State and Nation: Shall the Twain Ever Meet?

This article traces the separate trajectories of the Indian state and the Indian nation since independence. The state machinery, largely inherited from colonial times, retained its imperial character, which facilitated the integration of the princely states. The negotiated transfer of power also created the myth that the state was prior to the nation whose sovereign people gave itself a new constitution. The Indian nation, on the other hand, was imagined differently in each regional language. Thus, while there was certainly the concept of an Indian nation, it looked different from each linguistic perspective. Further, the idea of the Indian nation was also contested in each region. This article surveys the political process by which these two trajectories were sought to be united, first in the period of Congress dominance until 1967, then under the authoritarian leadership of Indira Gandhi, followed by the relative loosening of the federal structure in the 1990s, and culminating in the present attempt to impose the Hindu majoritarian conception of the nation, nurtured in particular in the Hindi language, on the Indian nation state. Looking at the forces that oppose this hegemonic attempt, the article argues that only a genuinely federal conception of the nation in which each part is given equal respect can effectively challenge Hindutva hegemony.