Nationalist Politics Research Articles

The Student Labor Camp Movement, Postcolonial Development, and the Shaping of Citizens-to-Be in Independent India, 1954–65

The Government of India organized over ten thousand student labor camps for the purposes of village development between 1954 and 1965. This camp movement functions as a key to the novel idealizations of youth in the postcolonial world and the shifting development agendas of independent India. The image of the toiling and vigorous camper committed to serving the newly created nation-state came to be constructed as India's model citizen-to-be, and this figure embodies the emergent forms of postcolonial nationalist politics and ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s. This youthful labor force was depicted in the developmentalist imagination of India as literally building and metaphorically embodying the nation-state and its ideologies of physical fitness, secularism, anti-casteism, and national discipline. This article will argue that camp life negotiated a hierarchy of citizens that made the educated youth the agent of development and the villager the object of development. The running of these camps by volunteer movements such as the National Cadet Corps, the Bharat Scouts and Guides, and the Bharat Sevak Samaj brings to light how the developmental apparatus in India worked or did not work in practice for the students and the poorer classes.

Visionary or Voyeur: Lionel Wendt and the Contradictions of Late Colonial Modernity in Ceylon

The voyeuristic qualities that permeate the vast oeuvre of Ceylonese photographer Lionel Wendt (1900-1944) are a point of contention within scholarship on his work. Scholars counter claims of voyeurism by underscoring his national belonging to Ceylon, his anti-colonial politics, or the global modernist influences on his aesthetic. Many of these analyses rely on Wendt’s biography to contextualize the formal qualities of his photographs. While his biography is important for establishing his influences and motivations as a photographer, it can overshadow the insight offered by the images themselves. This paper draws on a selection of Wendt’s photographs to chart a dialogue between their formal qualities and the political and cultural context of their production, such as a modernist visual arts movement in Ceylon, and a changing political economy as the island approached independence from colonial rule. I argue for a more robust definition of Ceylon modernism that accounts for its relationship to the social modernity during the late colonial era. I then recalibrate the question of voyeurism through an examination of the most common recipient of Wendt’s gaze: the laborer. I pair a formal reading of Wendt’s photo series Men at Work with a discussion of Ceylon’s labor movement, including its contested and antagonistic relationship to the growing nationalist politics of the period. Through my analysis, I foreground the contradictions so characteristic of late colonial modernity in Ceylon, as well as the limitations of binary anti/post-colonial discursive frameworks in which Wendt has been understood.

Religion, Identity and Tribal Sub-national Politics in India

What is the role of religion in tribal politics? Does religion shape tribal political imagination? If so, how and in what manner? Politically, tribal movements since the colonial period have been deeply rooted in religion, and even in post-independent India, they continue to inspire and shape tribal politics. The article argues that tribal politics and religion interact in complex ways. First, the article shows how groups and organisations incorporate religious ideas within their political ideology. Second, religion and politics also come into conflict with one another in terms of the use and interpretation of religious beliefs and commitments for political ends, mainly when it involves the use of violence. This is examined through the case of the Mizo movement for independence in northeast India, where religion was interwoven with the politics of identity, nationalism and violence.

Balance of Threat Analysis in Resolving the Diplomatic Crisis of Qatar and Saudi Arabia in 2017-2020

The regional closeness of Persian Gulf countries faced a threat due to Qatar's foreign policy approach. Despite having the lowest military expenditure among Gulf countries, Qatar diverged from Saudi Arabia's policy of fostering stability in the Persian Gulf region to distance itself from groups deemed a threat to the domestic politics of other Gulf nations. Qatar's pursuit of greater democratic freedoms and a more moderate approach to international relations prompted Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations to impose a diplomatic blockade in 2017. Despite this, Qatar's flexible foreign policy helped it avoid a prolonged domestic crisis. Establishing ties with nearby countries like Iran and Turkey and acquiring fighter aircraft from France and the United States garnered international support beyond its region. This research will examine Qatar's efforts to navigate the diplomatic crisis using a balance of threat approach—a key concept in Neorealism theory that posits an anarchic international structure requiring countries to navigate the global political stage for survival.

