The Battle of Belonging: On Nationalism, Patriotism, And What it Means to Be Indian

by Shashi Tharoor

The ‘us–them’ syndrome is cultivated, of which the first step is ‘de-individualization’, in which people of a different ethno-national background are no longer seen as individuals, but rather as members of a broader, undifferentiated stereotype. If a society is lucky the syndrome stops there, as it has so far in India; if not, it descends to the second step, of dehumanization, reducing the other to non-human status and no longer entitled to basic human considerations of decency, respect, or even (as with Hitler and the Jews) life. The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama dubs as megalothymia (‘a new word with ancient Greek roots’) this desire to be recognized as superior to other people, and adds that ‘nationalism represents a transmutation of the megalothymia of earlier ages into a more modern and democratic form’.103