The Construction of Indian/Hindu Nationalism and Implications of India's Future as a Postcolonial State in Colonial Globality

Abstract

In this paper, we will question the nation-state of India, the construction of nationalism and its implications for women, peasants and the subalterns of India. In order to do this, we must look beyond International Relations to find discourses to accommodate a history without the nation-state, a history of the people and peasants of India, a history that does not evaluate nation-states as homogenous units in homogenous capital time, a history that does not situate countries on the same trajectory of development, and a history that IR has mostly forgotten.

To wrestle with these issues, we need to move beyond the limited discourses in IR and find discourses that address issues of human culture and identity, nations without states and the borderless, subjectivity and the subaltern. Academically, the point of this study is to allow for honest and responsible scholarship in IR and that can only happen when we begin to take colonial legacies and realities seriously. And yet, practically, we are doing a critical rewriting of International Relations, drawing out its colonial nature and how it affects present "postcolonial" nations in the hopes of changing mindsets and policies in the global. It is imperative that we start to write, speak and approach global politics with an understanding and space for the ‘Other’ that does not otherize but involve underprivileged and marginalized voices. At the same time, we must take note of Gayatri Spivak’s "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and make sure that we do not make any assumptions about the heterogeneity of marginalized voices, and come across as western intellectuals speaking for the subaltern and/or the ‘Other’.

Keywords: India, constructivism, colonialism, Other, subaltern studies, postcolonialism