Contested National Identity and Political Crisis in Bangladesh: Historical Analysis of the Dynamics of Bangladeshi Society and Politics

This paper develops the theme that the ongoing political polarization and political crisis in Bangladesh since its independence from Pakistan in 1971 reflect the fundamental weaknesses of the pillars of Bangladeshi society and national identity. The paper adopts an historical approach to explain why and how Muslim nationalism, which was the basis for the establishment of Pakistan, has re-emerged in contemporary Bangladeshi society and politics and is competing against Bengali ethnicity, language, culture and secularism (‘Bengali nationalism’) within an emerging ‘two-party’ political system. However, instead of establishing a stable political system following the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy, the Bangladeshi society/polity has been polarized and divided almost vertically on the question of national identity and political philosophy and created sustained political instability and uncertainty. This has stifled the formation and consolidation of a national identity based on ethnicity/language/culture or religion/territory/political history or that have elements of both. Neither ethnicity/language/culture/secularism-based nationalism (Bengali nationalism) nor predominantly Muslim-territorial nationalism (‘Bangladeshi nationalism’) alone can dominate and flourish in Bangladeshi society and polity; instead, the objective conditions in the country dictate that a competitive democratic system of politics which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and Islamic ethical–moral codes remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country's multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

‘My Poor People,Where Are We Going?’: Grounded Theologies and National Identity in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Although Islam is described as a fundamental aspect of Kyrgyz national identity, its theological aspects are generally elided in nationalist discourse. However, as Islam becomes more prominent in Kyrgyz society, anxieties about ‘Arabisation’ and the weakening of national traditions permeate popular and political discourse. These anxieties operate simultaneously in the national and religious registers, suggesting the extent to which theological beliefs inform national identity, even in secular states. Examining a recent controversy over veiling in Kyrgyzstan, this article argues that theology is both linked to nationality and also a site of contestation over the terms of nationalism itself.     

The (un)making of Bimshire and the Black Englishman: Barbadian nationalism in post-colonial Britain

This paper considers Partha Chatterjee’s [1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press] theory of anti-colonial nationalism – itself a response to Benedict Anderson [(1983) 2006. Imagined Communities. Reprint, London: Verso] – to understand how migrants from Barbados and their children construct their national identities in postcolonial Britain. Using interviews with first-, second- and third-generation Barbadian-Britons, it aims to determine what it means to be Barbadian, fifty years since independence, and how this identity has developed in the long shadow of colonialism and the more recent era of sovereignty. Guided by Chatterjee’s framework of spiritual and material nationalism, the findings locate Barbadian nationalism in the dynamic spiritual domain of family, racial consciousness and culture, unaffected by British aesthetic and institutions that have endured since the island’s occupation. How is this identity constructed within the borders of the former colonial power? This research locates the Caribbean within these competing discourses of nationalism, particularly nationalism as it responds and adapts to migration.     

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n?=?792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.     

Russian Economic Nationalism during the First World War: Moscow Merchants and Commercial Diasporas

While accounts of the end of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires have often stressed the rise of Turkish and German nationalisms, narratives of the Romanov collapse have generally not portrayed Russian nationalism as a key factor. In fact, scholars have either stressed the weaknesses of Russian national identity in the populace or the generally pragmatic approach of the government, which, as Hans Rogger classically phrased it, “opposed all autonomous expressions of nationalism, including the Russian.” In essence, many have argued, the regime was too conservative to embrace Russian nationalism, and it most often “subordinated all forms of the concept of nationalism to the categories of dynasty and empire.” Recently, two authors have challenged the predominantly pessimistic portrayals of the extent of Russian national identity in late imperial Russia, focusing on peasant responses to the First World War. Scott Seregny makes a strong case that while peasants may not have been full “Russians” by 1914, the spread of politics and literacy to the countryside through the zemstvos was rapidly integrating peasants into a broader civic identity. Josh Sanborn argues that even though responses were varied and in fact protest against the war quite frequent, the important thing is that both positive and negative responses were expressed within a single national political framework and discourse. In response, S. A. Smith grants that the war strengthened rather than weakened national identity, but thinks Sanborn and Seregny underestimate the degree to which nation, empire, and class pulled in different directions from 1916, concluding that “by the summer of 1917, politics had become polarized between an imperial language of nation, used mainly by the privileged and educated strata, an anti-imperial language, used mainly by the elites of the non-Russian nationalities, and a language of class, used mainly by the subaltern classes.”     

