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Harris Mylonas 2021

A new approach to the study of nation-building: onset, process, outcome Nation-building refers to the policies that core group governing elites pursue toward non-core groups in their effort to manage social order within state boundaries in ways that promotes a particular national narrative over any other. Such policies may vary widely ranging from assimilationist to exclusionary ones ( Mylonas 2012 ; Bulutgil 2016 ). Moreover, the content of the national narrative or constitutive story ( Smith 2003 ) varies dramatically from case to case. The systematic study of the process of nation-building intensified following the Second World War primarily in relation to decolonization movements and the associated establishment of postcolonial independent states around the globe ( Emerson 1960 ). However, the field was initially dominated by assumptions and logics developed based on European experiences with nation-building.

We would not be that interested in nation-building were it not for its far-reaching impact on state formation and social order, self-determination movements, war onset, and public goods provision. The desired outcome of nation-building is to achieve social order and national integration ( Wimmer 2018 ). Nation-building, when successful, results in societies where individuals are primarily loyal to the nation. This process of national integration facilitates military recruitment, tax collection, law enforcement, public goods provision and cooperation ( Bendix 1977 ). There are also negative aspects of this process as well including violent policies, at times chauvinistic nationalism, even cultural genocide. When nation-building is either not pursued or is unsuccessful it leads to either state collapse (through civil war and/or secessionists movements) or to weak states ( Darden & Mylonas 2016 ). In fact, many civil wars or national schisms can be understood as national integration crises ( Mavrogordatos 1983 ).

Nation-building has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. For the purposes of this review essay, I focus on an overlooked distinction in the study of nation-building: works that focus on the onset , those studying the process , and finally the ones that try to account for the outcome : success or failure. While there is overlap between these fields, each approach is focusing on a different question. Studies of onset are preoccupied with when , where , and why does nation-building take place to begin with. Works that focus on process are exploring the alternative paths to nation-building that could or have been taken. Finally, studies concentrating on the outcome analyze the societal consequences of the various paths to nation-building. Distinguishing between onset , process and outcome allows us to avoid several methodological pitfalls when testing arguments. For instance, oftentimes a theory focusing on onset is mistakenly tested on outcomes. We should not expect arguments aiming at explaining variation in nation-building policies, i.e., focusing on process , to also explain success or failure, i.e., outcomes . Similarly, once we internalize the importance of this distinction, we can be more careful in articulating our scope conditions. For example, if a place did not ever experience nation-building efforts then it probably should not make it into the universe of cases of studies that are trying to account for outcomes of nation-building policies. This theoretical move will help scholars unearth the linkages between aspects of nation-building and important effects such as military recruitment, civil war onset, or public goods provision.

Onset For scholars like Anthony Smith, nation-building can be traced to the ethnic origins of a particular core group ( 1986a , 259). Nation-states without pre-existing ethnic content face a problematic situation because without it, ‘there is no place from which to start the process of nation-building,’ as Smith put it ( 1986 , 17). In the early 1990s, Barry Posen proposed an alternative argument for the onset of nation-building in his “Nationalism, the Mass Army and Military Power” ( 1993 ). Posen identifies imitation of advantageous military practices as the mechanism that accounts for the spread of nationalism and the adoption of nation-building policies. Given the anarchic condition of the international system, states either adopted this new model to match external threats or perished. This critical juncture accounts for the spread of nationalism through nation-building policies, initially in the army. Eric Hobsbawm ( 1990 ) locates the source of states’ interest in spreading nationalism mainly in the need of new or increasingly centralized states to find new sources of internal legitimacy. Similarly, Michael Hechter ( 2000 ) locates the origins of nation-building in the transition from indirect to direct rule identifying different types of nationalism: State-Building Nationalism, Peripheral Nationalism, Irredentist Nationalism, Unification Nationalism, and Patriotism. In a more recent article, Darden and Mylonas ( 2016 ) suggest that state elites pursue nation-building policies only in parts of the world that face heightened territorial competition, particularly in the form of externally backed fifth columns.

Process Before we dive in the theoretical debates in this category, I should note that the theoretical underpinnings of the theories discussed here have been influenced by some seminal case studies ( Bendix 1977 ; Lipset 1967 ; Weber 1976 ; Harp 1998 ; Magocsi 1978 ; Mavrogordatos 1983 ; Banac 1988 ; Jelavich 1990 ; Livezeanu 1995 ). Three main causal pathways lead to national integration according to scholars who focus on the process of nation-building. The central debate is between those that understand nation-building as an outgrowth of structural processes taking place in modern times—industrialization, urbanization, social mobilization, and so forth—and those that highlight the agency of governing elites that pursue intentional policies aiming at the national integration of a state along the lines of a specific constitutive story. The third causal path emphasizes how bottom-up processes can reshape, reconceptualize, and repurpose nation-building trajectories.

Structural accounts understand nation-building as a by-product of broad socioeconomic or geopolitical changes. Karl Deutsch’s ( 1953 ; 1961 ) classic argument that modernization opens up people for new forms of socialization constitutes the core of this approach. For Deutsch the process of social mobilization led to acculturation in a new urban environment, facilitated social communication, and ultimately caused assimilation and political integration into a new community. Works by Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner could be categorized as being part of this modernization paradigm. Posner’s empirical work ( 2003 ) tracing linguistic homogenization in Zambia serves as an illustration of such structural arguments. But there are several other types of arguments that highlight the importance of other structural aspects of modernity. Adria Lawrence ( 2013 ) suggests that disillusionment with the French empire—in places where the French administration failed to extend equal rights to its colonial subjects—led to the abandonment of mobilization solely for equal rights. Disruptions/triggering factors (in the form invasion, occupation, or France’s decision to decolonize) then offered opportunities for mobilization that account for the variation in the patterns of nationalist mobilization across the empire and within particular colonies. Dominika Koter ( 2020 ) suggests that in the Sub-Saharan African context citizens developed national identities through impersonal comparisons with neighbors during the post-colonial period despite the information-poor setting.

Other scholars see nation-building as a top-down process . Clearly, these accounts that emphasize the top-down aspects of nation-building are developed and tested in cases where nationalism has already been introduced and dominated the political imagination of at least the ruling elites. Moreover, some of the processes discussed by modernization theorists are prerequisites for most of the top-down nation-building arguments to unfold. One of the first scholars to criticize modernist accounts for leaving elites’ agency out of their accounts was Anthony Smith ( 1986 ). According to Rogers Smith ( 2003 ), we should try to explain the social mechanisms of nation-building and identify political goals that motivate elites initiating and directing these mechanisms. Soviet policies of ethnofederalism and affirmative action were particularly consequential instances of state-planned nation-building policies in the 20th century ( Connor 1984 ; Suny 1993 ).

Andreas Wimmer builds on the work of Fredrick Barth, and describes the means of ethnic boundary making such as discourse and symbols, discrimination, political mobilization, coercion and violence ( 2013 , 74–75). McGarry and O’Leary ( 1994 ) have offered an accessible overview of different strategies available to state elites in this pursuit, yet scholars have also sought to explain why policy choices vary across states ( Brubaker 1996 ), across non-core groups within the same state ( Mylonas 2012 ), across different parts of the same country ( McNamee & Zhang 2019 ), and across historical periods ( Marx 2005 ). Some authors have argued that state strategies are strongly shaped by historical legacies ( Brubaker 1992 ; Aktürk 2012 ). Nation-building strategies have also taken violent forms ( Bulutgil 2016 ). In fact, a few authors have noted that in ethnically diverse states, the introduction of democratic mass politics can actually lead to violent national homogenization ( Mann 2005 ; Snyder 2000 ).

Han and Mylonas ( 2014 ) try to account for variation in state-ethnic group relations in multiethnic states, focusing on China. They argue that interstate relations and ethnic group perceptions about the relative strength of competing states are important—yet neglected—factors in accounting for the variation in state-ethnic group relations. In particular, whether an ethnic group is perceived as having an external patron matters a great deal for the host state’s treatment of the group. If the external patron of the ethnic group is an enemy of the host state, then repression is likely. If it is an ally, then accommodation ensues. Given the existence of an external patron, an ethnic group’s response to a host state’s policies depends on the perceptions about the relative strength of the external patron vis-à-vis the host state and whether the support is originating from an enemy or an ally of the host state. They test their theoretical framework on the eighteen largest ethnic groups in China from 1949 to 1965, tracing the Chinese government’s nation-building policies toward these groups and examining how each group responded to these various policies. All in all, these top-down accounts are better calibrated to account for the form that nation-building practices take compared to the modernization scholars that see nation-building as a by-product of other processes.

Another approach to nation-building refocuses our attention on situations in which nationhood emerges as an active force in political life through various forms of bottom-up actions by ordinary people . These bottom-up processes of identification are treated as independent causes, but they are also structured, and are themselves restructuring a particular historical and institutional context ( Suny 1993 ) that gives meaning to social action. Lisa Wedeen ( 2008 ) is interested in how seemingly quotidian social practices create and reproduce a sense of national belonging even in the absence of a strong state, applying her argument to Yemen. Michael Billig’s ( 1995 ) work on banal nationalism—referring to the everyday representations of the nation aiming at reproducing a shared sense of national belonging—is also pertinent here, since pride in victory in sports or prominence in cultural affairs could be the source of a bottom-up nation-building process. In the African context Crawford Young suggested that the arbitrary territorial borders have been internalized over time, thus becoming a primary component of national identity ( 2012 , 309). Authors of this strand implore us to think about the nation not as a thing with fixed relevance and meanings but as one of the possible outcomes of partially contingent social processes of identification ( Brubaker 2004 ). Dominika Koter ( 2019 ) argues that electoral outcomes have consequences for national identification. She finds that the election of one’s co-ethnic increases the sense of belonging to the nation.

Isaacs and Polese have put together a special issue published in Nationalities Papers on nation-building in Central Asia focusing both on the efforts of ‘the political elites to create, develop, and spread/popularize the idea of the nation and the national community’ and ‘the agency of nonstate actors such as the people, civil society, companies, and even civil servants when not acting on behalf of state institutions.’ ( 2015 , 372). Thus, they suggest a more dynamic understanding of the nation-building process, with elites proposing and implementing policies which are, in turn, accepted, renegotiated, or rejected by those targeted by them.

Finally, Darden and Mylonas ( 2012 ), offer a conceptually and theoretically reflective discussion of the challenges and limitations of externally promoted nation-building. They argue that effective third-party state-building requires nation-building through education with national content. Nation-building, however, is an uncertain and long process with a long list of prerequisites, making third-party state-building a risky proposition.

A conceptual clarification is in order here. Journalists, policy commentators, as well as several scholars have recently used the term ‘nation-building’ in place of what the U.S. Department of Defense calls ‘stability operations.’ In other words, they often use the term ‘nation-building’ to signify ‘third party state-building,’ efforts to build roads and railways, enforce the rule of law, and improve the infrastructure of a state. This literature grew following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and the US attempts at state-building in Afghanistan and Iraq ( Dobbins et al. 2007 ; Dodge 2006 ; Rubin 2006 ). But, state-building and nation-building although related they are analytically distinct concepts. Nation-building refers to the development of a cultural identity through constitutive stories, symbols, shared histories, and meanings. To be sure, state-building can and often does influence the national integration process over the long term, just as the existing patterns of national loyalties may facilitate or hinder state-building projects.

Outcome Important works also exist that try to account for the success or failure of nation-building projects. For instance, Keith Darden’s stand-alone work ( forthcoming ), points to mass schooling as a mechanism that explains both the initial fluidity and the consequent fixity of national identities. Darden’s argument is that in countries where mass schooling with national content is introduced to a largely illiterate population for the first time and it is implemented on more than 50% of the population, then the national identity propagated in this round of schooling will become dominant. He proposes a few mechanisms for this effect, including western style formal schooling, status reversal within the family, and consequent gatekeeping to keep their children aligned with their initial national identity. Darden and Grzymala-Busse ( 2006 ) have shown that mass schooling with national content is a particularly effective strategy of inculcating the population with national loyalties that can endure long periods of foreign-sponsored authoritarian rule. Balcells ( 2013 ) finds supports for Darden’s argument in the Catalan case. Despite similar initial conditions, Catalan national identity is not salient in French Catalonia today because the first round of mass schooling with national content took place under French rule. In contrast, mass schooling in Spain was introduced in Spanish Catalonia during a period of Catalan nationalist upheaval.

Sambanis et al. ( 2015 ) argue that favorable outcomes in interstate wars significantly increase a state’s international status and induce individuals to identify nationally, thereby reducing internal conflict. Thus, leaders have incentives to invest in state capacity in order to solve their internal nation-building problems. The key assumption here is that strength depends to a great extent on nationalist sentiment. An important implication of their model is that the ‘higher anticipated payoffs to national unification makes leaders fight international wars that they would otherwise choose not to fight.’ The authors illustrate their argument and test its plausibility through a thorough case study of German unification after the Franco Prussian war.

Vasiliki Fouka ( 2019 ) has recently argued that discrimination against German immigrants in the US led these immigrants to pursue assimilation efforts, i.e. change their names and seek naturalization. However, in another article ( Fouka 2020 ) she finds that forced assimilation policies, such as language restrictions in elementary schools, had counterproductive effects. In particular, those individuals that were not allowed to study German in several U.S. states following WWI, were less likely to volunteer in World War II, more likely to practice endogamy, and to give German names to their children. These articles are part of a broader project ( forthcoming ) where Fouka tries to identify the types of initiatives that contribute to or hinder immigrant incorporation. She tests her intuitions studying the integration programs during the Americanization movement. Overall, she finds that nation-building policies that increase the benefits of integration are successful in promoting citizenship acquisition, linguistic homogeneity, and mixed marriages with the native-born. Conversely, prescription-based policies—where a reward is tied to a specific level of effort—are either ineffective or counterproductive. However, this is an approach that may not travel in contexts where assimilation cannot be assumed as the government’s intended outcome for all non-core groups in a country ( Mylonas 2012 ; Wimmer 2013 ).

Andreas Wimmer’s latest book asks: Why does nation-building succeed in some cases but not in others? For Wimmer successful nation-building manifests itself in having forged ‘political ties between citizens and the state that reach across ethnic divides and integrate ethnic majorities and minorities into an inclusive power arrangement.’ ( 2018 , 1). He operationalizes successful nation-building through the degree of ethnopolitical inclusion in a country’s power structures and citizens’ identification with their nation-state. The crux of the argument is that state centralization in the 19th century—in turn a product of warfighting, in Europe, topography facilitating state control ‘where peasants could not escape’ (16), elsewhere, combined with population density high enough to sustain a nonproductive political elite at the end of the Middle Ages—facilitated the conditions for the linguistic homogenization of populations and the construction of central governments able to provide public goods. These two factors, along with the presence of civic society that spans ancestral/ethnic divisions, lead both to successful nation-building. The most exogenous part of Wimmer’s argument is that variation in topography and population density explain the success of initial state building efforts. But could there be an alternative argument that accounts for variation in initial state- or nation-building efforts? Darden and Mylonas ( 2016 ) argue that a threatening international environment leads to state capacity and public goods provision in the form of nation-building policies (in particular public mass schooling) that in turn, when successful, account for variation in linguistic homogeneity and national cohesion. Comparing cases with similar levels of initial linguistic heterogeneity, state capacity, and development, but in different international environments, they find that states that did not face external threats to their territorial integrity were more likely to outsource education and other tools for constructing identity to missionaries or other groups, or to not invest in assimilation at all, leading to higher ethnic heterogeneity. Conversely, states developing in higher threat environments were more likely to invest in nation-building strategies to homogenize their populations.

Amanda Robinson ( 2014 ) focuses on Africa and attempts to evaluate the impact of modernization and colonial legacies on group identification utilizing survey data from sixteen African countries. She is focusing in particular on national vs. ethnic group identification. Robinson’s findings are consistent with the classic modernization theory. Living in urban areas, having more education, and being formally employed in the modern sector are all positively correlated with identifying with the nation above one’s ethnic group. Further, greater economic development at the state level is also associated with greater national identification, once Tanzania is excluded as an outlier.

