REVISITING NATIONALISM – 2

 

PRASANNA KUMAR CHOUDHARY

 

NATIONALISM THEORISED

With the emergence of nation-states there also evolved several theories about nation and nationality. In this enterprise almost all the major thinkers of Europe made their contributions.However, the names that are often quoted prominently in this regard are: Jean Bodin (8), Giambattista Vico (9), Johann Gottfried Herder (10), Emanuel-Joseph Sieyes (11), Thomas Hobbes, Hegel, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Max Weber, Lenin, Rosa Luxemberg, etc. On the various aspects of this discourse, J S Mill, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Theodor Adorno and Benedict Anderson, too, are often quoted. Since nation constituted an important component of modernity in Europe, the inner contradiction of modernity also got reflected in this discourse.In history, humankind has been self-organizing itself in different forms of community depending upon different modes of earning their livelihood. In hunting and food gathering stage, the primitive form of community evolved as patriarchal or matriarchal gens, tribes and later on as tribal confederations. The territorial sovereignty of the tribes took the formof chiefdoms. In different geographical areas this form of community acquired its own specific features. In the agrarian age, human community took the form of settled territorial societies (janapadas) based on social division of labour necessitated by agriculture. Village was the basic unit of these societies. In this age, the sovereignty of landlords took the form of kingdoms, and later on, of empires. This form of community too has specific features in different parts of the world. Members of the tribes (based on blood relations) became subjects of their respective kings.In the age of exchange, human community reorganized itself in the form of nations in the capitalist countries of Europe. The sovereignty of the new bourgeois class culminated in the form of nation-state, and that of the colonial system of these nation-states. The 'subjects' of the agrarian age were transformed into 'citizens' of the nation-state. However, this form of human community was the product of the specific conditions of Europe where the sovereignty of the Roman Church was supreme - small states and principalities based on religious hierarchies were a great hindrance to the capitalist development. (In fact, after the Reformation, the Thirty Years' War and the Vienna Congress the first important step towards the unification of Germany was the 'customs union' formed by several German states in 1834.)

Thus nation was a historical product. It was a specific form of human community in Europe in the age of capital. But it was put forward as a 'natural form' of human community as if the humankind had at last found its ideal form of existence. Even its specific European form was made universal and capitalist nation-states of Europe tried to impose it all over the world. This attempt, combined with the competition among capitalist-imperialist states, resulted in protracted bloody civil wars in Africa killing millions of people - in Nigeria, Congo, Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, etc. In other places also, the situation was more-or-less similar. Indo-Pak partition, Israel-Palestine problem, etc. were also the results of the same process. Today, the nation-state exported to Africa, has crumbled in Somalia - what to talk of 'nation-building' efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Therefore, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri has rightly pointed out, "It may be true as Benedict Anderson says, that a nation should be understood as an imagined community - but here we should recognise that the claim is inverted so that the nation becomes the only way to imagine community. ....Hence our conception of community is severely impoverished. Just as in the context of the dominant countries, here too the multiplicity and singularity of the multitude are negated in the straitjacket of the identity and homogeneity of the people." (12) So it was poverty of imagination. In the age of exchange, too, human community can assume (and should assume) different forms depending upon different circumstances and backgrounds - this possibility was denied even at the level of imagination.

