become the home of power plant equipment and telecom
equipment today. Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd. (BHEL) was founded
well before China invested in power plant equipment manufacturing.
BHEL was capable of producing equipment for installing 4,000 -5,000
MW capacity per year for the power sector of quality comparable to
any in the world. At that time, Chinese companies were well behind.
Today, there are at least four Chinese companies that have capacity to
produce equipment many times more than BHEL and these companies
have overtaken all the global firms, who used to lead this field earlier,
such as Siemens, General Electric, ABB, etc.
Similar is the case in the telecommunications sector. C-DOT
exchanges were entirely indigenously developed, and were
technologically on par with what was being produced elsewhere. Instead
of using our own technological capabilities, India opened its market to
foreign equipment, essentially reducing ITT and C-DOT to minor
players. China instead, used its internal market to force major telecom
equipment manufacturers to transfer technology, the same way it had
done with the power sector. Today, Huawei is one of the global leaders
in telecom equipment and is ahead of most global players. In electronics
including mobile phone handsets, China is again the manufacturing hub
of the world. China is not just copying others, it is becoming a global
leader in hardware and software innovation.

Understanding Nationalism 18
 In the same period that China developed its technological
capability, India opened its market to global capital. It invited foreign
capital to not only bring in technology, but also to develop its
infrastructure. This dependant economic path led to significant industrial
stagnation in manufacturing, with economic growth primarily coming
from the service sector. Thus, for example, in spite of the huge local
market in telecom, spurred on by the cell phone 'revolution', equipment
manufacturing declined. The bulk of the handsets are imported, with
only some Indian manufacturers joining the fray. Even here, the major
part of the manufacturing is done in China. Even in pharmaceuticals,
where Indian generics have created a significant global presence, the
bulk of the active therapeutic ingredient are imported from China,
with Indian companies doing the formulation and packaging.
China is not only continuing with its Five-Year plans, but also
with medium and long term plans, spanning decades. It is planning its
infrastructure, its cities, education, science and technology development
plan and even a plan for developing innovation. Interestingly, it has
recently launched a Made in China 2025 plan. Contrast this with what
the current government is doing -- it has dispensed with the Planning
Commission, abandoned all planning and we are left with a toothless
Niti Ayog. The rejection of planning for our economy goes hand in
hand with handing over the economy to market forces that are governed
by foreign rather than national interests. We ask the question again, is
this not anti-nationalism at a grand scale?
What the current government does not recognise is that
knowledge is key in technology today. Take Apple Inc., which is the
biggest company in the world (in terms of market capitalisation) -- its
economic might is bigger than all but 19. Yet, it does not own a single
factory. It “produces” I-phones and Mac computers. How does it do
this? It owns the designs, the software and brand of Apple. With this,
it can force a Foxconn in China to manufacture Apple branded
products, such as I-phones, and pay them a pittance. A calculation
shows that Apple gets about $300 for each I-phone it sells, while
Foxconn gets only about $7. This is the nature of the knowledge
economy.

19 .................
 This focus on inviting foreign capital without building peoples
capabilities is certainly not a 'nationalist' move. Not surprisingly, in spite
of the publicity on 'Make in India', industrial sector growth continues
to shrink. While 12 million people enter the job market every year, only
7% find jobs in the organised sector. The rest are unemployed, or find
only casual employment, living a precarious existence.
Who is a Nationalist?
Our discussions raise a fundamental question. Who is a nationalist
today? Those who hold dear the values and dreams of the freedom
movement? Those who want to see a India that is strong, that is united,
that sees unity in diversity? Or those who weaken India by insisting that
only a certain kind of culture, only certain kinds of traditions, will be
respected in India? Can a person, or persons, or a government claim to
be nationalist while at the same time allowing our people's lives to be
endangered by handing over control of our national economy to foreign
forces? This is the real debate between nationalism and ant-nationalism.

Understanding Nationalism 20