The Nation-State Problematic in Asia: The South Asian Experience

Abstract

If nations and nationalism are products of industrialisation and modernity, then South Asia is not supposed to have the concept of nationalism since the region neither has experienced industrialisation nor has it undergone the transformation of modernity. The history of nation building in South Asia is a story of adaptation to alien values by the prudent manipulation of political elites. In the name of modernisation, South Asians were asked to relinquish their traditional values and opt for values that were purely western and projected as rational, and the only way to a better sociopolitical future. In the process, for political expediency, the colonial masters dissected the composite society into compartments, thus unwittingly preparing the grounds for debasing the concept of a composite nationhood that was endogenous to the Indian subcontinent. However, in the end the South Asian subcontinent was divided on religious grounds. The two infant nations set out to build nation-states that would be viable as modern states and united as nations. Both nations are still struggling to build their desired nation-states, and the primary threat has come from the question of “ethnicity” that has been haunting them both. The problems India and Pakistan face along with the other South Asian nations are: a multiplicity of nationalities; the overlapping geographical boundaries among nationalities; and the failure to articulate a common nationality.

Keywords

• South Asia, India, Pakistan, nationalism.

References

1. Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964, p. 1.
2. Shibashis Chatterjee, “Ethnic Conflicts in South Asia: A Constructivist Reading”, South Asian Survey, Vol. 12, No. 1 (March 2005), p. 83.
3. Rajat Ganguly and Ray Taras, Understanding Ethnic Conflict: The International Dimension, New York, Addison Wesley Longman, 1998, p. 9.
4. Urmila Phanis and Rajat Ganguly, Ethnicity and Nation-Building in South Asia, (revised edition), New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2001, p. 19.
5. Ernest Barker, National Character and the Factors in its Formation, London, Methuen, 1927, p. 17; quoted in Phanis and Ganguly, Ethnicity and Nation-Building in South Asia, pp. 19-20.
6. In most cases, particularly in Asia and Africa, state-building preceded nation-building, making the national identity of the state not as natural as ethnic nationalities.
7. Brendan O’Leary, “Introduction” and “The Elements of Right-Sizing and Right Peopling of State”, in Brendan O’Leary, Ian S. Lustick and Thomas Callaghy (eds.), Right-Sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. 9 Ibid.
8. The term communal here is used to refer to groupings that could be formed on various identities.

9. Phanis and Ganguly, Ethnicity and Nation-Building in South Asia, p. 146.
10. “Low culture” here refers to the culture of the agroliterate societies. Gellner identifies nationalism with “high culture” prevalent in industrialised societies from the “wild” or low culture that characterises agroliterate societies. See, Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 50- 52.
11. In line with the endogenous conception of nationhood in South Asia, nationalist aspiration means preserving the primordial identities within a composite political unit.
12. Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, London, Routledge, 1998, p. 73.
13. Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1985, p. 116. 16 Ibid.
14. There cannot be a single answer to what could have been better suited political structures for South Asia. A probable alternative could have been the creation of accommodative political structures that provided a space for the traditional institutions to operate and act as agents of modernisation.
15. Ayesha Jalal, “South Asia”, Encyclopaedia of Nationalism, Academic Press, 2000, p. 2.
16. As Ernest Renan argues, “[a] nation’s existence is a daily plebiscite”. Ernst Renan, “What is a Nation?”, translation of Renan’s Lecture delivered at Soborne, 11 March 1882, at www. cooper.edu [last visited 12 January 2014].