Scholarship going nowhere

Book review of On Nationalism

There is a sense of anachrony in writing this review for two reasons. First, this is not a new book.  It is not even a book as contemplated by the author.  The noted Marxist historian Professor Eric Hobsbawm is now dead for close to 10 years.  What we have here is a collection of extracts from one lecture and 22 Hobsbawm books, columns and pamphlets, with a fine introduction by his friend, Donald Sassoon, who also edited the volume.  While Professor Hobsbawm was greatly concerned about nationalism and its various aspects, we do not know if he wanted to address them in a volume.  He certainly did not leave behind a unified manuscript on the subject. 

Second, and more important, although Professor Hobsbawm had said in a letter to his friend in 1988, “I remain in the curious position of disliking, distrusting, disapproving and fearing nationalism wherever it exists…but recognising its enormous force, which must be harnessed for progress if possible,” he could not have possibly imagined the massive grip of nationalism on global geo-politics in the third decade of the 21st century.  Worse, its identification sometimes with a leader becomes a thin disguise for autarky.  Thus we have Brexit, which is nothing but naked nationalism.  Donald Trump still commands a huge following in the United States with his “America First” rhetoric. Vast masses march to the drumbeats of nationalism, the Chinese behind their new Emperor Xi and the Russians following the Czar Putin.  We dutifully chant Bharat Mata ki Jai as bid and suspect anyone who doesn’t follow of sedition.  Lesser worthies force commercial flights to land and disembark their presumed critics.

On Nationalism

Author: Eric Hobsbawm

Publisher: Hatchette

Pages: xxvi + 346; Price: Rs 799

This collection begins with relevant extracts from Professor Hobsbawm’s magisterial trilogy, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire. Students of the Hobsbawm theses would find them familiar.  Nationalism had its roots in primarily, but not exclusively, a bourgeois movement, not very well educated but not quite the labouring masses either, in the West which spread to the East, even to the areas under Turkish influence.  By mid-19th century, nationalist feeling led to the formation of nation-states.  Nationalism “seemed manageable within the framework of…liberalism.”  With the state dominating the nation-state, nationalism took a hard right turn in some nations under the guise of patriotism, ultimately leading to European Fascism.

For this reviewer, the best part of the collection is a small essay entitled “The state, ethnicity and religion: Transformation of identity” towards the middle of the volume.  This is from an international collection of essays published in 1994.  It is also chronologically the last piece included.  This is a nuanced analysis of how religion (primarily), language and ethnicity intersect and coalesce territorialism to form various kinds of nationalisms, at times in conflict with each other.  It not only addresses many of the issues the world faced then but seems to anticipate several with which it has grappled since then.  Its use of the term “Hindu fundamentalism” predates the rise of politics based on Hinduism in India and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party to political power.

This century started with the promise of globalisation.  Scholars wrote of prosperity for all in a flat world where national boundaries mattered little.  One thought perhaps this is what Professor Hobsbawm had in mind when he talked of the enormous force of nationalism that could be harnessed for progress.  But the crisis of 2008 showed how fragile the forces of globalisation were as they could not stop dominoes outside the United States from tumbling.

Today, the world is firmly in the grip of nationalistic fervour, be it in the matter of trade or protecting the “homelands” against “others”, however that term is defined.  And sub-nationalism lurks just under the surface.  That is perhaps why Dr Sassoon and his publishers thought bringing out this volume could help by highlighting the harm of which nationalism is capable.

I have been a great admirer of Professor Hobsbawm as an economic historian from the time I was introduced to him in the late 1960s.  I have followed most of his writings since then, not always with full agreement.  The 1994 essay referred to above was published when the Bosnian ethnic cleansing and the Sri Lankan civil war were at their peak (as was Professor Hobsbawm’s reputation).  Did his wisdom on nationalism, then, save any lives (incidentally, as I write this, Ratko Mladic, one of the Serbian leaders of the Bosnia massacre, has lost his appeal to a United Nations tribunal against his conviction)?  He calls the Palestinians a “highly heterogeneous ensemble of religion.”  Yet one Palestinian is as likely to be hit by an Israeli missile as his next door neighbour, no matter what their religious differences.

The point is this.  We can all agree that nationalism in its present form and all its concomitant manifestations are more evil than good.  But surely any change must come from political means.  And that is most unlikely to happen even in the medium term.  Therefore, even though I personally enjoyed revisiting some of Professor Hobsbawm’s elegant writing, I must consider the entire volume as nothing more than seminar-circuit material.