What counts as a nation? The deceptive simplicity of the question masks the underlying complexity of the considerations involved. Take the case of India. In the north, Kashmiri separatists have since long been demanding a separate nation based on Kashmiriyat. The Khalistan movement in the 80s and 90s demanded a separate nation for Sikhs (based on religion). Separatist movements in North-East have previously demanded separate nations of Assam (for Assamese), Tripuri (for Tripuran Christians) and Nagalim (for Naga people). Meanwhile, in the last two decades, four regions (Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Telangana) have managed to carve out their own federal states based on ethno-linguistic lines, asserting their difference from the rest of the nation without ever questioning their common national identity. But defiant secessionist movements and compliant internal divisions are not the only puzzling aspect of Indian nationalism. Some even believe in a unification with neighbouring states. Many organizations (including the current ruling party BJP) , have frequently called for the the creation of Akhand Bharat (literally, Undivided India) - a unification of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and parts of Afghanistan and Myanmar, based on the legendary ancient civilisation and heritage of SE Asia. In a region with a rich history, extraordinary mixture of ethnic groups, the profusion of mutually incomprehensible languages, the varieties of topography and climate, the diversity of religions and cultural practices, wide regional economic and political disparities, which claim for a nation is legitimate, and which is not? (The case of India is just illustrative. Parallels can be drawn with similar cases in Europe and Russia, for example) Generalising this question, what, really, counts as a nation?
One answer to this seeks to trace national identity to ethnic, geographical, linguistic or religious boundaries. But none of these categories provide an adequate basis for a nation. National identity couldn’t be tied with ethnicity - for there are many multiethnic nations in today’s world, and common ethnicities spread across nation. (Indian Bengalis and Punjabis, have more in common with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis than with other Indians.) It couldn’t be language - for there are nations which are multilingual (The consistution of India recognises 30 languages which were spoken by more than a million native speakers. Almost all of them have their own scripts and grammar). Nor could it be geographical boundaries, for then what explains the dozens of nations within a single continuous landmass such as Europe? ( The ‘‘natural’’ frontiers of India have been hacked by the partition of 1947)
It can be argued, of course, that the present day nation states do not reflect their true natures and boundaries. That the boundaries need to be redrawn along ethnic, or religious, or linguistic or geographical lines, and unless this is done, there would always be supra-nationalistic and sub-nationalistic struggles. But this argument falls flat once we acknowledge the strong bond that fellow citizens of a nation feel towards each other - a horizontal comradeship that extends beyond ethnic, religious, linguistic, or geographical lines, a bond that many are even willing to lay their lives for. An Indian Bengali might share a religion, ethnicity, language and culture with a Bangladeshi, but he would still feel a deep nationalistic bond with an Indian Punjabi with whom he shares nothing but his Indian identity.
One may now hasten to conclude that a nation, then, is nothing but a voluntary civic union. ‘‘A nation emerges when people ‘will’ it to be. A nation exists when a significant number of people in a community consider themselves to form a nation, or behave as if they formed one.’’ (Hugh Seth-Watson) But even this would not do. What separates a nation from a club, or a political party, or a state? Why not football teams or political groups consider themselves a nation? Groups that ‘ will’ themselves to persist as communities cannot be nations as this casts the net too wide - any club/society would count. A group needs to possess a self-consciousness as a distinct nation for it to be a nation. When this self-consciousness is formalised by political arrangements, and reaffirmed my mass media, a nation emerges.
These difficulties have been deftly handled by Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as an ‘imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.’
Nations are imagined: the members of even the smallest of nations would never interact with most of their members, yet in the minds of each it is crystal clear that they share a communal bond, or to in Anderson’s words, ‘in the minds of each live the image of their communion’. Regardless of all inequalities and exploitation, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. The community and the accompanying ties are invented not in the sense of being fabricated under false pretences, but in the sense of being actively imagined and created. Nationalism creates histories where there are none, ignoring certain facts and emphasizing others. The French nation tends to emphasize its oneness rather than the history of Bretons, Provencaux, Burgundians, Basques, Catalans, Germans. Similarly, the English disregard differences among Britons, Anglos, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes, and the Indians conveniently forget that the Taj Mahal was actually built by a
This also explains the apparent contradiction between the claim that nations are natural communities shaped by history and the history of nation-building. History tells us that nations are modern creations, and nationalists tell us that their nations have existed since time immemorial. (‘‘A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance,’’ said Nehru, India’s first prime minister on the eve of its independence) This is not a conflict. If nations are imagined, so are national histories. Members of a nation legitimate their union by reference to features like common history, collective destiny, language, religion, territory, climate, race, ethnicity. The political and civic union is modern, as is the membership, but their imaginings of their shared history or collective destiny extends beyond time.
Lastly, Nations are limited because even the largest of them has a finite (even if elastic) boundary, beyond which lie other nations. and sovereign because they are autonomous and not governed by a larger political unit. Sovereignty is fully, flatly and evenly operative over a legally demarcated territory in a nation state.
If this seems like casting the net too wide, compare nations to two other cultural systems that preceded nationalism: dynastic realms and ancient religious communities. In the kingdoms of the old age, states were defined by centres, borders were porous and indistinct, and sovereignties faded imperceptibly into each other. Their territories, extendable both by warfare and sexual politics, had no theoretical limits. If membership to a kingdom was imagined, it was imagined as a common vertical loyalty to a high lord, not as a horizontal bond between fellow members. Similarly, the ancient religious communities linked by sacral languages had a character very distinct from modern nations. Each community believed in their unique sacredness. They applied to the whole of mankind, and as such were not limited in their scope. Here again, the fundamental conception about ’social groups’ were centripetal and hierarchical, with the apex being divine, rather than horizontal and boundary oriented.
What about modern communities? It can be said that the community of all Manchester United fans is also an imagined community, and imagined as inherently limited (there have to be other clubs, different from Manchester United, who the fans support the club against). But they also lack sovereignty, self-consciousness as a nation, and imagination of a deep horizontal comradeship with fellow fans. Any club or community would not do. Similarly, all modern religious communities, lacking sovereignty and inherent limits, are excluded by our definition. (The Islamic State, with its goals of uniting all Muslim under one Caliphate with divine authority, essentially seeks to make Islam a sovereign nation in itself).
Thus, a nation is neither a natural historical community with common ethano-linguistic-cultural characteristics, nor a purely civic modern union. As the narratives of nationalism and actual history of modern nations tell us, it is something of a mix. Mere sovereign statehood is not enough. What is also required is an imagining which brings about in each of its members a self-awareness of them being distinct from the rest as a group. The imagining may embody patterns of behaviour, language, norms, myths, and symbols that enable mutual recognition. Moreover, these imaginings in the political community of a nation bring about strong ties and obligations that hold it together and legitimise its claim as a distinct separate entity. Ethnic, linguistic or even cultural homogeneity facilitate these imaginings, but they are not a prerequisite. It is in this spirit, this idea of a nation, that Nehru had described India as ‘‘ a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads….a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.’’
03 March 2016