Depetris-Chauvin, Durante, and Campante ( 2020 ) focus on sub-Saharan Africa and find that national football teams’ victories in sub-Saharan Africa make national identification more likely, they boost trust for other ethnicities in the country, and also reduce violence. Blouin and Mukand ( 2019 ) examine the impact of propaganda broadcast over radio on interethnic attitudes in postgenocide Rwanda. They exploit the variation in government’s radio propaganda reception due to Rwanda’s mountainous terrain. They find that individuals exposed to government propaganda decreases the salience of ethnicity, increases interethnic trust, and willingness to interact face-to-face with non-co-ethnics.

Dominika Koter ( 2020 ) puzzles over the existence of national identification in the absence of traditional nation-building projects and asks: what is driving national attachment in Africa? For Koter ‘the process that results in individuals identifying with their nation is nation-building.’ Which places her squarely in the ‘outcome’ group of scholars. However, Koter points out that Robinson’s ( 2014 ) finding that wealthier countries report higher levels of national identification worked on the third round of the Afrobarometer survey data but the correlation vanishes in subsequent four rounds of the surveys (rounds 4 through 7). In fact, the relationship appears to be skewing in the opposite direction as more countries were surveyed. Koter zooms in on Ghana and proposes an alternative pathway to understanding national identification, suggesting that national integration is an accidental byproduct of shared experiences and distinct country-level trajectories which allow contrast with other national communities. In particular, Ghanaian national identity is most consistent with the role of socio-political developments in the country, rather than cultural factors or state-led nation-building.

Conclusion The field of nation-building has developed tremendously in the past two decades, but more empirical interdisciplinary work, involving economists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and political scientists, remains to be done. In particular, work that involves cross-regional comparisons and perspectives will push our theories in a direction that can account for global patterns rather than rehashing the European experience and assumptions. Moreover, a more conscious effort thinking of onset, process, and outcomes as distinct stages when theorizing nation-building will move the field forward by improving our causal identification strategies.

[Sections of this essay build on Mylonas 2017 ]

Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers . His work contributes to our understanding of states’ management of diversity that may originate from national minorities, immigrants, diasporas, or refugees. His first book The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013) won the 2014 European Studies Book Award by the Council for European Studies and the Peter Katzenstein Book Prize in 2013. Mylonas’ work on the processes of nation- and state-building, diaspora policies, and political development has also been published in the American Review of Political Science , Perspectives on Politics , Comparative Political Studies , Security Studies , European Journal of Political Research , Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , Territory, Politics, Governance , Nations and Nationalism , Social Science Quarterly , Nationalities Papers , Ethnopolitics , as well as various edited volumes.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Nation-Building

Introduction, reference works: concepts and definitions.

Structural Explanations
State-Planned Policies
Third-Party Nation-Building
Contingency, Events, and Demonstration Effects
Seminal Case Studies
State Formation and Social Order
Self-Determination Movements
Public Goods Provision

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Nation-Building by Harris Mylonas LAST REVIEWED: 22 July 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 24 September 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0217

Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent. The desired outcome is to achieve national integration ( Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions ). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to national integration. Thus, nation-building has been theorized as a structural process intertwined with industrialization, urbanization, social mobilization, etc. ( Structural Explanations ); as the result of deliberate state policies that aim at the homogenization of a state along the lines of a specific constitutive story—that can and often does change over time and under certain conditions ( State-Planned Policies ); as the product of top-bottom processes that could originate from forces outside of the boundaries of the relevant state; and as the product of bottom-up processes that do not require any state intervention to come about ( Contingency, Events, and Demonstration Effects ). Since the emergence of nationalism as the dominant ideology to legitimate authority and the template of the nation-state as an organizational principle of the international system, state elites have pursued different policies toward the various unassimilated groups within their territorial boundaries ( Seminal Case Studies ) with variable consequences ( Nation-Building and Its Consequences ). Thus, scholars have suggested that the nation-building experience of each state—or lack thereof—has had an impact on patterns of State Formation and Social Order , Self-Determination Movements , War Onset , and Public Goods Provision .

The concept of nation-building cannot be understood without the help of certain key concepts such as the nation, national identity, nation-state, and nationalism. The term “nation” has been defined by multiple philosophers, scholars, and practitioners. These definitions range from essentialist ones that reify certain characteristics as purely national ones ( Herder 2004 , Fichte 2008 ) to more constructivist ones highlighting collective ascription as a key element for the existence of a nation ( Renan 1995 , Anderson 1983 ). Tension exists between scholars who see the emergence of modern nations as a natural outgrowth from centuries of development and those who understand national identity as a modern social construct. Naturally, most nationalists themselves adopt a primordialist understanding of nationhood but prominent scholars also highlight the ethnic origins of modern nations ( Smith 1986 ). Modernization scholars ( Gellner 2006 , Anderson 1983 ) and, later on, various strands of constructivists ( Laitin 2007 , Brubaker 1996 ) have pointed out the limitations of the primordialist view. The view of nations being the natural outgrowth of premodern ethnies often assumes phenotypical commonalities that do not correspond to realities on the ground. Moreover, constructivists echo Renan’s critique that shared ethnic attributes do not necessarily mean a shared national identity or imply anything about loyalty to a nation. Finally, a primordialist perspective that essentializes attributes cannot help us explain identity change ( Laitin 2007 ) or the timing of “national awakenings.” Regardless of the definition of the nation and debates about the origins of nationalism, most scholars agree that nationalism—the “political principle which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” ( Gellner 2006 , see p. 1)—is one of the most potent ideologies in modern times. In fact, what differentiates an ethnic group from a stateless national group is the fact that the former is not motivated by a nationalist ideology, namely the belief that the world is divided into national units (“nation-states”), that the primary loyalty should be to the nation and not to the family, the kinship group, or some other local or supranational unit, accompanied by a claim to sovereignty over a territorially bounded homeland. Nationalism takes different forms depending on the position that the group making the claim to sovereignty currently occupies in relation to other groups ( Hechter 2000 ).

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . London: Verso, 1983.

Anderson introduces an influential definition of nationalism that focuses on the constructed nature of nations, calling them “imagined communities.” He defines the nation as an imagined impersonal community, defined by its common history and perceived distinctiveness, that is believed to exercise the collective right to sovereign control over a given territory.

Brubaker, Rogers. Nationalism Refrained: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511558764

Brubaker’s theme is the nationalization of the political sphere. He highlights the dynamic interaction in the triadic nexus involving national minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands. The three entities are far from fixed according to Brubaker, who invites us to stop treating the “nation” as an entity and approach it as “an institutionalized form.”

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Addresses to the German Nation . Edited and translated by Gregory Moore. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Fichte (1808) defined the nation by objective criteria such as shared attributes. For Fichte, language is a natural phenomenon. Indeed, the possession of a shared language defines the natural boundaries of a Volk or a Nation. Fichte’s writings developed in reaction to the occupation of German territories by Napoleon’s forces.

Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism . 2d ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

This pathbreaking book was originally published in 1983. Gellner famously defined nationalism as “primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (p. 1). He emphasized the role of industrialization in the emergence and spread of nationalism through the introduction of mass schooling and assimilation into a high culture.

Hechter, Michael. Containing Nationalism . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hechter defines nations as “territorially concentrated ethnic groups” (p. 14). He focuses on the transition from indirect to direct rule and identifies different types of nationalism: State-Building Nationalism, Peripheral Nationalism, Irredentist Nationalism, Unification Nationalism, and Patriotism. Hechter, echoing Gellner, defines nationalism as “a collective action designed to render the boundaries of the nation congruent with those of its governance unit” (p. 15).

Herder, Johann Gottfried. Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings . Edited and translated by Ioannis Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004.

This is a reliable English translation of Herder’s writings from the second half of the 18th century. Herder argued that “Nature raises families; the most natural state is therefore also one people, with one national character. Through the millennia, this national character is maintained within a people and can be developed most naturally if its native prince so desires, for a people is as much a plant of nature as a family, only with more branches” (p. 128). He is considered as one of the fathers of romantic nationalism.

Laitin, David. Nations, States, and Violence . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Laitin defines the nation as a population with a coordinated set of beliefs about their cultural identities whose representatives claim ownership of a state for them by dint of that coordination either through separation, amalgamation, or return. Benefits of coordination explain the stickiness of these national identities.

Renan, Ernest. “What Is a Nation?” In The Nationalism Reader . Edited by Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay, 143–155. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995.

This is an English translation of a lecture that Renan gave in 1882 at Sorbonne University. It presents one of the first coherent and thorough critiques of the romantic nationalist view. Renan reviews the most common markers used to define nations in Europe, such as race, dynasty, language, religion, and geography, and discusses their limitations. For Renan, “the existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite” (p. 154).

Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations . Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

Smith has famously engaged Gellner’s claim that “any old shred and patch would do” for the purposes of constructing a nation. Smith, instead, highlights the importance of ethnic roots in the formation of nations. He takes issue with the emphasis on the exclusively modern quality of nations and argues that most nations have premodern origins in the form of long-standing cultural symbols that are building blocks for modern nation-building.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Nation Building — Nation-building Process

Nation-building Process

Categories: Nation Building National Identity Patriotism

About this sample

Words: 2315 |

12 min read

Published: Mar 28, 2019

Words: 2315 | Pages: 5 | 12 min read

The concept of nation-building, implementation strategy, new approach, imact of national development policy, works cited.

Maintain the basic strategy of NEP is the eradication of poverty and restructuring social and economic imbalances between the races and this contribute to strengthening national unity
To ensure balance development of main economic sectors (mining, service, agricul true, and farming)
Building a society that has social value and appreciate the positive feelings of pride and patriotism
Reduce and eliminate social inequality and to promote the sharing of the national economic in a more fair and equitable benefits
Reduce the inequalities in economic development between urban and rural areas
Concentrate on the development of a community of Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial
Ensure appropriate attention is given to environment of protection and ecology so that in the long term to ensure sustainable development of the country continued
Making science and technology as an integral part of the planning and socio-economic development

Competition in International Markets

Vision 2020, poverty reduction, restructuring society, achivevement of ndp.

women participation in the labour force increases to 53.6 per cent
rural road coverage increases to 51,262 km
rural electricity coverage increases to 98 per cent
rural water supply increases to 94 per cent
5,737 villages connected through the wireless village programme
RM175 billion invested in five regional economic corridors, creating 427,100 jobs
Malaysian life expectancy increases to 74.8 years
102,200 affordable houses completed
unemployment rate decreases to 2.9 per cent
1.8 million new job opportunities created
90.7 per cent pre-school enrolment
36.5 per cent academic staff with PhD qualification in public universities
15 per cent household waste recycling rate
forest cover increases to 61 per cent
23,264 hectares of forest gazetted as Permanent Reserve Forest
93,100 km of new roads built
46 per cent increase in passenger rate at KL International Airport (KLIA)
KLIA2 opened and third runway operationalised at KLIA
urban rail commuters increase 32 per cent
70 per cent households with broadband penetration
14 areas nationwide with access to Digital Terrestrial Television
95 per cent of population receives clean and treated water
services sector contributes RM2,550 billion to GDP
manufacturing sector contributes RM1,111 billion to GDP
agriculture sector contributes RM455 billion to GDP
construction sector contributes RM194 billion to GDP
small and medium enterprises contribute RM1,606 billion to GDP
Malaysia ranked 18th out 189 economies in the 2015 World Bank ‘Doing Business’ Report
Malaysia ranked 33rd on the Global Innovation Index out of 143 countries
Abdul Rahman, A. (2000). From Malayan Union to Singapore Separation. Singapore: Eastern University Press.
Faaland, J., Parkinson, J., & Saniman, R. (1991). Growth and Ethnic Inequality: Malaysia’s New Economic Policy. Oxford University Press.
Hippler, J. (2002). Nation-building: A Key Concept for Peaceful Conflict Transformation? Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation.
Mohamed Noordin, S. (2005). The Malays: Their Problems and Future. Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications.
Najib Tun Abdul Razak. (2008). 1Malaysia: People First, Performance Now. Pelanduk Publications.
Purcell, V. (1965). The Malayan Communist Party and the Indonesian Revolution. London: Oxford University Press.
Ratnam, K. J. (1965). Nation-Building in Malaysia 1946–1964. London: Oxford University Press.
Savunen, J. (2003). Nation-Building and Identity Conflicts: Facilitating the Mediation Process in Southern Philippines. Palgrave Macmillan.
Schwartz, L. (1991). The State of Malaysia: Ethnicity, Equity, and Reform. Routledge.
Tambiah, S. J. (1985). Culture, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Tamil Renaissance and the Hill Country Tamils in Sri Lanka. Cambridge University Press.

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The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism

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19 Latin America: State-Building and Nationalism

Nicola Miller, is Professor of Latin American History at University College London. Her publications include Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959–1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London: Verso, 1999); Reinventing Modernity: Latin American Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Published: 01 May 2013
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This chapter challenges the widely held view that nationalism in Latin America was mainly civic until the end of the nineteenth century and mainly ethnic thereafter, arguing that both civic and ethnic factors have interacted with each other throughout the period since independence. Debates about cultural distinctiveness between the former colonies began soon after independence; conversely, various forms of civic nationalism, particularly constitutionalism and economic nationalism, have persisted into the twenty-first century. The historical experiences of Latin America vividly illustrate that the two processes of state-building and nation-formation, still so often analysed separately, are best understood in relation to each other, and that the most successful nationalisms have been founded on a combination of civic and ethnic factors.

Introduction

The newly independent states of Latin America started out in the 1820s with none of the differentiating features usually specified as the basis for nationhood (namely, ethnicity, culture, language, or religion). In this sense they were, as Benedict Anderson famously argued, ‘pioneer nations’, 1 optimistically aiming to mould ex-colonial societies, which had been legally divided along racial lines, into modern republics based on concepts of individual liberty and popular sovereignty. With economic activity significantly interrupted by the wars of independence, these aspiring nation states manifestly lacked what Antonio Gramsci called an ‘efficient Jacobin force’ to articulate a popular collective will and break the barely diminished power of the corporate institutions of Church, military, and large landed estate. 2 From such unpromising beginnings, nationalism developed into a surprisingly persistent and pervasive force throughout the region. 3 By the end of the nineteenth century, notwithstanding political instability, wars (both within and between Latin American states), foreign interventions, and economic uncertainty, there had been notable achievements: territories had been defined and diverse regions brought together under federal states; infrastructure was being built; and capital cities were being modernized as showcases of national potential. During the twentieth century, not only social revolutions (Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua) but also military coups (Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and others) were carried out in the name of national redemption. The prevalence of populism across the region during the mid-twentieth century was at least partly symptomatic of the fact that the only political ideology with the potential to command widespread support in Latin American societies was nationalism.

Even in the contemporary era of globalization, when nationalism has been widely thought to be under threat from transnational forces, in Latin America nationalism has not only experienced a revival but also reassumed the specifically economic guise that neo-liberals had long thought safely banished. The new revolutionary leaders who emerged during the 1990s—Comandante Marcos of the Mexican Zapatistas, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela—portrayed themselves not as going beyond the nation but as going back to it: ‘we were able to recover words that had been completely prostituted: patria, nation, flag, country’. 4 As has often been noted, separatist movements have been rare in Latin America; sectarian violence has not been a significant feature of the region’s history; Latin American states have fought each other over resources but not over matters of religion or race. The aggression often associated with nationalism has been turned inwards rather than outwards in Latin America, where nationalism and internationalism have usually been seen as complementary rather conflictual.

