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Honors theses, “don’t confuse patriotism with nationalism”: a literature review and an analysis of two domains of post-wwii nationalism in germany.

Ashton Krueger , University of Nebraska - Lincoln Follow

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Spring 3-15-2021

Krueger, A. E. (2021). "Don't confuse patriotism with nationalism": A literature review and an analysis of two domains of post-WWII nationalism in Germany. Undergraduate Honors Thesis. University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Copyright Ashton Krueger 2021.

This thesis includes a literature review that is an examination of nationalism and patriotism as psychological constructs as well as an analysis of two post-World War II domains of nationalism in Germany. In the psychological literature, there is a very important distinction to be made between the concepts of nationalism and patriotism. As nationalism and patriotism remain relevant areas of study by scholars due to more global citizens than ever before, it is vital to understand the distinction between the two. The goal of the literature review is to demonstrate how nationalism and patriotism differ substantially, how patriotism also takes on various forms, how major determinants such as socialization contribute to nationalism, how certain brain structures function with each construct, how these concepts change over time, and how both relate to the degradation of outgroups in very different ways. By clarifying factors that are significantly related to nationalism such as socialization and degradation of outgroups, the analysis of two post-World War II domains of nationalism in Germany builds upon this psychological foundation by considering how fairy tale films and soccer both foster and display nationalism. Using films, the goal of the analysis is to argue that nationalistic themes are depicted in fairy tales films and the game of soccer. The various facets include for the fairy tales, superiority over other countries and anti-capitalism, and for soccer, the intense emotional identification and the us versus them dynamic of exclusion. This thesis contends how nationalism is not a thing of a past; it is still present today.

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Understanding nation and nationalism.

NAKUL KUNDRA is Assistant Professor of English at DAV University, Jalandhar, Punjab, India. Recently he has been writing about the works of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Tagore, and Raja Rao. India's experimental and avant-garde counterculture appeals to him the most for its potential as a research topic in the field of Indian writing.

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Nakul Kundra; Understanding Nation and Nationalism. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 17 June 2019; 21 (2): 125–149. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/intelitestud.21.2.0125

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Divided into four sections, this review paper on nation and nationalism gives a snippet view of the complex 1 concept of nation and nationalism. The first section of the paper outlines the idea of nation and nationalism and the complexities involved in framing its scientific definition. The second section touches on the main schools of thought in the discipline, whereas the third section cursorily traces the development of the discourse of nation and nationalism from Rousseau to Benedict Anderson and Partha Chatterjee. The fourth section explores the critical validity of the concept. The paper does not intend to identify and address any knowledge gap; it discusses the theoretical development of the intricate concept of nation and nationalism.

In common parlance, country/state 2 means a populated, politically defined, geographical entity that has a government and a sovereign system; it is extensively recognized at international level. On the other hand, nation is referred to a tightly knit large group 3 of people who are psychologically united with one another through some homogeneity of their culture. In other words, a country significantly incorporates population, demarcated land, government, and sovereignty, whereas a nation is a culturally homogeneous group 4 of people who share a common language, institutions, religion, and historical experience. “Country” comes from the Latin “contrata,” which implies “the landscape in front of one, the landscape lying opposite to the view,” and the word “nation” is derived from the Latin “nation-/natio,” which means “race, class of person.” Syed Ahmed Khan's “One Country, Two Nations” theory posits 5 that a country may consist of more than one nation. When a nation of people has a state 6 or country of their own, it is called a nation-state 7 .

To define “nation” with all its dimensions is problematic because “the very idea of a nation is never fixed/static, it is perpetually in the process of making or becoming” (Baral 66). In this process, “collective self-consciousness” (Grosby 10) is promoted by various elements such as common race, common language, geographical unity, common religion, common history, common political aspirations, common interests, and common culture. In academic arena, therefore, a number of scholars have explored the concept of nation from cultural, psychological, political, and ethnic points of view. According to Pradier-Fodere, “Affinity of race, community of language, of habits, of customs and religion are the elements which constitute the nation” (qtd. in Garner 46). Along the same lines, John William Burgess opines, “A nation is a population of ethnic unity, inhabiting a territory of geographical unity” (3). Johann Kaspar Bluntschli says, “Nation is a union of masses of men … bound together, especially by language and customs in a common civilization which gives them a sense of unity and distinction from all foreigners” (qtd. in Jaffrelot 53).

Some members of that nation have a narrow, intolerant view of their country by insisting that it should have only one religion, Hinduism; while others think that there should be freedom of religion such that Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians are rightly members of the nation. (5)

Under different circumstances, a nation may change its basic criteria of homogeneity. People “confronted with a given problematic situation” (Haldar 174) may form a nation, but they may constitute a different nation in another situation. No nation fits to be the ideal type “till the people are constrained and manipulated to conform to the nation … [the] feeling of nationhood is a matter of degree, no rigid line can be drawn across the continuous spectrum specifying that those who are above the line belong to a nation and those below do not belong to that nation” (174). For example, at one time a Sikh resident of Punjab, India, may think of themselves as a part of “the nation of India” during India's confrontation with another country over territories, and under some other circumstances, the same resident may feel affinity for the prospective Sikh nation.

