For Mazzini, a prophet of nationalism, it is bad governments which have distorted the natural divisions of peoples ordained by God, who, ‘divided Humanity into distinct groups upon the face of our globe and thus planted the seeds of nations.’

And then Arnold Toynbee, the high priest of history, visualised nationalism as "the outcome of a perversion of Industrialism and Democracy through the impact of these new forces upon the old institution of Parochial Sovereignty", and denounced it as "this disastrous corruption poisoning the political life of our modern Western society".

"Nationalism", observed Christian Pineau, Foreign Minister of France, in the General Assembly of the United Nations in the 1957 debate on Algeria: "Whatever some of you may think of it, it is no longer a sign of progress."

Let me relate an anecdote. An Indian farmer once told an anthropologist: "A dog that had long been plagued by fleas jumped in the Ganga and submerged himself until only his nose was out of the water. When all the fleas had collected on his nose, the dog took a deep breath, went all the way under and drowned them. Elated at having finally rid himself of his pests, he came out of the river, shook himself and lay down in the sun for a nap.

"He had been there barely a minute, however, when he began to feel stinging pain from his head to his tail. Opening his eyes, he found that he had been assaulted by a new multitude of fleas, which had gone so long without a dog that they were biting him worse than ever. "A wise dog," he smirked, "sticks to the fleas he is used to."

Is that why we are sticking to Nationalism?

There is a single test about how thorough a nation’s consolidation is. Will its people stick together even through a catastrophe, a national defeat, or a severe national depression? By this standard, the unity with which we faced the Chinese aggression in 1962, the conflicts with Pakistan, and the latest in Kargil is an eloquent proof of the growing integration and cohesiveness of the people of India.

We do enjoy a good deal of excitement over language and other controversies, but under stress, Indians have tended to show unity, and this fact need neither by forgotten nor ignored.

But a glance at nationalism and factors that promote it, tends to show that all the factors are seldom present in a nation. Let us take a look at a common language which is considered the root of emotional integration. India is a vast country, and it has been stated that the spoken language dialect changes every 12 kilometres. But is it any different in other countries? A people may set out with the same language but once they settle down to a land and agricultural occupations, their speech begins to change.

English is almost an exact half-and-half compromise between expressive Saxon words and longer French-derived words. The Swiss are one people, even though they speak four languages. German speaking Swiss, and German-speaking Germans are different peoples even though they speak the same language.

Rudyard Kipling told his countrymen that he felt at home with them because he knew the lies they were likely to tell. When we can predict what another person will do, under certain circumstances, we are inclined to trust him. Moreover, the factors that tend to integration sometimes leads to secession.

From the deep chasm of antiquity to the present-day permissiveness, European civilisation and, for that matter, Europe, is simply a geographic term and not a cultural entity. Nationalism in the West from the beginning of the 18th century right down to 1848, has been, ‘a movement of emancipation—emancipation from the closed world of the past, the promise of an open future, in which tolerance and liberalism would integrate various formerly separated religious and ethnic groups.’ But after 1848, liberalism was abandoned, and historical pride and exaggerated nationalism set up people against people. Utopian expectations faded, national self-assertiveness eroded civilisation. Weakened and shaken, it came to the verge of collapse, not because the ideas which animated their rise were wrong, but because they were, indeed even more than in words, abandoned and repudiated.

The dream of European domination of the world which dawned on Napoleon and was virtually buried with Hitler and others of his ilk who aimed at unification of Europe for world domination, aroused the resistance of nationalism. For the protection of their liberty, tranquillity and diversity, the other people joined hands to challenge the New Order of Conquest and Uniformity. Global domination for any one nation, ideology or leader has been interred with the bones of World War II heroes.

Of the many democracies born in the past century and a half, only a handful have survived. Peoples have set out on the democratic path with revolutionary verve and vigour, but before long, they have lost their way and settled back into dictatorial regimes.

The dilemma of power and its custody is as ancient as the hills. "How can a blind multitude," wrote Rousseau, "which often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation. Of course, the people will always be good, but of itself, it by no means always sees it. The judgement which guides it is not always enlightened."

The erosion of democracy in Asia and Africa has taken two characteristic forms: seizure of power by a military junta or reversion to one-party system. Whatever happens, politicians and political parties are denounced as corrupt, self-centred and betrayers of public interest. Recall what General Ayub Khan said when taking over Pakistan: "The stress of the economic, social and moral lives—withered and shrivelled by blasts of greed, corruption, self-seeking and intrigue, are now beginning to blossom again into tender green leaves, to herald the awakening of a glad and fruitful spring." Does that not sound like what General Pervez Musharraf is saying today?

The concern for social justice and for the well-being, physical, moral and intellectual, of people everywhere was declared of supreme international importance. But good intentions paved the way to hell—they were either not taken seriously or knowingly repudiated.

Nationalism found strange bedfellows in imperialism, colonialism, fascism, Nazism, communism and various other concepts, under which social inequalities not only continued but were exacerbated by growing class antagonism. A period of debunking set in and modern civilisation was ‘unmasked’ as a hollow pretext for national egotism and economic exploitation.

The dirge of ‘White Man’s burden’, ‘a place under the sun’, and other good-goody and high sounding terminology came to an end in ‘a bombs and gunpowder’ ideology. Man, once again, became a beast of prey. The so-called culture and sophistication, hardly skin-deep, revealed the true colour of the desperados who wore hideous masks simply to hide greed, lust and self-aggrandisement—another version of the old dream, to be a ‘Mistress of the World’.