Cultural Nationalism in Indian Perspective

Three streams of political worldviews prevail since the colonial days, viz., Dayananda-Vivekananda-Aurobindo thought-structure what may be precisely called cultural nationalism; Macaulayen-Congress Moderates-Nehruvian perception what may be called (western) liberalism; and Marxist vision. Latter two were clubbed together in post independence India and ruled the roost marginalizing the very essence of India, smacking of masochism and self-deception . They unleashed indelible impression on the entire realm of academics, intellects, politics and journalism. Hence people by and large are given to envision everything from western angle, eg., Rashtra is perceived as nation-state and Dharma is visualized as religion. Therefore, it has become an intellectual burden to discover Indian paradigm and ethos in order to interpret the Indian nation, Indian society, Indian culture and above all Indian history in proper perspective which had been out and out distorted as a sequel of far reaching conspiracy theory. With this backdrop the present work strives to articulate veritable identity of India. While we are to get rid of the western (mis) conception of India, we are to unfold the sometotal of elusive but vibrant Indianness as a unified, humanistic civilization in the comity of nations. It is due to this deficiency great deal of apprehension crop up in Indian social and public life. The present work has meticulously attempted to deal with almost every entailing dimensions involving nationalistic discourse. Century and half old evolution of cultural nationalism has been formulated in order to present the course of modern history dispassionately. While the author distances himself from the possible lapses of the drivers of cultural nationalism in operational politics, he does not mince word in eulogising their efforts in the given area. Thus this work may be sketched as counter-attack from resurgent India to reckon with. More has been clarified in the Preface and surfaces crystal clear in the Contents itself.