National Sentiments in Eastern and Western Europe

In a world of presumed nation-states nation has been, and still is, an intrinsic part of political legitimization. The claim of nationality has played an important role in such legitimization for the last two centuries. More than this, it has also constituted a fundamental collective entity for an individual's understanding of who they are in relation to those who are perceived as not sharing the nationality. This is nothing new, but in an era of globalization we are witnessing the rebirth of nationalism and nationality (Castells, 1997), where the power struggle over the political agenda will increasingly be about the struggle for the right to identity and the risks of exclusion from the national community. Even if this is the case it stands clear that everyday nationalism and nationalist struggles take different forms in different parts of the world. It has often been claimed that there are two types of nationalism prevalent in different parts of Europe, one in the so-called West and one in the so-called East. Kohn (1945) claimed that the rise of nationalism in the West was a political occurrence based on the democratic creation of the modern nation-state whereas the rise of nationalism in Eastern Europe was of a more backward type drawing its power from the struggle for cultural hegemony. The legacy of Kohn is taken up by Smith (1986; 1991) in his classical division of civic and ethnic national identities and nationalism, claiming that the former is a Western product and the latter mainly an Eastern one (see also Ignatieff, 1993). More recently, White (2000) claims that national identities in Eastern Europe have been strongly influenced by romanticism. The emphasis on ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe not only is related to historical nation formation, but also has been claimed to be of great importance in the postcommunist era (Lovell, 1999). It is widely realized that national identities and nationalism differ within the West as well as within the East, but it is still assumed that there are fundamental differences between Western and Eastern European nation formation and that these have influenced the types of national identity and nationalism prevalent in the different geographical areas. For example, Sugar (1969) claims that there are differences between the Eastern European states; nonetheless, there are also commonalties that make them differ from Western European states.     

Secularizing Religion: Hindu Extremism as a Modernist Discourse

In this article, I suggest that Hindu nationalism, like many other religious extremist ideologies, is a modern discourse rooted in modern categories such as a homogenous national identity, objective science and history, hyper-masculinity, and secularism. To demonstrate the above claims, I undertake a close analysis of the writings of V.D. Savarkar, a key founder of "Hindutva" or Hindu nationalism. I show how he retools Hinduism by removing all aspects of religiosity/piety while replacing it with a primarily political-secular identity that places an exclusive Hindu nation at the center.     

Peripheral modernity and anti-colonial nationalism in Java: economies of race and gender in the constitution of the Indonesian national teleology

This analysis investigates the limits of colonial modernity in the 20th century Dutch East Indies at a time that coincided with the building of the Indonesian national project. I am interested in the constitution of the national teleology as an inexorable socio-political project, deploying specific racial and gendered economies. As a locus of investigation I choose the literary narratives of two celebrated Indonesian intellectuals (and participants in the anti-colonial struggle), Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet and Mangunwijaya’s Durga/Umayi. Were the impulses of anti-colonial resistance intrinsically national in their orientation? Through what erasures and re-appropriations has the nationalism/modernity paradigm become the medium of decolonisation?     

Russian-speaking Belarusian Nationalism: An Ethnolinguistic Identity Without a Language?

Abstract

This essay examines the development of a form of Russian-speaking Belarusian national identity. While Belarus’s early post-Soviet nationalists relied upon Belarusian as the central pillar of national identity, this has been challenged by more ‘pragmatic’ nationalists using the ‘language of the people’, namely, Russian. Analysing history textbooks and popular history books that represent three key identity projects in Belarus, this study sheds light on the specific programmatic ideas of a new Russian-speaking Belarusian nationalism. Despite the emergence of the geopolitically-motivated Russian World (Russkii Mir) concept, some Russian-speaking nationalists have articulated a programme that paradoxically draws upon Russian neo-Eurasianist thought, but which is simultaneously anti-Russian.     

Pantheon on a tablecloth: Yugoslav dictatorship and the confrontation of national symbols in Croatia (1929–1935)

This paper questions the effects of the state- and nation-building that occurred in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the 6 January Dictatorship (1929–1935) and points to the importance of symbols during this process. By using an ethno-symbolist approach and extending it to “banal nationalism,” the article analyzes some of the most prominent and influential symbols from within an everyday environment. Using the Croatian ethnic space as a framework, the article traces the population’s attitudes toward the Yugoslav national flag and representations of King Alexander – two of the most forced symbols in the centralized Yugoslav one state and one nation concept of nation-building. The regime possessed all the mechanisms of power necessary to impose these symbols, though most Croats clearly felt no connection to them. Despite severe penalties, they opposed the regime’s plans for national reconstruction of the country by displaying Croatian flags and various symbolic representations of Stjepan Radi? – as a martyr of the Croatian nation. By linking this problem to specific studies that deal with the development of nationalism, this paper outlines the struggle between Yugoslavism and Croatianism through acceptance and resistance toward the Yugoslav symbolism.     