Within national borders, there has been recurrent state repression of people deemed unfit for membership of the national community. Wars were fought against indigenous peoples during the nineteenth century, especially in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, and there are many other instances of state-condoned violence against indigenous peoples and Afro-Latin Americans. Furthermore, the wider human rights violations carried out by military regimes during the Cold War in the name of national security testified that nationalism in Latin America could assume a deeply authoritarian form. Even so, however, nationalism in this part of the world never entirely lost its early-nineteenth century connotations of emancipation and self-determination, which were revived in the 1960s after the Cuban Revolution and articulated in the widely disseminated works of Che Guevara. Many Latin Americans would probably agree with one Brazilian writer’s view that ‘nationalism is […] an indispensable strategy of defence, because it is on the scale of the nation that we have to struggle against economic absorption by imperialism’. 5

In the enduring debate about whether nationalism is invented or innate, it has long been maintained that there is little scope for seeing Latin American nationalisms in anything other than constructivist terms. Indeed, in many respects Latin American experiences are a dream for historians who wish to highlight the importance of social engineering, invention, and imagining. The state, capitalism, and the mass media all undeniably played their part in creating the conditions for nationalism in Latin America, and it would be impossible to understand its varied history without taking them into account. The mass media, in particular, played a major role in bringing the majority of the population into the national political arena (radio—in many ways more important than television—was used to great effect by, for example, Juan Perón in Argentina and the revolutionaries in Cuba). Increasingly, however, evidence has been coming to light that shows the overall picture to be more complicated. While Latin American history duly confirms the modernists’ contention that it is perfectly possible for nationalism to develop without positing identities that are primordial or even perennial, the region’s experiences also lend support to Geoff Eley’s welcome suggestion that nationalism always involves a ‘complicated dialectic of political innovation and actually existing cultures’. 6 Moreover, a variety of forces were at work, by no means all of them deriving from the elites. Cultural producers (not only the writers and intellectuals who have attracted so much attention, but also musicians, cartoonists, photographers) and, to a surprising extent, popular leaders and organizations, have also been significant agents in the history of nationalism in Latin America. In general, the political Left, in all its various manifestations, has been a vociferous champion of nationalism because US interventionism, often carried out with the tacit support of Latin American elites, enabled the Left triumphantly to play the anti-imperialist card. The people, it was claimed even by quite moderate reformists (let alone by revolutionaries), had been robbed of their historic entitlement to national sovereignty by the imperialists and their local lackeys. Public opinion has in fact radicalized official nationalism at certain times and places, one notable example being the nationalization of oil in Mexico in 1938. Moreover, evidence is accumulating that even in the nineteenth century, nationalism was present beyond the elites, at least among some identifiable sectors of the masses.

This essay covers the period from the late nineteenth until the late twentieth century. Two factors that had a significant impact on both state-building and nationalism came to the fore towards the end of the nineteenth century: first, the cumulative effects of modernization from the 1870s onwards, which led to the strengthening of a central state and the rise of mass politics; and second, the rise of US interventionism on all fronts—economic, cultural, military, and political—particularly after the Spanish-American War of 1898. The effects of modernization compelled ruling elites to confront the problem of the exclusion of large sectors of their populations not only from the body politic but—far more significantly—from what were increasingly becoming national economies. By the 1920s, most Latin American states had switched away from Social Darwinist policies to eliminate their indigenous, black, and mixed-race people (by war, repression, or European immigration) towards ideologies to assimilate them as modern worker-citizens (although violence recurred, especially against indigenous peoples, in some countries). The increased US presence in the region, both from the private sector (entrepreneurs, engineers, and managers from US mining and agri-business) and in an official capacity (military personnel, diplomats, and economic advisers), meant that the United States became the most significant ‘other’ in Latin American debates about identity. Hitherto, Latin Americans had defined themselves mainly in relation to the former colonial powers of Spain and Portugal, Britain as the neo-colonial power, or each other (neighbours and rivals such as Chile and Argentina or Colombia and Venezuela).

The cumulative effect of all these developments was to bring the dominant ideology of liberalism to crisis point, by making unacceptable its continual deferral of citizenship rights for the majority of the population. For all these reasons it is widely agreed among historians that the character of Latin American nationalisms changed during this time, but there is little consensus as to the nature of that change. This dispute touches upon most of the main differences of opinion about the history of nationalism in Latin America and so is worth discussing here in some depth.

One widely expressed view is that nationalism in the region was mainly civic before the late nineteenth century and mainly ethnic thereafter. Or, to put it another way, Latin American countries engaged first in state-building and then moved on to nation-building. Or, in different terms again, Latin America experienced only republicanism or patriotism for several decades after independence and the term ‘nationalism’ was not relevant until the twentieth century. The argument of this chapter is that all these interpretations, which are very close to each other, underestimate both the role of ethnic factors during the earlier nineteenth century and the role of civic factors during the twentieth century. Moreover, what the history of nationalism in Latin America shows us, above all, is the importance of exploring the interrelatedness of processes that are still too often analysed separately: state-building and nation-formation. In what follows, I will illustrate this argument briefly for the nineteenth century and more fully for the twentieth.

The Nineteenth Century: Nationalism or Patriotism?

A flurry of debate was provoked by Benedict Anderson’s claim, in Imagined Communities (1983), that the Latin American wars of independence were nationalist. Anderson’s case was widely challenged by Latin Americanists, who now tend to concur that there are no good grounds even for characterizing the independence movements as nationalist, let alone explaining them as such. It does seem to be clear that the wish for political independence did not necessarily imply any desire for cultural unity on the part of those who led the fight for it. 7 Furthermore, the states conceived in the founding constitutions of Latin America (which were drawn with varying emphases from the Spanish Liberal constitutions of 1812 and 1820, the US Constitution of 1787, and French documents, especially the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 and the Constitution of 1795) were based on rights that were theoretically open to all, not on any sense of unique identity. The United States was not the only former colony in the Americas to develop a sense of manifest destiny (see Chapter 20 by Susan-Mary Grant): the founding dream of the emancipated Spanish American countries was to redeem the world from the despotic, self-interested rivalries of Europe and establish a new international politics based on the idea of the whole of humanity as a nation, ‘in which nationalities would be merely large municipalities’. 8 Well into the nineteenth century, Liberal Latin American statesmen continued to make declarations about their nations being the bearers of universal values. Does it follow, then, that we should see this period as one of republicanism and elite patriotism?

I would say not—at least, certainly not from the 1830s, when the circulation of French and German Romantic ideas fed into the emerging interest of Latin American intellectuals in studying ‘ethnic groups [ razas ], national characteristics and customs, historical antecedents’ in order to design the most appropriate institutions and laws to promote national development. 9 Even for the 1820s, ‘nationalism’ is probably the most appropriate term to capture the political discourse that by then had come to prevail. Within the cultural field in which Latin American statesmen and intellectuals operated, namely the Americas and Europe, by the start of the wars of independence terms such as ‘nation’, ‘state’, and ‘people’ had already become permanently charged with an ideological significance that they had lacked before the American and French Revolutions. The Enlightenment thinkers had hoped that political association would henceforth be based on choice rather than compulsion; it followed—as argued by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried von Herder (both of whom were widely read in Latin America)—that such choices were unlikely to be based on political criteria alone. Once it had been declared that ‘Le principe de toute souveraineté réside essentiellement dans la nation’ (article 3 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man )—a stipulation that was included in most of Latin America’s founding constitutions—then it became an overwhelming political imperative, if not an absolute logical necessity, to endow the abstract concept of ‘the nation’ with a human face. The independence movements may not have started out as self-consciously nationalist, but by the end of the wars—which were lengthy—they had been compelled to become so. In turn, this meant that if monarchy was rejected, as it was throughout Latin America except in Mexico (briefly, 1821–4) and Brazil (until 1889), and liberal republican democracy accepted as the ideal, then visualizing the nation meant depicting ‘the people’ who were to be the ‘porte-parole de la nation’ [‘bearers of the word “nation” ’]. 10 The strength of the concept of ‘nation’ lies in its very abstractness, which, as Charles de Gaulle famously remarked, enables it to bear the weight of ‘past, present and future’. But precisely because it is abstract, ‘the nation’ cannot actually exercise the sovereignty so rudely wrested in its name from absolutist monarchy; in consequence, a concept of ‘the people’, willing to live together, is needed to supply the nation’s delegated agent of sovereignty. And in the necessarily continuous creation of such a collective will (Joseph-Ernest Renan was right that a nation is ‘a daily plebiscite’) it is likely, albeit not inevitable, that not only political rights but also cultural factors will come to matter.

In this connection, it is also worth noting that the Spanish word nación was associated with the racial divisions under colonialism—the nación of the Spaniards, which included both those native to the Peninsula and those born in the Americas, and the separate nación of the indigenous peoples. For these reasons, patria was the term usually used by independence leaders to invoke the would-be nation states that they sought to found, which they envisaged as bringing together the hitherto separate groups of European and indigenous descendants into a unified, bounded community. In time, nación acquired the sense of nation state, and by the late nineteenth century it had gained common currency—for example in the titles of newspapers and periodicals—although the term patria (which is difficult to translate precisely because it means something in between ‘native land’ and ‘nation state’) continued to be in wide usage during the twentieth century.

Moreover, the founding documents of the new nations exhibit at least a nascent sense of cultural distinctiveness, in claims that these nations had been founded not only for the peoples of the region to ‘reclaim their rights’ but also for them to ‘fulfil the high destiny to which they are called’. 11 In Mexico, the importance of federation was emphasized as a means of reconciling the necessary notion of a collective will of Mexicans with manifest regional differences. The manifesto distributed by the Constituent Congress that drafted the 1824 Constitution argued that only ‘the calculated tyranny of Spanish mandarins’ could have aspired to govern such a ‘huge territory’ as Mexico by the same laws, in sublime disregard of ‘the enormous differences in climate and temperament’; a federal state, in contrast, would ‘give each of the peoples laws appropriate to their customs, localities and other circumstances’ so that each region could develop at its own pace. 12 Leaders of the new nations seemed to be perfectly well aware of the difficulties entailed in what they envisaged. The drafters of Mexico’s 1824 Constitution noted that it was ‘a very arduous task to obtain through enlightenment and patriotism that which is only the work of time and experience’, but they were reassured by the fact that they had the advantages of not being ‘contaminated’ by the vices of Europe; of having the models of ‘the modern peoples’ to follow; of being able to learn from ‘the lessons the world has received since the happy discovery of social science has shaken the foundations of tyranny’. 13

Debates about cultural distinctiveness in the different states of the region began shortly after independence. Initially, the main vehicle, in which civic and ethnic elements came together, was the writing of national histories. The wars of independence were seen by some historians as an extraordinarily intense period—‘we ourselves have experienced three centuries worth of history in fourteen years’—which constituted a foundational moment comparable to the French Revolution. 14 Commemorations of declarations of independence began very soon after they had taken place. Throughout the nineteenth century, state-sponsored independence days, involving ‘fireworks, raffles, religious services, distribution of alms, and patriotic speeches’ drew both on colonial traditions and religious practices to create national festivals that celebrated the indigenous past, replacing the colonial figure of the catechized Indian with the insurgent Indian and then later the Indian as noble savage, the wars of independence being represented as the avenging of the great indigenous civilizations defeated by the conquerors. 15 In fact, there was little consensus among creoles (people of Spanish descent born in the Americas) about what constituted a usable past—some liberals saw the beginnings of the nation in the wars of independence; others preferred to go back to the pre-conquest civilizations; conservatives held fast to 1492 as their origin myth. What is fascinating is that aspects of the indigenous were prominent in most of the versions in play, with even the conservatives bringing them in as evidence that the conquerors had been a great civilizing force. 16 Even in Argentina, notorious for the insistence of its elites on being ‘white and European’, the national anthem refers to its citizens as sons of the Inca. It is hard to understand any of this evidence in terms of republicanism alone.

Works by Rousseau and Herder circulated among the educated minority, and it is worth noting that these thinkers were received in Latin America not as advocates of one nation/one culture, but rather as a way of reconciling an appreciation that peoples and cultures were different in different parts of the world with the universalist promise of the Enlightenment. 17 By mid-century, in a second wave of liberalism, new generations of nation-builders across the region were starting to accept the conservative view that local specificities had to be taken into account, in a searching critique of the abstract rationalist blueprints of the independence generation, which had led to two decades of civil war with conservatives. A wide range of essays, novels, and poetry depicting and analysing local landscapes, customs, and modes of sociability helped to create and sustain imagined communities throughout Latin America.

Liberals were by no means hegemonic until the late nineteenth century, by which time their versions of liberalism had been adapted so much to achieve that very dominance that they bore little resemblance to the Lockean original. There was in fact a variety of liberalisms that developed in Latin America during the course of the nineteenth century, although there is a tendency in the historiography to see them all as one. From the 1830s to the 1850s, liberals in most Latin American countries tended to focus on anti-clericalism and/or institution-building. Later, however, particularly in Mexico (but also elsewhere), more socially radical approaches gained ground. The European revolutions of 1848 had their impact in Latin America—in some places, at least, dovetailing with local events to stimulate moves towards fulfilling the liberal promise of inclusivity. The leaders of the Mexican Reform Movement all developed this approach: Benito Juárez, first Mexican president of indigenous—Zapotec—birth (1806–72; president 1861–72); Ignacio Altamirano (1834–93), pioneer of cultural nationalism who called for a Mexican cultural renaissance; and Ignacio Ramírez (1818–79), who advocated education for the indigenous peoples. Around the mid- to late nineteenth century, then, at least some of Latin America’s rulers were publicly committed to the idea that ultimately all the people living within their territory would be brought into the nation state, through education and other civilizing measures. It was later in the century, when competition for land and resources led to violent clashes between creole elites and indigenous groups, that denials of the potential of indigenous, black, and mixed-race people for citizenship were routinely expressed by political leaders. The elites appropriated Social Darwinism and (crude accounts of) positivism to justify their continuing exclusion of the majority of the population in the name of the positivist promise of ‘order and progress’. The liberals of the late nineteenth century, as manifest in the dictatorship of Porfírio Díaz in Mexico (1876–1911) or the oligarchic rule of the PAN (National Action Party) in Argentina (1880–1916), were liberal only in their economic policies. Politically and socially, they were highly repressive, which partly explains why liberalism entered into crisis in the early twentieth century as mass politics emerged. From a variety of perspectives, others then began to do what Juárez had recognized as necessary, namely to introduce ethnic elements into primarily civic conceptions of nationalism, on the grounds that only by doing so would the extension of liberal rights become meaningful to large sectors of the population.

State-building and nation-building happened alongside each other in many modern nation states, including most of Europe; 18 in this respect Latin America is unusual only in degree, not in kind. It was not only nations that were incipient in the aftermath of independence, but also states. Ideas about how to create a nation and who should be included or excluded themselves became factors in the formation and functioning of state institutions. Governments could strengthen their claims to legitimacy by demonstrating that they were acting in the national interest. There is also a growing body of evidence that the liberal version of nationalism did permeate more widely in society than used to be thought. The idea of equality before the law was used, with some success, by poor, ill-educated people to claim rights to land or fairer treatment at work. During the course of the nineteenth century, Latin American elites ‘constructed both national images and stable states by political bargaining and negotiation in which democratic representation was used or abused according to the balance of power’. 19

For all these reasons, I do not see a major shift from patriotism or republicanism in the nineteenth century to nationalism in the twentieth century, as has been proposed by several observers. The project was nationalist from the outset and inseparable from the vision of becoming modern, which was a founding aspiration of Latin American countries, even if the economic conditions for it did not attain critical mass until late in the nineteenth century.

The Twentieth Century: The Eclipse of Civic Nationalism?

