Nationalism and Post-Colonial Identity

Culture and Ideology in India and Egypt

Anshuman A Mondal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134494163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des Nahen Ostens

How have nations and nationhood become the dominant form of political organization today? What is the role of culture in nationalism? In what ways have the ideological development of nationalisms in the post-colonial world shaped understandings of contemporary political problems such as the rise of radical Islam, communalism, and the failure of secular-liberal democracy? This book offers the first comparative study of two highly significant anti-colonial nationalisms. Its close analysis of nationalist discourse in India and Egypt is situated within a new theoretical framework for studying nationalism, based on a trenchant critique of theorists such as Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and Anthony Smith.

1
NATIONALISM AS CULTURAL POLITICS

Since the early 1980s the resurgence of scholarly interest in the figure of the nation has been characterized by a sustained critical interrogation of it. It is now generally accepted by scholars in the field that, contrary to its self-image, the nation is not a primordial category, fixed and unchanging. Rather it is the product of a specific historical moment, born as the European world slowly emerged into modernity, from the cradle of what Eric Hobsbawm calls ‘the dual revolution’ at the end of the eighteenth century, one which transformed the political contours of Europe, the other which transformed its economic field of production, each of them trailing in its wake the great social upheavals that lay the basis for the kind of world which we still inhabit.¹

Modernity, then, is crucial to contemporary discussions of the nation and even those who argue that the ‘core’ features of nations pre-dated modernity itself – that the cultural community that is the basis of the nation existed before it became a nation as such – concede that it was the advent of modernity that radically transformed those features into what we would now recognize as nations. And yet, in spite of this broad area of agreement, the only genuine consensus in the study of nations and nationalism is that the field itself is radically dissensual. As to why this should be is itself open to question but the disagreements often hinge upon the confusion generated by differing uses of the central terms in question such as ‘nation’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘nation-state’. No standard definition exists within the field itself as to what these terms signify and it is clear from even a cursory glance at recent studies that definitions of them depend upon the position one adopts with regard to the object of study.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the greatest confusion seems to rest on the term ‘nation’ itself since this is precisely what is at stake in the debate. Crudely, the field can be divided into two main camps: those who believe that the nation is primarily a cultural category, whom I shall call ‘culturalists’, and those who consider it to be primarily a political category, whom I shall term ‘statists’. For the culturalists the nation can be defined as a cultural community which exists above and beyond any political organization of it into a state; it is, therefore, ‘pre-political’. These cultural communities, which Anthony Smith terms ethnies, provide the basis for modern nations.² They are more or less culturally homogeneous on the basis of what he terms a ‘myth–symbol’ complex, which forms a fund of shared historical meanings to which every possessor of that culture has access, which bonds ‘a people’ together, and which ties that people to a ‘historic territory or homeland’.³ The nation is, therefore, a collectivity of meaning, a bond ‘embedded in history’ through common myths, symbols, narratives and other cultural forms, all of which enable ‘a people’ to recognize itself as a commonality as opposed to others who do not have access to this fund of historical memories.⁴ This ethnie therefore places limits upon the transformations that create modern nations. Thus, the nation could be seen as the product of modernity only in so far as ‘the era of nationalism succeeded in uniting the community on a new, political basis’.⁵ If, for these scholars, politics is important, it is only because it is the expression of a pre-existing nation; the nation exists ‘objectively’ regardless of whether it is organized politically. This fundamental separation of the nation from politics consequently separates it from the state such that it is possible to have nations without states, and by extension, ‘true’ nation-states are those which exhibit a confluence between the ‘nation’ as an ethnically homogeneous ‘culture community’ and a political unit. As Smith observes, this means that only about 10% of nations in the contemporary world would thus be classified as nation-states in this strict sense. The rest are, what he calls, ‘state-nations’ in that these ‘nations’ are the product of a nationalizing policy on the part of an existing political unit and not vice versa.⁶