An undisclosed story of roses: church,state, and nation in contemporary Georgia

Since the Rose Revolution (2003), Georgia has encountered an unprecedented scale of institutional reforms concomitant with the rise of American and European involvement in the “democratization” process. Various scholars have suggested that Georgian nationalism developed from an ethno-cultural basis to a more civic/liberal orientation after the Rose Revolution. This paper analyzes Georgian nationalism under President Mikheil Saakashvili to demonstrate the significant divergence between political rhetoric on national identity, the selection of symbols, and state policy toward the Georgian Orthodox Church versus state policy toward ethnic minorities. The aim of this article is to examine the at times conflicting conceptions of national identity as reflected in the public policies of Saakashvili’s government since the Rose Revolution. It attempts to problematize the typologies of nationalism when applied to the Georgian context and suggests conceptualizing the state-driven nationalism of the post-Rose Revolution government as “hybrid nationalism” as opposed to civic or ethno-cultural.     

Turkish nationalism at its beginning: Analysis of Türk Yurdu, 1913–1918

Turkish nationalism became an element of the Ottoman political scene in the late nineteenth century. Although its roots can be traced back to the Hamidian period (1876–1909), Turkish nationalism emerged as one of the most important political ideologies during the Constitutional Regime. Wars that the Ottoman State participated in from 1911 to the end of the empire in 1918 resulted in population and land losses. Especially, following the Balkan Wars, most of the lands that were populated by non-Muslim and non-Turkish subjects were lost. Within this context, Turkish nationalism came to be seen as the most dominant ideological tool intended to save the Empire. This article argues that Turkish nationalism emerged as a reactive ideology that addressed Ottomanism and Islamism, which were the two other dominant state ideologies during the late Ottoman State, due to the changing political context. In this article, Türk Yurdu, a well-known and influential periodical, is used as the primary source of reference to demonstrate the basic features of Turkish nationalism in its infancy.     

FORGETTING DOES (NOT) HURT. Historical Revisionism in Post-Socialist Slovenia

After the fall of socialism, besides the attempts to reach national reconciliation, radical reconfigurations and reinterpretations of the past were used to negotiate local, national and transnational identities and strengthen national agendas. In most of the formerly socialist countries, the historical interpretation significantly resembles the struggle over the legitimacy and authenticity of this representation. The author argues that in post-socialist Slovenia instead of the anticipated democratization and break with ideologically predestined historical work after 1989, at least three competing politically contaminated ways of interpreting the past gained momentum: the so-called liberal-conformist position, which insists that we have to look at the future and forget the traumas of the past; the revisionist standpoint which, at least in Slovenia, is the most aggressive one; and the objectivistic approach practiced by most Slovenian historians after 1991. To do that the author investigates how collective memories are mobilized in general, formal and in particular more personalized and/or emotional narratives and traces the changes in Slovenian memorial landscape divided into categories: the authoritarian type, defined by a desire for direct colonization of the interpretation of the past related to the Second World War; the conciliatory type that tries to achieve “reconciliation”; the conflicting type that clashes with the iconography of an existing partisan monument as an alternative interpretation.     

Book reviews

Paulin Kola, The Search for Greater Albania (London: Hurst, 2003), xiv, 416 pp. + maps. Few are the monographs available in English and written by Albanian scholars that deal with the contemporary history of the Balkans. The Search for Greater Albania is therefore a welcome contribution to the study of Albanian nationalism. The author endorses a definition of nationalism as an ideology “whose proponents advocate the indispensable congruence of the political and the national unit, i.e. the state and the nation” (p. xii) and endeavors to demonstrate that no one among Albanian leaders from King Zog to the present, including Hoxha, ever worked to achieve a “Greater Albania.” The intent of the book is then to explain why state-builders in Tirana from the very beginning disregarded their irredenta despite the fact that a substantial part of the ethnic population had remained outside the borders because of international treaties. After a summary of the historical developments in the first part of the twentieth century, Kola pays particular attention to the space for ethnopolitics among Albanian communist and post-communist elites in Albania proper, in Kosovo and marginally in Macedonia. The author is keen to question the nationalist credentials attributed to Enver Hoxha by most scholars of Albania. Kola describes the key historical events in the region after the Second World War by looking for references to Kosovo and the preservation of national independence and shows that these references were all just instrumental to elites' power politics. What the communist regime instead managed to do, observes Kola, is to impoverish its own citizens and to alienate Albanian communities from one another. Kola concludes that political leaders in Tirana have all been prone to “a comfortable parochialism vis-à-vis the national question“ (p. 233). Exceptions to the rule are considered, such as the attempt to internationalize the Kosovo crisis by the first post-communist governments. However, the 1997 descent into anarchy of Albania proper compromised the cause of nationalism in the “motherland.” The idea of “Greater Albania,” according to Kola, never existed in Albania proper but was rather rooted outside the nation-state borders. In Kosovo, where “real Albanian nationalism” instead resided, the discovery of the poverty of the “motherland” in the 1990s toned ambitions down (p. 394). The same Macedonian Albanians did not expect help from Tirana when they initiated the armed confrontation in 2000 and did not show any intention to seek national unification with Tirana. Therefore, Kola observes, foreign observers should be reassured that national unification is not the ambition of Albanian politics today and no one will press for it in the foreseeable future.     

