Lecture Supplement on “Whose Imagined Community?

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Introduction
Partha Chatterjee elaborates on the variety of nationalism(s) as it emerged in different
colonial contexts of Africa and Asia. With its roots in anti-colonial struggles in most cases,
the discourse of nationalism in the so-called Third world is conspicuous by its distinct nature,
especially in its divergence from the established discourse of nationalism in the West that
emerged since the sixteenth century. In highlighting the distinct nature of postcolonial
nationalism, the main intention of Chatterjee is to deconstruct the supposedly universal model
of nationalism (of a Western European variety) that is assumed to hold true for all nations
alike, which however, refuses to accommodate and acknowledge the differential histories of
coming-into-being of nationalisms in different parts of the world. Chatterjee begins his
narrative of postcolonial nationalism in India with a critique of Benedict Anderson’s version
of the idea of nation and nationalism as an ‘imagined’ community, which acquires a concrete
shape through certain institutions, especially that of ‘print capitalism’. According to
Anderson, the historical development of nationalisms in Western Europe, the US and Russia
serve as modular forms for rest of the world to choose from, especially for the newly
independent nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America following the period of decolonization
and democratization in 1940s-50s. According to Chatterjee, the specific discourse of
nationalism as it developed in the West, with attendant ideas of modernity, development, and
progress, cannot be delinked from its colonizing propensity that becomes explicit in the
context of the so-called Third World. Therefore, the universal model of nationalism as it
emerged in the West signifying the onset of modernity cannot but be a hegemonic discourse.
It’s unfolding in the nations of Asia and Africa highlights stories of not just colonial
exploitation, but also that of a discursive colonization, whereby political imaginations and
possibilities of recovery and development in the newly independent nations remained
entangled within the webs of such a hegemonic discourse.
The ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ of anti-colonial nationalism
Partha Chatterjee’s reading of postcolonial nationalism in the context of India proceeds with a
critique of conventional histories that trace the beginning of nationalism with the formation
of Indian National Congress in 1885. In such accounts, nationalism is reduced to being a
mere struggle for political power. The institutional history of coming into being of Congress
party and its gradual ascendance to power covers the history of emergence of nationalism in
India and also remains the determining feature of anti- colonial struggle in the country. In
contrast, Chatterjee’s own reading of history of nationalism rests on a principle which,
according to him, forms basis to the distinct way in which the nationalist discourse takes
shape in the specific history of a colonial country like India. According to him, articulation of
anti-colonial nationalism rests on a division or separation between two distinct spheres,
namely, the spiritual and the material. The material realm is one of economy, statecraft,
science and technology, in which the superiority of the West, represented by the colonial
power, is an established fact. In the material domain therefore, the historical task before the
colonized was to imitate and reproduce for itself, the benefits of the project of colonial
enlightenment and modernity. The spiritual realm on the other hand, represented true
sovereignty of the colonized. It was a sphere of cultural distinctness from, and superiority
over, the colonizers of the colonized people, and hence needed to be preserved that way. If
the material sphere represented the superiority of the colonial rulers, it was the spiritual
domain which was the main source of strength and autonomy of the colonized. Therefore, the
spiritual domain was one that needed to be preserved from all colonial encroachments.
As was evident, beyond a brief phase of enthusiasm on the part of the Indian social
reformers for British-initiated reforms in the customs and institutions of traditional society in
India, the latter half of the nineteenth century saw a vocal resistance against any action of the
colonial state to intervene in the ‘cultural traditions’ of the native people. This, according to
Chatterjee, symbolized nationalism among the colonized people. It effectively meant that not
only the colonial state was sought to be kept out of the spiritual or inner domain, but also that
any kind of reforms or intervention in the said domain would be completely in the hands of
the colonized masses. Therefore, the essence of the ‘imagined’ nation rested in the so-called
spiritual or inner domain in which the colonized masses were sovereign despite being ruled
by an alien, foreign power in the material sphere.
The historic task before the nationalists was to preserve the sovereignty of their
spiritual or inner domain, while at the same time, to re-fashion it to fit the need of the
changing times, that is, they sought to reform and recreate the national culture to make it
‘modern’ in all respects. Visible efforts on the part of the nationalists were to produce a
‘modern’ national culture, which was yet prominent in its difference from the colonial culture
by being rooted in indigenous traditions and values. Therefore, nationalism manifested itself
in the spiritual domain in a completely different way than its course in the material domain
where it increasingly sought to be like the colonizers. In the remaining chapters of the book,
Chatterjee traces the history of nationalism- through examples from history of colonial
Bengal- as it charts a particular course in its efforts to reform the different aspects of the so-
called spiritual or inner domain. These different aspects of cultural domain include that of
language and literature, education, and family which the nationalists sought to modify to
make them in tune with the requirements of the modern world. European influence on the
Indian social reformers in each of these cases was visible enough. However, the social
reformers including the nationalists embarked on a historical project to assert and establish
their cultural differences with the West and prove at the same time through necessary
reforms, their own capabilities to determine their future by fashioning a modern self for the
nation.