For statists, on the other hand, the nation is primarily a political category, as Ernest Gellner points out in the opening sentence of his book Nations and Nationalism, ‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.’⁷ Notwithstanding for the moment that this in itself does not resolve the question of what the ‘national unit’ actually signifies, the statists believe that the figure of the nation emerges as a solution to the socio-political problems faced at the end of the eighteenth century as a result of increasing modernization, the Industrial and French Revolutions and the massive socio-political upheavals they engendered, and of transformations in the relationship between the state and ‘society’. Gellner points out that ‘nationalism emerges only in milieux in which the existence of the state is already very much taken for granted’, and in so far as statists believe nations to be the result of nationalist politics, the existence of ‘politically centralized units’ has a definitive rather than merely expressive impact upon the formation of nations.⁸ John Breuilly elaborates upon this point in greater detail, pointing out that the nation cannot be conceived of without developments in the institutions and functions of the modern state. These formed the basis of the problematic to which nationalist politics addresses itself and to which it professes to furnish a solution, namely the relationship of the state to ‘civil society’. Thus,

a clear and distinct idea of the state as ‘public’ and ‘civil’ society as ‘private’ was elaborated . . . the explicit idea of the state as the sole source of political functions was associated with a modern idea of sovereignty . . . This also required a much clearer definition than hitherto of the boundaries of the state . . . The breakdown in corporate ties meant that within both state and civil society there was a new emphasis upon people as individuals rather than members of groups. The main problem was how to make the state-society connection; how to maintain some harmony between the public interests of society and the private interests of selfish individuals.⁹

The concept of ‘nationhood’ emerges, according to Breuilly, as a solution proposed by nationalist politicians to this political problem. Consequently, the nation can be seen to be the product of nationalist ideology and not a pre-existing and objective cultural category waiting to assume the trappings of state.

This point will be further discussed in greater detail, but for now one can widen the issue of terminology to incorporate another term that fluctuates wildly according to use, namely ‘nationalism’. Part of the problem for the culturalists is that even though the nation is, for them, conceived of as a ‘pre-political’ category, nevertheless, by accepting its ‘modernity’ (in that modern nations are not the same as pre-modern ethnies), and by accepting that an aspect of the ‘modern’ nation is, to a greater or lesser degree, a politicization of the cultural community, they cannot actually separate culture from politics much as they would like to in theory. Thus they cannot separate nations from nationalism. Nationalism, its nature and function, becomes a crucial question for all concerned. The culturalists, therefore, must engage the statists on this question and come up with a definition for nationalism. Smith defines nationalism as, ‘an ideological movement for the attainment and maintenance of self-government on behalf of a group some of whose members conceive it to constitute an actual or potential nation.’¹⁰ Given that nationalism, in this definition, must, in some sense, be spoken of in political terms it seems at first glance that nationalism is a much less contentious and problematic term than nation. However, Smith divides the category into two com- ponents, a principle or doctrine and a movement to realize this doctrine. Gellner, Smith’s opponent in the debate, also splits nationalism into these two categories, as does Breuilly. Yet given the structure of oppositions in the debate, it is at once clear that the definition of the ‘doctrine’ in turn must necessarily be qualified by the definition of the ‘nation’ that underlies it. The culturalists, having conceded much by admitting the political nature of nationalism still need to distinguish the doctrine which nationalism seeks to actualize from that of the statists. For the statists the doctrine is an invention of nationalist politicians, who thus invent the nation. The culturalists, however, need to maintain that the ‘doctrine’ is not an invention but rather the self-expression of a pre-existing ethnie that informs and determines, from the outset, the political trajectory of the nationalism in question. The doctrine is, therefore, not an invention but an expression of the ‘core’ values of the nation: an expression of ‘national sentiment’ which is not nationalist but rather national, deriving from the objective pre-existence of a proto-national cultural community. Thus, depending on the conception of the nation that is subscribed to, nationalism is again either primarily a cultural doctrine, or primarily a political one. In both cases it may well be that it is a political movement seeking to gain control of a state, but for one group it does so to solve certain socio-political problems, for the other to realize the expressive desire for self-determination of a discrete cultural group.

