NATION AND INSTITUTION Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of Indian Independence

Abstract

This essay examines the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence in 1997. The construction and legitimation of an institutional identity for the state, and the specification of a particular relation between the state and the society/nation, were the dominant imperatives of the celebrations in the golden jubilee year. This state-centrism of nationalist commemorative practices in India allows me to develop an argument about the broader categories of nationalism and national identity, and to suggest that the ideological work of nationalism is marked by a strong institutional impulse. In the theoretical revision that informs this essay, a nation is a political community produced by nationalist activities, in which individuals are bound by horizontal ties to each other, and by a 'vertical' bond to a particular state-institution. The nation thus embodies both an expression of identity or sameness, and an expression of subjectivity or the sense of being subject to the power of the state-institution. Consequently, to imagine the nation is also, and equally, to imagine the state. I develop this argument through my study of official commemorative practices in 1997. The organizational approach, the linguistic/discursive conventions, and the thematic content of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations construct a particular statist edifice, and in the name of the nation and national identity, speak of the role, attributes and relations of the state. I supplement my study of official nationalism with an examination of corporate/commercial commemorative practices in the same period. Despite fundamental differences in form and approach, the content of corporate-produced public-sphere celebrations is marked by an institutionalist understanding of Indian identity that mirrors the official nationalist definition of Indianness.