The conferences

Each of the post-Soviet Central Asian states inherited both inefficient collectivized agricultural systems and an understanding of the nation rooted in categories defined by Soviet nationality policy. Despite the importance placed on territorial homelands in many contemporary understandings of nationalism, the divergent formal responses to these dual Soviet legacies have generally been studied in isolation from one another. However, there are conceptual reasons to expect more overlap in these responses than generally assumed; in this paper, we engage in a focused comparison of three post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) in order to investigate how nationalizing policies and discourse, land distribution, and ethnic tensions interact with each other over time. We reveal that the nationalizing discourses of the three states – despite promoting the titular groups vis-à-vis other groups – have had limited influence on the actual processes of land distribution. Furthermore, the Kyrgyzstani case challenges the assumption that the effect flows unidirectionally from nationalizing policies and discourse to land reform implementation; in this case, there is evidence that the disruption caused by farm reorganization generated grievances which were then articulated by some nationalistic political elites.     

Nationalism and Cultural Memory in Poland: The European Union Turns East

The eastern expansion of the European Union confronts the process of European integration with the phenomenon of cultural and ethnic nationalism. This paper examines the situation of Poland, using Jan Assmann's theory of cultural memory to reconstruct the historical dimension of Polish nationalism which underlies the current constructions of the Polish nation. Understanding itself as the antemurale Europae christianiae, Poland owns an old tradition of resistance. This tradition allowed this country to survive times of division and oppression but now turns against the European Union.     

A Selected Bibliography on Occupied Beijing, 1937-1945

Abstract

This article examines the anti-French campaign triggered by the Laoxikai incident — a dispute in 1916–17 over lands bordering the French concession in Tianjin. The incident was a focal point for competing narratives of the nation, each drawing on traditions and inspirations that implied divergent futures for China. Constitutional monarchism, true monarchism, republicanism, and Christianity all played into the power struggles of the 1910s. This article also addresses the role of violent coercion in the incident, in which nationalism began to legitimate “punishment” of Chinese who continued working with the French. The nationalists felt shame on behalf of their nation, and through public humiliation they forced Chinese who appeared indifferent to the nation to share in the national shame. This development accelerated a trend of nationalistic violence and the discourse of “national humiliation”.     

Orthodoxy and nation-building: Nichifor Crainic and religious nationalism in 1920s Romania

This article uses the early career of Nichifor Crainic (1889–1972) to show why Orthodox Christianity became a central element of Romanian ultra-nationalism during the 1920s. Most Romanian nationalists were atheists prior to the First World War, but state-sponsored nation-building efforts catalyzed by territorial expansion and the incorporation of ethnic and religious minorities allowed individuals such as Crainic to introduce religious nationalism into the public sphere. Examining Crainic's work during the 1920s shows how his nationalism was shaped by mainstream political and ideological currents, including state institutions such as the Royal Foundations of Prince Carol and the Ministry of Cults and of Art. Despite championing “tradition,” Crainic was committed to changing Romanian society so long as that change followed autochthonous Romanian models. State sponsorship allowed Crainic to promote religious nationalism through his periodical Gândirea. Crainic's literary achievements earned him a chair in theology, from which he pioneered new ways of thinking about mysticism as an expression of Romanian culture and as crucial to understanding the Romanian nation.     

The Transnational Relations of the Contemporary Russian Extreme Right

This article describes and analyses the transnational relations of Russian extreme right entities. It classifies the Russian extreme right into categories according to their ideological orientation (ethnonationalism and civilisational nationalism) and forms of activity (political parties and interest groups, intellectuals, the autonomous neo-Nazi scene, and paramilitary formations). For each category important contacts are described in terms of the travels abroad of Russian extreme right activists, visits by foreign extremists to Russia, and the establishment of transnational organisation branches in Russia. The article concludes that although so far the Russian extreme right has mostly had ad hoc contacts abroad, it has been involved in the gradual building of stable networks.