This leads to implicit assumptions and distinctions which further undermine any attempt at reaching a consensual definition of nationalism, let alone of nations. John Hutchinson, a noted culturalist, identifies, for example, ‘two distinctive types of nationalist project: cultural and political nationalism’:¹¹

It is misleading to interpret nationalism as just a political movement . . . there has been a tendency to regard cultural nationalism as just a cover for political nationalism when normal political activity is not possible . . . even when scholars have noted their presence, they have tended to regard these movements as essentially regressive products of otherworldly romantics . . . which have little capacity to direct social change. Third, as a corollary of this they have been portrayed as transitory phenomena, destined to disappear with full modernization.¹²

I, however, will argue that there are two distinctive and sometimes competing types of nationalism: a political nationalism that has as its aim autonomous state institutions; and a cultural nationalism that seeks a moral regeneration of the community. Although the latter looks backward, it is not regressive; rather it puts forward a mobile view of history that evokes a golden age of achievement as a critique of the present, with the hope of propelling the community to ever higher stages of development. Indeed, at times of crisis generated by the modernization process, cultural nationalists play the role of moral innovators proposing alternative indigenous models of progress.¹³

Hutchinson then goes on to say, ‘In practice, of course, it is often difficult to distinguish between cultural and political nationalists.’¹⁴ This begs rather a large question as to the value of the distinction. Aside from that, we can also notice that Hutchinson takes as completely assumed and unproblematic the notion of a singular community which pre-exists its political incarnation, in fact whose value lies precisely in the fact that it can exist apart from its political manifestation. Everything of value is associated with the cultural nationalists, whilst the political aim is dismissed with a short phrase; cultural nationalism is good and integral to ‘the community’ whilst its political counterpart is exterior to it, almost superfluous, and is associated with ‘modernization’ – which in turn is characterized as ‘exogenous’, as opposed to the ‘indigenous’ community. Skipping along a few pages, however, we find that Hutchinson contradicts himself by engaging in the very practices for which he chastises the statist scholars. Thus, when confronted with movements that do not fit his neat distinction, such as when he finds cultural nationalisms that are also political, he shrugs them off as ‘a cloak for anti-state organization’.¹⁵ These are contrasted to cultural nationalisms in ‘normal circumstances’, where they take the form of small grass-roots movements that are eventually occluded by ‘coercive’ political nationalists – the politicians, the journalists and pamphleteers. Thus, it seems that, contrary to his claims, cultural nationalists are ‘otherworldly romantics . . . [who] have little capacity to direct social change’. Moreover, it seems that such movements are also transitory, occluded as they are by the political versions. Hutchinson has, in effect, gone round in circles in order to maintain his initial distinction. Furthermore, this leads him to make further distinctions. He must, for example, somehow distinguish between different types of cultural products within the community. It would seem that political treatises, pamphlets, newspapers and journals are not ‘cultural’ whereas others (presumably of a more ‘literary’ or ‘artistic’ kind) are.¹⁶ This would seem to contradict his fundamental assertion of the nation being a collectivity of meaning. Why are newspapers, treatises and so on excluded from his definition of ‘culture’ even though they are available to ‘the community’ and can be considered as sharing the same ‘fund’ of meaning?

However, nationalism cannot be considered as just a political movement or principle since to assert that would be to ignore the fact that, for nationalists, what is at stake is not only power but identity. An argument that proposes an ‘instrumentalist’ theory of identity, in which belonging to a group is seen as ‘a matter of attitudes, perceptions and sentiments that are necessarily fleeting and mutable’ so that any identity can be manipulated ‘instrumentally’ to further individual or collective interests, overlooks the fact that political identities are always in competition with other loyalties.¹⁷ The nationalists themselves recognized this and thus sought to yoke their political loyalties to a somewhat metaphysical cultural loyalty which they termed the nation. Nationalism is indeed about identity, but like all identities it must be embedded in a culture. The issue then becomes what kind of culture and why that kind? As is to be expected, both sides of the argument propose different solutions to this question, to which we shall presently return. The culturalists argue that the statist theories are facile precisely because of their instrumentalism. The charge is that statists who claim that nationalism ‘invents’ a new identity ignore the degree to which political identities must compete with and overcome pre-existing identifications that are usually considerably stronger. Statists usually respond by conceding that, politically, nationalists must to some extent work with pre-existing modes of identity. However, that is the role of nationalist ideology which, in this sense, is removed from the definition of nationalism in general, thereby maintaining a fundamental distinction between cultural production and political practice. Thus, Breuilly states that,

