NATION AND NATIONALISM

Nations in the modern sense of the word did not emerge until the close of the Middle
Ages.
According to E. H. Carr (1939), The term nation has been used to denote a human group
with the following characteristics:

The idea of a common government whether as a reality in the present or past, or as an

aspiration of the future.
A certain size and closeness of contact between all its individual members.
A more or less defined territory.
Certain interests common to the individual members.
A certain degree of common feeling or will, associated with a picture of the nation in
the minds of the individual members. (7)

Benedict Anderson in his much celebrated work, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism, defined a nation as an imagined political community and
imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.
It is imagined because:
the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members,
meet them, or even hear of them,
yet
in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.
The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, has finite, if elastic
boundaries, beyond which lies other nations.
The nation is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which
Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely ordained,
hierarchical dynastic realm.
It is imagined as a community because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that
may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.

Nationalism refers to a psychological sense of unity, which holds a nation united against
disintegrating forces.

National integration refers to a process by which divisive people and culture are
synthesized into a unified whole, along with higher levels of a process, it holds tightly together
the various relationships of ethnic groups and institutions in a dove-tailed manner through the
bonds of contrived structures, norms and values. It was in Europe, especially in Western
Europe, that the concept and phenomenon took roots in 16th century.
RISE AND GROWTH OF NATIONALISM IN INDIA

Origin

British Period

Various factors that developed within the Indian society under the conditions of the British rule
and the impact of world forces together led to the rise of nationalism.
Briish colonial rule for its own purpose:
radically changed the economic structure of the Indian society,
established a centralized state,
introduced modern education,
modern means of communications,
land revenue system more akin to the European system, and
other institutions.
This resulted in the growth of new social classes in urban and rural areas, and the unleashing of
new social forces unique in themselves. These social forces by their very nature came into
conflict with British imperialism and became basis of and provided motive power for the rise
and development of Indian nationalism.
British Challenge
Britishers pointed that the required unity among Indians does not exist they pointed to racial
and religious diversity, to the wars which incessantly devastated until a foreign strength,
furthered by justice, made the Pax Britannica an unearned boon. India they said, has never had
political unity, it has not yet become the common Motherland of the Indian peoples, those
peoples have not yet the unity of common life.they also claimed that India has no other unity
then the unity given to it from above by the British Government.
Apart from others the religious revival, brought about by Dayananda Saraswati and Swami
Vivekananda, was Indias first modern effort for self protection, her first reply to the challenge
of western culture. From that time onwards an indivisible Nationalism had two aspects, - the
one political, the other religious. The leaders felt that political salvation could come to their
land only from a revival of that in it which was most nearly national- religion.
Though this thought had a political ideal, yet it had no direct political message but through its
vivid religious nationalism. This revival of Hindu religion was essentially conservative; it
called men back into the ancient ways.
English Education
English education was one of the factors which directly or indirectly played a noteworthy part
in the development and diffusion of nationalism. It opened the Indian public to ideas of
freedom, liberty, rights, equality etc and thereby gave rise to dreams, ambitions and discontent
among the Indians. They too wanted for themselves and their region freedom and equality. It
also gave Indians the weapon to communicate across region and form a common bonding
among themselves.
In the year 1813 Sir John Malcolm the greatest Anglo-Indian of his time told a committee
of the House of Commons that it would be something like suicide were the British Governemnt
to increase the facilities for education in India. Years afterwards, Macaulay recorded that: do

you think we can give Indians knowledge without awakening their ambition? Do you think we
can awaken their ambition without giving some legitimate vent for it?
Other factors
The non representative character of the Indian Government, - its refusal to inform itself with
the mind of India, - and the consequent deteriorating subjection of the Indian peoples, have
been principal factors in the growth of Indian Nationalism.
Emergence of Indian National Congress (INC) and the Social Background of its
Leadership
The INC was founded at Bombay in the year 1885. Its origins were British, not Indian. Certain
Englishmen who were reasonably disturbed by what they saw around them, - by the increasing
unrest of the masses of India, by the increasing alienation of educated Indians from the
Government of India. Moved by their reflections, lord Dufferin then Viceroy suggested to a
retired Anglo-Indian official the convening of a Congress. He hoped it would be a safety-valve
for the British Raj.
However when the Congress was formed it went far away from what the Viceroy had hoped.
The Indian congress leaders carried to the common people with vigour the spirit of nationalism
and rejected the idea of only redressing Indians problem through congress platform. Liberal
Indian intelligentsia supported by a section of the commercial bourgeoisie signaled the first real
beginning of the Indian national movement on an all-India basis. It rose to prominence for
several reasons, like disastrous famines, and peasant uprisings, discontent among the masses
and so on. The congress popularized the notion of national identity, irrespective of provincial
and communal distinctions.