![]() Religious harmony is posited as the natural state which characterizes the past and under which Indian civilization ought to exist. Indigenization and Indianization are thus located as historically recognizable (though natural) events, while unity in diversity acquires an air of transcendence. The last is a state of being, which the former two processes help bring about. ![]() There are three key terms through which Nehru attemptsto reconcile the demands of diversity and an urgent, anticolonial nationalism: indigenization, Indianization, and, what has now become a catchphrase, "unity in diversity," all three of which will be explored in this paper. Though India's current political and social difficulties have often provoked criticism of Nehru and his policies, scant attention has been paid to the terms of Nehru's seminal work, perhaps one of the earliest works of national history to overtly privilege cultural diversity and tolerance as national values. What makes The Discovery exceptional, however, in terms of nationalist historiography, is its teleology-the end, and essence of India, for Nehru, is multiculturalism. ![]() (1) In this he treaded what has become a well-worn path. ![]() In The Discovery of India, written on the threshold of that country's independence, Jawaharlal Nehru sought to create "a public vocabulary through which Indians could talk to one another as Indians" through the medium of a shared history.
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