{"id":55,"date":"2018-07-16T09:17:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T09:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soc15.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=55"},"modified":"2018-07-18T07:12:21","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T07:12:21","slug":"earnest-gellner-and-benedict-anderson-on-the-nation-and-nationalism","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/soc15\/chapter\/earnest-gellner-and-benedict-anderson-on-the-nation-and-nationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Earnest Gellner and Benedict Anderson on the Nation and Nationalism"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\nIntroduction:-<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

This module will engage with the two prominent thinkers of the 20th century who worked on the idea of Nation, Nationalism and its aspects. Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson, who are prominently known for their contribution to Nationalism, gave two different perspectives which are both relevant in today\u2019s times. Ernest Gellner\u2019s works highlight how nationalism is primarily a Political Principle and what exactly it is that constitutes Nationalism. Critically looking into the Nationalism debates of the past few centuries, Gellner\u2019s vantage point provides a view which underscores how the idea of Nationalism has been understood as something which is given and natural. A departure from various other conceptions of Nationalism comes at this juncture. His account of work focuses on how Nationalism has been a product of Modernity. This principle is constantly created and re-created and produces the feeling of \u2018us\u2019 belonging to one particular nation. In fact the very survival of a nation works on these feelings and principles.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Similarly, Benedict Anderson who has worked on this aspect focuses on feelings of the masses however he differs with Gellner in terms of what are the reasons and the manifestations of those very feelings. Anderson calls Nation as an \u2018imagined community\u2019. The cultural roots that we establish and try to link ourselves with our co-inhabitants in the very same land produces a sense of community and this is precisely where we affirm that we are one nation. \u2018National consciousness is created and that instils the reaffirmation of a nation and it keeps the concept and the issues related alive\u2019(Anderson, 1983, p. 24).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Joseph Stalin mentions that \u2018A nation is primarily a community, a definite community of people\u2019. A nation is not a racial or tribal, but historically constituted community of people. (D.Smith, 1994). This is to say we are constantly thinking that people belonging to one nation are of one community and that defines us as a nation. Anthony Giddens, argues that \u2018A \u2018nation\u2019 only exists when a state has a unified administrative reach over the territory over which its sovereignty is claimed. The development of plurality of nations is basic to the centralization and administrative expansion of state domination internally, since the fixing of borders depends upon the reflexive ordering of a state system\u2019 (D.Smith, 1994). The understanding of a nation here is essentially to highlight how the issues of territoriality and sovereignty has crucial role to play. One can claim that it is their nation when there are demarcated, delimited boundaries and allocation of administrative powers within a state. Walker Connor argues, \u2018Defining and conceptualizing nation is much more difficult because the essence of a nation is intangible. This essence is a psychological bond that joins a people and differentiates it, in the subconscious conviction if its members, from all other people in a most vital way. The nature of that bond and is the well-spring remain shadowy and elusive, and the consequent difficulty\u00a0this task defining the nation is usually acknowledged by those who attempt this task\u2019 (D.Smith, 1994). The very idea of belonging to a particular nation and the \u2018sense\u2019 that we develop has to do with the psychological aspect of feelings. Bismarck\u2019s famous statement, \u2018Think with your blood\u2019 raises certain questions about how we actually work on mass psychological vibration predicated upon an intuitive sense of nation.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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With these varied understandings of Nation and Nationalism it becomes easier that there is no one theory which can explain a phenomenon of Nation and Nationalism, for that matter many have given their own perspectives which shows many facets of nationalism, starting from thinking Nation as a community, to imagined community to Political principle to the idea of looking at nation in terms of territoriality. This brings us to a crucial element that the giveneness of Nation and Nationalism is not taken or accepted rather it has put to many questions and many different understandings.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

