India: all aboard?, Kanishk Tharoor

Kanishk Tharoor — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:15:27 +0100

Amongst the big countries of the Asian continent, the nation is back. It was the foreign ministers of Russia, China, and India, after all, who met last year to affirm their vision of "multipolar world system", founded on the hallowed ground of respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Russia-Georgia crisis reminds Ivan Krastev that the 19th century lives on, while the ominous grandeur of the Beijing Olympics has lifted burgeoning nationalism in China from anachronism to global force. India - the continent's other "waking giant" - also rides the nationalist tide. Its recent economic successes and growing international influence have been matched by a swelling belief in national purpose.

Yet where grassroots jingoism throttled dissent in China during this year's Tibet crisis (see Ivy Wang, "China's netizens and Tibet: a Guangzhou report") and in Russia overwhelmingly supported state-propaganda during this month's clash with Georgia (see Evgeny Morozov, "Russia/Georgia: war of the web"), no such consensus can be easily found in India with its buzzing civil society and vast and varied media landscape. Antara Dev Sen, editor of the indispensable Little Magazine, offers a timely corrective to the Indian nationalist narrative. In the wake of India's 61st birthday, the country's problems remain immense and its dreams of superpower-dom all the more ungainly.

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India: all aboard?, Kanishk Tharoor