1 Nationalism and the Community Question in India A. P. Ashwin Kumar Keywords Nationalism, community, object-level, meta-level, tradition, corporate body, foundational beliefs Abstract In recent days, the idea of nationalism has again come into focus in mainstream political discussions in India. Those critical of the idea ('liberals'), have usually attempted to contain the concept of nationalism by showing how it is used to mobilize certain constituencies for a right-of- centre political imagination. Apologists for nationalism ('nationalists') have made a strong pitch for recognizing the cultural uniqueness of Indian polity and making it an important plank for discussing matters of public life and statecraft. In this article, I argue that the standard liberal strategy of dissolving the concept of nationalism by showing it to be a surreptitious tool in a game of political power is unsatisfactory. Equally unsatisfactory is the nationalists' method of gaining ground in this debate by invoking a catch-all idea of an Indian nation without delineating the exact implications of such a claim. I argue that claims about nationalism contain a significant, albeit distorted, appreciation of the political relationship between communities and modern states. However, I also try to show that both liberals and nationalists have a common, and untenable, notion of community underlying their claims. The Liberal and the Nationalist Contemporary liberal political discourse depends upon characteristically 'thin' concepts such as rights, freedom, tolerance, and social justice. They stand in opposition to the typically 'thick' concepts through which communities articulate and mediate their interests in a modern democracy. 1 The idea of the nation is at the fulcrum of this connection, such that, when liberals use it, they take it to represent citizens in the abstract. In fact, the liberal evocation of the concept of nation, and derivatively nationalism (in instances where they claim to be nationalists, such as when taking an anti-colonial stance) is somewhat lukewarm; for them, the primary concepts are rights, freedoms and social justice and the nation is simply the location where these 1 A 'thin' concept, in the way I am using it here, is typically one which can be applied to individuals without taking into account their cultural background (for example: freedom, equality, right and tolerance) whereas a 'thick' concept is necessarily mediated by a community (for example: filial piety, chastity and thrift). While this is not exactly how the standard literature on ethical questions has defined the distinction, the way I have drawn it is not contrary to standard usage.