Being aware of the fluid nature of the concept of nation, Eric Hobsbawm says that it is problematic to tell the observer how to differentiate a nation from other entities a priori, “as we can tell him or her how to recognize a bird or to distinguish a mouse from a lizard. Nation watching could be simple if it could be like bird watching” ( Nations and Nationalism 5). The elements that promote collective self-consciousness only outline the basic spirit of the concept of nation and lead to a mere abstract idea. Consequently, it is not possible to draw the absolute contours of any nation, and it becomes difficult to confine the kaleidoscopic and panoramic scope of nation within the confined walls of general definitions. Hugh Seton-Waston rightly concludes that “no scientific definition” of nation can be devised (5).

Nation presupposes some conditions. Without people, there will be no nation; nation is an example of collectivism. 9 The general objective of nationalism is that a people be in the charge of their collective destiny. Being in charge involves the protection of “their identity and dignity of the group and the maintenance of its units” (Harris 4–5). The fact that a sense of collective identity is a precondition to produce a sense of nation is supported by expressions such as Fichte's “an inseparable whole,” Renan's “common glories” and “common will,” Stalin's “stable community of people,” and Anderson's “community.” Size is also a considerably significant aspect in this context. A category of any size cannot fulfil the demands of nation making. Nation is a group that “extends in numbers far beyond a single kinship community and in expanse far beyond a single locality” (Akzin 32–33).

The identification of a “feeling of togetherness” or “collective self-consciousness” among a people outlines the psycho-spiritual concept of nation. The realization of “us” which differs from “them” makes the basis for the existence of a nation (Grosby 10). To be a nation, it is not mandatory for a people to be entirely homogeneous; they should be majorly homogeneous in those aspects that are national according to them. Most importantly, they must have the realization of such homogeneity among “their” people (and separateness from “other” people). In other words, the people of a nation feel similarities among themselves and dissimilarities from others. A people's will of being a nation is the core component of the entity of nation. It can be said that the constructive ideological imagination of being a nation works at the psychological and emotional levels of a people, who might be different in a number of ways and aspects. If those people think, believe, and feel that they are a nation, they are a nation. Handler tersely puts it: “In principle national being is defined by a homogeneity which encompasses diversity: however individual members of the nation may differ, they share essential attributes that constitute their national identity; sameness overrides difference” (6).

The significance of faith in “territorial self-determination for the group” (Barrington 712) remains at the center of most of the definitions of nation. Nations are unique and different from other social groups as “they are collectives united by shared cultural features (myths, values, etc.) and the belief in the right to territorial self-determination” (713). There are a number of social groups such as religious groups, ethnic groups, or even professional associations that hold common myths, values, and symbols. “But nations are not just unified by culture; they are unified by a sense of purpose: controlling the territory that the members of the group believe to be theirs” (713). Smith also says, “A nation must occupy a homeland of its own, at least for a long period of time, in order to constitute itself as a nation” ( Key Concepts 12).

The roots of the concept of nation lie in the “tendency of humanity to divide itself into distinct, and often conflicting, groups” (Grosby 1) and also in unifying tendency when human beings “engage in activities in which it seems not to matter who were their parents, where they were born, or what language they speak” (4). Nations are a result of numerous historical processes; they have historical antecedents. Such antecedents are not merely facts but memories that may not be factually accurate and “that are shared among each of those many individuals who are members of the nation about the past of their nation, including about those earlier societies” (8). Every nation views its own past distinctively, which makes it different from other nations. Grosby uses the term “temporal depth” for the component of time “when an understanding of the past forms part of the present” (8). “Central to the existence of the nation is the tendency of humanity to form territorially distinct societies, each of which is formed around its own cultural traditions of continuity” (11). Therefore, nation is formed around shared traditions about a “spatially situated past” (10).

The feeling of belonging to a nation is not innate. It develops in the society through a continuous process of learning and habit forming that takes place through social communication (Haldar 175). It is produced and sustained by symbolic forms such as “songs, films, cultural practices like stories, traditions, history writing” (Nayar 176). For example, Bollywood movies, temples and gurudwaras, portrait of Gandhi in offices, celebration of festivals like Diwali, metanarrative of Bharatmata, and so forth, unconsciously leave an impression that India is one. Eventually, a person living in Amritsar, near Wagha border, psychologically feels closer to other Indians (even in faraway states) than a Pakistani who lives just a few kilometers away in Lahore.

Jana Balázová says that national identity seems to be the basic human identity for most people. She adds that identification with a particular nation serves as the basis for a fulfilled human existence, providing security, possibilities for personal development, and defense against real or imagined dangers and enemies. The concept of nation lies in self-determination. And, the rhetoric of nationalism is based upon the idea that the peace and security of the world is the outcome of the freedom and security of every nation as a member of the world's great family of nations (Balázová).

It is, in general, a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of government should coincide in the main with those of nationality…. Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart. (qtd. in Smith Theories 9)

Gellner says, “Nationalism is a political principle that holds that national (Nation) and political units (State) should be congruent” ( Nations and Nationalism 1). He says that neither nations nor states exist at all times and in all circumstances. Moreover, nations and states are not the same contingency. For this coming together of state and nation, there are clearly three pre-conditions—there should be a state; there should be a nation; and finally, there should be nationalism to tell the other two that they are meant for each other and cannot live without each other. The pre-modern world may have occasionally thrown up nation-like formations (Kurds, Somalis, or even Marathas and Rajputs in medieval India), but they were rare and did not always fulfill all the conditions required to be a nation.

