Nationalism — Class 11 Political Science

This chapter introduces nationalism and the nation, assessing their claims and aspirations. Over the last two centuries nationalism has been one of the most compelling political creeds, uniting and dividing people, liberating them from oppression and causing wars, and redrawing the boundaries of states and empires — from the unification of Germany and Italy to the break-up of empires and ongoing separatist struggles (Quebec, the Basques, the Kurds, the Tamils in Sri Lanka). A nation is not based on any single shared feature such as descent, language, religion or ethnicity; it is to a great extent an "imagined" community held together by collective beliefs and aspirations. The chapter identifies what nations share: shared beliefs (a nation exists when members believe they belong together), a sense of continuing history, identification with a particular territory or homeland, shared political ideals, and a common political identity. It argues democracies should imagine the nation in political rather than cultural terms, expecting loyalty to constitutional values rather than to a single religion, race or language. It then examines national self-determination — the demand of a nation to govern itself — its costs (the "one culture-one state" idea caused mass migration and violence), and the case for pluralism, ending with Tagore's critique of narrow patriotism.