I would
like to move my discussion from History and Historiography to the subject of nationalism
in this week. As it has been repeatedly
accepted by many prominent academics, the importance of having a fair
understanding for the concepts such as nation and nationalism are critically
important in the contemporary political setup. Particularly, we should accept
that the post-colonial countries like ours have faced fundamental theoretical
issues in defining the term Nation and in fitting it into our state-formation
process. While accepting that we are a multi-ethnic society today, we should
also not forget the fact that some of the ethnic groups, emerged in the
post-colonial social-setup, and the fact that they were empowered by then
colonial empires for their own benefits and were manipulated to clash with one
another just for maintaining the power game.
Meaning of the word Nation
Meanings
and the uses of the word nation have been
in the center of this debate in the nation-state argument of classical political
theories. These discussions sometime move into giving broader interpretations
for the concepts of nationality, nationalism and national consciousness in
theoretical terms. It is correct to say that the debate of nation becomes a
prominent socio-political phenomenon with the inception of nation states in 19th
century. Since the term ‘ethnic group’ has also been used as synonymous to the term
of nation, we should look at the linguistic roots of this word. The term ETHNIC
comes from Greek word ethnikos which
contains the demarcated meaning of some civilized human group from barbarians.
And Latin sources say that the word natio
which was the root for the evaluation of English word nation, means ‘a group of people who shared collective identity and
common culture with identified historical origins of the group. This definition
becomes more problematic when it deals with the European concept of Nationalism
in late 17th century.
Benedic
Anderson, in his famous book under the name of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism, argues that the nation is not other than an ‘imagined
something’ in our mind based on cultural materials shared by a group. He
further says that concept of nation came into action in late 18th
and 19th centuries in Europe using the technology of Print
Capitalism which has developed shared identity among a group on the basis of culture.
Emergence of newspaper and other printing materials such as ‘stories’ ‘myths’
and ‘histories’ has enhanced this development further. So, according to Anderson,
it is this form of shared commonality (imagined community) which gave birth to
new form of identity under different names as nations. Eric Hobsbaum, writing a
perforce to his book, The Invention of
Tradition, argues that the nation which comprises national th century. He thinks that the nation has been an ‘invented thing’
rather than an existed phenomenon based on historical facts. He further argues
that the invention of cultures motivates people to think as a one group and as
a one nation. In this theory, the ‘constructed commonality’ does not have any
primordial links to the historical facts or a continuation of facts as
something relates to the past. These two prominent theoretical interventions
into the debate of nation and nationalism have been rather challenged by
Anthony Smith in his book, The Problem of
National Identity and has suggested another definition into the concept of
nation. He argues that the creation of nation as a new phenomenon has not happened
in a vacuum. According to Smith ‘nation
as an imagined something without based
on historical facts’ is problematic. The nation,
Smith argues, emerged based on some sort of historical evidence and facts such
as literary pieces, mythological backgrounds or archeological settings.
Sri Lankan Debates
As I
mentioned in the beginning of this column, the debate on defining the word ‘nation’
and ‘nationalism’ in Sri Lanka has been an unending task in the academia and
the political society. One interesting intervention into this discussion in Sri
Lanka could be seen in the famous debate between late prof RALH Gunawardane
(Lesly Gunawardane) verses prof KNO Dharmadasa on the history of Sinhalese
nation. The debate was initiated with Gunwardane’s paper published in Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities
(1979) under the name of “The People of the Lion: Sinhala Consciousness in
History and Historiography”. Gunawardane’s main argument in this paper was that
the ethnic identity of Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka has not been unique or
uninterrupted and the present form of Sinhalese nation was not found in the
terms that the ancient Sri Lankan inscriptive literature. Therefore,
Gunawardane suggests that the present form of the Sinhalese nation was a
constructed phenomenon after 13 century BC and it has been nothing other than a
modified version of history based on some colonial myths. Following Hobsbaum’s
thesis of invention of cultures,
Gunawardane concludes that the Sinhalese nation has been a construction of late
19th century BC in the light of the development of anti-colonial
thinking. This paper was challenged by prof KNO Dharmadasa in his paper titled,
“The People of the Lion: Ethnic Identity, ideology and Historical Revisionism
in Contemporary Sri Lanka” which was published on Sri Lanka Journal of Humanities (1992). In his reply, Dharmadasa argues by using
different historical facts that the relationship between linguistic identity of
Sinhalese people as a nation can be seen beyond 13th century BC. Further, Dharmadasa’s position on the
continuation of Sinhalese people as a culturally related one group in many
years in the history has shown a new light into nationalism discussion in Sri
Lanka.
There
are several other serious academic interventions that can be identified as some
intellectual contributions to the Sri Lankan debate on Nationalism.
Colonialism and Nationalism
Nationalism
in any post-colonial social setup has direct link with the colonial encounters
of that country which they have faced during many decades in their relative
histories. Sri Lankan experience is not an exception. Some studies have focused
on Buddhism as a ‘theoretical essence’ of Sinhalese nation which helped to
create a national consciousness against colonial power.
will write on the relationship between Colonialism Vs Nationalism in the next
column.