David Miller, in “Defence of Nationality,” sums up nationalism in three claims: “that a national identity is a defensible source of personal identity, that nations are ethical communities imposing reciprocal obligations on members which are not vowed to outsiders, and that nations have a good claim to be politically self-determining” (6). Hans Kohn in The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background suggests a classification of nationalism: Western and Non-western nationalism. With the spirit of democracy and individualism, he says, Western or Liberal nationalism developed in France and Britain. On the other hand, non-Western and more-chauvinistic type is traced outside of Western Europe, especially in Germany. It gives importance to the collective and primordial characteristics of the nation (330–42).

Kellas in The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity speaks of three general approaches that define nationalism: ethnic nationalism, civic or social nationalism, and state or official nationalism. He knows that “these categories are in practice not always mutually exclusive” (65–66). Ethnic nationalism refers to the ideology or movement of ethnic groups who perceive sameness through common history, language, race, territory, or other elements of culture (in other words, the tradition they inherit) and who have the nation-state as one of their main goals. These people with common ethnicity 11 struggle to preserve their ethnic identity, which is mainly based on common descent and language. The membership of ethnicity is hereditary, and in this case, homeland is politically projected to be state. Ethnic nationalism is influenced by the views of Herder and Fichte. Civic or social nationalism has social ties and culture at its center. Represented by the will of the people, it is democratic in spirit as it vests sovereignty in all citizens. It is influenced by the ideas of Rousseau in The Social Contract . Outsiders such as immigrants and diasporas can also join this kind of nationalism by adopting and following the ways of culture and society. Official nationalism covers the nationalism of state; it includes all those who are legally entitled to be citizens, irrespective of their ethnic group, national identity, and culture. Official nationalism is promoted by the state (through an official language and other state-sanctioned symbols) to cultivate and maintain the dominance of a specific nation (Kellas; Cruz Fernández).

Guichard says that in nationalism four elements—movement, feeling, ideology, and discourse—are linked. She says, “A political movement defends an ideology with the help of a discourse, which can be used to arouse certain sentiments” (14). She writes about Brubaker's terms of “state seeking” and “nation shaping” nationalism. In the “state seeking” sociopolitical phenomenon, the members of a nation try to attain “a certain amount of sovereignty” or “political autonomy” (15). “Nation shaping” nationalism hopes “to establish an identity between the existing state and their idea of a nation to which they believe, this state corresponds only imperfectly.” She adds, “In countries that have been colonized, nationalist movements started as ‘state seeking’ and became ‘nation shaping’ after decolonization.”

There are various types of nationalism—left-wing nationalism, liberal nationalism, religious nationalism, pan-nationalism, socio-political nationalism 12 (Michel Seymour), postcolonial nationalism, expansionist nationalism, romantic nationalism, and so forth. Besides, banal nationalism 13 (Michael Billing) has transformed the scope of nationalism. Preetam rightly claims that “nationalism shows every sign of suffering from the political equivalent of multiple-personality syndrome” (26). Nationalism attains its shape on the basis of circumstances and the political causes responsible for it. That is why, anti-colonial nationalism tends to be a liberating force linked to the goals of liberty, justice, and democracy, whereas a nationalism born out of social dislocation and demographic change often attains “an insular and exclusive character, and can become a vehicle for racism and xenophobia” (26).

Nationalism is considered both a negative and positive concept in political and philosophical debates. If it became the inspiring factor for the struggle for independence in many countries, it was also responsible for the disastrous wars and international fallouts in the world history. Notably, nationalism is considered a root cause of the World Wars. In India, nationalism contributed to the independence of India, but it also resulted in bloodshed, hooliganism, and destruction. It is pertinent to mention here that nationalism is expressed not only through political struggles, but also through pieces of art (painting, movies, songs, sculpture, etc.), nationalist literature, celebrations of self-identity, mourning the national loss, speeches and debates, movements, colors, symbols, artifacts, architecture, and so forth.

In the complex and contested field of the study of nationalism, the following are the main schools of thought: the Primordialists, the Perennialists, the Modernists, and the Ethnosymbolists.

The Primordialists favor the antiquity and naturalness of nations. They believe that nationality is an integral natural part of human life; it is “as natural as speech, sight or smell, and that nations have existed from time immemorial” (Ozkirimli 49). The Perennialists also believe in the presence of nations since time immemorial, but they differentiate themselves from the Primordialists by asserting that nations do not constitute natural phenomenon but historical and social phenomenon (Guichard 9).

As a rule, wars before the French Revolution didn't arouse deep national sentiment. In religious and dynastic wars of early modern times, Germans fought against Germans, and Italians against Italians, without any realization of the “fratricidal” nature of the act. Soldiers and civilians entered the service of “foreign” rulers and served them often with a loyalty and faithfulness which proved the absence of any national sentiment. (16–17)

Anthony D. Smith 14 coined the term “ethnosymbolism” to advocate his views on the subject. In The Ethnic Origins of Nations ( 1986 ), he challenges Gellner's modernist view and opts for a midway between primordialism and modernism. He says, “There is considerable evidence that modern nations are connected with earlier ethnic categories and communities and created out of pre-existing origin myths, ethnic cultures and shared memories” (“Memory and Modernity” 385). The basic idea is that even if nationalism is a modern phenomenon connected to the emergence of the Enlightenment and the political ideas of the French Revolution, nations themselves are not modern but are the continuation of earlier forms of cultural identity—ethnies. “Modernity created the structural conditions in which nationalism could become an ideology of modern nations built round this ancient ethnic core” (Harris 49). Smith focuses on nations’ origin in the pre-modern forms of ethnies (the French word to refer to ethnic groups), a kind of “socio-cultural organization.” He says that ethnies are “named human populations with shared ancestry myths, histories and cultures, having an association with a specific territory and a sense of solidarity” (Smith “Structure and Persistence of Ethnie” 27).

