By – Amar Yumnam
In The New York Times edition of 18 May 2026, I read an article on Nationalism beating Nationalism. It was written by Katrin Bennhold who is a “German and… grew up being taught that nationalism was bad. Then I married a Welshman who persuaded me over the years that nationalism can be joyful.” She ends the article thus: “a good story is not enough, if a party can’t ultimately deliver on improvements to those lives.” It immediately made me think of the scenario in India. Since 2014, what we have experienced is the increasing destruction of the concept and content of nationalism and moving fast towards an India without nation. The increasing efforts have been to convert her to a country ruled by a single party and its religious wing – holding power is the sole objective. They sacrificed or rather considered unimportant to understand the origin, content and form of the Indian state as distinct from the nations with singular origins, cultural frameworks and social content of the community. In order to achieve the objectives of the few rulers and religious heads, the BJP indulged in a design (i) for destroying anything functional and performing the shared social welfare functions of the state; (ii) to incorporate in their functioning cheap persons who could be easily satisfied with some personalised benefits; (iii) easily disown any thinking person from their group and with no sense of guilty; (iv) compromise and destroy any social and Constitutional institution such that there is only facilitation to their actions; (v) finish any dissent; and (vi) ignore efficiency and competence completely in every institution and put only their people as heads.
So now what have been the consequential scenario? Despite the “good stories” of India becoming so and so, no significant achievement has taken place. What has happened is only the Centering of the whole nation in a few hands by making even Constitution conveniently irrelevant and every institution non-functional. Poverty and inequality scenario has worsened; Bangladesh has a higher per capita income than India. Unemployment has only increased while only a few favoured ones get employed. Education has been completely destroyed. How things are happening in the universities around the country is anybody’s knowledge. By recruiting people subservient to their agenda only, the institutions have forgotten their responsibility coupled by incapability of the recruited people to deliver. The institutional compromise has reached such a level that even the Chief Justice of India forgot of propriety of using terms in public speeches; for a moment he must have lost the idea that he is Chief Justice of India and definitely not the Chief Justice of the Government of India. His clarification on the day of resignation of the Education Minister of India has only made more mess in public appreciation. Three characteristics of the Modi government are strong revelations of their approach to building the Bharat as they like.
First, in 2015 the “Narendra Modi’s India has developed an increasingly protectionist approach to population, evident in both the policing of Hindu women who might be subject to ‘love jihad’ from Muslim men and in the closure of India’s assisted reproduction clinics to international clients.” This is “weaponisation of reproduction”. Secondly India does not have any long term foreign policy strategy. Even the recent so-called Free Trade Agreements are of little value. There is no policy response on how the South East Asian part of India, necessarily border regions, are to be incorporated in this. I do not think the significance of the recent ASEAN Summit where Myanmar was invited after five years is yet appreciated from varied angles. Third, the appointments of VCs of universities have just been a joke during the last 12 years, such that recently 56 candidates were called for interview for selection of a VC for a Central University. This has been coupled by forcing experienced Faculty to keep shut. They do not realise that the students of a university know very well who are the good teachers and the quality of the newly appointed ones. Even further, the force of the opinion of the university faculty is socially very powerful even if not put out as openly as usual. It is a strong component of making or unmaking a government and the state.
Now the first primary step is to restore the Nation build upon a shared development approach. It is only a wide-based development approach which can address inequality reduction, poverty removal and employment creation. In doing this Education becomes the most important agent for performance. So, revive the health of education. Further, there is an imperative for border policy – one based on contextual realities and not one conceived by people in Delhi without knowing the context. The burning instances in this are the Kashmir Statehood issue and the crises in the South East Asian part.