As a natural corollary to this line of thinking, many nationalist thinkers of Europe were convinced that after independence, India was destined to disintegrate. According to them, unity forged among various nationalities of India during their struggle against the British colonial rule, was not sustainable after independence. India's balkanization, in their eyes, was a foregone conclusion.However, after sixty three years of independence, barring a few areas in the north-east and Kashmir valley, the unity of India, despite all its diversities, has strengthened. On the other hand, even after more than three hundred and fifty years of the Westphalian Treaty, the process of building and rebuilding nation-states is continuously going on in Europe till today. In the last decade of the previous century and the first decade of the present one, most of the new nation-states emerged in Europe itself. Many western writers call this process 'the balkanization of Europe'. ..........Around 1922, ex-colonies of Russia 'voluntarily' merged themselves in the Soviet Union - after 1992 (in the background of the fall of communism in Russia) they, asserting their right to self-determination, 'voluntarily' broke away from the Union leading to its final disintegration. As a result, many nation-states emerged in eastern Europe and Central Asia -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Uzbekstan and Turkmenistan. Even the Russian Federation faced a bloody seperatist rebellion in Chechanya. .... Ukraine too is facing secessionist pressures, as the people residing in Galicia, the Bukovina and the sub-Carpathian Ukraine (Who are different from the bulk of the Ukrainian people) are clamouring for a seperate nation-state. Transdniestr region of Moldovia is currently under Russian military's watchful eyes.Similarly, after the end of the communist rule in Yugoslavia, all of its previous constituents are now independent nation-states -- Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Demand for the unification of independent Macedonia and Macedonia province of Greece has already soured relation between the two countries. Kosovo has unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia. Czechoslovakia, too, now stands divided into two nation-states - Czech and Slovakia. Russia and Georgia have already fought a war over Georgia's two rebel provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The rise of these nation-states has been a very bloody process in some cases - particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.However, this process is not confined to the erstwhile communist-ruled states of Europe. As we have already seen, the independent development of nation-states in Europe has led to a number of national wars and in the twentieth century, to two world wars. Hence, the organization of the European Economic Community in the 1950s, and later on of theEuropean Union, was also intended to check the growth of aggressive ultra-nationalist tendencies (like Nazism). However, the EU failed to contain nationalist movements forseperate nation-states. To the contrary, such movements acquired a pan-European forum to further their cause. Small nationalities in Europe, on the one hand, want to secedefrom their parent nation-states, and on the other hand, by becoming members of the EU and NATO, they want to enjoy the benefits of the unified European market as well asto guarantee their security.

In Belgium (which houses the headquarters of the EU), the strained relation between Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons are heading towards separation.Flemings are now veering around the demand for independent Flanders. Basque separatist movement is one of the oldest movements in Europe; so is the movement for independent Catalonia in Spain. Secessionism is gaining ground in the Lombardy region of Italy. Greenland has now declared its (limited) independence from Denmark - the first nation-state-in-the-making that owes its origin to the global warming.In 1707, through the 'Act of Union ', Scotland and England, in place of their seperate parliaments, established the single parliament for the whole of Great Britain. Now, three hundred years later, Scotland is well ahead on its road to independence.The role of UNO as the word organization of nation-states has never been remarkable; today it has gone down further and become miserable. On the one hand, demands for itsreorganization are gaining ground, on the other hand, through global, regional and bilateral conferences, treaties, and institutions, attempts to build new power equations and structures in different fields ( be it economic, political, cultural or environmental ) can be easily discerned.

Nation-state in Europe, it seems, is completing a full circle, albeit in a changed global scenario.

NATIONALISM CHALLENGED

The ideology of nationalism had to face serious challenges from the very beginning itself. Needless to say that there was always a radical opposition in Europe's bourgeoismovement, whose social base consisted of common working people like urban workers, craftsmen, poor peasants, lower sections of urban middle class,etc. These sections were then making their presence felt in various secret societies and sects, revolutionary, communist and radical political movements. In England, behind the Levellers, there were Diggers (13), in Germany, behind Martin Luther was Thomas Munzer (14). During the Reformation, there were Anabaptists (15) in Switzerland, Germany and TheNetherlands; in France, there were Jacobins and of course, the man named Francois Noel Babeuf (16). There were sects like Freemasons or Quakers (17). Later on, came Chartists, communists and social-democrats. These movements strengthened the concept of 'popular sovereignty', challenged the homogeneity of nation, and in due process helped in the democratization of nations. However, the development of democratic institutions continued till the first half of the twentieth century - even the universal adult franchise was realised in that century itself.

Moreover, parallel to the nationalist thought, a few ideological systems came to the fore in Europe itself in which 'nation' was accorded a very minor or transitional role. Insteadof regarding nations the 'natural form' of human community, religious fraternity, class or civilizational societies were considered as prominent forms of human community. All these categories were supra-national, and in place of 'national consciousness', religious, class or civilizational consciousness were preferred. Marxists emphasized on class identity, class solidarity and class-based internationalism. Toynbee discovered twenty-one species of human society as a whole in his study of history and six living species of society, namely, (i) western Christian society; (ii) orthodox Christian society; (iii) Islamic society; (iv) Hindu society; (v) far eastern society which got divided into (a) Sinic society (main body), and (b) Korean-Japanese society. (18) Huntington's much quoted 'clash of civilizations' theory is just a simplistic imitation of Toynbee's original theory of 'species of society'.Moreover, due to the pressures of current globalization, nation-states are today confronted with the very real challenge to their relevance itself.

Continued.

 

Next: home/page 15