‘The sanctuary of them all’: the politics of manpower and nationality in the armies in exile in the United Kingdom, 1940–4

Abstract Historians have long remarked upon the political significance of the Allied armies from Continental Europe which were established on British soil during the Second World War. Much less attention has been devoted to the implications of maintaining and expanding these forces amid the very particular circumstances of wartime exile. This article examines three aspects of the tension between the imperatives to secure as many men as possible for military service while maintaining the distinctly ‘national’ character of the force as a whole. The failure to mobilize emigrants and expatriates is examined in the first section, while the second section shows how soldiers could use national identities to their own advantage and pass between foreign armies. The final section examines the far-reaching political consequences of the often-obscured ethnic diversity within the ranks, focusing particularly on Jewish soldiers.

:German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism

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Between Economic Nationalism and Liberalization: Ideas of Development and the Neoliberal Moment in Mobutu's Congo, 1965–74

AbstractIn January 1967, under the infamous military head Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the Democratic Republic of Congo nationalized its mining industry based on anticolonial rhetoric of “economic sovereignty.” Only two years later, the same Mobutu government welcomed foreign companies and investors with open arms to the inaugural Foire Internationale de Kinshasa. Even at this crucial postcolonial moment when ideas of economic independence and self-sufficiency had become so highly valued, an attachment to — even affinity towards — foreign capital persisted throughout Congolese politics. This article explores the political and intellectual tensions that arose from the postcolonial utilization of foreign capital for state consolidation and synthesizes these contradictions into a broader understanding of early development approaches in Mobutu's Congo. In contrast to those who have framed the Congolese leader's ideology as a rearticulation of colonial logics or the authoritarian whims of an individual, I argue that these early notions of Mobutist development should be understood as a kind of “worldmaking,” emerging from an anticolonial ideology that asserted Congo’s economic sovereignty while simultaneously inserting itself into the global streams of finance. By tracing the Mobutu government's fluctuating relationship to foreign finance, this research offers a longer history of the “neoliberal moment” in Congo — one in which the intellectual underpinnings for liberalization had percolated in Congolese nationalist politics for several decades.

Sri Aurobindo on Nationalism- A Perspective

The long mendicant era of the Indian National Congress (1885-1905) created a need for a leader in Indian nationalist politics who could rally the populace to struggle for political independence from the British. Sri Aurobindo fulfilled that space and employed his ideas of nationalism that has been the subject of scholarly debate for a long period. His inclusive national strategies to stir the entire nation played a key role. But his conception of nationalism goes beyond the struggle for freedom. He was on a mission to create a new country based on India's rich spiritual and cultural heritage and modern European sciences. As far as India’s diversity is concerned, the task seemed greater than anything else. His writings especially in his journal Bande Mataram created waves among the masses. He appealed to the then-fragmented population to ascribe to the identity of one nation. His nationalism aimed at the Indian Renaissance through both political freedom and spiritual regeneration. This study will highlight most of the salient features of his nationalism.

"Wawacan Nata Sukma": Tracing the traces of classical Sundanese literature from the dark history of colonialism to the identity politics of oppressed nations from a performing arts perspective

Reading about the Sundanese people of Bandung Regency after the 17th century, one can learn from the Wawacan literary works, which helped shape the collective minds of the people. Wawacan is strongly influenced by Islamic teachings, which are depicted in sagas in the form of poetry called dangding (poetic bond). This research examines Wawacan Nata Sukma, written anonymously by the people of Banjaran on the slopes of Mount Cupu Pangalengan in Bandung Regency. Writing using Pegon (Arabic) letters, Sundanese language, 1833 AD (18th century) during the "forced cultivation" period of growing coffee under Dutch colonialism. The story Wawacan Nata Sukma contains the metaphorical, wild, intriguing, and patriotic resistance of the character "Nata Sukma". Staged from 1930 to 1960 in Bandung Regency. Nata Sukma struggled beyond war and oppression. He succeeded in deepening knowledge, changing fate, and achieving a dignified life after defeating the kings of five countries. Wawacan Nata Sukma is a reportage and portrait of events that occurred during the "forced cultivation" period and is related to the politics of the national identity of the oppressed. Research uses a hermeneutic perspective and qualitative methods in describing and analyzing phenomena, events, social activities, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and thoughts of people individually and in groups.

