Independence Day discourses, speeches and poetry oscillate between, to borrow Freudian terms, the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The pleasure principle is the affirmation of India’s grandeur. It offers, like all nationalisms, a vicarious sense of pride, achievement and hope. No political project, especially a nation, can thrive without a sense of pride, the mechanism by which we produce identification with a people or a cause. It is difficult for a politician to be successful without evoking pride, self-belief, and even a sense of romance. Anger and a sense of injustice only get you so far in politics. But almost as a counter-reaction, there is the temptation to counter the pleasure principle with the reality principle: What is the actual state of the nation?

The Hindi poet Raghuvir Sahay was the master of this. In his poem ‘Adhinayak’, he captures the three standard counters used by the reality principle: Authoritarianism, material deprivation and the maintenance of illusion. He poignantly asked: Who is the Adhinayak who makes us sing these praises? Harcharan, the ordinary impoverished citizen, is conditioned to sing the national anthem, without either true freedom or prosperity. The conditioning is to keep up appearances, to go through the liturgical motions of nationalism, keeping the illusion alive for the rulers that all is well. We are asked to sing its songs but are not allowed to speak in our own voices.

Nissim Ezekiel, in ‘The Patriot’, used exaggerated Indian English to mock the superficial nationalism during the Emergency. The remarkable thing is that every single theme he touched........

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