Nationalism and the quest for authenticity: The Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets

Abstract

Abstract Developments within Tower Hamlets during the 1980s have revealed the way in which identities are constructed through political discourses and practices. The emergence of Bangladeshi community organisations in Tower Hamlets during the early 1980s and the political developments within the borough encouraged the articulation of a primordial Bangladeshi identity which linked British Bengalis to political struggles both within their country of origin and in Tower Hamlets. The political discourse was associated with Bangladeshi national rituals and with competition for public resources within the borough. Recent political developments at local and more global levels have encouraged the articulation of another primordial, Islamic solidarity which forged a bond between Bangladeshis and other members of an imagined, universal Islamic community. The prioritisation of a particular identity — Bangladeshi or Islamic and, in other contexts, black, Asian or British — needs to be located, therefore, within polit...