Democracy, Authoritarianism and Global Economic Governance

Four weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, US Senator John Kennedy accused the Biden administration of indirectly providing over $17 billion to Moscow as Putin was gearing up for war. In August 2021, the International Monetary Fund had indeed approved a historic $650 billion allocation of Special Drawing Rights to help member countries struggling with the Covid crisis. Russia benefited from these money transfers, as did Iran, China, and Myanmar, notwithstanding the authoritarian consolidation of these regimes. Kennedy's op-ed sparked a debate about the lack of transparency in the use of crisis resources and led to the adoption in the United States of the ‘Russia and Belarus SDR Exchange Prohibition Act’, which bans currency transactions with these countries through the IMF, following the imposition of 2,500 sanctions by the US Treasury since February 2022. The op-ed also reignited a decades-old debate over whether international organisations such as the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO) should be held accountable for supporting authoritarian and corrupt governments or interfering in the politics of sovereign nations.

Social Progress and the Dravidian “Race” in Tamil Social Thought

In the closing decades of the 19th century, a wide range of Tamil authors and public speakers in colonial India became acutely interested in the notion of a Dravidian “race”. This conception of a Dravidian race, rooted in European racial and philological scholarship on the peoples of South India, became an important symbol of Tamil cultural, religious, and social autonomy in colonial and post-colonial Tamil thought, art, politics, and literature. European racial thought depicted Dravidians as a savage race that had been subjugated or displaced by the superior Aryan race in ancient Indic history. Using several key works of colonial scholarship, non-Brahmin Tamil authors reversed and reconfigured this idea to ground their own broad-reaching critiques of Brahmin political and social dominance, Brahmanical Hinduism, and Indian nationalism. Whereas European scholarship largely presented Dravidians as the inferiors of Aryans, non-Brahmin Tamil thinkers argued that the ancient, Dravidian identity of the Tamil people could stand alone without Aryan interference. This symbolic contrast between Dravidian (Tamil, non-Brahmin, South Indian) and Aryan (Sanskritic, Brahmin, North Indian) is a central component of 20th- and 21st-century Tamil public discourse on caste, gender, and cultural autonomy. Tamil authors, speakers, activists, and politicians used and continue to use the symbolic frame of Dravidian racial history to advocate for many different political, cultural, and social causes. While not all of these “Dravidian” discourses are meaningfully politically or socially progressive, the long history of Dravidian-centered, anti-Brahmanical discourse in Tamil South India has helped Tamil Nadu largely rebuff the advances of Hindu nationalist politics, which have become dominant in other cultural regions of present-day India. This piece presents a background on the emergence of the term “Dravidian” in socially critical Tamil thought, as well as its reversal and reconfiguration by Tamil social thinkers, orators, and activists in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The piece begins with a brief history of the terms “Dravidian” and “Aryan” in Western racial thought. The piece then charts the evolution of this discourse in Tamil public thought by discussing several important examples of Tamil social and political movements that incorporate the conceptual poles of “Dravidian” and “Aryan” into their own platforms.

Authoritarian Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Face of the Jina Movement

Since last Shahrivar [August—September], a movement has arisen across Iran which has come to be recognised globally by its pivotal slogan, ‘Zan Zendegi Azadi’. This movement can be viewed from one perspective, as a continuation of the Dey 1396 [December—January 2017–2018], and Aban 1398 protests [October—November 2019] protests, in large part due to the fact that, like these previous two uprisings, it featured the same anti-establishment demands. However, this most recent Movement has also featured the highest rates of involvement from women, youth, and ethnic minority groups in decades. Much has been written to describe and explain the Jinah Movement, and so I don’t intend to discuss the reasons for its formation, nor its distinguishing features, the reasons for its subsequent decline, or its current prospects. Instead I will take this opportunity to question what factors—aside from the decisive role of repressive structure—contributed to the decline of the movement, what discourses played an inhibiting role in this movement and what could ultimately make its victory impossible?

