There is no political or social force stronger than a national or group identity. The idea of liberal individualism may seem more dominant but its antithesis that which balances it, is nationalism, tribalism or group or national identity. The nation one belongs to is for most people one of the first and most fundamental ways there to find even if they don’t acknowledge it. But what drives this identity? Is it a natural allegiance to those geographically or culturally closest? Or has it developed through the arguments of what utility does national identity have?
Primordialism
One of the first groups of theories of national identity is Primordialism. It is a term first used by Edward Shils who in an influential article written in 1975 argued that national identities with natural ineffable bonds and are the ties of blood. All primordial national identity explains through congruity, customs, relations, and language
one is born into naturally. Primordialism emphasises that national identity is a priori that it is not a changeable social construction but an inevitable force. A strong emotional connection and kinship that drives everyone in unison.
Clifford Geertz another primordial theorist writes that they have overpowering coerciveness in and of themselves. But let’s not give all
the credit to Primordialism because over the years since its inception it has come under
a lot of criticism, for not fully understanding invasion, colonialism, land acquisition and slavery. In an often-quoted article The Poverty
of Primordialism by Jack David Eller and M. Coughlan argue that evidence disputes the idea that there is anything natural about these ties and that there is strong evidence that they are socially constructed. The authors argue that
the language of primordialism implies that national identity is a spiritual, mystical, and unchangeable phenomenon and it has been here since the beginning, withstanding the vagueness of the meaning of beginning. National identity for primordialists, is something that affects you that you don’t have any control over.
Enter the Modernists
Modernist theories of national identity generally critique primordialism because they argue that national identity developed roughly over the
last two centuries simultaneously to modern phenomena like Capitalism, Democracy, Urbanisation which led to Peri-urbanisation and Industrialisation. In other words, national identity is not a natural or biological inclination. Ernest Gellner is by far the most influential theorists of nationalism. For Gellner modern nationalism, is a clear result of Western Industrialisation in the 19th Century.
Instead of being born into a family roll of cattle butchers or carpenters, a citizen can be “transformed” by the state to suit their requirement. While it is true for America or European countries it is not so easy to understand the nuances of class and caste difference of India through the same lens. Gellner writes, “A modern society is, in this respect like a modern army, only more so. It provides a very prolonged and fairly thorough training for all its recruits, insisting on certain shared qualifications: literacy, numeracy, basic work habits, and social skills... The assumption is that anyone who has completed the generic training common to the entire population can be re-trained from most other jobs without too much difficulty.”
In other words, a shared national culture is necessary for citizens to be mobile and within that culture education, especially universal literacy is key and national identity is essential to modern industrial societies. For example, if I’m from Bangalore and I move to Mumbai I can be sure that things will work in roughly the same way.
Benedict Anderson
Gellner’s theory is laid out in the book Nations and Nationalism published in 1983; and in
the same year another influential book by Benedict Anderson titled Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and the Spread of Nationalism also was published.
Benedict Anderson defines the nation as imagined political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. He describes the nation as imagined because as he writes, “The members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them yet in the minds of each lives the image of their Communion.”
Now, what comes to mind when we hear the term “Anti-National” is someone who is not a fellow patriot and an Indian. But how do we see the members of our own country in either
a negative or positive light? How do Indians relate to national identity? Think also about the relationship between the nation as an idea and the concept of the border, for instance even in India where the ocean naturally creates this division, at least in the southern half of it, but the idea of border only becomes a reality when we use words to describe what is or isn’t
a national boundary. The current tensions between India and China could elaborate on that even more so. We have never walked along the border of India and it may not be absolutely accurate but we are educated to believe that
this patch of land defines us. Anderson suggests that the modern age of nationalism began in
the western Europe in the 18th century for a complex variety of reasons including of print capitalism meaning that the wide circulation
of reading material to the masses in one common dialect rather than exclusively Latin brought dispersed locales together through a new and shared language. Anderson argues the newspaper began to present the nation as a continuous story with characters coming and exiting the stage at different times on top of
this you assume that imagined others in the community. We have read the same story and we share a cultural code.
Anderson’s studies look into Asia and Latin America asking why in the former, nationalism in Vietnam, Cambodia and China were at odds with each other when they are all communist countries. And in the latter asking why nationalism developed on a continent with roughly a shared language. Anderson argues that the combination of capitalism and print media created these imagined geographical networks. For example, even in a semi-industrialised society people walking the same path, wearing the same uniform, eating the same sanctioned food, going on the same sanctioned bus and getting information from the same newspaper create a certain shape of intangible stories
and bonds that create an illusion of imagined community. Nowadays this is being done
by state sponsored TV news channels in the country.
An important question to ask at this point is how Anderson describes our Imagined Communities as political. In one sense as he writes, “Regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately this fraternity that makes it possible over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.”
Another question to ask is how does an imagined community become so real in the minds of its individual members so as to
render such sacrifice as unquestionable and even expected? For Anderson the answer lied somewhere in the construction of nationalism. For example, the state can construct a nationalist sentiment through the idea of the “unknown soldier”— the unknown soldier representing not so much a person but an ideal and becomes the site onto which discourses about the nation come together that one can and should sacrifice their lives for the nation. Anyone by this logic can either be excluded from the national consciousness or be villainised.
The Invention of Tradition
The historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, through a Marxist reading of nationalism in the book Invention of Tradition argues that national myths are perpetuated through repetition and continuity of the past which justifies itself through an ability to conserve. A kind of, ‘it’s worked before so we should keep doing it’ mentality. So, nationalism helps to legitimize the status-quo.
Of course those with power are usually the ones to decide on what path does long-standing or successful and so what encounters for elites might not do for the disenfranchised for a Marxist like Hobsbawm. Then nationalism
is inherently linked to class; so nationalism and national identity are of course powerful phenomena sometimes encouragingly so and sometimes dangerously. Understanding how and why they function may help us to learn
to read and pacify some of its most dangerous effects or expand upon some of its most useful.
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