January 17, 2026 12:50 PM IST First published on: Jan 17, 2026 at 12:50 PM ISTBy Dhruv Janssen-SanghaviWhatever the design underlying the idea may be, nationalism can most palpably be observed in India to have been reduced to a marketing strategy. It sells flags, slogans, hashtags, and occasionally, outrage. But let us not be facetious. What is nationalism, really?At its idealistic best, nationalism can be understood as individuals taking ownership of their actions and of the impact those actions have on their fellow nationals, and choosing them consciously. It is a moral relationship between citizens, not merely a legal one between the state and its people. Yet, the easiest hallmarks with which individuals tend to identify themselves – ethnicity, language, religion, caste, custom, costume, and cuisine – have too often been the basis of violent exclusion rather than collective belonging. India’s history bears witness to how identities built on these markers have combusted, sometimes catastrophically.AdvertisementPerhaps it was to rise above the banality of such divisions, and the dangers they posed, that India’s founders attempted to unify a profoundly diverse land into a single constitutional polity. Their initial resistance to organising India entirely along linguistic lines was rooted in a fear that political identity would collapse into cultural silos. The hope was that if individuals identified themselves as Indian first, they might empathise with those who do not look, sound, eat, or live like them, and thereby preserve peace and solidarity.In contemporary practice, however, Indian nationalism often manifests as something quite different: The idea of a nation-state’s ownership of its citizens, with the terms of belonging dictated not by shared civic responsibility but by conformity to the preferences of a dominant political imagination. Nationalism becomes less about mutual obligation and more about obedience; less about solidarity and more about surveillance. In this form, it is unsurprising that many experience nationalism not as empowerment, but as coercion.If Indian nationalism is to mean anything beyond jingoism, it must be practised, not merely professed. Participation in the nation cannot be reduced to voting once every five years, after which citizenship recedes into passive spectatorship. A democracy requires continuous civic engagement, particularly in the institutions that sustain the rule of law and social trust.AdvertisementNowhere is this more evident than in the justice system. The rule of law is foundational to democracy, but it is hollow if justice is delayed indefinitely. India’s judiciary is notoriously burdened with backlogs; cases drag on for years, sometimes decades. Predictably, public faith in the judicial system is eroded. The blame game is familiar: Judges are accused of inefficiency, politicians of failing to fill vacancies, and lawyers of obstructionism. Much of this criticism, however, is armchair commentary – loud, indignant, and detached.Where is our skin in the game?It is here that the idea of reviving jury duty becomes relevant – not as nostalgia for colonial-era institutions, but as a reimagining of civic responsibility. Jury duty compels citizens to participate directly in the administration of justice – both civil and criminal. It forces individuals to confront the complexity of facts, the ambiguity of human conduct, and the weight of deciding another person’s fate. Justice ceases to be an abstract service delivered by a distant institution; it becomes a shared civic function.A jury drawn from across social strata – daily wage earners, domestic workers, professionals, and industrialists – brings together individuals who would otherwise never interact meaningfully. India today is fractured by caste, religion, language, and economic disparity. Each group carries its own lived reality and its own conception of justice. Jury duty acts as an equaliser, compelling citizens from radically different backgrounds to deliberate together, listen to one another, and arrive at a collective judgment.In doing so, it exposes participants to the many Indias that coexist within the country – often invisibly, often uncomfortably. It tempers certainty, challenges prejudice, and instils humility. Most importantly, it transforms justice from something people complain about into something they are responsible for sustaining. Criticism of delays and inefficiencies becomes informed, grounded, and participatory rather than abstract and accusatory. Jury duty would not fix delays magically, but it would change how Indians relate to justice.Any discussion of jury duty in India must acknowledge why juries were abandoned in the first place. The system was discontinued in the 1960s in the aftermath of the Nanavati case amid concerns that juries were vulnerable to prejudice, public sentiment, and social pressure. Those concerns were articulated in a particular historical context shaped by colonial assumptions about Indian society, and by anxieties about education, caste, and public reason. Whether or not those assumptions were justified at the time, they should not be treated as permanently dispositive. Bias and susceptibility to influence are not unique to juries. They exist in all human institutions, including the judiciary itself. The question today is not whether juries are flawless, but whether a democracy can afford to exclude its citizens entirely from participation in the administration of justice.The argument for civic participation does not end with the judiciary. It extends to how Indians relate to one another in everyday life. A striking feature of contemporary India is the pervasive sense of entitlement that cuts across class lines, though it manifests differently at each level. The wealthy often feel entitled to the labour, deference, and invisibility of the less privileged. On the roads, entitlement takes the form of incessant honking, traffic violations, and an aggressive insistence on reaching one’s destination at the expense of everyone else’s safety and sanity. Public spaces are treated as obstacles to be conquered, not shared environments to be respected.This entitlement is mirrored in cultural and political discourse. Despite the founders’ resistance to a rigidly linguistic federation, the politics of othering has flourished. Many who claim to be “Indian first” imagine India as a monolith – specifically, their version of it. Practices that do not conform to this imagined norm tend to be labelled un-Indian, even though pluralism has always been intrinsic to Indian society. This selective nationalism reveals a failure to engage with India as it actually exists. It substitutes lived understanding with symbolic posturing.Civil conscription, if designed thoughtfully, may offer a potential corrective. Mandatory national service – whether military or civilian – causes citizens to serve others rather than merely extract benefits from the state. It disrupts entitlement by reminding individuals that citizenship is about community. Service instils discipline, but more importantly, it cultivates empathy.Conscripts drawn from one state or cultural background and posted to serve in another are likely to understand and come to appreciate India’s heterogeneity in ways that textbooks and slogans cannot convey. Language barriers, unfamiliar customs, and different social norms cease to be abstractions and become lived experiences. Over time, this exposure fosters understanding, patience, and respect. The “other” becomes a colleague, a neighbour, or a friend.Such service need not be confined to the armed forces. Military service would be one among several options, not the organising logic. Healthcare, disaster relief, infrastructure maintenance, environmental conservation, and education are all domains where national service could be meaningfully deployed. The objective is not militarisation, but social integration. A society in which citizens have served one another is far less likely to tolerate casual cruelty, cultural arrogance, or civic indifference.Serious objections exist. India’s history of coercive governance, selective enforcement, and bureaucratic overreach makes any expansion of compulsory civic duty deeply suspect. But liberty divorced from responsibility looks less like democracy and more like feudal indulgence – privilege without obligation.Of course, one would have to be very careful with how this notion is instituted. Any national service regime that disproportionately burdens the poor while the privileged opt out would be morally indefensible. Democratic citizenship has always entailed obligations – taxation, compliance with the law, and participation in public life. Jury duty and national service merely make those obligations visible, tangible, and shared.most readUnless entitlement is replaced by service, and indifference by participation, Indian nationalism will remain hollow. At best, it will continue as a marketing strategy – useful for selling products, political campaigns, and curated identities. At worst, it might harden into a tool for exclusion and hatred.If India is to reclaim nationalism as a unifying civic ideal rather than a divisive spectacle, its citizens must do more than cheer from the sidelines. They must sit in judgment, serve strangers, and learn – sometimes uncomfortably – what it means to belong truly to one another.The writer is an international tax and human rights lawyer based in the Netherlands and in India