This module focuses on these two varied understandings of Nationalism and the idea of Nation which helps us to conceptually distinguish and mark a theoretical distinction between these two perspectives. In section one, we look at Ernest Gellner\u2019s conception of nation and nationalism and in section two, we look at Benedict Anderson\u2019s constriction of these same ideas. Finally, in section three, we take up a critical assessment of these ideas looking at how other authors have responded to these two thinkers. However before dealing with these two distinct ways of Nationalism and nation there are some scholars who opined on these issues.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nSection-I<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nErnest Gellner and the idea of Nation:-<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Ernest Gellner (1925-95) was one of the most prominent theorists who has worked on Nationalism and the idea of Nation. He taught at London school of Economics and Political Science. His own life experiences as a Czech Jew who became a British citizen and moved back to Prague in his final years, had a major impact on his views on nationalism, modernity, and personal identity. Gellner grew up in Bohemia, the early Czech, during when the leaders were trying to create a Czech national identity amongst their subjects. The time was marked by nationalism and industrialization, a phenomena which greatly interested Gellner and became the focal points of his thinking. Belonging to a later generation of Bohemian Jews than Kafka, Gellner experienced both German and Czech nationalism but could only imagine belonging to Czech culture, despite his family\u2019s loyalty towards the Habsburg empire. Gellner\u2019s major contribution to the subject is the socio-economic analysis of nationalism. His book, Nations and Nationalism (Gellner, 1983), was declared one of the hundred most influential books written since the end of the war. Gellner argues that nationalism appeared and became a sociological necessity only in the modern world. \u2018Thought and change\u2019 (1964), \u2018Nations and Nationalism\u2019 (1983) are the renowned books amongst the many he has written. Also consult the biography of Ernest Gellner (2011) by John. A. Hall.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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In Nations and Nationalism Gellner\u2019s contribution to conventional understanding of nationalism has been significant. In order to deal with issue of nationalism one needs a critical lens to look into the subject. Nationalism was regarded as a component of national history rather than as a distinct subject. The great theorists of modern society \u2013Marx, weber and Durkheim have written little on this. Nationality was treated as something \u2018given\u2019 whether it is good or bad. The way nationalism is linked to state and the nation and inevitable link between the nation and the people in the particular nation draws attention. \u2018It is only in the inter war period that nationalism became a subject of explicit and general analysis\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. XVII). Nationalism is not a new concept however the amount of attention it gained is something new. Elie Kedourie (1993), in his book Nationalism summarized that \u2018Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century\u2019 (D.Smith, 1994). Gellner argue sin the similar lines and further states that only during the inter war period it gained more attention.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The approaches to nationalism have gained importance. We usually understand Nation in terms of National history, or common culture or some sentiments. In this context in 1980\u2019s Gellner\u2019s idea of nation and nationalism provided a different perspective which called idea of Nationalism as a Political Principle. Gellner thought of modernity as a distinctive form of social organization and culture. He sees nationalism as a function of modernity. Some historians argue that nationalism was modern and nationalism produced nations, not the other way around. However Gellner disagrees with this position and argues that the idea of nationalism was product, not producer of modernity. He focused on break in human history, where propounds three different stages with it. According to Gellner, \u2018Firstly, hunting stage (pre-agrarian), secondly, the agrarian stage and thirdly, the industrial age\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. 106). He explains various concepts through these transitions. The emergence of new kinds of knowledge and values; the defects of various issues about these transitions from feudalism to capitalism, according to Gellner nationalism is one of the aspects of these changes. Gellner in his idea of nationalism elucidates that \u2018nations and nationalisms are not natural because they are not a permanent feature of human condition but came into being with the transition to industrialism\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. XXIII). Gellner\u2019s theory of nationalisms states that \u2013 nationalism is not a sentiment expressed by pre-existing nations, rather it creates nations where they previously did not exist.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Nations can only be defined in terms of the age of nationalism. \u2018It is nationalism which engenders nations not the other way around. Nationalism uses the pre-existing, historically inherited proliferation of cultures or cultural wealth and most often it transforms them radically\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. 64). In the name of nationalism dead languages can be revived, traditions are reinvented and quite fictitious pristine purities are restored. Gellner strongly argues that the cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventions. Nationalism is not what it seems, and above all it is not what it seems to itself. The culture that it claims to defend and revive is often its own inventions, or is modified out of all recognition. There is every possibility that with the overtly self-worshipping tendencies the\u00a0\u00a0nationalist principles and the idea of nationalism have its own amnesias and selections which are profoundly deceptive and distorted. It is to say that the mechanism of <\/span>Nationalsim thrives on certain things like bringing back the old cultures and making them appear as if they are inevitable to understand one\u2019s own idea of nations. The project of nationalism is to revive the cultures and reaffirm them, eventually leading to national liberation. But it perpetuates, defends and reaffirms the already <\/span>exiting high culture paying less attention to the culture that needs attention. In Gellner\u2019s words \u2018Nationalism is primarily a political principle which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. Nationalism can be a sentiment and a