‘Unity in diversity?’ Dilemmas of nationhood in Indian calendar art

Abstract

This article focuses on the visual representation of the ideal of secularism in the popular print culture of the ‘Nehruvian’ era of Indian nation-building in the light of some contemporary controversies. The analysis reveals a tension between a relatively egalitarian understanding of the principle of ‘unity in diversity’, in which all religious traditions are conceived as equivalent sources of truth, and a ‘majoritarian’ understanding whereby other religions are appropriated to a Hindu order (represented by Mother India, the Mother Goddess, or the Mother Cow). This tension, as well as relations of equivalence, reciprocity and exchange, are illustrated in reference to a set of ‘Sikh’ calendars of the period. These calendars instantiate the delicate relations of similarity and difference, affinity and hostility, between the Hindu and Sikh faiths as constituents of the multi-religious society of post-Independence India. The article also illustrates the process whereby old images are reworked in new contexts, sometimes to provoke the assimilationist/separatist confrontation, but sometimes, on the contrary, to mark a gesture of conciliation.