Cultural Nationalism in India

The concept of Nationalism is linked to the idea of sovereignty and hence; it has to be associated to the principle of self-determination. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill argued that nationalist movements were dependent on ethnicity, language and culture. These were the basis of the demand for statehood. While this stood true for most nationalistic movements, Hurst Hanum of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy remarked that in this era, the notion of self-determination was used by groups to divide rather than unify territory. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire can be used as an example.

It was at the peak of colonialism in the mid-19th century that the colonised world witnessed the rise in nationalistic sentiments with the emphasis on the idea of a common language, religion, ethnicity etc. While the western idea of nationalism aims to set up a uni-nation, uni-culture dictum, nationalism operates on different principles in a multi-national, pluralist context (for the purpose of this paper, the term pluralist and multi-nationalist will be used interchangeably). Nationalism had a dual role to play in the last century through the many nationalistic upheavals leading to decolonization of most of Latin America, Africa and Asia.