movement. In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires <\/span>that entire boundaries not cut across political ones, in <\/span>particularly that of ethnic boundaries within a given state -separate the power holders from the rest\u2019. (Gellner, 1983, p. 1) This means the way the idea of nationalism is driven is highly political and it can assume legitimacy and claims the authority over a territory. The minute we call something as Political it already underlines the strategies and the mechanisms that it undertakes in order to gain legitimacy and legitimize the actions and the Political <\/span>behaviour of that particular issue. This means it uses cultures, languages, and the several other issues which are actually not natural but it seems like as if it is something which is already given. It is here he calls \u2018Nationalism as an ideology suffers from pervasive false consciousness\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. 119). It inverts reality and it claims to defend folk culture, while in <\/span>fact it forges a high culture. Nationalism is a manifest and self-evident principle, accessible as such to all and violated only through some perverse blindness. It preaches and defends continuity but owes everything to a decisive and unutterably profound break in human history. It preaches and defends cultural diversity but imposes cultural homogeneity both inside and outside and also between the political units. Its self-image and its true nature are inversely related. Hence it seems obvious that we can\u2019t learn too much from the study of its own prophets. What we need to deny is to accept nationalism in its own terms.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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The links between state and the nation can be elaborated in the following. The inevitability of the state is questioned by Gellner and argues the various facets of nationalism in this framework. State being the institution of specially concerned with the enforcement of the order. The state and its institutions are separated out from the rest of social life. This is to say that not all societies are state endowed. It immediately tells us that the problem of nationalism does not arise for stateless societies that means nationalism emerges only in milieu in which the existence of the state is already very much taken for granted. In Hegelain words the absence of the state is inescapable. In simpler words, the problem of nationalism does not arise where there is no state. \u2018It does not follow that the problem of nationalism arises for each and every state, on the contrary it arises only for some states\u2019 (Gellner, 1983). The primary understanding of man without a nation is someone like a man without a shadow show, the inevitable aspect of nationalism which has been made essential and fundamental to human life. Having a nation is not an inherent attribute of humanity, but with time it has come to appear as such.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n \r\n

As Elie Kedourie (1993) argues, what becomes crucial is to understand that the nationalism imposes homogeneity; it is rather that homogeneity imposed by objective and inescapable imperative which eventually appears on the surface in the form of nationalism. Gellner puts that nationalism is indeed an effect of sequences of industrialism. Though nationalism is indeed an effect of industrial social organization, it is not the only effect of <\/span>imposition of this new social form, hence it is necessary to disentangle it from those other developments. Gellner problematizes how nationalism is seen as something which is <\/span>natural and universal ordering of political life of mankind. Among the other aspects of Gellner\u2019s work, there are two crucial aspects which <\/span>goes into the \u2018construction of the theory of nationality \u2013 \u2018will and culture\u2019. (Gellner, 1983, p. 52) If we define a nation as something in which the groups will have to come together, this brings us to a problem. Will, consent <\/span>and identification were never absent from human history. Rather they were accompanied by fear and interest. \u2018Also, any definition of nations in terms of shared culture is another net which brings in far too rich a catch, human history is and continues to be well endowed with cultural differentiations\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. 53). It becomes easy to define nationality in terms of shared culture but what is often forgotten is the idea of how culturally plural all of us are.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

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As mentioned earlier nation can be defined only in terms of the age of nationalism, rather as we might expect the other way around. \u2018The summation of awakening and political self-assertion of nationalism highlights the idea of nationalism and nationality. It is nationalism which creates nations\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. 72). Traditions are re-invented, cultures are revised, and history is revisited. Finally all this revoke the feelings of nationalism and creates a nationality. The basic deception and self-deception practiced by nationalism is essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previously low cultures were to take the place of high culture. Nationalism usually conquers in the name of folk culture which exactly it does oppose in reality (Gelnner, 1983). The high culture and the nationalist feelings are created through print media post enlightenment period where Benedict Anderson also argues the same. The textbooks, social spaces and public institutions are engrained in the process of creating a nation, nationality and the idea of \u2018The typology of nationalisms can be constructed by working out on various possible combinations of the crucial factors which enter into meaning of a modern society\u2019. (Gellner, 1983, p. 85)The access to education and modern high culture questions the fundamentals of nationalism. The power holding positions in