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The Rediff Special/Ashutosh Varshney

Is Sonia Indian?

In classes, seminars, public meetings and online discussions, I have often been asked: Should Sonia Gandhi be considered an Indian?

This is a surprising question in the United States, though it would not be one in Germany. By and large, ethnicity determines citizenship in Germany, and an Italian by birth cannot easily become a German citizen. In the United States, however, most citizens are hyphenated. It is possible to be an Italian-American, as so many Americans are, but it is inordinately difficult, if not impossible, to be an Italian-German.

Is Indian nationhood closer to the German model or the American? Is India multi-ethnic and multi-cultural like the US, or mono-ethnic and mono-cultural like Germany? On the view taken will depend our answer to whether Sonia Gandhi should be viewed as an Indian.

Since India's national movement, political leaders and scholars have articulated two views of India's national identity: secular nationalist and Hindu nationalist. The former view was promoted by the leaders of the national movement, especially Gandhi as well as Nehru. The latter view was peripheral for decades, but has acquired some currency with the rise of the BJP.

How are the two views different? What do they tell us about whether Sonia Gandhi is, and can be, an Indian?

The secular nationalist notion of India is that ideas of tolerance and pluralism define Indian society. India is not only the birthplace of several religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism -- but in its history, it has also regularly received and accommodated "outsiders" --- Parsis, Jews, Muslims and Christians. The followers of St Thomas, for example, arrived as early as the second century, thus reaching India before Christians reached Europe. Religion is not central to being an Indian. An Indian is one who accepts the pluralist ethos of the country.

According to the Hindu nationalist view, however, only the Hindus can be true Indians. This, of course, begs the question: who is a Hindu?

"A Hindu", says Savarkar, the founder of Hindu nationalism in this century, "means a person who regards this land....from the Indus to the Seas as his fatherland (pitribhumi) as well as his holyland (punyabhumi)." The definition is thus territorial (land between the Indus and the Seas), genealogical ("fatherland") and religious ("holyland"). Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists can be part of this definition for they meet all three criteria. All of these religions were born in India. Christians, Jews, Parsis and Muslims can meet only two, for India is not their holyland.

Especially Christians and Muslims, wrote Savarkar, "cannot be recognised as Hindus. For though Hindustan to them is the fatherland, as to any other Hindu, yet it is not to them a holyland too. Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and godmen, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided."

It should now be clear why the most vociferous objections to Sonia Gandhi have come from the Hindu nationalists. She was born in Italy and is Christian by religion. The Hindu nationalist definition of an Indian immediately makes her unacceptable. It is also the prevalence of Hindu nationalist ideology in large parts of Indian American community that leads them to pose this question so often in public forums.

Those who object this way seem to be saying that they adhere to a notion of Indian nationhood that is closer to a mono-cultural Germany than to a multi-cultural America.

This is a highly implausible notion of India's national identity. Its biggest flaw is that it confuses religion with nationhood. Catholicism is a religion, not a nationality; and India is a nation, not a religion. Nationality and religion are, both in fact and theory, separable. Belief in the Bible and loyalty to India are perfectly compatible.

Consider the classic argument of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, on the relationship between religion and nation. The Mahatma used to say that: he was i) a Hindu and ii) an Indian nationalist, but not iii) a Hindu nationalist. Why are categories i), ii) and iii) fundamentally different?

Hinduism and Hindu nationalism are separable, for every Hindu does not have to be, and is not, a Hindu nationalist. Hindu nationalism says that only those, whose religions were born in India (Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists), are true Indians. Hinduism does not say that, for it only makes claims about what it means to be a Hindu, not about what it means to be an Indian.

Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism are also different because the former, believing in tolerance, pluralism and multiculturalism, easily incorporates non-Hindu minorities, not questioning their loyalty, but Hindu nationalism argues that religions not born in India -- Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc -- are basically suspect and their practitioners must prove their loyalty.

Historically speaking, Hindu=India is a worthless equation. India's history is littered with instances when Hindus did not act "loyally", calling into question the easy Hindu nationalist assumption that Hindus are naturally loyal to India. The British captured Bengal in 1757 with abundant help from the Hindus. As all military historians know, the Battle of Plassey was hardly a battle, and British collaborators, who made possible the defeat of the Bengal nawab, included the well-known Hindus of Bengal.

A century later, the Sikhs -- also called Hindus by Hindu nationalists -- by and large did not support the 1857 Mutiny against the British. And finally, it is a Muslim prince, the nawab of Lucknow, who became the centre of the 1857 Mutiny, not the Hindu princes of Travancore, Jodhpur or Baroda.

Thus, if we at all wish to follow the Hindu nationalists in calling India a "nation" even before the 20th century, let us remember that many Hindus and Sikhs have been "disloyal", and many Muslims (and Christians) "loyal" to India. The attempt to equate religion and nationality is utterly preposterous for a country like India.

This does not mean that there are no arguments against Sonia Gandhi. There can be some potentially serious criticisms: whether, for example, she will promote dynastic politics; whether she has spent enough time in the field of politics; whether her view of women is highly traditional, in that she sees women primarily as wives and mothers, not as independent persons in their own right. The answer to all these questions will be given by her political conduct in the coming months. It will be hasty to pre-judge.

What, however, is manifestly wrong is a critique based on her birthplace or religion. She is an Indian -- by her citizenship, by her act of living in India, and by the way she has adopted a new home. If an Indian is one who accepts the ethos of India, she is certainly one. A German view of India's national identity, to which the Hindu nationalists subscribe, violates the basic spirit of India. India is not like Gremany for it is not an ethnic nation. It is more like the US, for it is a nation of many ethnicities. Indianism is an idea, an ethos, in which many many ethnic and religious groups have historically participated.

Finally, only the electorate will decide whether Sonia Gandhi is politically acceptable as an Indian. A democracy has a very good way of resolving these matters. As of now, India's electorate does not seem to paying much attention the Hindu nationalist argument that Sonia Gandhi's Catholicism and Italian birth disqualify her as an Indian.

The author is an associate professor of political science at the Columbia University.

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