A familiar thing is often the hardest to analyze. Beyond Belief directs a much-needed critical and demystifying gaze on the familiar ideologies of nationalism in India by “investigating the nation-state formation project in postcolonial India, notably the ways in which the distinctive entity of the nation-state assumed its form, authority, and meaning” (p. 4). It examines the Nehruvian project of nation building by focusing on the state institutions, policies, programs, and agents that defined India and Indianness for its citizens. By drawing attention to the role of the state in the making of a national imaginary, Roy admittedly inscribes a history “from above” (p. viii). The book builds on critical works that have interrogated the formation of nationalist ideologies in various parts of the postcolonial world and comes as a required addition to works that have analyzed how the idea of India was “produced” in the colonial context.
At its core, the book is a methodologically rich interrogation of theories of nationalism, which, according to the author, have suffered from a disproportionate attention to communities at the expense of analyzing the institutional means and mechanisms that produce the discourse on nationalism (pp. 8–14). Roy's engagement with the state as an agent of nation making allows her to theoretically add to extant scholarship on the topic by going “beyond discussions of national identity as an internalized belief” (p. 15). Urging her readers to take quotidian bureaucratic acts in which one “encounters” the state seriously as practices fostering the ideological formation of the nation-state, Roy argues that “it is their iteration rather than their credibility, their ability to elicit recognition rather than inspire passion, that consolidate the dominant ideologies of the post-colonial nation-state” (p. 8; emphasis added).
Roy identifies two central axes of state sloganeering that were iterated during the Nehruvian era as catchphrases for defining the postcolonial Indian nation-state. First is the “unity in diversity” principle, the production of which is delineated through a detailed examination of documentary films produced by the Films Division of India (chapter 1), and the performative nationalism of the Republic Day parade (chapter 2). Second is the discourse generated around the refrain of “Indian darkness” or “state failure.” This is explored through a thorough analysis of official policies concerning the establishment of new science and technology institutes (chapter 3), and the spatial mappings of newly founded steel townships (chapter 4).
The modes of transmission of these ideas of Indianness were carried out in the routine level of everyday state practices, producing the effects of “boredom” and “disenchantment” (p. 29, 35) as well as the spectacular level through national commemorative rituals performed by the state and displayed in the pageantry of the Republic Day parades (chapter 2). In such ordinary and extraordinary sites, Roy argues, the state articulated its own “authorial flourish” (p. 35)—whether as the sole recognizer of difference, or as the primary guardian of national security. The nature of the Nehruvian state that emerges from Roy's discussion is one that celebrates its diversity while carefully safeguarding its authority as the primary institution that grants recognition to difference. A central paradox thus defines the nature of the Indian state—articulated in the softspeak of cultural terms but capable of hard talk by wielding the stick as and when required.
As a significant departure from current understandings, Roy contends that the powerful and generative ideologies of the postcolonial Indian nation-state were not simply expressions of a “pregiven natural reality to which a state can respond in better or worse ways” (pp. 6–7). Instead, these were actively produced through policy decisions and their implementation by state agents and institutions. Furthermore, Roy asserts, the production of particular kinds of Indianness was a specific mode of negotiating the travails of a postcolonial participatory democracy. The state represented itself “not simply as a problem solver, but as a subject of needs itself” (p. 110). Thus, by placing itself “in history's waiting room” (p. 109), the Indian state could make intellectual and political demands on its citizenry. This included the state's emphasis on developing a “scientific temper” and urging its citizens to eschew politics in favor of science (chapter 3). The articulation of state failure, Roy argues, was a state-produced discourse—yet another “‘performative’ expression of nationalism, wherein national becoming rather than national being receives emphasis” (p. 111; emphasis added).
Beyond Belief makes for a riveting read, and it is to Roy's credit that she is able to weave a consuming narrative out of source materials that must have often been rather dreary and bureaucratic. In the view of this reviewer, the book could have benefitted from an even organization of period and themes within chapters. Perhaps this aspect was predetermined by the author's decision to focus on institutions rather than eras. The book will be useful to a wide audience, including political scientists, historians, anthropologists of the state, and scholars of modern South Asia. While individual chapters address South Asian scholarly concerns more directly, the introduction and the conclusion serve as theoretical framing devices that make the monograph an essential read for anyone who is interested in theories of nationalism. Overall, it is a timely intervention both in the thematic of the formation of nationalist ideologies as well as the problematic of a specific articulation of postcolonial nationalism in India.
