Revolutionary Nationalism in Asia and Africa

Abstract

IN CHAPTER XVIII OF THE CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRESENTATIVE Government (1861) which discussed ‘The Government of Dependencies by Free States’ John Stuart Mill wrote that ‘It is always under great difficulties and very imperfectly, that a country can be governed by foreigners; even where there is no extreme disparity, in habits and ideas, between the rulers and the ruled. Foreigners do not feel with the people. They cantlot judge, by the light in which a thing appears to their own minds, or the manner in which it affects their feelings, how it will affect the feelings or appear in the minds of the subject population.’ This to Mill was a disadvantage; but reflection may lead us to conclude that there may be solid advantages in such a state of affairs; for we will remember that government, whether by foreigner or by native is exercise of power; and power, it is commonly and rightly said, sets up barriers, isolates, puts him who exercises it in a Merent world from him who is subject to it. Those who have power and those who do not have power are different species of men. It is therefore safer and more prudent for distances to be kept , and for the governed to approach their governors with cautious and mistrustful circumspection. An ancient Chinese sage declared it a mistake to compare the ruler to a father; for, he said, the ruler does not (or at any rate should not) feel affection towards his people. Again, the story is told of another wise Chinese, a ruler who, recovering from an illness, heard that his subjects had sacrificed an ox for his recovery.

Myths of nationhood: Cultural nationalism, political Islam, and the movement against sculptures in Bangladesh

“…The nation itself is a political construct borne out of a politically induced collection of cultural artefacts (Anderson, 2006;Breuilly, 1993;Gellner, 2006;Kedourie, 1974;Smith, 1999). Schopflin defines culture as a system of collectively held notions, beliefs, premises … to which myth gives a structure" (Schopflin, 1997: 27).…”

“…The argument stresses that nationalism gets its power from the "myths, memories, traditions, and symbols of ethnic heritages and the ways in which the popular living past has been … rediscovered and reinterpreted" (Smith, 1999: 9). The 19th-century myths of French nationalism (Renan, 1990) and citizenship (Brubaker, 1992), Fichte's Address to the German Nation (James, 2015), creating grand rituals in colonial India (Cohn, 1983), the rise of Hindu nationalism in India (Breuilly, 1993;Kedourie, 1974) and the idea of a Muslim nation in India (Ali, 1970;Taylor and Yapp, 1979) are all either tied to specific interpretations of pre-existing mythologies or manufactured and consciously connected to preexisting mythologies.…”

“…However, this article will treat nationalism as a political phenomenon, affected by global politics but manifested purely locally. I will unequivocally start this treatise with the assumption that both the linguistic-cultural and the religious identities are political creations, in the same sense that Kedourie (1974), Gellner (2006, Anderson (2006), or Breuilly (1993) might.…”

“…In that endeavour, the effort to deify the figure of Bangladesh's founding father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, has been a potent and ubiquitous element. This attempt at the deification of Bangabandhu is not an anomaly when studied from a nationalist perspective (Breuilly, 1993;Kedourie, 1974;Smith, 1999). In recent years the discussion of Bangabandhu and the idea of secularism, one of the key tenets of his four-fold political ideology of Mujibism, 5 has been dragged out for multiple interpretations.…”

Cosmopolitan World in Contemporary Asia: A Phenomenon of Asian Diaspora

“…Recorded in post World War II the number of countries reached 51 countries and currently has reached 192 countries. The decolonization process was triggered by nationalist movements that developed in each country in Asia and Africa (Kedourie, 1968). Noted such as the Young Turkish Movement, Phillippines Nationalism Movement, Chinese Nationalism Movement, Indian Nationalism Movement, and various similar movements that emerged in countries such as China, Japan, Egypt, Libya, India, and others.…”