To focus upon culture, ideology, identity, class, or modernisation is to neglect the fundamental point that nationalism is, above and beyond all else, about politics and politics is about power . . . we need to examine closely how nationalism operates as politics and what it is about modern politics that makes nationalism so important. Only then should we go on to consider the contributions of culture, ideology, class, and much else.¹⁸

Yet if nationalist ideology is not exactly nationalism in this strict sense then what exactly is it? Is politics to be considered separately from ideology per se? Or is it something peculiar about nationalist ideology that merits separate consideration from nationalist politics?

Other definitions of the term ‘nationalism’ add to the confusion. Eric Hobsbawm, for example, follows Smith in divorcing the doctrine from the movement – or as he puts it, ‘the principle of nationality’ from nationalism – but for him the latter only acquires meaning and value after the development of fuller electoral democracies in which political parties and agents utilize the ‘principle of nationality’ in order to accomplish a range of things in the field of power.¹⁹ Nationalism is thus born at the moment of transition to mass politics. The ‘principle of nationality’ thus seems to possess a life of its own within the realms of cultural discourse as Hobsbawm endeavours to chart the changes in its meaning and value, separated from nationalist politics at least, if not from social and historical realities in general. Until the advent of mass politics, the mutations in the ‘principle of nationality’ which Hobsbawm, with his great historical eye, tracks so meticulously seem to occur as a response to general shifts in the political climate, themselves a response to even more general historical shifts in social forces and material production, rather than the efforts of nationalist politicians. Hobsbawm implicitly runs the risk of reducing nationalism to a determinism which others less careful have been guilty of.

There is another variation in the term nationalism which merits consideration since it is, according to Hobsbawm, the meaning ‘for which the term “nation- alism” was actually invented in the last decade(s) of the nineteenth century’.²⁰ This is the ‘strict’ meaning of the term which for Miroslav Hroch signifies ‘that outlook which gives an absolute priority to the values of the nation over all other values and interests ’.²¹ Hroch goes on to use this strict sense to draw a categorical distinction between ‘nationalism’ and ‘national movements’. The former, which is characterized negatively, assumes that the nation-building process has achieved its goal and that the nation-state is fully formed. It is thus equated with the extremity of the political right. The latter, however, is a positive movement which seeks to form a nation-state by seeking to build on existing national values. Its desire to establish a nation-state carries with it revolutionary implications which firmly locate ‘national movements’ on the political left. Moreover, it is wrong to confuse national movements with nationalist movements. One is positive, the other pernicious; one regenerates national values, the other overemphasizes them; for one, national revolution prefigures other social and political revolutions, whilst the other signifies an extreme conservatism. However, Hroch’s distinction arises as a consequence of his culturalist position. The cultural nation, the spring of all the positive values that Hroch identifies, must be rescued from a tainted association with the intolerant chauvinism of nationalism. Thus, implicitly, nationalism is characterized as a political ‘interest’ which demands overriding allegiance in order to maintain and camouflage social exploitation and divisions within a state, whilst the narrative of the national movement is characterized as the ‘natural’ expression of a national community demanding socio-political revolutions as a consequence of, and springboard for, cultural regeneration.

Nationalism for Hroch presupposes a fully formed nation-state. It is, therefore, an overemphasis of national sentiment. National sentiment, or identity, is yet another way in which nationalism can be and has been defined. In this sense it signifies the sense of belonging to a cultural community called ‘the nation’, and as such it is probably the only definition of nationalism that can be accommodated by both statists and culturalists since it does not depend upon a prior definition of the term ‘nation’. For Benedict Anderson, ‘nation-ness, as well as nationalism are cultural artefacts of a particular kind’...