What came first, nation or nationalism? This query is almost like the chicken-and-egg riddle. The dichotomy has become a sterile framework for explaining nationalism. Both the positions that once triggered and further inspired discourse on nation and nationalism have increasingly become entrenched and poles apart. So major academia would like to move beyond (Hearn 7).

It is usually said that the theory of nation and nationalism does not have its own grand thinkers. “Unlike other ‘isms,’ nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbeses, Tocquevilles, Marxes, or Webers” (Anderson 5). The idea of nation is said to be rooted in the Enlightenment 15 and the views of the French political thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1772–1778) (Harris 22). Rousseau in Discourse on Inequality (1755) wrote that human beings, having evolved from a state of nature into communal living that was based on shared customs and a single way of life, could be expected to feel affection only for the members of their own societies, not for the whole human race (Parashar 15). In The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau wrote that man faced the danger of “the possible tyranny of will by his fellowmen” while living in society. In order to cope with it, it was important for men to exchange their selfish will for “the general will” by becoming “citizens” and ceasing to be natural men. Natural men were self-centered, whereas citizens depended on the community of which they were a part. General will favored general good over private interest (Ozkirimli 12). It was “the voice of all for the good of all” (Wayper 144).

Rousseau's contribution is significant in the conceptualization of the early notion of democracy as a community of citizens with equal rights irrespective of their socio-economic position. This does not compulsorily suggest a particular cultural community but could, in principle, be a grouping based on some kind of shared interests, such as class (Harris 22). Since humanity is organized along cultural lines, however ill-defined or artificial they may be, a united community of equal citizens became the basis of the national self-determination doctrine (22). Notably, Rousseau is one of the greatest thinkers whose views are said to have influenced 16 the French Revolution (1789), a revolution which “created nationalism by inadvertence” (Thompson 51). According to the revolutionaries, “the people were sovereign and they owed no allegiance to any government that didn't derive their sovereignty from the nation. This subversive doctrine helped to influence the rise of nationalism” (Choudhury 3).

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), a German thinker, provided the link between the Enlightenment and German Romanticism 17 (Ozkirimli 13). Rousseau expressed his views as a Frenchman, whose country had witnessed a long history of political independence, whereas Herder wrote as a German, a people divided among more than one hundred jurisdictions (Parashar 18).

Herder believed that humanity had its roots in and derived its values from a number of national cultures, each of which had its own virtues and no one of which could rightly lay claims to universality. He said that each culture was influenced and shaped by the physical environment in which it developed, by the language of its people, and by the forms of education through which customs, traditions, and values were passed on to younger generations. Herder used the term Volk to describe each community that had an identifiable culture, and he was willing to apply this name liberally to communities of the most varied sizes and characteristics. Each Volk had its own specific traits that were to be understood and appreciated of their own rather than weighed in the balance of contemporary values and found wanting (Parashar 18–19). Yet there was no Favorit-Volk in Herder's scheme of things. He said, “No nationality has been solely designated by God as the chosen people of the earth; above all we must seek the truth and cultivate the garden of the common good” (qtd. in Ozkirimli 14). He objected to the “unnatural enlargement of states” through the conquest of one nation by another.

Has a nationality anything more precious than the language of its fathers? In this language dwell its whole world of tradition, history, religion and principles of life, its whole heart and soul. To rob a nationality of its language or to degrade it, is to deprive it of its most precious possession. (qtd. in Ozkirimli 13)

I want to gather … from over the whole of our common soil men of similar sentiments and resolutions, to link them together, so that at this central point a single, continuous, and unceasing flame of patriotic disposition may be kindled, which will spread over the whole soil of the fatherland to its utmost boundaries. (qtd. in Ozkirimli 14)

It is true beyond doubt that, wherever a separate language is found, there a separate nation exists, which has the right to take independent charge of its affairs and to govern itself … where a people has ceased to govern itself, it is equally bound to give up its language and to coalesce with conquerors. (qtd. in Ozkirimli 15)

With the views of Rousseau, Herder, and Fichte, the idea of nation and nationalism started acquiring a visible shape. Rousseau's ideas of “general will” and a self-governing state based on the consensus of a community moved to Herder's understanding of Volk and historicism, and then to Fichte's views about the special virtues of the Germans, who might “impose these virtues on the entire world” in the future (Parashar 24). The essay “What Is a Nation?” (1882) by Earnest Renan offered an innovative insight into the subject. First, Renan listed the elements that were not essential to nation making. According to him, race, language, and religion were not essential to a nation. Race, originally crucial, was gradually becoming less important. Language though invited people to unite, yet it did not force them to do so. Likewise, religion, he said, couldn't supply an adequate basis for the constitution of a modern nation. He added that a nation was a spiritual principle; it was a spiritual family, not a group determined by the shape of the earth. Two dimensions were necessary to constitute this spiritual principle—the past and the present. “One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present day consent, the desire to live together” (277). In 1912, Joseph Stalin in his essay “Marxism and the National Colonial Question” defined nation as “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture” (20). He said that a nation essentially required all these characteristics to be present together.

Renan's view of nation has been criticized because it involves various non-nations as well. According to it, any self-conscious group with some degree of living together (e.g., college friends who have been living together in a hostel since school days) could be called a nation. On the other hand, Stalin's definition, based on common language and territory, does not fit in the case of the Jews in the early twentieth century, who were scattered through Europe and America and had no territory they could call their own, even though they shared religious beliefs and a sense of belonging. If we consider the example of the Jews only an exception among others, Stalin's definition of nation emerges as a correction of and extension to Renan's idea of nation.