Asian American transnationalism: queer diasporic critique on Netflix’s Bling Empire

ABSTRACT This essay interrogates Asian American representations in the Netflix’s reality TV series Bling Empire (Jenkins, J., Panaligan, B., Weintraub, R., Chung, E., Eisele, B., & Li, K. M. (Executive Producers) (2021, January 15; 2022, May 13). Bling Empire [TV Series]). We deploy queer diaspora as an analytic tool to read how Bling Empire represents the politics of Asian American transnationalism, through contestations of family tradition, kinship, and racialization rooted in cisheteronormativity. By transnationalism, we mean global (dis)connections of power, identity, labor, and capital built upon the nationalist politics. The following themes emerge from our analysis of the foci above: Representational Privileges of Masculinity, Transnational Kinship Making, and Diasporic Exceptionalism. By disordering the structure of cisheterosexuality, we problematize how Bling Empire works with the Asian American transnationalism supporting the configuration of diaspora, migration, and citizenship.

"So called in America": Nationalism, Nativism, and the Representation of Indigenous Languages in Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Languag e (1828)

ABSTRACT: This study explores Noah Webster's representation of vocabulary derived from indigenous languages in the first edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Previous scholarship on Webster has revealed much about how his lexicography reflected his nationalist politics, but the role that his treatment of indigenous languages plays in this narrative has not been explored. By analyzing words with indigenous origins as a distinct category within the Dictionary and bringing to light new evidence of Webster's etymological theories towards indigenous languages, this study emphasizes nativism as a tool in Webster's nationalist project and explores the historic treatment of indigenous languages and cultures in American dictionaries.

ICD-10 - ORPHA: An Interactive Complex Network Model for Brazilian Rare Diseases

A disease is considered rare if it has a low prevalence. It is estimated that around 400 million people worldwide have a rare disease, including 15 million in Brazil. Consequently, it became a public health priority for the World Health Organization and the Brazilian Health Ministry. In 2014, the Brazilian government launched a national policy regarding the care for rare patients’, the Ordinance nº199. The national politic defines guidelines, procedures, and descriptions of rare disease codes to provide access and diagnosis in the public health system to reduce mortality and improve patient’s quality of life. Diseases are identified according to the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision, a widely used terminology in this context. However, there are also different terminologies to codify a rare disease, such as the ORPHAcode provided by Orphanet. This paper proposes a complex network model using the terminologies’ relationship to show that the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision may be generic for diagnosing rare Brazilian patients. Moreover, there is no perfect nomenclature to define rare diseases, but each context has a better application. So, mapping the relationship between each terminology is fundamental for creating consistent semantic relationships in biomedical ontologies, providing a functional environment for carrying out tasks involving more than one terminology.

Corruption and its Implications for Politics in South Asian Countries

This study measures corruption using survey data, newspaper reports, court records, anti-corruption agency records, and other sources. Corruption and problems with the government have been significant problems in South Asia since the early 1980s. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from Transparency International is recommended because it is a "robust" indicator that looks at many different ways to measure political corruption in each country. The root causes of corruption in South Asian countries, however, are a monopoly of government-controlled institutions, excessive regulations, convoluted tax and licencing systems, numerous government departments with opaque bureaucracies and discretionary powers, and a lack of transparency in laws and procedures. Tax evasion, which helps black money accumulate and lowers public morale, has a substantial negative impact on the economies and politics of South Asian nations. Since the 1980s, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Bangladesh have all been officially charged with corruption. In addition, political rivals and the media frequently accuse the prime ministers of Sri Lanka and Nepal of corruption. In Bangladesh, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries, political bribery is widespread. In 2002, General Pervez Musharraf passed stringent election laws that forbade politicians convicted of a crime from seeking office. The rule's detractors believe that applying it would prevent the civilian community's two most influential political figures from challenging the military administration in elections later this year.

