Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895-1945

Robert Cribb, Narangoa Li, Robert Cribb, Narangoa Li

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000144017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Between 1895 and 1945, Japan was heavily engaged in other parts of Asia, first in neighbouring Korea and northeast Asia, later in southern China and Southeast Asia. During this period Japanese ideas on the nature of national identities in Asia changed dramatically. At first Japan discounted the significance of nationalism, but in time Japanese authorities came to see Asian nationalisms as potential allies, especially if they could be shaped to follow Japanese patterns. At the same time, the ways in which other Asians thought of Japan also changed. Initially many Asians saw Japan as a useful but distant model, but with the rise of Japanese political power, this distant admiration turned into both cooperation and resistance. This volume includes chapters on India, Tibet, Siberia, Mongolia, Korea, Manchukuo, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Chapter One
The Icon of Japan in Nationalist Revolutionary Discourse in India, 1890–1910

VICTOR A. VAN BIJLERT

Radical Nationalism in India

The late nineteenth century in colonial India witnessed a period of rapid cultural and political change. Within a few decades, Indian nationalism transformed itself from cultural opposition to the West into political activism aiming at total independence from the British Empire. This chapter will deal with a little analysed source of inspiration for early Indian anticolonial nationalism, namely Japan. We will look at Indian radical nationalism (sometimes also called 'Extremism') as it was theorized and disseminated between 1890 and 1910 and the ways in which Japan was presented within it as a model and an iconic example. The year 1890 marks the beginning of the dissemination of radical nationalist discourse in colonial India. This discourse was predominantly Hindu religious and exhortatory in tone and remained so for several decades. It tried to impart self-confidence and a feeling of self-worth in the Indian public. The year 1910 witnessed a dramatic increase in nationalist terrorism. Indian nationalism had moved from cultural discourse to revolutionary action.

Commenting on Benedict Anderson's powerful thesis of nationalism as the construction of an 'imagined community', Partha Chatterjee argues that Anderson leaves the 'non-West' with nothing of its own:

If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain 'modular' forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine? History ... has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual consumers of modernity. Europe and the Americas ... have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation, but also that of our anti-colonial resistance ....¹

In an earlier book, Chatterjee articulates the same problem in the form of a rhetorical question:

why is it that non-European colonial countries have no historical alternative but to try to approximate the given attributes of modernity when that very process of approximation means their continued subjection under a world order which only sets their tasks for them and over which they have no control?²

Chatterjee points to a major historiographical problem, namely: how do we recognize different forms of nationalism? This problem leads to a string of related issues: how much do non-Western nationalisms owe to Western hegemonic models of modernity? Is it possible to conceive of anti-colonial self-definition and nationalist struggle without following master-models designed by the West? Is it possible to have modernity without Western hegemony? In a very pertinent way Indian anti-colonial nationalism made this problem manifest and tried to answer it. I will discuss this nationalism as if it is a single phenomenon but I admit this position is an oversimplification. In fact, Indian nationalism consisted of a mix of different conceptions of what the nation had been and ought to become. But to the extent that these conceptions were all based on total rejection of British rule and the demand for full independence of India, they can be treated as various modes of the same intention. Thus these 'nationalisms' were modes of cultural and political emancipation.

In the nineteenth century the urbanized intelligentsia in and around Calcutta accepted Western modernity as far as the natural sciences, progressive political theory and economic theory were concerned. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when British rule did not offer much more to the indigenous intelligentsia than a 'subaltern' role in colonial society, the latter became increasingly critical of Western hegemony They more and more resented the colonial state and the imposition of Western cultural models.

Cultivation of the indigenous languages through 'print-capitalism' and the creation of a modern indigenous written culture were the only means by which Western hegemony could be resisted.³ Culture was thus the earliest battleground for the clash between the West and Indian civilization. This clash was often formulated in terms of Western materialism versus Indian, mainly Hindu, spirituality. It was thought that India particularly excelled in the latter. Spirituality, especially understood as the philosophy of Vedanta, symbolized for many Indian intellectuals the feature that distinguished India from the materialist West. The term Vedanta primarily refers to the mystical insights and realizations recorded in the Upanishads (between the fifth and third centuries BCE) and the Bhagavad Gita (first century CE). The Upanishads are the philosophical portions of the earliest sacred Hindu texts, the Vedas. The Bhagavad Gita is not a portion of the Vedas, but is held in equally great reverence. Vedanta is a blend of monistic and monotheistic intuitions with various spiritual disciplines to 'realise' the Divine essence or Self within oneself and the cosmos. This aim is one of the key concepts of Vedanta. In the minds of many Hindu intellectuals, the ideas of selfimprovement through spiritual disciplines and self-realization represent an Indian ideology of modernity.

