Nationalism today
Today, I saw two very interesting videos. The first one was by Makarand Paranjape to JNU students on nationalism ( Makarand Paranjape at JNU ). The second was Bharka Dutt’s response to Anupam Kher on the Telegraph National Debate.( Bharka Dutt at the Telegraph National Debate ) It was such a delightful experience listening to two sane voices. Importantly, both of them have tried to provide a meaningful context for the nationalism debate. Here I have attempted to provide my own interpretation of the ongoing debate. We have on the saffron corner, the right wing RSS and Hindu outfits, who’s advocacy of Hindu nationalism borders on authoritarianism. Nationalism to this group has very narrow definition and has a bias towards Hindu nationalism. Their friends BJP, sitting very close to them, have a more economic agenda. Unfortunately , elements in their team subscribe to the Hindu nationalist agenda. The BJP economic agenda is openly free market and at times in conflict with th...