The portraits of pre-independent india in sarojini naidu’s poems

Sarojini Naidu wrote poetry based on the beauty of simple joys and sorrows of life. One of the major themes of Sarojini Naidu’s poetry is the theme of people because she has succeeded in offering diverse images of the lives of Indian people and their various life backgrounds. Poet, feminist, nationalist and a powerful Orator, Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was born in in Hyderabad during the critical time of India’s Independence. She was called affectionately by the people with multiple titles like “The Nightingale of India”, “The wandering Singer”, “The Indian Joan of Arc”, The Indian Judith”, and “The Peace-Maker.” This paper analyses the ways in which how she exhibits the Indianness throughout her poems. Lyricism, symbolism, imagery, mysticism and native fervour are the remarkable assets of her poetry. The present paper focuses on the poems written by Sarojini Naidu which depict the lives of common men and women of India and their traditions. Naidu’s poetry is written in English and usually took the form of lyric poetry in the tradition of British Romanticism, which she was sometimes challenged to reconcile with her Indian nationalist politics. Finally, this paper further analyses her variety of poetic expressions such as Indian ethos, pathos, naturalness, gentleness and hunger.

Corruption and its Implications for Politics in South Asian Countries

This study measures corruption using survey data, newspaper reports, court records, anti-corruption agency records, and other sources. Corruption and problems with the government have been significant problems in South Asia since the early 1980s. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from Transparency International is recommended because it is a “robust” indicator that looks at many different ways to measure political corruption in each country. The root causes of corruption in South Asian countries, however, are a monopoly of government-controlled institutions, excessive regulations, convoluted tax and licensing systems, numerous government departments with opaque bureaucracies and discretionary powers, and a lack of transparency in laws and procedures. Tax evasion, which helps black money accumulate and lowers public morale, has a substantial negative impact on the economies and politics of South Asian nations. Since the 1980s, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Bangladesh have all been officially charged with corruption. In addition, political rivals and the media frequently accuse the prime ministers of Sri Lanka and Nepal of corruption. In Bangladesh, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries, political bribery is widespread. In 2002, General Pervez Musharraf passed stringent election laws that forbade politicians convicted of a crime from seeking office. The rule’s detractors believe that applying it would prevent the civilian community’s two most influential political figures from challenging the military administration in elections later this year.

“Don’t Dig in the Graveyard”

Abstract This article fills the gap on the research of memory of the Croatian War of Independence (1991–1995) in film and theatre and demonstrates that so far the arts have been the main channel of the emancipatory narrative, challenging the mainstream collective memory of a victim and victorious nation and serving as a space of fostering debate on the country’s recent past. The article focuses on the cultural representation of the war in Croatia in the last decade, since Croatian accession to the EU, while paying special attention to the reactions of the wider audience to such works, especially the key mnemonic actors, such as the war veterans and the nationalist politicians. The results show that even though theatre and film offer counter-narratives on the Homeland War and spur and spark the debate, it is yet to be seen if they can lead to a wider discussion in the society.

Karma as a Means of Wartime Political Mobilization: A Reading of Chinese Buddhists’ Response to the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945

The concept of karma is of great significance for scholars of modern China seeking to comprehend the impact of Buddhism on the Second Sino-Japanese War. This paper explores the sociopolitical function of karma within China’s wartime society and its profound implications for Nationalist politics. It examines how karma was articulated by wartime Chinese Buddhists as a means of Nationalist mobilization for China's war effort. Moreover, this paper situates the discourse on karma within the framework of modern nationalism by comparing the sociopolitical utilization of karma by Chinese and Japanese Buddhists during the war. As such, it reveals that the divergent interpretations of karma by Buddhists in the two nation-states had enduring and far-reaching consequences on their respective societies.