society showcase who have high culture and who don\u2019t. Most often the agenda of nationalism and nationalist becomes so crucial in terms of spreading high culture rather than understanding the nuances of the lower culture, which is very unlike the constant claims of the nationalist principles. In terms of power bifurcated society, there are four distinct possibilities; it may be that only power holders, have access that they use their power privilege to preserve for themselves the monopoly of this access or alternatively , that both the power-holders and the rest have this access or again only the rest have such access, and the power-holders do not or finally as sometimes happens , that neither party enjoys the benefits of such access, or put it in simpler terms, that the power holders , those over how the power is exercised. By combining the inequality of power with the various possible patterns of the distribution of the access to\u00a0\u00a0education, we have obtained four possible situations: equal access, equal lack of access, and access titled either in <\/span>favour of or against the power holders.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Here, the role of communication (Gellner, 1983) plays a critical role in the dissemination of the nationalist idea. The connection between nationalism and the facility of modern communications is to a certain extent misleading. It gives the impression that a given idea happens to be there and the same will remain untouched. The most important and the persistent message is generated by the medium itself, by the prominence role of which media have acquired in modern life. \u2018Nationalism is a very distinctive species of patriotism, one which becomes pervasive and dominant only under some social conditions which in fact prevail in the modern world\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. 132). According to Gellner, Nationalism is a species of patriotism which are marked by loyalty, culture homogeneity, which thrives on high culture.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

What is important to be highlighted here is the fact that at the core of his definition of nationalism, Gellner asserts that nations ought to be ruled by co-nationals. Though liberal nationalists insist on this to be the case, however, they reiterate that this must be done with unequivocal consensus of the co-nationals. Gellner did not hesitate to tell his readers that nationalism is not worth examining because it represents a mixture of myths, human superstition, and false consciousness. The suggestion that nationalism cannot tolerate ethnic, racial or religious differences is refuted by the existence of multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-religious nations. Yet because Gellner asserts that the essence of nationalism is to \u201cattain that close relation between state and culture, \u201d he preludes it with the charges of \u201cpopulation exchanges or expulsions, more or less forcible assimilation, and sometimes liquidation\u201d (Gellner, 1983, p. 126). By far, this is the most deficient sign of his understanding of the variety of political methods available to modern political systems.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nSection-II<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nBenedict Anderson and Nations as \u2018Imagined Communities\u2019:<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Benedict Anderson is the author of one of the most significant concepts in political geography, of nations as \u2018imagined communities\u2019. Guggenheim Fellow and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Anderson was born in Kunming, China in 1936. Brother of political theorist Perry Anderson and an Irish citizen whose father was an official with Imperial Maritime Customs, he grew up in California and Ireland before attending Cambridge University. In 1983 the publication of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism established Anderson\u2019s reputation as one of the foremost thinkers on nationalism. In the book Anderson theorized the condition that led to the development of nationalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in the Americas, and gave the eminent definition of nation as an \u201cimagined community\u201d (Munro). Anderson and Gellner are contemporaries and shares the same timeline of work. The Interstate war period, the ongoing cold war has raised many issues related to nationalism during 1980\u2019s.\u00a0The works of both Anderson and Gellner have contributed immensely to the understanding of Nationalism. According to <\/span>Anderson nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in <\/span>political life of our time. Nation, nationality <\/span>and nationalism are difficult to define but can <\/span>analyzed. Anderson tries to give <\/span>satisfactory interpretation of the \u2018anomaly\u2019 of nationalism. According to him nationality and nation-ness are cultural <\/span>artefacts of a particular kind. In order to understand <\/span>this they demand profound emotional legitimacy. This means we create or imagine <\/span>abond between the people of <\/span>particular nation which we think is ours. The theorists of nationalism are often surprised by the following propositions. \u2018Firstly, the objective modernity of the nation to the historian\u2019s eye Vis-\u00e0-vis their subjective antiquity in the eyes of <\/span>nationalist. Secondly, the formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept, which indicates that in the modern world everyone will have and should have a nationality. Thirdly, the political power of nationalisms Vis-\u00e0-vis their philosophical poverty and incoherence\u2019 (Anderson, 1983). In simpler words, to say nationalism has never created thinkers of its own. Rather many thinkers are critical of it in many issues. Tom Nairn sharply puts, \u2018Nationalism\u2019 is the pathology of modern development history which has a built-in capacity for decent to dementia, rooted in dilemmas of helplessness trust on most of the world\u2019 (Anderson, 