National Existence And National Oppression
Athithan Jayapalan
The Nation
A nation as a concept is grounded on the basis of denoting people who foremost share a common language, a common and contiguous territory, historical processes, an overarching ethnic identity and distinct collective socio-cultural traits. This is not to deny the forms of differentiation within a nation based on caste, class, locality and gender which can generate internal oppression and intersection in experience and identities. Despite the internal differentiation the nation is, in Benedict Anderson’s words, a commune of people who imagine as being part of a collective nation. Although it is in essence imagined or rather a cognitive condition, it manifests itself as lived experience and material reality for those concerned. The collective existence of a people is constituted upon the consciousness of being a nation, belonging to a collective.
The nation being a historically constituted and sustained community of people on the basis of national characteristics as mentioned above is still dependent on socio-political processes to engender national consciousness and action. Such is often materialized through the political mobilization of a people under the banner of a nation. Beside its historical preconditions, the nation is dependent on conscious and sustained efforts to exercise national mobilization.
Throughout the world, national mobilization has become integral in the struggle for self-determination and political rights for oppressed people as well as in regard to state projects of nationalism. Without such political activity the nation as a platform for collective social action will be ephemeral and insignificant. It is the dynamics between the two forms which are of concern in this article. .Read More
