Nationalism and Nationalisms: Making Sense of Diversity

Jayant Lele

Queens University

Kingston, Canada

The current practice of capturing the diverse manifestations of nationalism, both old and contemporary, by referring to them in plural or by giving them separate labels and listing their apparently distinct attributes, has two interrelated negative consequences. This practice of typology creation fails to sufficiently explore the common elements that enable us to label them all as nationalism and allow us to exclude some other forms. It also has the effect of shying away from a systematic exploration of the inner dynamics of these forms and of the commonalities and differences in those dynamics.

Taking its cue from Benedict Andersons point that nationalism cannot be understood without reflecting on the older political forms from which it emerges, this paper attempts to explore the negative consequences of the typology strategy by using the examples of a few major analyses of nationalism, including that of Anderson. It argues that the most important common element of all forms of nationalism is the inner contradiction, described by Tom Nairn in one of his early articles as its janus-face.

The paper questions the wisdom of treating any particular phenomenon of nationalism as a given in its analysis. It calls for a careful analysis not only of the older political forms out of which it emerges but also of the socio-economic and cultural contexts in which the old forms were embedded. It also calls for a careful analysis of any transformations of those contexts that will have preceded the emergence of a particular form of nationalism. Any construction of nationalism will then have to be examined in terms of how it creatively re-imagines its past and appropriates it. A key element of the analysis of such a reconstruction will have to be a careful study of the actors involved, in terms of their socio-political and economic location in the changing social order.

The most common dichotomy, used to capture the differences in the manifestations of nationalism, is that of the political-economic form to which is juxtaposed a cultural-ethnic form of nationalism. The project proposal, "From Developmental Nationalism to Cultural Nationalism in Asia", uses a variation of this dichotomy. While accepting that the tendency to privilege one over the other or to submerge one into the other is counterproductive, this paper also rejects the suggestion that one form is simply dying while the other shows signs of resurgence. It also questions a fairly common assumption of their simple or "natural" simultaneity or of their instrumentally convenient coexistence. Instead the paper argues that what these labels are trying to capture are the two faces of nationalism, the two contradictory "moments," that characterize its inner dynamics. It identifies those moments as moments of "hegemonic" and "critical" appropriation of the past. The paper questions the notion that "traditional" communities were simply uprooted and then integrated into the "modern" form of the nation-state. It asks that the process of appropriation of tradition be examined in terms of a contradictory dynamic of hegemony and critique. The essentially contradictory character of nationalism, as ideology and identity, is further explored, using some examples from India's long past.