Nation Worship (A chronicle)

Abstract

The imagination of the nation like the one in the Vishnu Purana traces its origin to the evolutionary journey of human species. Prof Yuval Noah Harari argues that the ability to communicate and imagine common myths has given us immense ability to cooperate on a large scale. He writes: “But fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers.” This cooperation originated as a process to survive has given immense power to the few amongst us to construct states, institutions, societies and nations to direct the cooperation of the remaining. This essay examines the diverse interpretations of nations’ imaginations and looks at the times that make this imagination oppressive. We shall also examine the potential imagination of a global identity to create self-sustaining human civilisation.