The early twentieth century was a period of optimism in Latin America. Even those intellectuals and politicians imbued with racial pessimism tended to see their nations as potentially great, if only they could eliminate the allegedly bad blood of indigenous and black people by a process of whitening through European immigration. There was a widespread desire among Latin American elites to attract supposedly sober and industrious (north) Europeans, imbued with the Protestant work ethic, to meet their need for a skilled labour force. However, it is worth bearing in mind that European immigration was only a major feature in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay—and even there, the immigrants mostly came from Italy, Portugal, and Spain, and were rapidly cast in a negative light as lazy and/or tempestuous and violent. The otherwise positive trend of recent historiography towards thinking comparatively about the whole of the Americas has had one drawback, namely a tendency to categorize all American nations as ‘immigrant nations’ in the mode of the United States or Canada. 20 While Latin American nations did indeed all experience some immigration, mainly between about 1880 and 1920, none of them have defined themselves as immigrant nations, not even Argentina where the phenomenon was most pronounced. Indeed, a surprisingly strong and adaptable creole cultural identity dug in its heels against any notion analogous to the melting pot. Recent research has confirmed how difficult it was historically for any of the immigrant communities to achieve recognition as members of the nation. In order to hacer la América , immigrants to South America had to assimilate culturally (especially linguistically) to a far greater extent than in the United States, where political loyalty and compliance with the law sufficed. It does not strike me as persuasive to talk about ‘plural ethnic identities’ in Latin America. 21

Although the European model of one nation/one culture was manifestly unworkable in Latin America, the region’s elites—confronted by an increasingly militant labour movement, peasant mobilization, and general social unrest, some of which was indeed provoked by radical immigrant workers—elaborated a modified version of the European model of ethnic homogeneity in the ideology of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixing). This positive re-evaluation of racial mixing originated in a refutation by Latin American intellectuals of the low status attached to the mixed races in the Social Darwinist hierarchy; they began to argue that, to the contrary, mixing could be a source of superiority because it combined the talents of all races into a glorious new whole—the ‘cosmic race’—that was greater than the sum of its parts. 22 Politicians appropriated this idea, which enabled them to contain the challenge from increasingly mobilized popular forces. First in Brazil, then in most other Latin American countries, governments claimed that they presided over ‘racial democracies’, in which class, not race, determined an individual’s life prospects. Such claims did not come under serious scrutiny until the 1970s and 1980s, when social- science analysis showed that there was an undeniable overlap between class and race. 23

It is hard to overstate the complexity of the phenomenon of mestizaje , which assumed a range of meanings that differed according to time and place. Often, it was effectively synonymous with Hispanicization and encouragement of the suppression of indigenous and/or black identities. At other times, in other countries (examples would be Mexico in the 1930s and Bolivia after the Revolution of 1952), it was complemented by pro-indigenous policies ( indigenismo ) that went some way towards creating a place in the national polity for indigenous ways of life. Those relatively short-lived policies have been the object of criticism on the grounds that they, too, were premised on the assumption that everyone would ultimately succumb to the allure of modern goods and modern conveniences. There is a wealth of evidence that an ideology (and sometimes a practice) of racial mixing has long coexisted with racialized states and societies. After all, it was not until the 1990s that Latin American countries reformed their constitutions to grant recognition and rights to indigenous peoples. However, it is at least arguable that, even when it was overtly assimilationist, the ideology of mestizaje still created symbolic space for indigenous and Afro-Latin Americans in national narratives, especially when linked to indigenista or negrista movements, which, however romanticized and prejudicial, made it impossible to tell any story but one of heterogeneity.

Thus, the idea that nationalism was inevitably a project requiring the repression of difference (a view vehemently rejected by progressive Latin American nationalists who see it as a European assumption) has historically existed in Latin America alongside a variety of pressures for the recognition of difference. Indeed, it was claimed that one feature common to the various Latin American cultures was their limitless capacity to integrate whatever they found. Thus, mixing in its most radical sense was not seen as a one-way process of assimilation, but rather as a continually creative flux of encounter, borrowing, and exchange, an expression of the shared Latin American values of openness and hospitality that constituted a genuine universalism: ‘There are European cultures far more “developed” than ours, but they are closed in on themselves (rather than “developed” it would be better to say “elaborated”).’ 24 Such a claim does capture a widely articulated element of Latin America’s collective self-image, one that is endowed with its own particular nationalist history and aspect in the various different countries.

Cultural nationalism was a major feature of the first half of the twentieth century in Latin America and its manifestations were by no means dominated by the modernizing states—indeed, they often had to catch up with developments in society. A significant impetus was the wish to achieve clear differentiation from the United States, which was no longer seen as the embodiment of ideals of democracy and freedom that also animated Latin American republics, but rather as the manifestation of how those ideals could become corrupted by aggression, materialism, and sheer vulgarity. The newly imperialist United States was caricatured as ‘a buffalo with silver-plated teeth’, as the leading Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío put it, or—most influentially—as Caliban, the brutish barbarian from Shakespeare’s The Tempest . Many intellectuals, following the lead of the Uruguayan essayist José Enrique Rodó, posited an opposition between Latin ‘spirituality’ (which referred to a commitment to ethics and an appreciation of culture and ideas rather than to religiosity) and Anglo-Saxon materialism. Again, this Latin-America-wide identity was reworked into specific manifestations at national levels, where political values—an innate capacity for liberty, democracy, and heroism—were attributed to popular cultural archetypes—in Argentina, the gaucho; in Mexico, the mestizo (of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent) peasant. The increased presence of the masses in politics fed through into a modification of the national imaginary, as the ruling elites were compelled to make some concessions to popular values. The Argentine modernist poet Leopoldo Lugones could never have persuaded the chattering classes of Buenos Aires that gauchos were chic had it not been for the genuinely popular success in the 1880s of the epic ballad depicting life on the pampa, José Hernández’s Martín Fierro . Similarly, in Mexico City after the revolution murals depicting indigenous peasants as the stoic heroes of Mexican history would probably not have become so fashionable among the new bourgeoisie had it not been for the forcefully demonstrated and widely admired—not least by foreigners—capacity of peasant leader Emiliano Zapata and his followers to fight for their demands for land.

Just as ethnic factors were far from absent during the nineteenth century, however, so were civic factors very much present during the twentieth. States became powerful enough to start implementing policies on infrastructure, institution-building, and services. In societies still lacking an entrepreneurial class, the state was accepted as the avatar of development. Their capacities were limited in comparison to West European states of the time: they could conscript (which they began to do in the 1930s) and they could educate, at least at primary level (mainly a post-1945 policy, apart from in Mexico), but their ability to tax effectively was weak. Correspondingly, their service provision was limited and targeted at certain strategic groups (usually key labour sectors such as railway or port workers). 25

On the face of it, these states did not offer their populations a great deal in terms of political rights. There was relatively little of the pluralist liberal democracy specified in the constitutions. Suffrage was extended very slowly. Most of the revised constitutions of the first half of the twentieth century removed any qualification for literacy, although notably Chile kept it until 1970 and Brazil until 1988. Ecuador pioneered votes for women in 1929 and most countries followed suit in the 1930s and 1940s, but the process was not completed until the early 1960s. The separation of Church and State had taken place in most Latin American countries by 1930, but the enduring power of the Church, at least in some countries, was graphically illustrated by the role it played in undermining the socialist revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Land reform was slow to occur (apart from Mexico, it was not implemented in most of the continent until the 1960s at the earliest), and the military grew in strength as it became more modern and professional during the early to mid-twentieth century. Thus powerful corporate institutions continued to coexist uneasily with constitutions championing the rights of the individual. The paternalist populists or more overtly authoritarian military leaders who mainly controlled the state from the 1930s until the 1980s all routinely invoked the virtues of democracy but did little to create the conditions for its effective operation. 26

Nationalism was strongly promoted by all these regimes, in the absence of other policies to command consensus or legitimacy, and it was the main vehicle for incorporating the masses into politics. The role states assigned themselves in promoting the new popular nationalism that was to dominate Latin American politics for much of the twentieth century was explicitly set out in the Mexican Constitution of 1917. This was a lengthy document, drafted while the revolution was still in process, the unwieldiness and inconsistency of which testified to the varied and conflicting interests that lay behind ten years of civil unrest. It presaged the region-wide shift from exclusion to inclusion of the masses. Right at the beginning, in a signal that mass citizenship could no longer be indefinitely postponed, there was a commitment to public education, which, it was stated, would be both ‘democratic’ and ‘national, in as much as it will –without hostility or exclusivism—attend to the understanding of our problems, the advantageous use of our resources, the defence of our political independence, the securing of our economic independence and the continuity and growth of our culture’. 27 In its notorious Article 27 the Mexican Constitution laid down the founding statement of economic nationalism in Latin America, declaring the right of ‘La Nación’ [ sic ] to administer natural resources and private property—native- or foreign-owned—in ‘the public interest’.

In countries where both race and class divisions were acute, it is hard to overstate the importance of economic nationalism, which became a major feature of all Latin American nationalisms during the mid-twentieth century and is one powerful example of the continuing role of civic nationalism. It is linked to the widespread sense that political independence did not enable the full exercise of sovereignty, which entails not only the right but also the power to take decisions about the resources that determine prosperity.

Economic nationalists habitually referred back to the wars of independence: for example, Perón’s Declaration of Economic Independence on 9 July 1947 was made in the same house in Tucumán where Argentine independence had been declared on the same date in 1816; 28 the Cuban revolutionaries’ talk of a Second Independence of Latin America articulated a demand with resonance throughout the region; when President Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalized Venezuelan oil in 1976 he invoked the Liberator Simón Bolívar leading the nation to freedom from Spain at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821. An assertion of sovereignty over natural resources is also one very obvious way in which the state can assert itself as the concrete manifestation of the national interest. Fernando Coronil has described how the Venezuelan state succeeded in acquiring a high level of legitimacy through its role as mediator between ‘the nation’ and foreign oil companies during the early twentieth century. By representing itself as the sole means of unifying the ‘body politic’ of the nation (its citizens) with its natural body (subsoil resources), the Venezuelan state assumed ‘a providential hue’ by ‘[providing] the material foundation for the institutionalization of popular sovereignty’. 29 Economic nationalism enables governments to claim that they have made the nation manifest through the transcendent power of the state to mould nature in a physical, visible reconfiguration of its territory—an example would be the Brazilian military’s opening up of Amazonia during the 1960s and 1970s. The idea of nations as construction thereby takes on a literal sense and a particular significance in Latin America, where the relative absence of any common culture has often been compensated for by a highly assertive act of domination over nature. After Benedict Anderson’s famous definition of the nation as ‘an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’, 30 historians have paid a great deal of attention to the terms ‘imagined’ and ‘community’. Latin America’s history reminds us both of the need to focus on the nation’s political character and of the importance of sovereignty.

Other elements of civic nationalism continued to be salient throughout the twentieth century in Latin America. Revisions to constitutions, which occurred quite often in most countries, tended to attract a great deal of public interest and controversy. Moreover, constitutions were invoked as sources of legitimacy by a wide variety of political actors (from Fidel Castro’s emphasis on the Constitution of 1940, introduced during the elected presidency of Fulgencio Batista, the dictator overthrown by the revolution, to Augusto Pinochet’s surprisingly successful claim that the revised Constitution of 1980 gave him a mandate to rule). Likewise, democracy was continually invoked in the rhetoric of Latin American leaders across the political spectrum, particularly those who had suspended it, from the claim by the military authoritarian leaders in Brazil that they were only in power in order to take the steps necessary to make their nation ready for democracy to the insistence by Cuban or Nicaraguan revolutionaries that participation, not pluralism, was the benchmark of genuine democratic practice. Furthermore, particularly during the 1990s, after procedural democracy had become the norm everywhere except in Cuba, major struggles erupted over citizenship rights and over the legacy of human-rights violations. All these are civic matters, debates about all of them are cast in terms of nationalism and national identity, and even though some of them—particularly citizenship—also raise ethnic concerns, their significance arises from the interrelatedness of civic and ethnic. This is illustrated most vividly by the debates around what is meant by being indigenous: slogans of the protest movements against the presence of TNCs (transnational corporations) in Bolivia proclaimed ‘We are all indigenous now!’, that is, all non-elite Bolivians, not only those of indigenous birth, were excluded from the benefits of globalized capitalism supported by the sell-out elites. Thus a term denoting ethnic identity acquired a civic referent.

What Latin American history shows, above all, is that the most successful nationalisms have brought together civic and ethnic elements. Revolutionary governments, especially in Mexico and Cuba, were particularly good at integrating foundation myths, official histories of national redemption that cast the revolution as the catalyst for true national self-realization, anti-imperialism, economic nationalism, and an emphasis on popular participation. In all Latin American countries, heroes play a major role in generating popular allegiance to nationalism: with their exemplary lives, they are represented as incarnations of popular values, endowed with the national virtues and portrayed as men of the people. Most Latin American countries include people of mixed race in their pantheon; black or indigenous leaders are rarer, although not absent. Images of super-heroes, such as Liberator Simón Bolívar, convey an extraordinary range of racial representations of him, from absolutely white to almost indigenous, depending on the context in which his name was being invoked. The comparative history of Latin America’s heroes and the political appropriation of their images is as yet relatively little studied, but would probably be very revealing about the entwining of civic and ethnic components of nationalism.

Latin American experiences invite revision of a series of generalizations that have been made about nationalism, based mainly upon European examples. What makes Latin America particularly interesting in the history of nationalism is its ambivalent relationship to European models: unlike in many of the other post-colonial nations that achieved independence in the mid-twentieth century, nationalism in Latin America was initially shaped not so much by opposition to European powers as by a desire to avoid their mistakes. In taking a stand for democracy against despotism, the Latin American nations were founded in the hope that they could enact the European Enlightenment project that had not been fully realized in Europe. Latin Americans envisaged their nations as being both different from and better than the European; they differentiated between what they wished to emulate (economic success), what they wished to do differently (politics), and what they wished to transcend (culture). Being constituted as modern republics, committed to liberal principles of democracy and the separation of powers, has remained fundamental to Latin American nations’ sense of identity. Thus European models and ideas were far from irrelevant, but, as Partha Chatterjee and others have long since pointed out, 31 the process of adaptation to circumstances was far more complex than can be captured by any notions of imitation or passive consumption. This can be seen in a series of shared features of Latin American nationalism that suggest the need for revision or qualification of certain widely held assumptions about nationalism in general. I will briefly outline these below.

In Latin American nations there certainly was an elite-led drive towards homogeneity around the ideology of mestizaje , with its latent agenda of whitening—but even that was posited on a claim that what is unifying is the shared experience of difference, of mixing. In practice, there has been a constant set of pressures to accommodate difference, not least in the idea that the capacity to do so is a distinctive feature of being Latin American, particularly in contrast to the racially segregated and intolerant United States. There has been a recurrent tendency to make a virtue out of difference, representing it as abundance: Brazil is all of this. Nationalism in Latin America has rarely been conceptualized as an exclusive identity, precluding the possibility of local, regional, or continental identifications. The latter, known first as Hispano-Americanism, later as Latin Americanism, have functioned as a pool of values to draw upon, from which distinctively national variations can be marked out. 32 In a range of ways, Latin American processes of identity creation have worked not within a self-other dichotomy, but rather within a looser framework of multiple selves and multiple others. From the outset, it is possible to trace a series of transnational routes to creating national identities in Latin America, in a three-way relationship between Latin America, Anglo-Saxon America, and the various European countries (really, we should disaggregate further, particularly between the Iberian former colonial powers and the models of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy). Relationships within Latin America also played their part in the process of self-differentiation: Argentina and Brazil have long defined themselves in terms of not being what the other is thought to be; Mexico sees itself not only as not the United States, but as not Guatemala either. Within the borders, as Claudio Lomnitz argued in a critique of Benedict Anderson, the nation has not necessarily been envisaged as dependent upon horizontal bonds, assuming equality in community; instead, one route towards national integration has been through vertical connections of patronage and clientelism. 33

The relationship between religion and nationalism in Latin America is an area that is still under-researched, but it is evident that the claim of Anderson and others that nationalism functions as a replacement for organized religion is not borne out by Latin American histories. Religious symbols are prominent in the iconography of Latin American nations. The Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe is the most famous, and the most studied, but most Latin American countries have their own particular manifestation of the Virgin Mary, which has acquired status as a national symbol. Latin American Liberal nation-builders were often vehemently anti-clerical (although this varied according to country) but most of them argued that spirituality should have a place in modern life. As noted above, many of the civic festivals organized to promote identification with the nation drew upon religious symbols and practices. The Mexican reformist intellectual Ignacio Altamirano evidently regretted the fact that ‘the only bond’ that united Mexicans was adoration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, 34 yet the enduring power of this cult was not only testament to the limitations of the Liberal secularizing project but also to the capacity of religious symbols to generate nationalist sentiments.

Conceptions of time are manifestly crucial to nationalism, although Latin America offers fascinating evidence that it is not only Anderson’s homogeneous empty time that matters, or indeed the linear sequence of past, present, and future. Latin American literature, social commentary, and philosophy explore the concept that time can be experienced not only sequentially but also simultaneously. This idea connects to the main point to highlight here, which is that—as Anderson himself noted in the revised edition of Imagined Communities (1991)—ideas about space are also crucial to nation-building. This was particularly so in Latin America where, as discussed above, history was so problematic. Thus, geographies of nationalism are important and quite a lot of research has been done on the initiatives undertaken by states throughout the nineteenth century to map their countries and to chart the flora and fauna of the landscape. If neither history nor culture could provide a unifying nationalist theme, the land potentially could and it became a primary object of attention initially for poets, then later for essayists and novelists. Later, towards the start of the twentieth century, archaeology and anthropology began to modify conceptions of the relationship between history and the land.

