The HRD ministry was wrong, in the first place, to issue a directive that all students must sing Vande Mataram on September 7 to commemorate 100 years of India’s national song. Wearing one’s patriotism on one’s sleeve, and introducing compulsory rituals in its name, serve little purpose.

When Arjun Singh later retracted to say that singing Vande Mataram on September 7 was voluntary, not compulsory, it wasn’t out of a newly discovered respect for liberal principles, but because of a counter-blast coming from Imam Syed Bukhari.

According to Bukhari, Indian Muslims ought to love the nation enough to lay down their lives for it, but it doesn’t follow that they should worship the nation, as Vande Mataram enjoins them to do.

Bukhari may reprise another oft-played tune – that of Muslim victimisation – and his claim to speak on behalf of all Indian Muslims may be questioned.

But shorn of that there is something in his objection to Vande Mataram that Muslims as well as non-Muslims can sympathise with.

Worshipping the nation is going to solve few contemporary problems – in fact a narrow view of national interests compounds many of today’s crises.

Twentieth century nationalism could be out of sync with the requirements of a globalised 21st century. Take greenhouse gases and other forms of environmental pollution which, by their very nature, transcend national boundaries.

Fixing them will require international agreements, but the US bucked the Kyoto Protocol regulating greenhouse gases. The result may be runaway climate change that will affect all countries, the US included.

Washington displays similar unilateral inclinations in the war against terror, leading to better coordination between terrorists than the democracies they attack. The WTO cannot take trade liberalisation forward due to domestic farmers’ lobbies in rich countries.

BPOs face similar obstacles. Asia is supposed to be resurgent, but different nationalisms are coming into conflict over Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi’s frequent visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, commemorating Japan’s war dead, never mind that they include some war criminals.

While Tokyo takes a hard line on North Korea, Beijing says that any declaration of independence by Taiwan’s parliament will trigger an invasion of that country.

If conflict breaks out on any of these fronts Asia’s resurgence would be over – although the hopeful thing is that the economies of China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are so interdependent as to preclude conflict.

Such interdependence looks threatening to many in India, who evoke an unreflective and overly emotional nationalism as a charm to ward it off.

If we are moved by them India will fail to capitalise on the manifold opportunities that globalisation offers, while its destabilising effects will still be with us.

<B>From India

Source: © Times of India - Pritish Nandy</B>