What it means to be ‘national’

• PRABHAT PATNAIK

Nationalism that developed in India during the anti-colonial struggle was sui generis, an altogether new phenomenon the like of which the world had not seen earlier. It was essentially a democratic and egalitarian nationalism, as opposed to the aggrandising European form.

When students of my university are being accused of being “anti-national”, it is time to ask the question: what does “national” mean? And the answer is not as simple as many imagine. The terms “national”, “nationalism” and “nation-state” came into vogue in Europe after the Westphalian Peace Treaties in the 17th century. But European “nationalism” had three major characteristics. First, it was never inclusive of the entire population even within the territory of the “nation”. It always invoked an “enemy within” (example, the Jews). Second, it was necessarily imperialistic. Within months of the Westphalian Treaties, Oliver Cromwell had attacked Ireland (the first ever colony of conquest) and acquired for England the possession over its entire land area.

In the subsequent decades, European powers, even while “peacefully co-existing” within Europe, were engaged in bitter wars in far-off places like India, with each trying to carve out an empire for itself. Third, the “nation” was apotheosised for its own sake; the idea invariably was to make the “nation” strong. This was not just a notion of mercantilism to which it has been obviously ascribed; it underlay even classical political economy. Adam Smith’s magnum opus was titled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (emphasis added). Smith differed from the mercantilists on what exactly constituted the wealth of nations; but on the need to augment this wealth per se, no matter what it meant for the people, he had no differences with the mercantilists. European “nationalism” in short 

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