Analogously, while Latin America does provide some evidence for Anderson’s emphasis on textuality—from the mid-nineteenth century onwards Romantic novels played a role in creating a national imaginary in which people of different races were present, and poets and essayists have been important throughout—what I would emphasize here is the evidence Latin America offers that visual culture is a crucial part of nationalism. National identity becomes embodied: the ‘face, expression, look’ of a particular nation matters, 35 and can be studied in visual images of all kinds from cartoons to photographs to public monuments, posters, dress codes, public spectacles, film, and murals. This point connects also to the importance of everyday practices, which are increasingly being studied, particularly the place of food in self-differentiation, for example, the Peronist campaign to make everyone ‘eat Argentine’. We also know a lot more about the role of sport—notoriously, soccer, but also baseball and basketball, have been vehicles for nationalism, both at national state and local levels—and music. Both state and local environments can be seen as microcosms of how nationalism works in Latin America: the state plays a role, as do transnational market forces, but the popular input is crucial and remarkably resistant to manipulation.

In sum, if historians take Latin American experiences into account, it is no longer possible to sustain the arguments that nationalism requires homogeneity; seeks to displace other sources of loyalty, especially local and continental identities; is necessarily secular; is primarily shaped by conceptions of time; is shaped primarily by textual practices; or is mainly about high politics and/or revanchist projects. Above all, the history of Latin American nationalism indicates that successful nationalist projects entail both a commitment to popular sovereignty (even if delegated) and a sense of cultural uniqueness. Nationalists can choose to emphasize either civic or ethnic sources of identity, but in order to succeed they usually have to offer elements of both. To put it another way, returning to Rousseau—where many of the Latin American nation-builders started—the need is to find a balance between autonomy and authenticity, each of which is, to a significant degree, dependent upon the other.

1 B. Anderson (1991, 1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism , London, 47–67 .

2 A. Gramsci (1957) The Modern Prince and Other Writings , London, 139 .

For the colonial period, see Chapter 6 by Don Doyle and Eric van Young.

4 Comandante Marcos, interviewed by Carlos Monsiváis and Hermann Bellinghausen , in La Jornada (Mexico City), 8 January 2001 .

5 Brazilian critic and commentator Antônio Cândido, cited in A. Castillo , E. Muzzopappa , A. Salomone , B. Urrejola , and C. Zapata (eds.) (2003) Nación, estado y cultura en América Latina , Santiago .

6 G. Eley (2000) ‘Culture, Nation and Gender’, in I. Blom , K. Hagemaan , and C. Hall (eds.) Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century , Oxford and New York, 31 .

7 D. H. Doyle and M. A. Pamplona (eds.) (2006) Nationalism in the New World , Athens, GA, 4 . See also Chapter 6 in this book by Don Doyle and Eric van Young.

8 F. Bilbao (1866) Obras completas , Buenos Aires, 2 vols., II, 483 .

9 D. F. Sarmiento, cited (without reference) in R. Orgaz (1937) Alberdi y el historicismo , Córdoba, iv .

La déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789. Histoire, analyse et commentaires sous la direction de Gérard Conac, Marc Debens, Gérard Teboul , Paris (1993), 91.

11 ‘Acta de la independencia’ [de Chile], 1810, in J. B. Espinosa (ed.) (1889) Constituciones de Chile , Santiago, 37 . Similar examples can be found throughout the region.

‘Manifiesto del congreso social general constituyente á los habitantes de la federación [de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos]’, 1824, in Colección de constituciones de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos , Mexico (1828), 3 vols., vol. I, 16–32, 22–3.

‘Manifesto del congreso’, 23–4.

‘Manifesto del congreso’, 24.

15 R. Earle (2002) ‘ “Padres de la Patria” and the Ancestral Past: Commemorations of Independence in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America’, Journal of Latin American Studies , 34, no. 4 (November), 775–805 , esp. 782–4.

16 R. Earle (2007) The Return of the Native , Durham, NC, and London .

17 As Ernest Gellner valuably reminds us, Herder’s critique of universalism ‘was relatively modest, almost humble, rather than vicious and lethal’. See E. Gellner (1997) Nationalism , London, 69 .

18 G. Eley (2000) ‘Culture, Nation and Gender’, in Blom, Hagemaan, and Hall (eds.), Gendered Nations , 30. The classic study for Europe remains E. Weber (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France , London . See also A. Knight (1994) ‘Peasants into Patriots: Thoughts on the Making of the Mexican Nation’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos , 10, no. 1 (Winter), 135–61 , which cites Weber.

19 M. Tenorio-Trillo (1999) ‘Essaying the History of National Images’, in M. Thurner and A. Guerrero (eds.) After Spanish Rule , Durham, NC, 59–86, 64 .

Doyle and Pamplona, Nationalism in the New World , 2.

21 Doyle and Pamplona, Nationalism in the New World . Statistics on immigration to Latin America are difficult to pin down, not least because many immigrants were seasonal, or did not settle permanently. The best-documented case is Argentina, where foreigners constituted 12 per cent of the population in 1869 and 30 per cent in 1914. For a survey of the debates, see N. Sánchez-Albornoz , ‘Population’, in L. Bethell (ed.) (1989) Latin America: Economy and Society, 1870–1930 , Cambridge, 83–114 , esp. 88–101.

22 The classic text is J. Vasconcelos (1925, 1997) The Cosmic Race: A Bilingual Edition , trans. D. T. Jaén, Baltimore, MD .

23 The literature is well reviewed in T. Skidmore (1993) ‘Bi-Racial USA vs. Multi-Racial Brazil: Is the Contrast Still Valid?’, Journal of Latin American Studies , 25, 373–86 .

‘Mesa redonda: Nacionalismo, patriotismoy emancipación’, Contracorriente. Una revista cubana del pensamiento (Havana), 3, no. 9 (1997), 122.

25 L. Whitehead (1994) ‘State Organization in Latin America since 1930’, The Cambridge History of Latin America Economy, Society, and Politics. Vol. 6, Part 1: Latin America since 1930: Economy and Society , ed. L. Bethell , Cambridge, 3–95 .

26 For a good survey, see E. Williamson (1992) The Penguin History of Latin America , London , esp. ch. 9, ‘Nationalism and Development: An Overview’, 436–58.

27 L. L. Guerra and L. Aguiar de Luque (eds.) (1992) Las constituciones de Iberoamérica , Madrid, 573 .

28 M. E. Rein (1998) Politics and Education in Argentina, 1946–1962 , Armonk, NY, and London, 65 .

29 F. Coronil (1997) The Magical State: Nature, Money and Modernity in Venezuela , Chicago, IL, 168 and 1.

Anderson (1991 edn.) Imagined Communities , 6.

31 P. Chatterjee (1996) ‘Whose Imagined Community?’, in G. Balakrishnan (ed.) Mapping the Nation , London, 214–25 . Many of Chatterjee’s points about the reception of the national idea in Asia and Africa strike me as relevant to Latin America, although he categorizes ‘the Americas’ together with ‘Europe’ as ‘Western models’ that condemn the rest of the world to immiserated mimesis.

There are affinities here with the cases of pan-nationalism in other parts of the world considered by Cemil Aydin in Chapter 34 of this book.

33 C. Lomnitz (2001) ‘Nationalism as a Practical System: Benedict Anderson’s Theory of Nationalism from the Vantage Point of Spanish America’, in M. A. Centeno and F. López-Alves (eds.) The Other Mirror: Grand Theory Through the Lens of Latin America , Princeton, NJ, 329–49 .

34 D. A. Brading (2001) Mexican Phoenix. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries , Cambridge, 256 .

Tenorio-Trillo, ‘Essaying’, 59.

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Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart

by Andreas Wimmer. 2018. Princeton University Press

Key words: nation-building, ethnic diversity, state capacity Summary by Margaux Dandrifosse – IBEI

Micro-summary: Successful nation-building happens due to pre-existing inclusive political institutions and national identification.

Summary: In this book, the author investigates the puzzle of why certain ethnically diverse countries were able to create solid and resilient nation-states while others have broken down. To do so, he examines the underlying factors behind a successful nation-building in ethnically diverse societies.

This book sits within the political science literature and makes a significant contribution to the scholarships on nationalism and ethnic conflict. The author finds little support for the theories according to which democratization, economic development, or the absence of a colonial experience lead to nation-building. Rather, he argues that states in which there already exists inclusive political institutions and national identification are more likely to democratize, feature good governance and economic growth, and less likely to experience ethnic polarization or civil wars. Accordingly, the main argument presented is that successful nation-building occurs in states which have, over generations, built inclusive institutions in which minorities and majorities are equally represented through multi-ethnic coalitions. This is achieved when 1) political integration and alliances run throughout the whole territory and transcend ethnic divisions and 2) when identification with the national institutions reaches across all ethnic groups and is stronger than particular ethnic, social, or class identities.

Nation-building occurs through three long-term historical mechanisms. First, when a state has developed alongside large networks of civil society organizations, such organizations spread throughout the territory and across groups. They gather individuals around interests, rather than ethnicity, enabling the state to mobilize political coalitions and leaders across different ethnic groups. This argument is demonstrated by comparing the successful historical case of Switzerland to Belgium. Second, states which are able to provide public goods efficiently and equally across regions and groups acquire cross-ethnic legitimacy, thereby fostering national ownership and identification. To illustrate this process, the effective and equalitarian public goods provision in Botswana is compared to clan-based resources allocation in Somalia. Third, states which have historically promoted a shared nationwide language reduce the costs of transcending ethnic boundaries, and fuel equal political opportunities, multi-ethnic alliances, and national identification. This is exemplified by looking at the Chinese common written language as compared to linguistically fragmented Russia. Lastly, the author claims that the capacity of states to provide public goods equally and promote a national language, and thereby achieve successful nation-building, largely depends on the degree of centralisation of the pre-colonial state, directly related to its bureaucratic quality. The book concludes by providing policy-recommendations. It emphasizes the inadequacy of Western interventionism aimed at democratization and regime change to build national cohesion in foreign countries. Rather, it advocates long-term capacity building of national institutions and state ownership of public goods provision.

Follow-up: The book has been critically reviewed by Vera Tolz and Eliot Green, which has given rise to a lively debate with the author, mainly over the selection of case studies. Moreover, Andreas Wimmer has published a short article in 2019 “”Why Nationalism Works: And Why It Isn’t Going Away”. It builds on the argument of this book to claim that nationalism is a positive force in societies which have historically established inclusive institutions, while it is related to conflicts in countries with exclusionary power centers. In 2021, the author has also participated in an innovative article on the possibilities to quantitatively measure national and ethnic identity.

Relevance for the SECUREU Project: Wimmer’s argument provides a conceptual lens to analyze how the EU’s performance in nation-building may have influenced the contemporary rise of xenophobia and the securitization of minorities in Europe. Are those phenomena resulting from the failure of European integration to build inclusive political institutions and civil society organizations, equally provide public goods, and promote language homogeneity? Moreover, it points out to the EU’s North-South and West-East inequalities as potential illustrations of the failure of European nation-building and as an important basis to understand the securitization of minorities. Lastly, it suggests that the differences in xenophobia, right-wing populism, and minorities’ securitization among EU member-states may be explained by the countries’ varying degrees of success in building inclusive institutions.

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18 Nation, nationality and nation building in India

Chandan Kumar Sharma

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Defining the Concepts

2. Nation State and Nation Building

3. Nation and Nation Building in India

4. Conclusion

5. Summary

NATION, NATIONALITY AND NATION BUILDING IN INDIA

Introduction: Defining the Concepts

Defining Nation, nationality or nationalism is a complicated exercise. These terms are often used to imply a multiplicity of interrelated phenomena, leading to their ambivalence. One reason for such ambivalence is that they all have the etymological origin in the same Latin word ‘ natio ’ which implies birth or descent.

A dominant view in the past was that to become a nation, a people sharing common race, language, religion, etc must live together in a geographical area. However, this view does not have much currency now. The generally accepted view today holds that rather than sharing attributes like common race, language, religion, etc it is the sentiment of common consciousness that forms the basis of a nation. A nation has a political meaning which is distinct from a nationality. A nationality is transformed into a nation when it organises a state or at least cherishes a common will to live together in a state for the future.

When the territorial boundary of a state is co-terminus with the cultural, linguistic and ethnic division of the people (nation) within it, it becomes a nation state which is different from the state forms, for example, the empires, of the earlier times which constituted more than one, and often several, national groups. The concept of nation state based on the concept of ‘one nation, one state’ became a dominant mode of state forms in the Western Europe. This also subsequently came to form the nation building projects of the newly independent states in various parts of the world. But problems emerged as most of these countries were multi-national in nature, incorporating several nations or groups with near-nation status. Empirical experiences have shown that there rarely exists a country in the modern world where ‘one nation, one state’ model can be observed. On the contrary, one witnesses not only several nations within the territorial boundary of a single state but also a single nation spreading over more than one state. For example, the United Kingdom, Russian Federation, India, the United States of America, etc are examples of multi-national states while the Kurds, the Tamils, the Hazaras, etc are examples of trans-state nations implying they are spread over more than one state.

Historian Eric Hobsbawm writes that ‘nations’, contrary to popular belief, are not as old as history. “The modern sense of the word is no longer than the eighteenth century…” (1990: 3). He admits that what characteristics classify a group of human beings as a ‘nation’ is difficult to answer (ibid: 5). Nevertheless, he points out that attempts have been made to establish objective criteria for defining a ‘nation’ based “on single criteria such as language or ethnicity, or a combination of criteria such as language, common territory, common history, cultural traits or whatever else.” But all such objective definitions have failed because “only some members of the large class of entities which fit such definitions can at any time be described as ‘nations’” though exceptions are there. Hobsbawm also shows that “the criteria used for this purpose – language, ethnicity or whatever – are themselves fuzzy, shifting and ambiguous” (ibid: 6).

Sociologist T.K. Oommen offers what he calls, “some tentative definitional proposals of a nation/nationality, state/citizenship and ethnic/ethnicity” (1997: 19). In his definition the “nation is a territorial entity to which the nationals have an emotional attachment and in which they invest a moral meaning; it is a homeland – ancestral or adopted”.(ibid) The state, on the other hand, “is a legally constituted institution, which provides its residents with protection from internal insecurity and external aggression” (ibid). Making the distinction between the state and nation, he says that while territory is common to both, “there is a crucial difference between national territory and the state territory; the former is a moral, and the latter a legal entity…If the state and the nation are coterminous, we have a nation-state. But most states today are multi-national, poly-ethnic, or a combination of the two” (ibid).

He then goes on to say that for the sustenance of a nation, “the people should be in a position to communicate with one another, that is, they should have a common language…(however,) it is not the case that all those who communicate in the same language necessarily make a nation…It is the combination, the fusion of territory and language, that makes a nation; a nation is a community in communication in its homeland” (ibid). Thus, according to Oommen, “a common homeland and a common language (ancestral or adopted) are the critical minimum markers of a nation and national identity” (ibid: 20). On the other hand, Oommen defines nationality as “the collective identity that the people of a nation acquire by identifying with the nation” (1997: 19). This view equates nationality with citizenship. However, nationality is often used as a synonym for ethnicity. In this sense, various cultural groups constituting a nation are described as nationalities.

Anthony D. Smith defines nation as “named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths, and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members” (1991: 14). However, Smith’s definition of nation is criticized on the ground that it does not distinguish a nation from an ethnic group. Barrington points out that the idea of territory is central to all definitions of nation and is the distinguishing feature between nation and other social categories such as an ethnic group (Barrington 1997: 712). According to Barrington, nations are groups of people linked by unifying traits (myths, values, symbols, etc) and the desire to control a territory that is thought of as group’s national homeland. It is not necessary that they actually control any such territory (ibid: 713). He further points out that the word ‘nation’ is often mistakenly used as synonyms with ‘ethnic group’ or ‘ethnicity’. However, although a nation can evolve from an ethnic group it is more than an ethnic group because of its belief in its right to territorial control. More importantly, nations need not be based on certain ethnic identity. For example, the American nation is not based on any shared ethnic identity although the Americans share certain cultural features such as origin myths and symbols and language (ibid).

Emphasizing the difficulty in offering a stable definition of nation, historian Prasenjit Duara writes, “The instability of the concept of the nation is such that we are unable to even say whether it is in ascendancy or in decline” (1996: 4). The definitional ambiguities associated with the term ‘nation’ have its own impact on the conceptualization of the term ‘nationalism’. It is pointed out that the definitions of nationalism reveal more about the definers than about the defined (Aloysius 2000 [1997]: 11). Under such a situation, “to expect a consensus on contested political realities or a single, overarching paradigm explanatory of all manifestations of the national phenomena is illusory, at least for the time being” (ibid: 14).

