The Sense of Collective Belonging

• Nationalism spreads when people begin to believe that they are all part of the same nation , when they discover some unity that binds them together.
• This sense of collective belonging came partly through the experience of united struggles.
• There were also a variety of cultural processes through which nationalism captured people’s imagination .
•  History and fiction, folklore and songs, popular prints and symbols , all played a part in the making of nationalism.

• The identity of the nation is often symbolised in a figure or image .
• In the twentieth century , with the growth of nationalism , the identity of India came to be visually associated with the image of Bharat Mata.
• The image was first created by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay .
• In the 1870s he wrote ‘Vande Mataram’ as a hymn to the motherland.
• Later it was included in his novel Anandamath and widely sung during the Swadeshi movement in Bengal .
• Moved by the Swadeshi movement, Abanindranath Tagore painted his famous image of Bharat Mata .
• In this painting Bharat Mata is portrayed as an aesthetic figure ; she is calm , composed , divine and spiritual .
• The image of Bharat Mata in subsequent years, acquired many different forms , as it circulated in popular prints , and was painted by different artists .

The mother figure here is shown as dispensing learning , food and clothing . The mala in one hand emphasises her ascetic quality. She is calm , composed , divine and spiritual .

This figure of Bharat Mata is a contrast to the one painted by Abanindranath Tagore . Here she is shown with a trishul, standing beside a lion and an elephant - both symbols of power and authority.

Two contrasting pictures of Bharat Mata

• Devotion to this mother figure came to be seen as evidence of one’s nationalism .
• Ideas of nationalism also developed through a movement to revive Indian folklore .
• In late-nineteenth-century India, nationalists began recording folk tales sung by bards and they toured villages to gather folk songs and legends.
• These tales , they believed, gave a true picture of traditional culture that had been corrupted and damaged by outside forces . 
• It was essential to preserve this folk tradition in order to discover one’s national identity and restore a sense of pride in one’s past.
• In Bengal , Rabindranath Tagore himself began collecting ballads , nursery rhymes and myths , and led the movement for folk revival .
• In Madras , Natesa Sastri published a massive four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales, The Folklore of Southern India .
• He believed that folklore was national literature ; it was ‘the most trustworthy manifestation of people’s real thoughts and characteristics’ .

• As the national movement developed, nationalist leaders became more and more aware of such icons and symbols in unifying people and inspiring in them a feeling of nationalism.
• During the Swadeshi movement in Bengal , a tricolor flag (red, green and yellow) was designed.
• It had eight lotuses representing eight provinces of British India , and a crescent moon , representing Hindus and Muslims .

• By 1921 , Gandhiji had designed the Swaraj flag.
• It was again a tricolour (red, green and white) and had a spinning wheel in the centre, representing the Gandhian ideal of self-help. 
• Carrying the flag , holding it aloft, during marches became a symbol of defiance .

• Another means of creating a feeling of nationalism was through reinterpretation of history . 
• By the end of the nineteenth century many Indians began feeling that to instill a sense of pride in the nation, Indian history had to be thought about differently.
• The British saw Indians as backward and primitive , incapable of governing themselves.
• Indians began looking into the past to discover India’s great achievements .
• They wrote about the glorious developments in ancient times when art and architecture , science and mathematics , religion and culture , law and philosophy, crafts and trade had flourished .
• In their views, this glorious time was followed by a history of decline, when India was colonised.  
• These nationalist histories urged the readers to take pride in India’s great achievements in the past and struggle to change the miserable conditions of life under British rule.

• The failure of the Cripps Mission and the effects of World War II created widespread disappointment in India.
• This made Gandhiji to launch a movement calling for a complete withdrawal of the British from India.
• In its meeting in Wardha on 14 July 1942 , The Congress Working Committee , passed the historic ‘Quit India’ resolution .
• Demanding the immediate power to Indians and quit India.
• On 8 August 1942 in Bombay , the All India Congress Committee endorsed the resolution which called for a non-violent mass struggle on the widest possible scale throughout the country.
• It was on this occasion that Gandhiji delivered the famous ‘DO or Die’ speech .
• The call for ‘Quit India’ almost brought the state machinery to a standstill in large parts of the country as people voluntarily threw themselves into the thick of the movement.
• Hartals were observed by people, and demonstrations and processions were accompanied by national songs and slogans .
• It was truly a mass movement which brought into its ambit thousands of ordinary people, namely students , workers and peasants .
• The mass movement also saw the active participation of leaders , namely, Jayprakash Narayan , Aruna Asaf Ali and Ram Manohar Lohia and many women such as Matangini Hazra in Bengal, Kanaklata Barua in Assam and Rama Devi in Odisha.
• The British responded with much force , yet it took more than a year to suppress the movement .