Modernity, in whatever mode, can be interpreted as increasing self-awareness and the desire to gain control over one's own destiny; thus advancing towards modernity entails a universal trend towards greater individuality. Individuality and recognition by others of one's individuality can be gained on a personal level but also collectively. If a large collective like the nation seeks this individuality, we could call it the search for national identity. But we should never forget that the construction of a national identity is an imposition of homogeneity on to a non-homogeneous mass of persons.

Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838-1894), the famous Bengali novelist, was one of the first Indian modernizing intellectuals who tried systematically to tackle the problem of western colonialism.⁴ In his best-known Bengali novel Anandamath [Abbey of Bliss] (1882), Bankim (the usual shorthand for Bankimchandra) offered for the first time an imaginative blueprint for a successful uprising against the British.⁵ The philosophical dialogue Dharmatattva [Essence of Religion] (1888), contains Bankim's theoretical search for the Indian nation on the basis of his understanding of the Bhagavad Gita. Bankim's importance lies in the fact that his writings became major sources of inspiration for anti-colonial nationalism. By propagating the Vedanta as modern Hinduism par excellence and as an ideology of modern Indian nationhood, Bankim set the tone for at least two decades of radical nationalism. Many later nationalists, among them M.K. Gandhi (18691948) and Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), referred to the Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita as sources of inspiration for nationalist struggle.

India’s Spiritual Self-Defence: Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita

The Bengali religious leader, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) rapidly rose to all-Indian and international fame during the last decade of the nineteenth century.⁶ Where Bankim wrote mostly in Bengali for the Bengali urban middle class, Vivekananda preached his messages of Hindu religious empowerment, Indian regeneration and cultural pride mostly in English to a global audience, including British, Americans, and of course the Indians at home. Whereas Bankim had never ventured outside India, Vivekananda travelled to Europe and America to preach his message of modern Vedanta. Although Japan did not figure much in his public speeches and writings, he referred to Japan in his letters and newspaper interviews. Vivekananda regarded Japan as the model for India: politically and culturally independent from Europe and yet a modern nation.⁷ Japan was what India ought to become. In an interview in the newspaper The Hindu from February 1897 Vivekananda is reported to have said:

The world has never seen such a patriotic and artistic race as the Japanese ... [w] hile in Europe and elsewhere Art goes with dirt, Japanese Art is Art plus absolute cleanliness. I wish that every one of our young men could visit Japan ... .⁸

The 'key to Japan's greatness' according to Vivekananda was the 'faith of the Japanese in themselves, and their love for their country. When you have men who are ready to sacrifice their everything for their country, sincere to the backbone - when such men arise, India will become great in every respect'.⁹ But this greatness would not happen 'until all the three hundred millions of India combine together as a whole nation'.¹⁰ Vivekananda regarded the whole of the then British Indian Empire as the realm out of which the Indian nation had to be moulded. The Indian nation of the future would have to form an unbroken unitary community. And Japan was one of the examples of successfully welding together a nation.

In Vivekananda's estimation, Japan was in a process of modernizing without losing its sense of self-identity. Japan was not senselessly copying the West like the urban educated Indians, by which Vivekananda primarily meant Calcuttans. In a recorded conversation held probably around 1900, Vivekananda stated:

in Japan, you find a fine assimilation of knowledge, and not its indigestion, as we have here. They have taken everything from the Europeans, but they remain Japanese all the same, and have not turned European; while in our country, the terrible mania of becoming Westernised has seized upon us like a plague.¹¹

Japan had modernized itself but the Japanese national identity was kept intact, according to Vivekananda. He had briefly visited Japan in 1893 when he was travelling from India to the United States. In a letter dated 10 July 1893 he wrote approvingly of Japan in contrast to China. His brief experience of Japan had revealed to him the stark contrast with India. In his opinion Indians had been sitting down 'these hundreds of years with an ever-increasing load of crystallized superstition' in their heads. In the same letter he continued his diatribe: 'Kick out the priests who are always against progress. ....