1983). The nationalism as <\/span>idea has been made a Nationalism with capital \u2018N\u2019 as an ideology. The crucial element of Anderson\u2019s understanding of nationalism comes in through his anthropological spirit where he calls a Nation as an \u2018imagined political community\u2019 and imagined as inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson, 1983, p. 7) It is imagined because the members of that particular community might have never seen, heard or met but the idea of all of us belonging to a particular territory, as nation instils the idea of community and the feeling of togetherness. Gellner makes a comparable point here that \u2018Nationalism is not awakening of nations to self-consciousness, it invents nations where it does not exist\u2019 (Gellner, 1983, p. 75). Gellner\u2019s notion has been criticized for his claims of nationalism as masquerading under false <\/span>pretence, where he calls it by <\/span>invention, assimilation and falsity etc., for Anderson it is an \u2018imagination\u2019 and \u2018creation\u2019 \u2013 the communities <\/span>are never interacted face-to-face but they are imagined. Communities have to be analyzed not by their falseness or genuineness but by the way they imagine themselves being part of it. The net of kinship and clientship have been created through the imagination of nation and nationalism. The imagination of <\/span>nation is always finite and limited, no nation would imagine something which is <\/span>boundary less or limitless. The imaginations of nationalism are highly constricted. \u2018Most crucially, irrespective of exploitation and inequality, one imagines their nation with horizontal and deep comradeship. This proves how people are willing to die for their nation\u2019 (Anderson, 1983, p. 206). But what brings people together is not just the imagination of nation and nationalism itself, rather also dying for one\u2019s own nation. The answer lies in <\/span>cultural roots of nationalism. Anderson proposes that \u2018nationalism first emerged at the end of the eighteenth century amongst creole communities, and that the \u201cconceptual model\u201d was \u201cpirated\u201d around the world until it was \u201cset in ineradicable place.\u201d (Anderson, 1983) Although \u201cofficial nationalism\u201d was \u201cfrom the start a conscious, self-protective policy, intimately linked to the preservation of imperial-<\/span>dynastic interests\u201d, subjected peoples soon took control of the nations \u201cimagined\u201d by colonial powers.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Imagined Communities initially demonstrates a recognisably Marxist economic determinism: a local bourgeoisie has to accrue enough capital to launch \u201cprint-capitalism\u201d, there has to be a \u201cnational\u201d market for printed materials, and similar economic circumstances determine the seemingly unstoppable course of nationalism as it is \u201cpirated\u201d around the world. Once the world has organised itself into nations, however, history stops. Revolutionary leaderships inherit nations and, however hostile they may be to the idea of nationalism, they \u201cconsciously or unconsciously\u201d come to play \u201clord of the manor\u201d. Anderson shoots the horse from under him, in discarding the Marxist analysis which has carried his theory to modernity. The nation is now a permanent and seemingly ahistorical political reality, and \u2013 aside from the possibility that the established array of nations may fracture into a greater number of nations \u2013 Anderson recognizes no further opportunity for subsequent geopolitical \u201ccommunities\u201d to emerge.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The overwhelming response to the burden of one\u2019s own nation comes from their cultural imaginations. It is most often said that nation-states are \u2018new\u2019 and \u2018historical\u2019 but the ideas and imagination that it evokes showcases the issues that are immemorial which talks about limitless future in limited nation. This shows magic of nationalism which turns chance into destiny. \u2018Nationalism is not understood as a political ideology rather as a cultural system which brings people together\u2019 (Anderson, 1983). It is not that idea of nationalism is simply growing out of religious and dynastic realms rather the very availability of these ideas and accessible tendencies of those ideas instigates the feeling which is beyond our immediate identities. These imaginations have started in eighteenth century Europe through novels and newspapers. The sociological landscapes have created these novels and newspapers. A new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together, print capitalism made it possible for people rapidly growing number of people to think themselves and relate themselves to particular community.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n

\u2018The origin of national consciousness and the sense of belonging essentially came from the primacy of print capitalism\u2019 (Anderson, 1983, p. 36). The mass production process that it has been involved created a massive sense of imagining themselves in relation with others too. The manuscript knowledge was scarce and not available easily but through print, which indeed became easily accessible for most of the people. Reproducibility and dissemination were two important things which have been focused by print to instil the national consciousness. Print has changed the appearance and the state of the world. \u2018Firstly, revolutionary vernacularizing thrust of capitalism directly contributed to the rise of national consciousness. Secondly, the reformation at that time owed much of its success to print capitalism. Thirdly, the slow uneven geographical areas have also been equally covered with the advent of print\u2019 (Anderson, 1983). The point languages were also distinct in their ways where they adopted the local vernacular languages and published the material in those languages. This also contributed to immense\u00a0readership and dissemination of ideas. The secular, particular ideas of nationality have started to sow seeds to imagine one\u2019s own community. The convergence of print technology and capitalism has created a possibility of new form imagined community which led to the basic morphology of the modern nation-state.