Chatterjee cautions his readers against reducing the dual scheme of material and the
spiritual to being merely indicative of any kind of exceptionalism as far as Indian nationalism
is concerned. Rather, he insists that the respective histories of development of the two
domains of material and spiritual must be perceived in their mutuality to understand the
nationalist discourse in India. A nationalist historiography in the Indian context must take into
consideration the intertwined geneses of both spheres; each sphere posed as a limitation as
well as cast an impact on the other, determining it particular shape. The project of modern
politics introduced by the British in the colonial sphere had to negotiate with and accord
concession to the inner, cultural politics of the nationalists to produce consent. Likewise, the
‘inner’ domain of subaltern politics had to readapt to the institutional mechanisms introduced
by the colonial rule in the elite or material domain. This interaction between the two domains
of politics is a characteristic feature of postcolonial nationalism and has deep implications for
the perceived universality of the Western concept of nationalism. It also provides for a deeper
analysis of the role played by colonialism in the modern regime of power. Far from being a
mere tangential question to the discourse of power in modern times, colonialism is deeply
implicated in way in which modern forms of power manifest themselves in different
historical contexts. Therefore, a nationalist historiography which links the end of colonialism
with displacement of political rule of the foreign power is an incomplete one. The historical
narrative of unfolding of modernity in the context of India is a story of continued
colonization, a product of modern regime of power.
Rule of colonial difference as modern disciplinary power
Chatterjee’s analysis is influenced by Michel Foucault’s reading of modern concept of power;
by this scheme, power is productive or facilitative rather than being prohibitive. Modern
technologies and institutions of power rule not by being restrictive; rather, they aim to
normalize social regulations to guide or enable self-disciplining among subjects. Instead of
being prohibitive, modern power reconfigures the social environment in order to guide and
affect conduct of the inhabitants of that environment. According to Partha Chatterjee,
colonialism in the context of countries of Asia and Africa was the main channel through
which the disciplinary power of the modern state was exercised. It is through the rule of
colonial difference that the foreign rule maintained its power and produced consent for its
rule. Rule of colonial difference implied that modern institutions of self-representation and
democracy could not be replicated in a society like that of India, rooted as it was in deep-
rooted hierarchies-based caste and religion which made it naturally unsuited to democratic
organization and functioning. That the otherwise universal principles and institutions of
democracy and self-governance could not be applied to the Indian context, was seen as an
inevitable outcome of an inherently backward, superstitious, and authoritarian society in
India. Therefore, the colonial powers in India saw their primary task as being limited only to
the administration of the country, and ensuring welfare of the people, and professedly
disowned the task of educating the masses in liberal democratic politics. Consequently, the
colonial rule managed to establish its difference from the colonized society, and race as a
category became crucial to the articulation of that essential divide between the colonizers and
the colonized. Superiority of the colonial rulers as against the inherent backwardness of the
colonized society was affirmed by racial differences between the two broad communities.
The established rule of colonial difference had a more profound role to play in the
colonial scheme of things. Its more important contribution was to accord legitimacy to the
grand exercise of modern colonial state to survey, classify and enumerate its subject
populations. On the pretext of knowing better the society that was meant to be ruled, modern
colonial state strived to gather as much information about the colonized terrain. All the
information gathered systematically through scientific ways, formed basis to codification of
laws, and it was this access to knowledge that was a source of power for the colonial rulers.
The link between knowledge and power here cannot be overemphasized because it was
owing to its prerogative in classifying and enumerating the colonial society that the colonial
rulers managed to cast an order on it, one that served their interests and was in their control.
This particular modality of governance by the modern colonial state was facilitated by rule of
colonial difference which affirmed the disciplinary hold of colonial state over the colonized
society. It was through rule of colonial difference that the access of Indians to fair recruitment
in colonial bureaucracy, freedom of press, and public opinion was denied. A society
considered not fit for a responsible democratic system could find no use for its institutions as
well.
Nationalist Response as an act in Self-discipline
What was the response of the nationalists to the growing intervention of the colonial rulers?
The universality of modern regime and institutions of power, howsoever imposed, was
acknowledged by the nationalists in the material sphere and they were vehemently opposed to
rule of colonial difference which they saw as an assault on that universality. Therefore,
nationalist politics was aimed at removing any kind of difference between the colonizers and
the colonized in the outer domain of politics. Nationalist resistance to the dominance of the
colonizers in the material sphere was deemed possible only by fulfilling the lack in self, that
is, by equipping oneself with the superior techniques of the colonizers as far as material life
was concerned. This relation of subordination of the nationalists in the material sphere was
complemented by a relation of dominance in the cultural sphere. The cultural realm was the
domain of sovereignty for the nationalists which they increasingly sought to keep out of the
reach of any kind of colonial intervention. Therefore, it from within the inner or spiritual
domain of indigenous culture- radically different from that of the colonizers’- that the
nationalists derived an autonomous agency or subjectivity that was articulated as key form of
resistance to the corrupting influences of colonial modernity.
