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Comment by sgpl | Hacker News Reader

In this instance it concerns me because this form of 'nationalism' is a net negative for India and its future generations. It's masquerading as national pride but it's an attack on the secularity of the country, an attack on minorities (religious, lgbtq+ folks, etc), an attack on free speech and an attack on political freedom/opposition.

India is not a monolith but a diverse country with a rich history and trying to force an entire country to 'fit in' to this narrative of 'nationalism' does more harm than good for society moving forward IMO.

As for your second question, I don't know enough to give a definitive answer on whether nationalism is always or almost always negative but in this case I feel it is.

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India's diversity is guaranteed only because of Hindus.

Communists, Christians & Islam has cultural cleansing as their core instrument. As simple scan of the world will let you clearly classify nations as catholic, protestant, sunni or shia.

Projecting problems of western ideologies into false equivalences in Eastern thought does no one any good.

Laws against LGBTQ was imposed by the British and it was removed by the current BJP government after 70 years of independence because the BJP does not give in to fundamentalist Christian/Islamic voices.

I am a Hindu and definitely against the expansionist philosophies of these religions. But isn't the mainstream nationalist narrative too pushing the same Hindutva-Hindi homogeneous propaganda? And diversity is not only about religion either.

Hindutva, as laid out by Savarkar, embraced the diversity and was against any kind of homogenisation. BJP support Hindu as a second language or link language; it does not want to replace any language. Hindu Nationalism in principle wants to preserve the cultural identity of the Hindus which itself is very diverse and therefore supports diversity.

Hindi as a link language is a non-starter, unless people in North Indian states also learn South Indian languages.

To simply understand this point, forcing exclusive use of Hindi in Central government institutions gives an undue advantage to people from North India.

You mention in principle, but in practice the opposite happens. I am an East Indian who has spent all his life in South India I speak both Hindi and a South Indian language along with my native tongue. When North Indians come to South India, and stay for a long time a majority of them refuse to learn the local language whereas every South Indian who has spent time in the North picks up Hindi.

As a tamil myself I do not necessarily expect that, since each South Indian language is very different.

Hindi translates easily to tamil, compared to English. I do not approve of forcing a language, however I do not see it being forced in anyway.

Contrast that with forcing native people to fill bank forms in English, or the fetishization of urudu.

Forcing is unnecessary as people are understanding the utility of hindi.

Savarkar had faults, but his "Hindu Atheist" ideology was compelling and pretty progressive IMO. But today's RSS/BJP is not that, with all that Mandir politics, moreover they are as much or more corrupt than INC and just using nationalism as a bait to attract uninformed voters. And because of the fierce nationalist narrative (which often turns anti-progress and anti-science), they have got many blind followers who will defend their horrible-est of policies.

It is similar to the fine balance between nationalism and globalism.

As someone on hn I am sure you know how much more nationalist and mono cultural much of the world is.

I am from TN, the amount of power these "minority" religions hold is unbelievable.

As an example, Loyola college in Chennai is totally under the control of the church so much so that being a Christian gives one preferential admission or skip the queue.

What many people do not know is that the campus property belongs to a temple and the salaries are paid by the tax payers. The Church has disproportionate control of an institution to which its contributions is practically zero.

India has not completely decolonised.

I agree. I mentioned it in second sentence ("expansionist philosophies"). But what I said is Modi/RSS is also trying to create a monocultural image in order to strengthen their political power. India is a spectrum of cultures.

What I also don't like is people influenced by one (Hindutva) ideology of Modi turning into fascists slowly, and anyone who criticises Modi for unrelated (eg economic) reasons is called anti-national. Being strong Hindutva ideology shouldn't give him a pass in other areas.

Never mention Savarkar's "Hindu Atheist" progressive ideology shadowed by current RSS activism and them using all kind of religious sentiments to get high PR. Congress is fucked up minority appeasement party, I am not a Congress supporter. But what I am saying is BJP is not doing much better.

Hindus are pushed to unify to withstand aggressive groups.

This has been going on for centuries.

The BJP is just a reflection of the sentiment of the people.

For instance temple taken over by the state, what used to be run by unique communities is now run in a uniform way.

There is also an attempt to Abrahamise Hinduism by the left and the educated elite/judiciary. To defend itself in an unfair battle field, Hinduism is taking on the shape of a monoculture.

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