The most important book on nation/nationalism in recent times is Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, who suggests that nations were not the determinate products of sociological conditions; they had been “imagined” into existence everywhere in the world. To quote Anderson, “It (Nation) is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (6). It is imagined as “[t]he members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (6). It is limited in the sense that it has a limit beyond which lies other nations; it cannot incorporate the entire world. There must be another nation/non-nation against which the self-definition of one nation can be constructed. Nation is imagined as sovereign because the concept of nation was developed in the late eighteenth century, “an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm … nations dream of being free…. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state” (7). Finally, it is imagined as a community because the nation is always “conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” regardless of “the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each” (7). Nations hold such power and imaginations that a lot of killing and sacrifice is also witnessed in the name of national duty. Further, in war, national citizens are equal and class boundaries are eroded in the communal struggle for national cause.

Anderson says that the rise of nationalism was intimately connected with the development of “print capitalism,” together with the development of a national language. Capitalist entrepreneurs printed their books and media in the vernacular (instead of exclusive script languages such as Latin) in order to maximize profits. As a result, readers speaking various local dialects were empowered to understand one another, and a common discourse emerged.

Anderson considers Asian and African nationalisms to be a modern phenomenon, inspired by European Enlightenment and Romanticism in an economic environment prospered by industrial capitalism. According to him, the post-Enlightenment European phenomenon reached Asia and Africa through colonization and imperialism, and it provided a platform for the making of a nation through Western education and the introduction of print capitalism. It created an intelligentsia who selected their models from the “official nationalism” of European or American histories, which “were copied, adopted, and improved upon” (140).

Scholars such as Partha Chatterjee and T. Mayer have criticized Anderson's views in Imagined Communities . Mayer analyses the book from feminist perspective and remarks that expressions like “fraternity experienced by members of a nation” and “comradeship” bring with them the connotations of masculine solidarity. It is argued that Anderson envisions “a hetero-male project … imagined as a brotherhood,” ignoring gender, class, and racial structures at inter- and intracommunity levels (6).

Partha Chatterjee says that Anderson's idea of nationalism “in the framework of universal history” is Eurocentric (4). “He [Anderson] argues that the historical experience of nationalism in Western Europe, in the Americas, and in Russia had supplied for all subsequent nationalisms a set of modular forms from which nationalists elites in Asia and Africa had chosen the ones they liked” (5). Chatterjee says that Anderson views the citizens of the postcolonial world as “perpetual consumers of modernity,” and he leaves nothing for the colonies to imagine. “Even our imaginations must remain forever colonised” (6).

Chatterjee believes that nationalism is a more complex and richer phenomenon than it is viewed by Anderson. According to him, Anderson is undermining the contribution of the colonized in the formation of modern nations. Moreover, anti-colonial nationalism in India and Africa is not modelled “on an identity but rather on a difference with the ‘modular’ forms of the national society propagated by the modern west” (5). He cites the example of India, where nationalism “proper began in 1885 with the formation of the Indian National Congress” (5). Prior to that, it was the period of “social reform” from the 1820s to the 1870s, when the colonial interference “with the customs and institutions of a traditional society” began in the name of modernization. A decade before 1885, it was a period of preparation when several political associations were formed.

The Bilingual intelligentsia came to think of its own language as belonging to that inner domain of cultural identity, from which the colonial intruder had to be kept out; language therefore became a zone over which the nation first had to declare its sovereignty and then had to transform in order to make it adequate for modern world. (7)

The cultural elite, who were bilingual, subsequently took steps to bring Bengali into modern usage. Chatterjee does not object to Anderson's focus on print capitalism, but he says that in the case of Bengal, Bengali, an indigenous language, an “inner domain of cultural identity,” was kept “outside the purview of the state and the European missionaries” (7). Almost similar is the case with drama. “The literary criteria that would presumably direct the new drama into the privileged domain of a modern national culture were therefore clearly set by modular forms provided by Europe” (7–8). However, even today, the performative practices of the modern theater in West Bengal (the theater which is national and which is different from folk theater) continue to promote a national culture in the form of language and traditions, and they “fail to meet the standards set by the modular literary form adopted from Europe” (8).

It is broadly proposed that nation and nationalism may have one or more of the following important components at its center—will (Renan), culture (Stalin), ideology (Gellner), imagination (Anderson), and ethnies (Smith).

Nation is an abstract concept; it loosely depends upon the criteria by which culturally homogeneous people locate themselves among other non-nations and by what they perceive as national. All nations comprise the blend of objective features (religion, language, shared past, etc.) as well as subjective features that leave scope for the peculiar expressions of homogeneity in each nation (Heywood 103–8). The collective sense of belonging to a nation actually operates at individual level, “in a population larger than a community” (Akzin 32–33); it acts as a psycho-spiritual assurance to a person of his/her national identity. That is why, two neighbors or even two family members may claim their commitment to two different nations. It is simply because the acceptance or negation of any nation is the domain of individual psychological makeup. So, nation is a category of people who are not only culturally homogeneous but also like-minded and who are imagined to be present in a large number. Hence, inclination to any nation reflects an individual's psychological understanding/acceptance of the collectivity of that nation. Such an understanding may simply be an illusion as it is imagined (Anderson) or invented (Hobsbawm).

