National culture and democracy are among the ideals of the nation-state... Democracy can at one level be a mechanism for representing those that make up the nation-state, but it can also descend to becoming a numbers game in which politics is conditioned by a mechanical calculation of the number of votes... The definition of the majority, usually takes the form of the assertion of a particular identity which can be religious or ethnic or linguistic and where the larger identity covers over and tries to erase the variations within the group...
Mobilisation takes place through an assertion of this identity. It is claimed that were this identity to come into being as the sole identity of the nation, there would be a true democracy based on equal rights for all. Democracy then becomes a manipulation of votes in which not only are vote banks central but even changes... are due less to concerns... and more to arithmetical calculations linked to voting patterns. Sentiments of various kinds are invoked and rathayatras become vote-banks.
In such situations the concept of a national culture takes on dimensions much larger than before. The creation of a national culture in the colonial past was anti-colonial in its political message, but in its more narrowly cultural message it was inevitably defined in accordance with views of the middle class. This led to its construction being influenced by both upper-caste culture and the 'discoveries' and interpretations of Orientalist research. The self-perception of the middle class was in terms of its own social origin, those of landowners, brahmans, scribal castes and those from families of well-established mercantile castes... The transfer of power was in a sense from colonial rule to upper castes...
The problem of identity in the nation-state had by then assumed importance with the two-nation theory cutting across nationalist ideals. There was perhaps a sub-conscious concern that there might be a need to accommodate a variety of cultures, lest they each begin to demand independent state. The liberal values of the nationalist struggle required the inclusion of the culture of the lower castes, but this was never given serious thought and was more often than not included in the nebulous category of 'folk culture'...
The need for a national culture was underlined and this remained essentially a middle class culture and largely 'Hindu'. The insistence on a single culture breeds its own opposition and groups fissioning off are characteristic of the ferment within the smooth exterior of the nation.
The fact of the plurality of Indian cultural expression whether of caste, language, religion or class, whether of popular or elite and its implications were not worked out. Plurality was seen as the co-existence of cultures rather than their intermeshing. Since the Hindu religion was not a clearly defined entity as were the Semitic religions, there was a greater mixing in the area of religion and culture. Themes which had played the role of cultural idioms were slowly confined to a narrowly defined religious expression, a process which was intensified after independence...
The most obvious example of this is the narrative of Rama, which has been treated in a variety of divergent ways by various social groups in the sub-continent in the past but which is now virtually seen only as a single religious concept... So convinced are we that the numerical majority of Hindus and particularly those of the Hindi heartland, can be the only arbiters of national culture...
This has a bearing on how we see the notion of tradition today...
To be seeped in tradition is frequently to be seeped in what one believes or would like to believe, is the tradition. The appropriation of tradition also becomes a matter of political importance...
Seen in this context the BJP-VHP-RSS-Bajrang Dal politics with its claim to speaking in the tongues of religion and culture becomes a major political and cultural crisis for the Indian nation-state. The VHP has invented a tradition in focussing on one issue, that of the Babari Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute. It originally claimed the historicity of Rama and his birthplace and when this was questioned it argued on the basis of faith and disallowed history. Today it has shifted its ground and is trying to use archaeology to prove the existence of a temple dedicated to Rama, destroyed and replaced by the Babari Masjid...
Even if such a temple existed, that is not the point at issue. To insist on the destruction of the mosque and its replacement by a temple is merely to return to the politics of the medieval period as well as an attempt to maintain that history can be unravelled and reknit. Earlier periods of history in many parts of the world witnessed the quick-change act of churches and mosques and temples, being converted and reconverted from one to the other—the most impressive... In other cases the destruction of the monument was an act of politics. Similarly the issue at Ayodhya is also a political issue and the demand for the destruction of the mosque is a return to the politics of an earlier period of history, which period cannot be brought to life and changed, nor can the acts of the time be avenged, for such vengeance can only spell disaster for the present. Such a stand is essentially a mobilisation for political representation along the lines of religious affiliation. Such mobilisation further forecloses the need to consider the plurality of culture.