Week 10 Creating a Nation

Week 10Creating a Nation Dr Supriya Akerkar

What is a nation?

Theories of what is a nation • Multiple significations • Is a cultural artefact of a particular kind • Raises deep attachments • Self consciousness merged with political ideologies • Historical product: a recent creation towards end of eighteenth or early nineteenth century • Source: Anderson Paradox: • Historians consider it a modern phenomenon as against its subjective antiquity in the eyes of the nationalists

Theories of Nation • “A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future.....” by Ernest, Renan Source: Renan, Ernest. "What is a Nation?" in Eley, Geoff and Suny, Ronald Grigor, ed. 1996. Becoming National: A Reader. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press

Theories of Nation: Memory and Culture • (1) a 'memory' of some common past, treated as a 'destiny' of the group - or at least of its core constituents; (2) a density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling a higher degree of social communication within the group than beyond it; (3) a conception of the equality of all members of the group organized as a civil society.“.... ... Hroch, Miroslav Source: Hroch, Miroslav. "From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-building Process in Europe," in Balakrishnan, Gopal, ed. Mapping the Nation. New York and London: Verso, 1996

Theories of Nation : Role of nationalists • "... nationalists have a vital role to play in the construction of nations, not as culinary artists or social engineers, but as political archaeologists rediscovering and reinterpreting the communal past in order to regenerate the community. Their task is indeed selective - they forget as well as remember the past - but to succeed in their task they must meet certain criteria. Their interpretations must be consonant not only with the ideological demands of nationalism.....and patterning of particular ethnohistories.” Anthony Smith • Smith, Anthony D. "Gastronomy or geology? The role of nationalism in the reconstruction of nations." Nations and Nationalism 1, no. 1 (1994): 3-23.

Theories of Nation: State or Nation-State? “I do not regard the 'nation' as a primary nor as an unchanging social entity. It belongs exclusively to a particular, and historically recent, period. It is a social entity only insofar as it relates to a certain kind of modern territorial state, the 'nation-state', and it is pointless to discuss nation and nationality except insofar as both relate to it........... Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round. .....Hobsbawm, Eric J • Source: Hobsbawm, Eric J. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Theories of Nation: Role of Nationalism • “Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist” (Gellner) • Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983,

Theories of Nation • “It is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson) Source: Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Edition ed. London and New York: Verso, 1991

Imagining of nations: key themes • Imagined • Political community • Limited and sovereign By Anderson

Nation as a modern idea • Born in the age of Enlightenment • Built on and aligned with cultural systems that preceded it: Religious community and dynastic realm • Source: Anderson

Explorations of the non-European world • Self conscious territorialisation and relativisation of faith with political intent: My faith is better than yours • Source: Anderson

Role of Print Capitalism • Book as first modern style mass produced commodity • Self contained and reproduced and reprinted in mass quantities • Spread of vernacular languages: French and English • Newspapers: Imagined world rooted in daily life creating a community in anonymity the hallmark of modern life • (Source: Anderson)

Imagining a nation • Role of narratives and memory

Narratives of nationalism • Emblems of nationalism: Tomb of unknown soldier

Narratives of nationalism • Honouring of dead soldiers in wars in the town of Wooten Bassett • “Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.....” By Ernest Renan

Narratives of nationalism • Celebrations of independence days, special national days • Source: http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations-a-states/what-is-a-nation.html

Imagining of nation • People willing to die (or even kill?) for their nation • History of the building of some post colonial nation-states has witnessed such violence. How were nations imagined during those times?

Example of India/Pakistan creation • Thousands of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims people killed during partition • What narratives could have led to such major massacre? • What narratives of nation were constructed following the violence? • Source: • http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sikhnet.com/files/news/2009/November/partition-7.jpg

India/Pakistan nation creation David Gilmartin (1998) argues • that the purificatory or religious cleansing violence which accompanied the partition was an attempt to lay a moral claim to the new territories carved out by partition. • Purificatory violence symbolically sealed the relation between territory and a new vision of the moral community

India/Pakistan nation creation • Symbolic meanings attached to the new boundaries.... • In the words of one of the refugees who reached Pakistan, after witnessing murders of family and friends, the connection of flag, territory and Muslim identity took new meaning “Long live Pakistan, Long live Islam.....I had lost everything, forty people of our family were martyred, but the happiness I found when I saw the Pakistani flag flying at the Pakistan border, is still living in every cell of my body”

In conclusion...... • Imagined communities of ‘Nations’ were created in the era of anti-colonial struggles. Diverse groups were brought together through this process.... • The post colonial nations continue to face challenges in this nation-creation....

In conclusion • Next term we will focus on the challenges faced by post colonial nations..... • Thank you...

Week 10 Creating a Nation