Technology and Nationalism in India: Cultural Negotiations from C ...

It can also be seen in the annual migration of thousands of Indian graduates in science and technology to the United States for higher studies. The emphasis on technology is also bolstered by the numerous announcements of initiatives in technological development by the Indian state and private sector, duly noted and reported by the Indian press.

The omnipresence of nationalism and technology as two intertwined master narratives of Indian social life reflects the burdens and legacies of Indian colonial and postcolonial modernity. The relationship manifests itself in the present in one form in the shape of what I have termed “technocultural Hindu nationalism,” embodied in the figure of the Hindu who seeks to redefine the meaning of Indianness on and through the Internet. One hesitates from speculating too much about the possible future trajectories of the relationship between technology and nationalism in India. The largely descriptive analysis I have undertaken in this book precludes such predictions about the future. One hopes, however, that this relationship in the future—whether within or without the realm of cyberspace—takes the form of a happy and democratic profusion of identities that are inclusive and enabling rather than exclusive and constricting. Otherwise, the idea of India as a land of pluralism, tolerance, and coexistence may be reduced to no more than an article of faith in the years to come, even as the nation prepares to don its new mantle as an economic and technological powerhouse in the twenty-first century.