Podcast - A Young Nation's Selfhood
Delve into the philosophical musings of Jawaharlal Nehru and Salman Rushdie on the complexities of the modern Indian self. Explore how Nehru's vision of India as a "bundle of contradictions" resonates with Rushdie's exploration of the multiplicity within each individual. Join us as we unravel the nuances of selfhood in the context of Indian identity and cultural evolution.
#JawaharlalNehru #SalmanRushdie #IndianIdentity #Selfhood #CulturalEvolution
#JawaharlalNehru #SalmanRushdie #IndianIdentity #Selfhood #CulturalEvolution
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Outlook brings to you excerpts from its latest issue titled 'Rediscovery'.
00:05 At a time when the polity refuses to forget Nehru for a host of reasons,
00:10 in the Outlook's latest issue, we look at the time and decisions of Nehru,
00:15 the white, black and the grey, going beyond the binaries and looking at the politics around his personality,
00:22 and the historic successes and blunders that are so often discussed today.
00:27 A Young Nation's Selfhood by Manasvirag Bhattacharjee
00:31 Manasvirag Bhattacharjee is the author of 'Nehru and the Spirit of India'.
00:37 He is currently working on a book on Gandhi.
00:40 Nehru understood that the newly independent nation was the contradictory whole of many contradicting selves.
00:47 In an article he wrote for Time magazine in 2001, reflecting on 50 years of India's independence,
00:55 Salman Rushdie connected the so-called idea of India to the modern Indian self, through a string of paradoxes.
01:03 In the modern age, we have come to understand our own selves as composites,
01:09 often contradictory, even internally incompatible.
01:13 We have understood that each of us is many different people.
01:18 Our younger selves differ from our older selves.
01:22 We can be bold in the company of our lovers and timorous before our employers,
01:28 principled when we instruct our children and corrupt when offered some secret temptation.
01:35 We are serious and frivolous, loud and quiet, aggressive and easily abashed.
01:43 The 19th century concept of the integrated self has been replaced by this jostling crowd of eyes,
01:51 and yet, unless we are damaged or deranged, we usually have a relatively clear sense of who we are.
01:59 I agree with my many selves to call all of them 'me'.
02:04 Reading this article in the Jawaharlal Nehru University library,
02:09 a year before submitting my PhD thesis on Nehru and Gandhi,
02:13 I detected a Nehruvian echo in Rushdie's evocative passage.
02:18 We can make an analogous connection between Rushdie's description of selves
02:23 and what Nehru describes as the nation in this passage from the epilogue to the discovery of India.
02:30 "The discovery of India, what have I discovered?
02:33 It was presumptuous of me to imagine that I could unwheel her
02:38 and find out what she is today and what she was in the long past.
02:44 Today, she is 400 million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other,
02:51 each living in a private universe of thought and feeling.
02:56 If this is so in the present, how much more difficult is it to grasp that multitudinous past
03:03 of innumerable successions of human beings?
03:07 India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity,
03:14 a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads.
03:20 What Nehru imagines as India's selfhood in terms of modern life,
03:24 Rushdie finds within each self of the numerous selves that make a nation.
03:30 It is impossible to contain this vast sea of differences without and accepting contradictions
03:38 between people and allowing them to thrive."
03:41 For this and more, read the latest issue of Outlook.