Renowned theorist of nationalism Benedict Anderson (1995 [1983]) contends that nationality, nation-ness as well as nationalism, are cultural artifacts of a particular kind (ibid: 13). They are “notoriously difficult to define, let alone analyze” (ibid: 126). He argues that a nation is an act of imagination (ibid: 15) by underlining the fact that nations were not the determinate products of some given sociological conditions like language or race or religion— they had been imagined into existence. He also describes some of the major institutional forms through which this imagined community comes to acquire concrete shape. He further emphasizes that the “twentieth-century nationalisms and nation states have a profoundly modular character” (ibid: 123). Historical experience of nationalism in the west provided all subsequent nationalisms with a set of modular forms from which nationalist elites in Asia and Africa had chosen the ones they liked.

Etienne Balibar writes that he and Immanuel Wallerstein consider, “‘nation’ and ‘people’ as historical constructs, by means of which current institutions and antagonisms can be projected into the past to confer a relative stability on the communities on which the sense of individual ‘identity’ depends.”(Balibar and Wallerstein 1998: 10) According to them, No nation, that is, no national state, has an ethnic basis, which means that nationalism cannot be defined as an ethnocentrism except precisely in the sense of the product of a fictive ethnicity. To reason any other way would be to forget that ‘peoples’ do not exist naturally…either by virtue of their ancestry, a community of culture or pre-existing interests. But they have to institute in real (and therefore in historical) time their imaginary unity against other possible unities (ibid: 49).

Balibar further writes that the term ‘fiction’ should not be taken in the sense of a pure and simple illusion without historical effects. As he contends, No nation possesses an ethnic base naturally, but as social formations are nationalized, the populations included within them, divided up among them or dominated by them are ethnicized— that is represented in the past or in the future as if they formed a natural community, possessing of itself an identity of origins, culture and interests which transcends individuals and social conditions (ibid: 96).

According to Social anthropologist and political philosopher Ernest Gellner, “Nationalism is primarily a political principle,” Gellner emphasizes, “which holds that the political and the national units should be congruent.” (1983: 1). He further writes, “…nations, like states, are a contingency, and not a universal necessity…” (1983: 6). Explaining the relationship between ‘nationality’ (or ‘ethnicity’) and ‘nationalism’, Gellner has this to say, Ethnicity or ‘nationality’ is simply the name for the condition which prevails when many of these boundaries converge and overlap, so that the boundaries of conversation, easy commensality, shared pastimes, etc., are the same, and when the community of the people delimited by these boundaries is endowed with an ethnonym, and is suffused with powerful feelings; ethnicity becomes ‘political’. It gives rise to ‘nationalism’, when the ‘ethnic’ group defined by these overlapping cultural boundaries is not merely acutely conscious of its own existence, but also imbued with the conviction that the ethnic boundary ought also to be a political one. The requirement is that the boundaries of ethnicity should also be the boundaries of the political unit, and, above all, that the rulers within that unit should be of the same ethnicity as the ruled (1994: 35).

In the ‘Preface’ to his Ethnicity and Nationalism (1991), Political theorist Paul Brass states that “ethnicity and nationalism are not ‘givens’, but are social and political constructions” (Ibid: 8). They are created by the elites of ethnic groups with the object of “protecting their well-being or existence or to gain political and economic advantage for their groups as well as themselves” (Ibid: 8). He further argues that ethnicity and nationalism are modern phenomena inseparably connected with the activities of the modern centralizing state arising out of specific types of interactions between the leadership of centralizing states and elites from non-dominant ethnic groups, especially but not exclusively on the peripheries of those states” (Ibid: 8-9).

Brass argues that when an ethnic group demands “a major say for the group in the political system as a whole or control over a piece of territory within the country, or they demand a country of their own with full sovereignty” with an aspiration to “national status and recognition” and achieves “any one of these goals either within an existing state or in a state of its own” it becomes “a nationality or a nation” (1991: 20). From this viewpoint, a nation “may be seen as a particular type of ethnic community, or, rather, as an ethnic community politicized, with recognised group rights in the political system” (ibid). It follows from this that “nations may be created by the transformation of an ethnic group in a multiethnic state into a self-conscious political entity or by the amalgamation of diverse groups and the formation of an inter-ethnic, composite or homogeneous national culture through the agency of the modern state” (ibid).

Nation State and Nation Building

When modern nation states came into being especially in Western Europe, the ethnic identities of many of the constituent groups within the nation states were lying dormant so much so that their ‘distinct’ identities were almost ignored. The concept of the nation state subscribed to a definition of nation that accords a central place to the idea of state in which the term ‘nation’ was held synonymous with the most dominant group within the so-called nation state. The idea working behind this concept of nation was that the smaller or marginal communities living within a particular nation state in course of time would assimilate with the dominant group or else over a period of time would move toward the formation of their own nation states.

It is this perception that has inspired the dominant group within the nation state to assimilate the other smaller constituents in the name of the nation-building exercise. In some cases, this exercise achieved relative success depending on the “effectiveness of their projects of cultural standardization” (Baruah 1999: 4). But in most of the cases this project faced serious problems. The dominant groups in these cases carried out their agenda of nation construction through the exercise of their influence in the economic, political, cultural, and demographic spheres without taking into consideration the ethos and aspirations of the smaller communities. The concept of nation-building thus comes to be metaphorically described by McCloskey as a “handsome neo- classical building in which political prisoners scream in the basement” (cited in Baruah 1999: 1) which treats people, as Bauer puts, as “lifeless bricks, to be moved by some master builder”(Ibid: 1).

At this stage, it is worthwhile to take note of Wallerstein’s observation on the phenomenon of nation-building. Addressing the question as to why should the establishment of any particular sovereign state within the interstate system create a corresponding ‘nation’, ‘a people’, he states that this happens as states in this system have problems of cohesion as they often face threat of both internal disintegration and external aggression. The creation of a ‘national’ sentiment reduces such a threat (Balibar and Wal1erstein 1998: 81). He writes, “(T)he government in power has an interest in promoting the sentiment, as do all sorts of subgroups within the state. Any group who sees advantage in using the state’s legal powers to advance its interests against groups outside the state or in any sub-region of the state has an interest in promoting nationalist sentiment as a legitimation of its claims. States furthermore have an interest in administrative uniformity that increases the efficacy of their policies. Nationalism is the expression, the promoter and the consequence of such state-level uniformities”(ibid: 2).

The attempt at creating such uniformities, however, leads to politico-economic and cultural suppression and marginalization of the smaller nationalities within these states. This eventually reinforces a sense of separate identity among the latter vis-à-vis the dominant community/communities as being deprived and repressed. In an attempt to politically mobilize this new identity consciousness, against the hegemonic designs of the centralizing state, the elites of the smaller nationalities take recourse to a project of cultural hegemony rooted in their history— partly real, but largely imagined — much after the model of the modern state. It is through this process that the nationality movements emerge in the modern nation state. Led by their elites, these movements mobilize themselves asking for more political, economic, and cultural rights from the state. The latter naturally attempts to subvert the aspirations of the smaller groups in order to maintain its existing status. This intensifies the political expression of the smaller groups even farther. However, the struggle of a nationality group demanding more rights and privileges for itself and its simultaneous interaction with the State, does not necessarily lead to the consolidation of its identity, it also often leads to the growth of fissiparous tendencies underscoring the existence of cleavages within it.

Nation and Nation Building in India

It has been pointed out that the post-independence Indian state despite its multi-ethnic character has been engaged in a project of nation building which subscribes to the western notions of nation-state in which, ideally speaking, language, religion, and political sovereignty have co-terminus boundaries. Dwelling on the overall nation-building experience in India and other parts of South Asia, Phadnis and Ganguly write, “post colonial nation-building approaches (in the region) focused almost exclusively on creating a unified ‘national identity’ based around either common political values and citizenship or a putative majoritarian ‘ethnic’ identity. The aim of both approaches, on the whole, has been to produce a pulverized and uniform sense of national identity to coincide with the state boundaries that seldom reflect ethnic divisions on the ground. This type of outlook towards nation-building, as promoted vigorously by the modernization school of thought, refused to accept the notion that states incorporating more than one ‘ethnic nation’ could be both stable and harmonious” (2001: 13).

Political scientist Ishtiaq Ahmed commenting on the nation-building enterprise in the South Asian elites argues, “(T)he elites which took over power at the time of British withdrawal were compelled by a host of internal and external pressures to reduce or eliminate the incongruence between state and society…the nation-building process in all…(the) countries have been confronted by serious separatist challenge. Each case of separatism constitutes a unique specimen of state-society contradiction…” (1996: 15).

This nation-building exercise that the post-independence Indian state adopted with the objective of the construction of a pan-Indian identity stood in the way of the fulfilment of economic, political, and cultural aspirations of various ethnic groups located within its territory fuelling protest movements among them. As Krishna says, “(W)henever state elites in the region (South Asia) have attempted to ride roughshod over the rights and aspirations of so-called peripheral minorities (religious, linguistic, regional, or other), the result has been either a violent partition/secession or that emergence of ethnonationalist movements that have attempted to achieve those ends.” (Ibid: 13-14).

This point finds support in other scholars too. Ghose and Chakrabarti, for example, point out that despite the recognition of the fact that the future survival of the nation-state in India would depend on acceptance of the plurality of nationalities, there continued to be a strong strain of thought that sought to do away with group identities in the name of national integration generating a lot of resistance in areas like the northeastern region of the country (cited in Misra 2000: 155).

On the other hand, these groups are also not homogenous identities. They are often constituted by a number of other smaller ethnic configurations living in geo-social proximity. This process of the formation of a crystallized ethnic identity by incorporating such smaller groups is still operative in several parts of India, especially its north-eastern region. It is to be recognized that prior to the establishment of the colonial rule, India did not exist as an integrated politico-territorial entity. There existed various nationality groups with different, if not conflicting, territorial and political loyalties. Quite a few of them emerged simultaneously with the pan-Indian identity and some even predated it. Some of these nationalities were engaged in their own project of cultural hegemony (Baruah 1999: 8).

The colonial regime, besides making India into an integrated politico-territorial entity, also created new regional politico-territorial units incorporating willy-nilly more than one, in most cases several, such nationalities. This integration, however, was impelled by the administrative and economic motives with the total exclusion of attempts to bind the territory with the feelings and emotions of nationalism. On the contrary, in order to continue its exploitation unabated, the colonial administration took full recourse to the policy of ‘divide and rule’, thereby also hindering the ongoing process of nationality formation among the above-mentioned nationality groups.

But colonial exploitation and repression, so universal throughout the British India, had instilled in various communities within it a common sense of bondage, as being deprived and marginalized. This in turn inspired them to fight united against the colonial regime. The fact that India long existed as a cultural and social entity, despite all its internal variations, helped. Although, the constitution of leadership of the Indian freedom movement was not exactly all Indian in character in that it did not have any noteworthy representation from the smaller or peripheral communities, not much opposition was raised against the former in view of the ultimate objective of the movement.

Eric Hobsbawm (1990: 164), thus, very aptly describes India as a polity that grew out of anti-colonial movement. It is in the wake of this movement that the Indian nationalist leadership woke up to the idea of one Indian nation by incorporating the various ethnic and linguistic entities within the colonial state. The Indian nationalist leadership tried to carry out this objective after independence in the name of the policy of nation-building, through its own project of cultural hegemony. However, some scholars point out that treating the Indian response to the British colonial rule under the unified title of the nationalist movement is nothing but a rarefied reading of the movement which is insensitive to the regional variations and is ideological in intent and character (Aloysius 1999: 6).

Regional Nationalist Identities and Linguistic States

Nevertheless, almost simultaneously to the independence of the country, demands came from various nationalities from its regions for a greater recognition of their identity within the new dispensation of the state. Language became the mainstay of this new identity aspiration. It posed a new challenge to the nation building exercise of the recently-independent Indian state.

The colonial state created territorial units that were not based on any obvious principle, except administrative convenience, and the quite accidental timing of conquests (Kaviraj 1999: 224). This practice gave, “…sub-colonial advantages for some linguistic groups, simply because those were the first to receive colonial education and formed the natural reservoir for personnel for colonial administrative expansion…Resentment against this kind of sub-colonial dominance was bound to find expression after independence…(M)ovements for regional autonomy began soon after independence with the demand for the recognition of an Andhra state (Ibid: 224-5).

The post-independence Indian State was initially unsympathetic to the demand for statehood based on distinct linguistic identity. Jawaharlal Nehru opposed such a scenario for fear of creating inward-looking states that would imperil the consolidation of Indian nationhood, and even encourage separatism (Tillin 2013). Political scientist Sudipta Kaviraj also holds that Nehru’s opposition to the linguistic states was due to the “anxiety that more homogeneous regional units might lead to the weakening of the political imagination of the Indian nation” (Kaviraj 1999: 225).

However, in the face of pressing demands, the States Reorganization Commission (1956), recommended the reorganization of states on linguistic lines and a number of new states were created staring with the creation of a separate Andhra state from the erstwhile Madras state as a result of a very strong campaign launched in the Andhra region in the early 1950s for the reorganisation of state boundaries around linguistic communities – rather than administrative histories. In the subsequent years, more linguistic states were created in south and west India. States were created for speakers of Kannada (present-day Karnataka), Malayalam (Kerala), Marathi (Maharashtra) and Gujarati (Gujarat); and later Punjab and Haryana were divided too (although religion, as well as language – Punjabi and Hindi – was at stake in the latter instance) (Tillin 2013).

Although the cultural foundation of India’s regionally based sub-nationalism was the languages of the region, the problem with the north-east region of the country arises from the fact that the region has so many linguistic groups that it is not realistically possible to reorganize it on linguistic lines. Assam, the home of the largest linguistic community in the region, viz., the Assamese, was for long a separate British province which incorporated many areas like the districts of Naga Hills (present Nagaland), Khasi and Jaintia Hills (present Meghalaya), and Lushai Hills (present Mizoram). These areas, after independence, have been made into separate provinces not on the basis of the linguistic principle. Rather, the guiding principle(s), singularly or collectively, that led to the making of these provinces were religion, race, geographical and physical distinctiveness, etc. beginning with the formation of separate province of Nagaland in 1963. Subsequently, states of Meghalaya and Mizoram were also created.

However, the demands for separate states from different regions did not stop. Creation of Jharkhand (bifurcating Bihar), Uttarakhand (from Uttar Pradesh) and Chhattisgarh (from Madhya Pradesh) in the year 2000 was in response to such demands. Statehood demands for Vidarbha (from Maharashtra), Budelkhand (from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh) have been continuing for quite long. There has been demand for further division of Uttar Pradesh. Statehood demands for separate Gorkhaland (bifurcating West Bengal), Bodoland (from Assam), etc also have been there for quite some time now. A number of the statehood movements mentioned above, however, moved away from the language-based identity assertion and made regional inequality as the basis of their demand. The most recent example of this is the creation of the new state of Telangana by bifurcating Andhra Pradesh in 2014 although this demand can be traced back to late 1960s. Further, some scholars argue that such demands for creation of new states have to be understood in the context of the decentralization of political life and economic change in India (Tillin 2013).

Rise in the Politics of Regionalism

Politics of regionalism in India can be traced back to the Dravidian identity assertion in Tamil Nadu. Interestingly, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of Tamil Nadu at an early stage asserted its aim for an independent state for the Dravidians. Although they dropped this idea afterwards, they vehemently opposed the move of the Central Government to introduce Hindi as the official language of Government of India in 1965 and it was mainly their opposition which prompted the Central government to continue with both Hindi and English as official languages of the Government of India. In April 1974, the DMK government brought in a resolution in the state assembly urging the Centre to accept the Rajamannar Committee

(http://interstatecouncil.nic.in/rajamannar.html) recommendations on state autonomy and amend the Constitution of India to pave the way for a true federal system.

Similarly, the Shiromani Akali in Punjab articulated their political, economic and cultural views in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution in 1973

(http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/punjab/document/papers/anantpur_sahib_re solution.htm). It clearly underscored that India is a federal and republican geographical entity of different languages, religions and cultures. It stated that in order to safeguard the fundamental rights of the religious and linguistic minorities, to fulfill the demands of the democratic traditions and to pave the way for economic progress, it was imperative that the Indian constitutional infrastructure should be given a real federal shape by redefining the Central and State relations.