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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The character of the nationalism is to create roots of fear about ourselves and roots of hatred about others. Nations often inspire love and especially self-sacrificing. \u2018The cultural roots of nationalism which are symbols, poems, places and monuments, often showcase this self-sacrificing love for nation which further crated the feelings of love for nation\u2019 (Anderson, 1983). This naturalizes the feelings of belongingness and crystallizes the nationality, through this happens the realization of imagined community. Most often we imagine nation in a homogenous empty time and space. The memory and the forgetting is another crucial factor in the way we understand nationalism. The conscious acts of what to forget and what to remember remind us of not just as an individual but as a community, which is inextricably linked with others too.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nSection-III<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nCritique of Gellner and Anderson<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Ernest Gellner concept has become very popular, mainly because of his thesis that nations are products of national- ism, and not vice versa. It concurs with the current \"constructivist\" perspective which claims that nations are not anything real, objective, or indispensable; they are only \"constructs,\u201d contingent and artificial, deliberately created by various elites. Thus we cannot speak of the process of \"awakening\" nations to conscious life, as such an approach is defined as \"preconstructivist simple- mindedness\" which presumes that nations did exist in the objective sense and just waited to be \"awakened.\u201d The opponents of \"constructivism\" are usually referred to as \"primordialists\" or \"essentialists.\u201d It is, however, evident that although the term makes argument much easier, it largely distorts the essence of the dispute. In order to oppose \"constructivism,\u201d one does not have to go so far as to claim that nations are \"perennial\" and possess \"invariable essence\"; it is enough to recognize that they have a sociological reality as permanent products of objective and spontaneous historical processes. In order to understand the specific nature of Gellner's views, as well as the intellectual climate in which his views have been received, it is worthwhile to examine contructivism in its consistent and extreme form. It is well exemplified in an article by the American author Rogers Brubaker, \"Nation as Institutionalized Form, Practical Category, Contingent Event.\u201d1 According to Brubaker, nations are not by any means \"enduring components of social structure\"; they are constructed, contingent and fluctuating, they are \"illusory or spurious communities,\u201d and an \"ideological smoke-screen.\u201d The very question \"What is a nation?\" is not innocent, as it assumes, quite mistakenly, \"substantialist belief in the existence of nations. What is real is nationalism, but it is not a product or function of nations. Anderson's insightful analysis adds to our understanding of the strength and development of nationalism, especially because of his focus on the personal and cultural feeling of nascent<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n

\"national\" identity. This is important, not only in understanding the new states that will be born of present-day struggles carried out under the banner of nationalism, but also in fathoming the behavior, persistence, and impact of \"national\" myths and ideology in all nation-states. This is crucial, for in the next decade, we will witness competing \"national\" visions of communities in conflict in Eastern and Southern Europe, and the persistent struggle for recognition for \"imagined communities\" like the Kurds and the Palestinians, asserting their nation's independence against the national myths of other states that deny their existence. Undoubtedly, we will also observe the rise of \"nations,\u201d heretofore unarticulated, unrecognized, or unknown, within the boundaries of old states. Another theorist, John Breuilly, in Nationalism and the<\/em> State <\/em>(1982), claims that nationalist political consciousness originates from oppositional activity within modern states. Nationalism, he says, is a parasitic movement and an ideology which is shaped by what it opposes. The general condition for the development of anti-colonial nationalism is the existence of a distinct power under foreign control. The very statement echoes Chatterjee\u2019s assumption of the difference between the anti-colonial nationalism from the modular forms of the West. He refers to nationalism as political movements seeking or exercising power and justifying such actions with nationalist arguments. Partha Chatterjee, attempts a critique of Imagined Communities<\/em> in the first chapter of his book The Nation and<\/em> Its Fragments <\/em>(1993) which he titles as \u2018Whose Imagined Community?\u2019. Here he challenges the idea of nation as being imagined from certain modular forms. He argues that nationalism is not rooted \u201con an identity but rather on a difference of the modular forms of the nationalist society propagated by the modern west.\u201d (1993:5). There was the creation of another form which is indigenous and \u2018original\u2019 to every nation. This \u2018original\u2019 form is what Chatterjee terms as a sovereign nation in the post-colonial world. Therefore, the meaning of the term \u2018imagined community\u2019 is not a universal one. If at all a nation is imagined, it is imagined differently by different nations.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nFurther Readings<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n