I don't believe in this India-Shindia? It's all very well, you're going away now, but suppose when you get there they decide to draw another line somewhere? What will you do then? Where will you move to? No one will have you anywhere. As for me, I was born here, and I will die here. (215)

Nations rest upon material as well as nonmaterial cultures: symbols, ideologies, day-to-day practices, and so forth. The symbols of a nation differ from those of a state; they are not directly controlled by the state. For example, Bollywood, restlessness during Indo-Pak cricket match, concern over terrorists’ attacks near borders, mythologies, traditional values, and so forth, fall within the domain of the Indian nation and nationalism, whereas the national bodies such as CBSE and UGC, Indian railways, the initiatives of the Government of India such as “Swasch Bharat Abhiyan” and “Surrender LPG Subsidy,” the national celebrations of the Independence/Republic Day in New Delhi, the constitution of India, and M.P. elections are a few examples of the symbols of Indian state. The symbols of a nation deal with a category and they function at psycho-spiritual level, whereas the symbols of a state focus on a group and have physical modus operandi. Noticeably, the symbols of state and nation instill a sense of nation-state in a country.

Different theories about nation and nationalism reflect different attitudes or “approaches” 18 (Harris 47). So, it is impossible to identify and define any nation in absolute terms. For example, the British imperialists acknowledged India not as a nation but as a subcontinent, whereas the Hindu nationalists believe that India has always been a nation since ancient times. 19 Bipan Chandra comes up with another secular view in India after Independence . To his understanding, the Indian nation is the product of a historical process and has been therefore in the making for very long, at least some five centuries. Chandra adds that the elements of political, administrative, and economic unity had developed especially under the Mughals, and a feeling of Indianness, however vague, had come into being, as testified by the currency of the concepts of Bharat Varsha and Hindustan. After the independence, the linguistic reorganization of the states, integration of the tribals, and regionalism and regional inequality 20 helped in the consolidation of India as a nation (83). Hence, claims to a nation are multi-dimensional.

Nationalism is also multi-dimensional, protean, fluid, and flexible in nature. Different people view nationalism differently. For example, in India, the idea of nationalism was varyingly Indianized to accommodate Indian society. In a lecture delivered under the auspices of the Bombay National at Mahajan Wadi, Bombay, on 19 January 1908, Aurobindo said, “Nationalism is not a mere political programme; Nationalism is a religion that has come from God; Nationalism is a creed which you shall have to live” (“The Present Situation” 818). On the other hand, Gandhian nationalism advocated the ideas of swaraj (self-rule), swadeshi (native products for social development), swadharma (to follow the best in his/her own religion), satyagraha (holding fast on to truth), sarvodaya (upliftment of all), brahmcharya (Celibacy), asangrah (non-possession), sharirashrama (physical labor), aswads (control of palate), sarvatra-bhaya-varjana (fearlessness), and ahimsa (non-violence). Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) “found in socialism a continuation of his love of nationalism” (Mohan 183). The scope of nationalism is wide. Keeping it in view, Gangeya Mukherji appropriately applies the term “open texture” 21 to nationalism.

As nationalism cannot be defined in absolute terms, its scope and interpretations may change with time, place, and point of view. It can be well illustrated through Tagore's idea of nationalism. Tagore has clearly criticized nationalism in his lectures on nationalism. Tanika Sarkar says that “nationalism was invariably a project of power and self-aggrandizement, of exclusion and incipient imperialism” for Tagore (38). Today, many critics feel that Tagore was not against nationalism as such, but he was against its violent aspect. Amartya Sen calls Tagore's attitude to nationalism “dual.” He says, “Tagore remained deeply committed to his Indianness, while rejecting both patriotism and the advocacy of cultural isolation” (Foreword xx). Quayum claims that Tagore, in fact, does not reject nationalism, but “calls for a humanitarian intervention into present self-seeking and belligerent nationalism.” Kedar Nath Mukherjee writes, “His (Tagore's) nationalism was international in outlook for he was the lover of humanity” (17). Indra Nath Choudhuri, the first Chair of Tagore Studies at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland, maintains, “Tagore didn't reject nationalism but formed his own understanding of it by studying what was authentic in his country's history.” Hence, every interpretation of nationalism is influenced by the subjective viewpoint of its interpreter.

With the formation of many nation-states across the world in the twentieth century, it was considered that the age of nationalism was over as nationalism had completed its task. However, nation-states are subject to constant internal as well as external threats in the form of “centrifugal pressures, generated by an upsurge in ethnic and regional politics” (Preetam 39). Thus, nationalism is always required to instill strength in the nation-state. Moreover, the idea of banal nationalism has linked nationalism to routine activities.

At the end of this article, it may be said that the very concept of nation and nationalism is based on a vortex of ideas or approaches given by various scholars and critics in the development of the history of mankind; any sacrosanct theory about it is impossible. In other words, “There are as many as definitions of nation, nationality, nationalism because there are fundamentally different attitudes towards their real bases. Their explanation remains a matter of dispute, with no end foreseeable in the near future” (Balázová).

This paper is based on my PhD work titled “Construction of Nation and Nationalism in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Anandamath , Rabindranath Tagore's Gora , and Raja Rao's Kanthapura .” I am thankful to Dr. Parminder Singh, my supervisor, for his consistent support.

The fact that nation and nationalism is a widely discussed topic across the world is also supported by Google Books, which shows a plethora of results for the term “nation and nationalism.” An article of this length cannot incorporate all aspects of the topic under study.