Early 1980s witnessed the emergence of some new political parties such as the Telegu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh and Asom Gana Parishad in Assam asserting regional aspirations against the alleged domination of the Central government. Gradually, the country also saw the emergence of political parties like Shiv Sena in Maharashtra founded on anti-immigrant ideology. As Indians from one region have moved in far more greater numbers to another region in the last couple of decades, such anti-immigrant ideology has spread into various other parts of India in recent times posing questions about one Indian identity for all its citizens and the nation building exercise of the Indian state. As Aloysius puts, Indian “(N)ationalism, instead of giving birth to one national society, seems to have delivered a whole litter of communities divided from one another in terms of language, religion, region and caste” (1997 (2000): 1).

Secessionist Challenges

The regional nationalist assertion in India has not been confined only to the demand for creation of linguistic states or for fulfilment of other regional aspirations within the Indian nation state. The latter has had to face the challenges of secessionism from its various regions. Starting with the Naga insurgency in the northeastern region immediately after the independence, such secessionist movements had spread to other groups in the region such as the Mizos, the Manipuri Meteis, the tribal groups in Tripura and the Assamese. Since the early 1980s, the Khalistani insurgency in the state of Punjab assumed a serious turn. Similarly, separatist movement in Kashmir has been a continuous source of challenge to the Indian nation state. Although, Indian state has been negotiating with these movements by various means, sometimes with success, questions have also been raised about the faultlines that using of some of such means, especially military force and repressive laws, have unfolded.

It is, however, to be noted that the Indian state has tried to address the question of diversity of the country in terms of various constitutional provisions for a number of groups and states. In fact, much before the independence of the country, the leadership of the anti-colonial freedom movement acknowledged its staggering diversity which makes it impossible to imagine India in the frame of the western nation states. Therefore, they adopted an inclusive approach to the future nation building in India which was embedded in the phrase “unity in diversity” emphasizing an underlying unity of the people of India despite the differences in language, culture, history, and so on.

After the independence of the country, the leadership of the freedom movement got this understanding enshrined in various provisions of the constitutions. For example, backward groups and communities within the country have been accorded with various provisions to safeguard their political, cultural and economic interests. While the state of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim majority state, was given a special constitutional status under article 370, several states in the northeastern India, inhabited by a majority of tribal population, have also been given special constitutional status where the traditional customary laws of the tribal groups often get precedence over provisions of the Indian constitution. Similarly, many tribal communities which have not been given separate states have been given special status under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the constitution. This is how Indian state has accommodated not only regional aspirations but also the aspirations of the minorities and disadvantaged groups.

Despite a more inclusive constitutional mandate, critics point out that the Indian state often shows a tendency to engage in a project of cultural homogenization in the mold of the dominant Hindi-Hindu culture (Jaffrelot 1993; Hansen 1998) seeking to establish a culturally more uniform nation state. Oommen also contends, “the central issues of nation building in India revolve around the persistent tension between the Hindi-speaking twice born Hindus, who define themselves as the norm-setters and value-givers, the cultural mainstream, and a multiplicity of other primordial collectivities occupying the periphery of the system, depending upon their positioning in the socio-cultural space of India (1993: 473).

Such a tendency of privileging one set of language, culture and religion, mainly belonging to the politically and demographically dominant north India, over others pose to marginalize language, culture and religions of other regions as well as minority communities. In fact, within the followers of Hinduism too there are many and serious regional variations in terms of their rituals, customs and food habits. In a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic, multi-religious society like India, such attempts at homogenization have thus generated apprehensions among the communities which are at the receiving end of such homogenization projects. The attempt of the Government of India to introduce Hindi as the official language of India, for example, has faced repeated resistance time and again. The Anti-Hindi agitations of 1965 forced the central government to abandon its efforts to introduce Hindi as the only official language of the country and to continue with English as the other official language.

Further, the Indian Centre is enormously strong. In constitutional terms itself, India is a union of states. The Indian polity was so designed professedly to keep the newly independent nation with a large number of ethnic identities politically/territorially intact. But the power of the Centre vis-à-vis the states kept on growing far exceeding the original constitutional sanction. Such centralizing tendencies have given rise to rise of politics of regionalism in different parts of India.

Nevertheless, it is to be noted that many of these regional or sub-national articulations and movements, often steered by the interest of the regional elites, have been addressed by the Indian state within the broader framework of the Indian nation state. However, for a long term solution to the conflict between the nation building project of the Indian nation state and the aspirations of smaller nationalities and communities, scholars have argued for a creation of a federal state sensitive to the identities and aspirations of various groups within it. Misra, for example, advocates for “greater decentralization of powers and a radical restructuring of Centre-state relations” (2000: 161) as a solution to the problem.

Sanjib Baruah argues for a shift in the policy of the Indian State from nation building to that of federation building. Referring to the recurrent secessionist movements in the northeastern region of India, he says, “(O)nly a bold new project of genuine federation–building that takes our complex multinational history seriously — and framed as an alternative to nation-building — can become a viable alternative to independentist thought that captures the hearts and minds of so many young people in India’s troubled northeast” (2002: 37). Similar recommendations were made by the Sarkaria Commission (http://interstatecouncil.nic.in/Sarkaria_Commission.html), constituted by the Government of India, which submitted its report on the centre-state relationship in India in 1988. But these recommendations are yet to see implementation. There is no gainsaying that how Indian state negotiates between its concerns about the unity and security of the Indian nation and the rising aspirations of a large number of nationalities within its territorial boundary will largely shape the nature of the Indian nation and nationalism in the times to come.

In the above, we have discussed about the concepts of nation and the other related concepts such as nation state, nationality, nationalism and nation building. A nation is often confused with ethnic group and state. While a people sharing common myths, language, customs, history, religion, etc may constitute an ethnic group, to become a nation it must have an association with a homeland, real or imagined. The state, on the other hand, is a legally constituted institution. While, territory is common to both, there is a crucial difference between national territory and the state territory in that the former is a moral and the latter a legal entity. When the territorial boundary of a state is co-terminus with the cultural, linguistic and ethnic division of the people (nation) within it, it becomes a nation state. The concept of nation state based on the concept of ‘one nation, one state’ became a dominant mode of state forms in the Western Europe and subsequently came to inform the nation building projects of the newly independent states in various parts of the world including India.

The Indian state is constituted by many groups and nationalities. Some of these preceded and some emerged simultaneous to the Indian nation which grew out of the colonial rule in India. The anti-colonial rule gave rise to the idea of Indian nation and nationalism which went on to inform the nation building exercise of the post-independence Indian state. Although the Indian constitution offers a more inclusive mandate with regard to the Indian nation building, critics argue that the Indian state have been engaged in a project of cultural homogenization in the mold of the dominant culture seeking to establish a culturally more uniform nation state. This has stood in the way of political, economic and cultural aspirations of the smaller nationalities and other minorities prompting different kinds of protest and assertions among them. While the Indian state has achieved some success in addressing some of these issues and concerns, problems remain calling for a more inclusive nation building in India.

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Nation-Building

Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent.The desired outcome is to achieve national integration (Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to national integration. Thus, nation-building has been theorized as a structural process intertwined with industrialization, urbanization, social mobilization, etc. (Structural Explanations); as the result of deliberate state policies that aim at the homogenization of a state along the lines of a specific constitutive story—that can and often does change over time and under certain conditions (State-Planned Policies); as the product of top-bottom processes that could originate from forces outside of the boundaries of the relevant state; and as the product of bottom-up processes that do not require any state intervention to come about (Contingency, Events, and Demonstration Effects). Since the emergence of nationalism as the dominant ideology to legitimate authority and the template of the nation-state as an organizational principle of the international system, state elites have pursued different policies toward the various unassimilated groups within their territorial boundaries (Seminal Case Studies) with variable consequences (Nation-Building and Its Consequences). Thus, scholars have suggested that the nation-building experience of each state—or lack thereof—has had an impact on patterns of State Formation and Social Order, Self-Determination Movements, War Onset, and Public Goods Provision .

Related Papers

Studies on National Movements

Harris Mylonas

Nation-building refers to the policies that core group governing elites pursue toward non-core groups in their effort to manage social order within state boundaries in ways that promotes a particular national narrative over any other. Such policies may vary widely ranging from assimilationist to exclusionary ones (Mylonas 2012; Bulutgil 2016). Moreover, the content of the national narrative or constitutive story (Smith 2003) varies dramatically from case to case. The systematic study of the process of nation-building intensified following the Second World War primarily in relation to decolonization movements and the associated establishment of postcolonial independent states around the globe (Emerson 1960). However, the field was initially dominated by assumptions and logics developed based on European experiences with nation-building. We would not be that interested in nation-building were it not for its far-reaching impact on state formation and social order, self-determination movements, war onset, and public goods provision. The desired outcome of nation-building is to achieve social order and national integration (Wimmer 2018). Nation-building, when successful, results in societies where individuals are primarily loyal to the nation. This process of national integration facilitates military recruitment, tax collection, law enforcement, public goods provision and cooperation (Bendix 1977). There are also negative aspects of this process as well including violent policies, at times chauvinistic nationalism, even cultural genocide. When nation-building is either not pursued or is unsuccessful it leads to either state collapse (through civil war and/or secessionists movements) or to weak states (Darden & Mylonas 2016). In fact, many civil wars or national schisms can be understood as national integration crises (Mavrogordatos 1983). Nation-building has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. For the purposes of this review essay, I focus on an overlooked distinction in the study of nation-building: works that focus on the onset, those studying the process, and finally the ones that try to account for the outcome: success or failure. While there is overlap between these fields, each approach is focusing on a different question. Studies of onset are preoccupied with when, where, and why does nation-building take place to begin with. Works that focus on process are exploring the alternative paths to nation-building that could or have been taken. Finally, studies concentrating on the outcome analyze the societal consequences of the various paths to nation-building. Distinguishing between onset, process and outcome allows us to avoid several methodological pitfalls when testing arguments. For instance, oftentimes a theory focusing on onset is mistakenly tested on outcomes. We should not expect arguments aiming at explaining variation in nation-building policies, i.e., focusing on process, to also explain success or failure, i.e., outcomes. Similarly, once we internalize the importance of this distinction, we can be more careful in articulating our scope conditions. For example, if a place did not ever experience nation-building efforts then it probably should not make it into the universe of cases of studies that are trying to account for outcomes of nation-building policies. This theoretical move will help scholars unearth the linkages between aspects of nation-building and important effects such as military recruitment, civil war onset, or public goods provision.

Journal of Humanities and Social Policy

Ikeh Chinyere

The concept of nationbuilding probably possesses the weirdest trajectories of interpretation in the social sciences and the associated disciplines and endevours. Purposeful research undertakings in the affected fields entail properly reconciling the associated contradictions. But it appears as if scholars have given up on arriving at a modicum of relatedness in their different perceptions of nationbuilding. Hence, extant literature seems to be devoid of researches attempting to achieve the necessary conceptual linkages. There is an embedded pedantic hue in the positions of scholars exceedingly maintaining their viewpoints as what ought to be the correct usage of the concept. Others usually approach the conceptualization of nationbuilding from its mere linguistic dimensions. What truly is the meaning of nationbuilding? This paper aims at taking a position on the constructive definition of nationbuilding. The methodology of the work is qualitative and this possesses bearing with an inevitable approach of reviewing related literature. This article considers the inherent scenarios as academically unbecoming. The paper holds unassumingly that nationbuilding means the process of weaving an indomitable new nation out of a diversity of existing national inclinations. The paper's standpoint is envisaged to provoke further researches in the area of searching for similarities among scholars' perceptions of nationbuilding.

Sociological Forum

John Torpey

Dario Navaro

My dissertation examines the impact of four key independent variables on nation-building, on the evolution of the spread and intensity of nationalism. An ethnic basis (language, culture, identity, etc.) similar to the desired end-product as well as the growth of education facilitate nation-building. In most cases, industrialization hinders nation-building. Sudden shocks (collapses of empires, wars and revolutions) change the intensity of nationalism scores significantly during very short periods.%%%%

Dejan Guzina , Catherine Goetze

Sinisa Malesevic , Tamara Pavasović Trošt

Journal of Globalization Studies

Dmitri Bondarenko

In the form the nation-state has been known until now it formed in Europe and North America in the Early Modern time and flourished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being adequate to realities of the world of industrial capitalism and cultural nationalism. However, nowadays other trends, related to superintensive globalization and post-industrialism, are dominating in the world. At present, the Western states have to depart from the classical concept of the nation and seek solutions to a completely different problem-of supporting their citizens' unity at preservation of cultural diversity brought by migrants from all over the world in recent decades. Under the current circumstances, it should not be ruled out that post-colonial states, most of which are multicultural initially due to their unique history of formation, will find themselves in an advantageous position, if they abandon attempts to build nations according to the outdated classical Western pattern. While irreversible, globalization is associated with Modernity (Modern time) started in the West half a millennium ago, nation-building in contemporary post-colonial countries shows that globalization is by no means equal to Westernization, and that Modernity as a historically-specific type of society and culture, splits into multiple modernities.

Vojin Rakic

Both the modernists and primordialists are confronted with identical manifestations of the ethnic phenomenon. Their explanations of this phenomenon, however, differ substantially and do not seem reconcilable, since a primordial phenomenon cannot have emerged for the first time with the modern human. Nevertheless, one does not have to accept the modernist position if one abandons primordialism. Some nations, namely, may have emerged in pre-modern times, but as a consequence of a particular historical moment and not as a matter of necessity. For instance, the ancient Greeks, Jews and (to a lesser degree) Romans exhibited a type of collective identity which may be called national identity (Kohn 1945) and which does not have to be a natural form of social cohesion. In that respect, modernists can justify their claims only by adopting a restrictive use of the term 'nation.' Those who do not accept such a restrictive use may allow the modernist only the minimalist and tautological statement that 'modern nations are a modern phenomenon.' The fact that similar manifestations of the ethnic phenomenon are explained by cogent, but different (sometimes conflicting) theories, often depending on the selection of cases (as a more detailed insight in the mentioned theories would reveal), might indicate that it is perhaps impossible to develop a universal theory of nation formation. This article will cautiously side with this claim on the basis of an interpretation of a number of cases of nation formation and nation assimilation in two (former) multinational and authoritarian states (the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia), which applied mechanisms of state power to manipulate ethnic processes. The fact that contemporary mechanisms of coercive state power were only in some cases successful in the direction of ethnic processes will serve as the basis for the development of a model of nation formation which seems most appropriate for the regions. This article will concentrate on Caucasia, Macedonia and Montenegro. This model, however, will not claim its universal validity. On the contrary, it is supposed to serve as an illustration of the assertion that nation formation and nationalism may be explained by different theoretical models, frequently depending on the cases they address.

Mangal Research Journal

dilip nepal

The wave of globalization and the impossibility to maintain uniformity within the nation-state, which in itself is characterized by diversities, has reframed the past status of nation-state in the contemporary globe. In this article, the author considers the scopes and strengths of nation-state are diminishing in the contemporary global order, arguing that the pervasive implications of globalization and the emergence of dissident voices within the specific geo-political territories have posed pragmatic problems in the traditional notion and stand strand of nation-state. As globalization has opened newer avenues with wider spaces of opportunities to the people all across the globe, the culture, tradition, religion, language, emotional affinity within the specified communal people, which are considered to be binding aspects of nation-state, don't sustain the same values as that used to hold in the past. The digital media and communication, advancement of transportation and the flow of knowledge and goods in the postmodern world have been key instruments to the people to transcend national boundary and promote the cross country affinity. Besides, this paper also explores and analyses how an effort to maintain uniformity in structure within particular political geography fails due to its undeniable reality of socio-cultural and economic variations among people within the same territory. If the uniformity and harmony, as assumed, are synonymous to nation-state, why are many countries suffering with civil wars? Hence, this paper attempts to record the practical problems which have created questions on traditionally elated space and scope of nation-state. Moreover, to examine and analyze this situation, the author uses qualitative method.

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Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building for Students and Children

500 words essay on role of youths in nation building.

