Analysis Of Sudipta Kaviraj's The Imaginary Institution Of India

The term nation has been envisioned variously by primordialists and modernists and is enmeshed in bewildering contradictions. In this paper it has been used to mean “ . . . not so much a cultural artifact . . . but a web of material relations and practices, which rests on classes, caste structures, gendered systems of production and reproduction, armies, laws, territories and yes, signifying practices as well.” (Ahmad 2007:40) The establishment of India as a nation-state upon Indian sub-continent not only conferred the people living within its political boundary a new overarching national identity of being ‘Indians’ above other ‘fuzzy’ identities based on caste, class, community but also brought in its wake the catastrophe of Partition that made the exclusionist and territorial aspects of nation-state quite evident. Sudipta Kaviraj in “The Imaginary Institution of India” explicates the idea of territorial demarcation of boundaries of the modern- nation state, as an imperative condition for enumerating its subjects in the process of nation formation for the purpose of administration and control. He also purports the
The story allegorizes the imperative demand the modern-nation state imposes upon its citizens to adhere to the common political identity or nationality and those who fail to align themselves to it, are labeled as traitors and are exterminated, which becomes evident in the story, in the casual remark made by a soldier that “[n]ow even dogs will have to be either Indian or Pakistani” and that “[l]ike Pakistanis, Pakistani dogs will also be shot.” (Hassan 2007:175) The story also highlights the ‘unnaturalness’ of boarders and the irrationality of conflict by juxtaposing in the narration the description of nature that continues its course unmindful of the warring