According to the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of the State (1933), a state must conform to the following criteria in order to exist: a permanent population, a defined territory, and a government capable of maintaining effective control over its territory and of conducting international relations with other states. This definition is given from an international perspective. The term “state” is usually used interchangeably with country. “Country denominates a geographical territory, whereas state expresses a legitimized administrative and decision-making institution” (Chandra, Shailesh 30).

The word “group” is usually loosely applied in the context of nation. Nation does not represent a group, but a category. In a category, members are brought together by classification and they don't interact, whereas the members of a group do interact. See Brubaker 168–69. (Guichard 11).

The size of such a group is larger than a single tribe or community.

Before the partition of India, Syed Ahmed Khan in his famous speech “One Country, Two Nations” asserted that India had two nations—the Mohammedans and the Hindus. Because of their opposing cultures, they couldn't be united, and formed two nations in one country. “It is worth notice how, when an agitation was started against cow-killing, the sacrifice of cows increased enormously, and religious animosity grew on both sides” (21).

A “state” is a self-governing political entity. It is usually a division of a federal state (such as the states of the United States of America).

It is usually said that the roots of the nation-state lie in the Treaty of Westphalia, which was actually a pair of treaties negotiated in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück and concluded on October 24, 1648. The Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Westphalian sovereignty is the concept of nation-state sovereignty based on two things: territoriality and the absence of a role for external agents in domestic structures.

Nations are mainly based on the cultural aspects. However, “political nations” are considered to be basically political in nature. “A ‘political nation’ is one in which citizenship has greater political significance than ethnic identity; not uncommonly, political nations contain a number of ethnic groups, and so are marked by cultural homogeneity” (Preetam 19). For example, the Britain includes four cultural nations, i.e., the English, the Welsh, the Scots, and the people of Northern Ireland. However, the British national identity is based on political factors such as “a common allegiance to the crown, respect for the Westminster parliament, and a belief in the historic rights and the liberties of the British people” (19). Such nations were formed “upon a voluntary acceptance of a common set of principles or goals, as opposed to an existing cultural identity” (20). These nations “may at times fail to experience the organic unity and sense of historical rootedness that is found in cultural nations,” and nationalism which develops in the case of these nations is “typically tolerant and democratic” (20). To my understanding, in a political nation, political values are treated as modern cultural values. Hence, cultural homogeneity is at the core of political nations also.

In the field of political philosophy, collectivism, according to Moyra Grant, is referred to as any philosophy or system that considers any kind of group (such as a class, nation, race, society, state, etc.) as more important than the individual (Chandra, Shailesh 44).

“Love that one has for one's nation is designated by the term patriotism…. It (patriotism) need not reject differing conceptions of the nation held by members of the nation, as nationalism often does…. When one divides the world into two irreconcilable and warring camps—one's own nation in opposition to all other nations—where the latter are viewed as one's implacable enemies, then, in contrast to patriotism, there is the ideology of nationalism. Nationalism repudiates civility and the differences that it tolerates by attempting to eliminate all differing views and interests for the sake of one vision of what the nation has been and should be. For example, a French nationalism might consist of the belief that to be a good member of the French nation, one must hate everything English and German; and anyone who does not, isn't ‘truly’ French” (Grosby 16–17).

According to Ashis Nandy, patriotism does not define any specific territoriality (sort of a naturalism) whereas nationalism is “more specific, ideologically tinged, ardent form of ‘love of one's kind’ that is essentially ego-defensive and overlies some degree of fearful dislike or positive hostility to ‘outsiders.’ It is ego-defensive because it is often a reaction to the inner, unacknowledged fears of atomization or psychological homelessness induced by the weakening or dissolution of primordial ties and growing individuation, alienating work and the death of vocations, in turn brought about by technocratic capitalism, urbanization and industrialization” (3502).

“An ethnic group undoubtedly possesses a communal identity and a sense of cultural pride, but unlike a nation, it lacks collective political aspirations. These aspirations have traditionally taken the form of the quest for, or the desire to maintain, political independence or statehood” (Preetam 16). Hence, an ethnic nation is based on ethnic elements and has political aspirations.

“According to Seymour, the socio-political nation represents a political community with recognized territorial boundaries within which there is a majority national community that considers itself to represent a nation, and that shares a common language, culture or history. For Seymour, the socio-political conception of the nation supersedes the purely civic or territorial conception in its scope for recognizing within its boundaries the presence of minority nations and/or individuals who may feel a sense of belonging and attachment to other national communities. He considers that a socio-political conception of the nation best captures the reality of Quebec” (Preetam 21).

Banal nationalism, a sort of endemic nationalism, is about the reproduction of nationalism in the day-to-day life of nation-states; it dismisses that nationalism is a temporary mood in the West. According to Billing, nationalism does not vanish when a nation becomes a nation-state; it gets absorbed into the environment of the established homeland. In a number of ways, the citizens of a nation-state are continuously reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so common and familiar, it is not consciously registered as reminding. The use of flags in everyday contexts (flag on the top of a building in some market), symbols on money, the division of news into home and foreign news, and so forth, are some of the examples of banal nationalism.

Smith was a student of Ernest Gellner (Harris 52).

Enlightenment is “a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century trend in philosophy and literature, rooted in faith in the power of human reason” (Shipley 100). It was developed in Western Europe. To be specific, “[p]olitical scientists are however not of the one view about the origin of nationalism. The dates that some historians single out as signaling the advent of nationalism include 1775 (the first partition of Poland), 1776 (the American Declaration of Independence), 1789 and 1792 (the commencement and the second phase of the French revolution), and 1807 (Fichte's address to the German nation)” (Preetam 13–14).