Chatterjee’s insightful intervention is that the hegemonic project of nationalism in
colonial context of India was based on mediation between these two spheres, which exposed
both its possibilities and limits. The historic task to prove that the colonized were not the
‘inferior other’ as projected by the rule of colonial difference, took the nationalists to
‘modernize’ themselves in the material sphere. In contrast, the cultural or spiritual essence of
the nation needed to be preserved in its pristine and distinctive form, precisely because it was
the source of self-identity of the nation. This led the nationalists, as Chatterjee says, to
selectively appropriate aspects of western modernity, based on the ideological premise that
modernity of the west must be tamed so as to retain the essence of national culture. The
process of construction of a national culture that was both ‘modern’ and ‘Indian’ at the same
time was an act in self-disciplining, that is, an internalization of the disciplinary element of
the modern regime of power. The nationalists took upon themselves to reform and modernize
aspects of cultural sphere to make them suitable for modern times. Therefore, in complex
ways, the outer and inner, material, and spiritual, public and private corresponded to give
shape to the hegemonic project of nationalism in postcolonial society in India.
National Project and the Woman’s question
For the nationalists, woman’s question was firmly positioned within the autonomous cultural
realm that was the basis of self-identity of the nation. To repeat an earlier point, the
nationalists had no option other than to accept the dominance of modernity in the material or
outer sphere. It was in the spiritual or inner realm that nationalists assumed sovereignty from
any external domination, and this was precisely because East was considered superior to the
West in spiritual terms. The duality between the material and spiritual found corresponding
references in dichotomies of inner and outer or home and the world. Family- as opposed to
the outer world which was subject to vagaries of material reality- was seen as a private realm
that embodied one’s true identity; it was reflective of one’s autonomous self. This source of
self-identity needed to be preserved against encroachments by forces of modernity. If the
colonized could not escape being hegemonized by modernity of the west in outer material
domain, they had to do so without compromising on their true, autonomous identity in the
spiritual realm. The complex dialectic between the material and spiritual led to a division of
social space into home and outside world, with corresponding gender roles and a sexual
division of labour. Women as belonging to the essential space of the home, were the
repository of values of the inner, essential cultural sphere. The question of family, its space
within the hegemonic discourse of the nation, the corresponding role of the woman within the
family and simultaneously towards nation-building, her education etc were some questions
that need to be located against this complex exchange between the material and spiritual
worlds. By relegating the question of women within the inner realm of culture, the
nationalists managed to depoliticize it, that is, as Chatterjee says, the nationalists refused to
see women’s question as holding any value in terms of political negotiation with the colonial
state. Resolution, if any, of the so-called women’s question was to be found only by the
nationalists, and that too in keeping with framework of the traditional values of the
indigenous culture. Therefore, Chatterjee notes a distinct reluctance on the part of nationalists
and social reformers by the end of nineteenth century, to allow any colonial intervention in
matters of socio-cultural reforms, and especially ones related to position of women in
colonized society.
For the colonizers, the inferior status of women in colonized society was reflective of
the inherent barbarism of traditional culture of the colonized. With the self-assumed role of
imparting ‘civilization’ to the subject population, the British were able to bring to light the
oppressive nature of social customs of the colonized, and also drew justification for their hold
over colonial society on the pretext of reforming the latter by introducing a proper framework
of procedural law and rational methods of governance. The nationalists on their part saw any
effort on the part of colonial rulers to introduce reforms in matters of indigenous culture as an
assault on their private autonomous sphere constituting essential identity of the nation. As per
the nationalist agenda, therefore, the chief question was concerning the role and conduct of
women in changing conditions of the modern world. For both nationalists and the
colonialists, the question concerning the status of women was much beyond than what was
evident at first instance: it was a question of political confrontation between a colonial state
and the so-called ‘traditions’ of a colonized nation, and this largely determined the stance
with which each sought to resolve women’s issues.
According to Chatterjee, the approach of the nationalists towards resolution of
women’s question was one that was based on selective modernization. Selective
modernization led to a new patriarchy that was based on reinvention of tradition, and it did
not lead to any substantial transformation in the lives of women of middle-class families. For
example, education was encouraged because it enabled cultural refinement in women and
helped them to fulfil their duties within the families in a better way. Women as embodiment
of cultural values of the nation were endowed with the responsibility to keep intact the
sanctity and purity of the inner spiritual realm while men braced themselves to withstand the
assaults of forces of modernity in outer realm of politics and economy.