Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Aug 6, 2015 16:58:32 GMT 5.5
“One of the difficulties of the history of ideas is that names are more permanent than things. Institutions change, but the terms used to describe them remain the same,” says Alfred Cobban in The Nation State and National Self-Determinism (1969). What are still called nation states in western Europe such as England, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal among others steadily evolved into nation states before nationalism was born at a point when it was not wrong or inappropriate to call these states nation states. The evolution of whatever each of these countries was into a “nation state” lasted centuries during which major differences in ethnic and cultural landscapes were ironed out into a homogenous people through an often difficult and bloody historical process. Now, as Cobban says, things have changed and these countries are no more nation states, and the idea of nation states has now become a fallacy.
The basic idea of the nation state is congruence between a territorial state and a sovereign national community; that is, each nation (= people of one culture) to have their own state (say country, in a layman’s term). This is no more possible in today's complex world.
Marginalization based on, inter alia, race, culture and religion may be a day-to-day reality in multi-racial and –cultural states of the contemporary, but you cannot wish out of state with a nation-state dream. What insurgent organizations and their pros we know working in and around Manipur are doing is exactly this. The Kukis insurgents want a sovereign Kuki state (say country) and the Naga insurgents want a sovereign Naga state (say country). It is only the insurgent organizations which are composed majorly or dominantly of Meitei cadres that want Manipur as a state not just for the Meiteis but for all the communities living in this state of India. However, that dream is not basically different from a nation-state dream given the fact that all indigenous communities in this land are of mongoloid stock and they broadly share a pre-Hindu cultural ground. The notion of nation which these insurgent organizations and their pros have is along the lines of Joseph Stalin’s fixation with this concept. In his Marxism and the National Question (1913), Stalin defined nation as “an historically formed, stable community of people, united by community of language, of territory, of economic life, and of psychological make-up, which expresses itself in community culture.” No wonder that Russia reeled under his brutal rule. We can no more build states now the way England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal were formed long before the birth of nationalism, a word born only very recently in the late eighteenth century (1770 – 1799).
Nationalism still remains an ideology and if very often drives political moments. But it should be very clearly understood without any degree of confusion that nationalism is (and should be) grounded in identification with an ethnic community, not with established political institutions, such as the state.
The basic idea of the nation state is congruence between a territorial state and a sovereign national community; that is, each nation (= people of one culture) to have their own state (say country, in a layman’s term). This is no more possible in today's complex world.
Marginalization based on, inter alia, race, culture and religion may be a day-to-day reality in multi-racial and –cultural states of the contemporary, but you cannot wish out of state with a nation-state dream. What insurgent organizations and their pros we know working in and around Manipur are doing is exactly this. The Kukis insurgents want a sovereign Kuki state (say country) and the Naga insurgents want a sovereign Naga state (say country). It is only the insurgent organizations which are composed majorly or dominantly of Meitei cadres that want Manipur as a state not just for the Meiteis but for all the communities living in this state of India. However, that dream is not basically different from a nation-state dream given the fact that all indigenous communities in this land are of mongoloid stock and they broadly share a pre-Hindu cultural ground. The notion of nation which these insurgent organizations and their pros have is along the lines of Joseph Stalin’s fixation with this concept. In his Marxism and the National Question (1913), Stalin defined nation as “an historically formed, stable community of people, united by community of language, of territory, of economic life, and of psychological make-up, which expresses itself in community culture.” No wonder that Russia reeled under his brutal rule. We can no more build states now the way England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal were formed long before the birth of nationalism, a word born only very recently in the late eighteenth century (1770 – 1799).
Nationalism still remains an ideology and if very often drives political moments. But it should be very clearly understood without any degree of confusion that nationalism is (and should be) grounded in identification with an ethnic community, not with established political institutions, such as the state.