It is a well-known fact that the youth of any country is a great asset. They are indeed the future of the country and represent it at every level. The role of youths in nation-building is more important than you might think. In other words, the intelligence and work of the youth will take the country on the pathway of success. As every citizen is equally responsible, the youth is too. They are the building blocks of a country.

Role of Youth

The youth is important because they will be our future. Today they might be our partners, tomorrow they will go on to become leaders. The youths are very energetic and enthusiastic. They have the ability to learn and adapt to the environment . Similarly, they are willing to learn and act on it as well to achieve their goals.

Our youth can bring social reform and improvement in society. We cannot make do without the youth of a country. Furthermore, the nation requires their participation to achieve the goals and help in taking the country towards progress.

Likewise, we see how the development of any country requires active participation from the youth. It does not matter which field we want to progress in, whether it is the technical field or sports field, youth is needed. It is up to us how to help the youth in playing this role properly. We must make all the youth aware of their power and the role they have to play in nation-building.

Ways to Help the Youth

There are many ways in which we can help the youth of our country to achieve their potential. For that, the government must introduce programs that will help in fighting off issues like unemployment, poor education institutes and more to help them prosper without any hindrance.

Similarly, citizens must make sure to encourage our youth to do better in every field. When we constantly discourage our youth and don’t believe in them, they will lose their spark. We all must make sure that they should be given the wind beneath their wings to fly high instead of bringing them down by tying chains to their wings.

Furthermore, equal opportunities must be provided for all irrespective of caste, creed, gender , race, religion and more. There are various issues of nepotism and favoritism that is eating away the actual talent of the country. This must be done away with as soon as possible. We must make sure that every youth has the chance to prove themselves worthy and that must be offered equally to all.

In short, our youth has the power to build a nation so we must give them the opportunity. They are the future and they have the perspective which the older generations lack. Their zeal and enthusiasm must be channelized properly to help a nation prosper and flourish.

FAQ on Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building

Q.1 What role does youth play in nation-building?

A.1 The youth plays a great role in nation-building. It has the power to help a country develop and move towards progress. It also is responsible for bringing social reform within a country. The youth of a country determine the future of a nation.

Q.2 How can we help youth?

A.2 As well all know youth is facing too many problems nowadays. We need to give them equal opportunities in every field so they can succeed well. They must be given all the facilities and also encouraged to take the challenge to achieve success.

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Guest Essay

Modi’s Temple of Lies

A rendering of Narendra Modi wearing a crown that features raised fists, lotus flowers and other Hindu iconography.

By Siddhartha Deb

Mr. Deb is the author of the novel “The Light at the End of the World.”

The sleepy pilgrimage city of Ayodhya in northern India was once home to a grand 16th-century mosque, until it was illegally demolished by a howling mob of Hindu militants in 1992. The site has since been reinvented as the centerpiece of the Hindu-chauvinist “ new India ” promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In 2020, as Covid-19 raged unchecked across the country, Mr. Modi, the leader of the Hindu right, went to Ayodhya to inaugurate construction of a three-story sandstone temple to the Hindu god Ram on the site of the former mosque. Dressed in shiny, flowing clothes and wearing a white N95 mask, he offered prayers to the Ram idol and the 88-pound silver brick being inserted as the foundation stone.

I traveled to Ayodhya a year later and watched as the temple was hurriedly being built. But it seemed to me to offer not the promise of a new India so much as the seeds of its downfall.

Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism has fed distrust and hostility toward anything foreign, and the receptionists at my hotel were sullenly suspicious of outsiders. There was no hotel bar — a sign of Hindu virtue — and the food served was pure vegetarian, a phrase implying both Hindu caste purity and anti-Muslim prejudice.

Outside, devotional music blared on loudspeakers while bony, manure-smeared cows, protected by Hindu law, wandered waterlogged streets in the rain. The souvenir shops at the temple displayed a toxic Hindu masculinity, highlighted by garish shirts featuring images of a steroid-fed Ram, all bulging muscles and chiseled six-packs. Even Hanuman, Ram’s wise but slightly mischievous monkey companion, appeared largely in the snarling Modi-era version known as Angry Hanuman , which went viral in 2018 after Mr. Modi praised the design.

After a decade of rule by Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, Hindu-majority India maintains the facade of a democracy and has so far avoided the overt features of a theocracy. Yet, as Ayodhya revealed, it has, for all practical purposes, become a Hindu state. Adherence to this idea is demanded from everyone, whether Hindu or not.

This is not sustainable, even if it seems likely that Mr. Modi will ride to a third victory in national parliamentary elections that begin Friday and conclude June 1. Mr. Modi’s India is marked by rampant inequality, lack of job prospects, abysmal public health and the increasing ravages of climate change. These crises cannot be addressed by turning one of the world’s most diverse countries into a claustrophobic Hindu nation.

Perhaps even the prime minister and his party can sense this. Their crackdowns on opposition political leaders, manipulation of electoral rolls and voting machines and freezing of campaign funds for opposition parties are not the actions of a confident group.

In January of this year, a wave of Hindu euphoria swept the nation as the temple I had watched being put together with cement and lies (there is no conclusive evidence supporting Hindu claims that Ram was a historical figure or that a temple to him previously stood there) was about to be inaugurated .

Newspapers devoted rapturous front pages to the coming occasion, and when I flew to my former home Kolkata on the eve of the big day, my neighbors there declared their anticipation by setting off firecrackers late into the night. The next morning, on Jan. 22, loudspeakers and television screens tracked me through the city with Sanskrit chants and images of the ceremony taking place at the temple. Mr. Modi, as usual, was at the center of every visual. Friends in Delhi and Bangalore complained about insistent neighbors and strangers knocking on their doors to share celebratory sweets. Courts, banks, schools, stock markets and other establishments in much of the country took a holiday.

The inauguration date seems to have been chosen carefully to overshadow Republic Day, on Jan. 26, which commemorates India’s adoption in 1950 of a “socialist, secular, democratic” Constitution. Those values are fiercely in opposition to what Hindu nationalism has ushered in. The temple inauguration date, which will be celebrated annually, reduces the republic to secondary status next to Mr. Modi’s Hindu utopia.

A similar effort has been underway to diminish the importance of Aug. 15, marking Indian independence in 1947. In 2021, Mr. Modi announced that Aug. 14 would henceforth be Partition Horrors Remembrance Day, referring to the bloody division of the country into Hindu-majority India and an independent Muslim Pakistan in 1947, a murderous affair for Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs alike.

This was sold to the Indian public as underlining the need for unity, but it was also a reminder from Hindu nationalists that a section of Muslims broke off to form their own nation and that the loyalties of India’s remaining 200 million Muslims were suspect. Given that Hindu rightists participated in massacres, rapes and forced displacement during the partition, Mr. Modi’s weaponization of the suffering seems particularly reprehensible. I was born to a Hindu family, and my father, a refugee from the partition, never blamed Muslims his entire life.

There have been countless other such stratagems with the Hindu right in power. The old Parliament building, whose design features refer to India’s syncretic history — Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian — was replaced last year by a new structure that explicitly reduces India’s past to a monochromatic Hindu one.

In the new Parliament, the lotus flower, common in Hindu iconography and the symbol of the Bharatiya Janata Party, runs amok as a motif. A statue atop the building of four back-to-back lions — India’s national symbol and a look back at its Buddhist past — has been altered so that the lions are no longer serene and meditative, as in the original, but snarling, hypermuscular Hindu beasts . Everywhere in India, roads and cities have been renamed to sever connections to centuries of Muslim history in favor of a manufactured Hindu one. On new highways through the state of Uttar Pradesh, where I traveled last summer, gleaming signboards pointed toward concocted Hindu sites but almost never toward the state’s rich repository of Muslim mosques, forts and shrines.

Knowledge and culture are being attacked along similar lines. Bollywood , Indian television and the publishing industry have become willing accomplices of Hindu chauvinists, churning out content based on Hindu mythology and revisionist history. In the news media, the few journalists and institutions unwilling to shill for the Hindu cause face legal threats and police raids .

In education, government institutions are run by ignorant functionaries of the ruling party , and from school textbooks to scientific research papers , the Hindu nationalist version of India is pushed forward, myth morphing into history. In the private universities that have begun to crop up in India, Mr. Modi’s government keeps a close eye on classes, panels or research that might be construed as criticizing his government or its idea of a Hindu India.

This cultural shift and the accompanying reduction of Muslims to alien intruders has been made possible by Mr. Modi delivering on his party’s three main promises to Hindu nationalists .

In 2019 he repealed the notional autonomy enjoyed for decades by the disputed Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir, which the Hindu right had assailed as favoritism toward Muslims and victimization of Hindus. Later that year, Mr. Modi delivered on a second promise by introducing a law that ostensibly opened a pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted minorities from neighboring countries but whose true motive lay in that it pointedly excluded Muslims. In the northeastern state of Assam , a registration process had already been underway to disenfranchise Muslims if they could not provide elaborate documentation of their Indian citizenship. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s declared intention to establish a similar registration system nationwide hangs the threat of disenfranchisement over all of India’s Muslims.

The inauguration of the Ram temple delivered on the third and most important electoral promise. It announced, triumphantly, the climax of the battle to turn India into a Hindu nation. And yet after 10 years under Mr. Modi’s government, India is more unequal than it was under colonial British rule. In 2020 and 2021, it surpassed China as the largest source of international migrants to O.E.C.D. countries. Many of the undocumented migrants to be found pleading for entry on the U.S.-Mexico border are from India , and they include Hindus for whom India should be a utopia.

The Hindu right’s near-complete control of India may indeed deliver a third term for Mr. Modi, maybe even the absolute parliamentary majority his party wants in order to expand on the transformation it has begun.

But the truth is harder to hide than ever. Mr. Modi and his party are giving India the Hindu utopia they promised, and in the clear light of day, it amounts to little more than a shiny, garish temple that is a monument to majoritarian violence, surrounded by waterlogged streets, emaciated cattle and a people impoverished in every way.

Siddhartha Deb ( @debhartha ) is an Indian writer who lives in New York. His most recent novel is “The Light at the End of the World.” His new nonfiction book is “Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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COMMENTS

PDF Nation-Building, Nationalism, and Wars
Alesina et al. (2017) consider nation-building but do not consider wars. They focus on the incentive to \nation-build" as a response to democratization. The interplay between democratization and external threats may exacerbate the need to nation-build and is left for future research. A number of papers study the relationship between war and the ...
Nation-Building
Nation-building, when successful, results in societies where individuals are primarily loyal to the nation. This process of national integration facilitates military recruitment, tax collection, law enforcement, public goods provision and cooperation ( Bendix 1977 ). There are also negative aspects of this process as well including violent ...
Nationalism: What We Know and What We Still Need to Know
Accidental nation-building Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association Aug. 29-Sep. 1 Washington, DC: ... An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism Oxford, UK: Clarendon. vom Hau M. 2009. Unpacking the school: textbooks, teachers, and the construction of nationhood in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru ...
Nation-Building
Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent. The desired outcome is to achieve national integration ( Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions ). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to national integration.
Between "imagined" and "real" nation-building: identities and
Framing nationhood and identities in post-Soviet Central Asia. Work on nation-building and identities in Central Asia has typically been framed using Rogers Brubaker's concept of "nationalizing states" (Brubaker Citation 1996).A "nationalizing state" is viewed in ethno-cultural terms whereby the titular national majority seeks to reinforce and promote its national identity upon the ...
Nation-building
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. ... Nationalities Papers (2021): 1-18. online; ... Junco, José Alvarez. "The nation-building process in nineteenth-century Spain." in Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula (Routledge, 2020) pp. 89-106.
The Role of Nationalism in Nation-State Creating and Nation-Building
With regard to state-building, as state creation was a child of liberal nationalism, conservative nationalism was more oriented towards emphasising regressive trains of thought, such as speaking of and praising past heroes, traditions, and victories that made that particular nation special and unique in comparison with other nation-states ...
What is Nationalism and Why Should We Study it?
Most essays on nationalism begin with the lament that the concept is as fuzzy as the states of mind it is supposed to describe are diverse. Studies of ... Nation building, infusing a sense of national identity, depends, in my argument, on the vic-tory of the legal-rational form over its potential competitors. The fact that
2 National Identities and Nation-building
These responses invoke nation-building, relying to various degrees on nationalist, liberal, republican, and multicultural community conceptions, that is, conceptions of the social basis for intergroup relations and cooperation. ... distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism, where ethnic nationalism defines the nation in terms of ethnic ...
PDF Nation-building, Nationalism and Wars National Bureau of Economic Research
Nation-Building, Nationalism and Wars 2 This paper examines nation-building in times of war. Mass warfare favored the transfor-mation from the ancient regimes (based purely on rent extraction) to modern nation states in two ways. First, the state became a provider of mass public goods in order to buy the support of the population.
Nation-Building and Nationalism: South Asia, 1947-90
South Asia has been a true laboratory for the students of nation-building and nationalism. No other region has experienced two partitions of the magnitude of those of 1947 and 1971. Such a violent history did not stem from the religious and linguistic diversity of the Indian subcontinent—that would be a simplistic interpretation—but from ...
Nation-building Process: [Essay Example], 2315 words
The process of nation-building is an effort to develop the spirit of patriotism and solidarity to create a country whose people share a common identity. The major aim is to foster national unity by developing a new nation and an integrated race (Hippler, 2002:1-3). In Malaysia, the idea of establishing a nation was initiated before Malayan ...
19 Latin America: State-Building and Nationalism
25 Nation-Building and Nationalism: South Asia, 1947-90 Notes. Notes. 26 Nationalism in Southeastern Europe, 1970-2000 Notes. Notes. Notes. Expand Part IV Nationalism in a World ... This essay covers the period from the late nineteenth until the late twentieth century. Two factors that had a significant impact on both state-building and ...
Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall
Micro-summary: Successful nation-building happens due to pre-existing inclusive political institutions and national identification. Summary: In this book, the author investigates the puzzle of why certain ethnically diverse countries were able to create solid and resilient nation-states while others have broken down. To do so, he examines the ...
Citizenship, Nationalism, and Nation-Building
From the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) to the First World War, the rise of modern citizenship was coterminous with the development of nation-states and nationalism as a secular ideology of the state. Nation-building involved the production of a uniform and integrated society of loyal, well-trained and healthy (male) citizens, if possible speaking ...
Citizenship, National Identity, and Nation-Building in Azerbaijan
The aim of this article is to shed light on the process of nation-building and the formation of national identity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The peculiarity of Azerbaijani nation-building is that the debates on how to build a nation and define national identity were nourished by two discourses: Azerbaijanism (Azerbaycançılıq) and Turkism (Tűrkçűlűk).
PDF The Concept of Nationbuilding: Theoretical Expositions
Keywords: Nationbuilding, State building, Nationalism, Concept of nationbuilding, Building a nation Introduction . Journal of Humanities and Social Policy E-ISSN 2545-5729 P-ISSN 2695 2416 Vol 8. No. 1 2022 www.iiardjournals.org ... ―nation-building is the intervention in the affairs of a nation-state for the purpose of changing the state's ...
Nationalism Essay for Students and Children
500 Words Essay on Nationalism. Nationalism is an ideology which shows an individual's love & devotion towards his nation. It is actually people's feelings for their nation as superior to all other nations. The concept of nationalism in India developed at the time of the Independence movement.
Nation, nationality and nation building in India
In the above, we have discussed about the concepts of nation and the other related concepts such as nation state, nationality, nationalism and nation building. A nation is often confused with ethnic group and state. While a people sharing common myths, language, customs, history, religion, etc may constitute an ethnic group, to become a nation ...
(PDF) The Essence of Nationalism and Patriotism in Nation Building
A Presentation on the Concept of Nationalism and Patriotism in Nation Building at the POSA-HISOK and Social Science Society Symposium at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, 13th ...
(PDF) Nation-Building
Harris Mylonas. 2020. Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent.The desired outcome is to achieve national integration (Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to ...
Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building for Students
Q.1 What role does youth play in nation-building? A.1 The youth plays a great role in nation-building. It has the power to help a country develop and move towards progress. It also is responsible for bringing social reform within a country. The youth of a country determine the future of a nation.
Modi's Hindu Utopia Is a Tawdry Mirage
Siddhartha Deb ( @debhartha) is an Indian writer who lives in New York. His most recent novel is "The Light at the End of the World.". His new nonfiction book is "Twilight Prisoners: The ...