David Blunkett, the MP for Sheffield Brightside and former Home Secretary and Education Secretary, shares his views on nationalism in the series named “Big Ideas that Changed the World” telecast by Channel Five of the UK. According to him, Rousseau argued that the subjects were not the properties of their rulers and the people belonged to themselves. This revolutionary idea influenced the French Revolution, and the revolutionaries abolished the power of the king and gave it to the people between 1789 and 1799.

Napoleon once said that The French Revolution could not take place without Rousseau. However, the historians like C. D. Hazen and Thompson believe that it was “revolutional situation,” which originated on account of the vices of political, social, economic, and religious aspects of national life, which led to the revolution. “The French revolution has been frequently ascribed to the influence of the philosophers or writers of the eighteenth century. This is putting the cart before horse” (Hazen 88–89).

“The German romantic idea claimed that the identity of a distinctive cultural community can be explored, discovered and investigated, and that humanity was divided into nations with specific characteristics of which the language was the most important marker. It is the combination of Rousseau's political nation with the romantic's cultural one that contemporary nationalisms promote” (Harris 24).

“The use of the term ‘theories’ … is somewhat misleading because all schools of thought about how nations came to be, when and what the role of nationalism in their formation was are actually approaches rather than theories” (Harris 47).

See Kundra 73–79.

Chandra says that the Indian National Movement didn't counterpose the national identity to regional identities; it recognized both and didn't see the two in conflict.

“Waismann's idea of open texture, more generally used in the philosophy of language, indicates that notwithstanding definition as applicable category, there still remain possibilities of a definition being inadequate, although remaining different from vagueness insofar as the definition may be fairly accurate in actual situations” (Mukherji 374).

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Nationalism and Sport. A literature review

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Book Review: ‘Ascent to Power’ studies how Harry Truman overcame lack of preparation in transition

Harry Truman’s ascension to the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt’s death was a rocky one, and it came at a pivotal time in the nation’s history.

Once a senator who complained that the 32nd president treated him like “an office boy,” Truman left the White House in 1953 as one of the most accomplished presidents. Those events are the focus of David L. Roll’s “Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged From Roosevelt’s Shadow and Remade the World.”

Roll’s book is an essential read for those who want to understand a presidency that, as he puts it, “spawned the most consequential and productive events since the Civil War.”

The book begins during the final months of Roosevelt’s time in office, chronicling his failing health and decision to choose Truman as his running mate in the 1944 election. Through meticulous research, Roll illustrates how Truman overcame a lack of preparation to lead the country through the end of World War II and shepherd in a host of domestic and foreign policy reforms.

The liveliest moments of the book come, fittingly, from the time Truman emerges from under Roosevelt’s shadow during his bid for his first full term in the 1948 election.

Roll portrays Truman as a master at populist campaigning who was able to close the gap with Thomas Dewey by focusing on workers, veterans, farmers and Black voters. But he also credits figures like adviser Clark Clifford, as Truman ran against the Republican Party’s record in Congress rather than his opponent.

Roll’s meticulous research and ability to balance multiple voices throughout provides readers with an illuminating portrait of Truman’s rise to the presidency and his time in office.

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Book Review: Twin brothers, one religious, one not, go on a wild and wacky road trip through South

This cover image released by Central Avenue shows “Goyhood” by Reuven Fenton. (Central Avenue via AP)

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In the beginning was… a lie. One day a rabbi knocked on the door of a woman with a Jewish-sounding last name in a small town in Georgia to recruit new members for his synagogue. When he asks if she knows of any Jews in the area, Ida Mae Belkin admits to being one herself. This comes as a shock to her 12-year-old twins Marty and David, who grew up believing in not much more than the national pastime of TV and fast food.

Fast forward some 20 years and Marty, who has become a religious scholar at a Brooklyn yeshiva and goes by the more Jewish-sounding name of Mayer, finds out via Ida Mae’s suicide note that she lied and he and David are not in fact Jewish. That means his marriage to devoutly Orthodox Sarah is effectively null and void since she never would have consented to marry someone outside the faith.

What to do? Clearly, the only solution is to convert to Judaism “on the down-low,” as Mayer’s pot-smoking rascal of a brother puts it, and in the meantime, take a road trip through the Deep South to, well, relax. So begins Reuven Fenton’s quirky debut novel, “Goyhood,” which takes the classic literary theme of the journey — think Homer’s “Odyssey” or Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” — and gives it a decidedly unorthodox twist.

Over the course of their journey, the brothers will adopt a one-eyed dog, almost get blown up in a fireworks store and eventually scatter Ida Mae’s ashes in the Great Smoky Mountains. David’s good friend Charlayne, an Instagram influencer with issues of her own, wonders if their trip isn’t a kind of rumspringa, the Amish rite of passage when young people are encouraged to break the rules before joining the church.

At the beginning of their travels Mayer defines his newly discovered “goyhood” – that is, the condition of not being Jewish – as “the state of rebounding from one travesty to the next.” By the end, he has gained a glimmer of understanding about why the wife he adored was always so standoffish about sex.

Fenton, a longtime reporter for the New York Post whose previous book “Stolen Years” was a nonfiction study of 10 men and women wrongfully imprisoned, has written a big-hearted novel about the enduring importance of faith and family. While some of the plot twists are a little meshuga — the Yiddish word for crazy — overall, the book is a lot of fun.

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