While critical scholarship, across disciplines, has analysed the link between heritage and exclusive group identity, how is this pairing constructed in the everyday, as an ongoing process?
The extraordinary nature of the crisis faced by the Congress means that the revival of the party is necessarily predicated upon its renewal. This task becomes particularly onerous as it has to be achieved in the face of a challenge posed by the ruthless hegemonic force controlling politics.
In the present form, the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 is unworthy of becoming an Act because there should be no politics in the passing of legislations that bypass the democratic ideals of India.
What is a 'nation'? What does the word 'nation state' connote? Beginning from early debates on nationalism and the nation state, the word 'nation' has shifted, coming to acquire at one and the same time, an expanding meaning and an ambivalence. Literature and the different social sciences, on the other hand, have exposed the nature of evil, depicting the nation as a genre of violence. A study of European and African works shows how the creation of nation has been fraught with a marginalisation of other groups and voices, with pain and suffering. Literature and language, this article suggests, must once again become tools to plumb the banality of evil that is inherent in the nation state. New 'thought experiments' must seek to challenge the politics of the nation, leading to a reinvention and a new beginning.
