Negotiating the nation: diaspora contestations in the USA about Hindu nationalism in India

ABSTRACT. Diaspora positions and identities are being continually constructed, negotiated and reframed. Nevertheless, many studies tend to focus on the ethno‐centric, exclusionary and/or nationalistic orientation of some groups. In this article, I will explore variations in the responses of the Indian American diaspora community to Hindu nationalism in India. The article will focus on the opposition of progressive groups to a particularly controversial Hindu nationalist leader, Narendra Modi. They stand in contrast to those US‐based organisations that support Modi and his political ideology. The debate between the two sides shows a high degree of political polarisation within the community. This study illustrates the variations in interpretations of nationalism and identity that exist among groups operating in the transnational political space. In particular, it shows us that the political process that articulates these differences can impact policy in the home or adopted country.     

The Indian nation and selective amnesia: representing conflicts and violence in Indian history textbooks

‘Unity is always obtained by means of brutality’ wrote Ernest Renan. Following this idea, this article investigates how social conflicts and violence are included or muted in national history. This is done by comparing the successive series of history textbooks used in India in the postindependence period. The historical narratives contained in the textbooks were influenced by different conceptions of the Indian nation, and these variations allow us to observe and better understand what is remembered or forgotten in the national narrative. We will see that conflicts and violence are referred to when they involve the nation against its ‘other’ but depictions of conflicts within the nation as it is imagined are avoided. Thus, certain violent episodes of the past find a place in the national historical narrative, yet violence in itself is never described.     

双重的矛盾——印度尼西亚与美国关系的历史解析(1949-1966)

从1949至1966年,印美两国关系经历了友好、冲突、缓和与恶化的曲折变化。印尼中立主义与美国遏制战略之间的冲突,是阻碍两国关系发展的第一重矛盾。印尼民族主义与美国维护冷战盟友荷兰、英国殖民主义之间的冲突,则成为影响两国关系的第二重矛盾。印美两国矛盾的实质在于,冷战的两极格局下,一个全球超级大国和一个新兴地区大国之间难以调和的国家利益的冲突。     

The politics of recognition: symbols,nation building and rival nationalisms

ABSTRACT. Ceremonial initiatives linked to nation‐building projects are highly visible in multiethnic states, where governments seem to have adopted a Durkheimian approach in which ceremonies contribute to the strengthening of communities. However, national ceremonies are not invented or exported to other nations easily, as seen when outlining the pattern of a successful national day. A unifying narrative (sometimes the historical genesis) is significant in the establishment of successful national days, as is the nature of the national day design. The celebrations of the constitution in Norway – and the 77 year struggle to get the Norwegian flag officially recognised – became part of resisting the enforced union with Sweden (1814–1905). Therefore, the growth of Norwegian nationalism must be understood in the context of rival nationalisms in Scandinavia. However, Constitution Day (17 May) has remained a powerful component of Norwegian nationalism long since the constitution ceased to be threatened because of its incorporation in primary and secondary school curricula and, more recently, within the debate on multiculturalism.     

Of scales, networks and assemblages: the League of Nations apparatus and the scalar sovereignty of the Government of India

Whilst greatly valuing recent critiques of the vertical imaginary and reified ontology of scale theory, and of the unfettered flows of network theory, this paper argues against a human geography without scale. Rather, four propositions from the theoretical literature are used to provide a tool-kit to analyse the practical negotiation of scalar politics, namely that: scales should be considered as effects, not frames or structures, of practice; networks must be considered in all their complexity and heterogeneity; networks can be interpreted as assemblages, the more re-territorialising and re-scaling of which can be analysed as apparatuses; and that state apparatuses work to create the impression that scales are ahistorical, hierarchical and possess exclusive relationships. These propositions are used to explore a period of history when the scalar constitution of the world was under intense debate. The interwar era saw the imperial scale clash with that of the international, both as ideological worldviews, and as a series of interacting institutions. The assemblages of internationalism and imperialism were embodied by apparatuses such as the League of Nations and the colonial Government of India respectively. Attempts by the League to encourage the abolition of tolerated brothels in an attempt to reduce the trafficking of women and children led to intense debates between the 1920s and 1930s over what constituted the legitimate domains of the international and the 'domestic'. These explicitly scalar debates were the product of League networks that threatened the scalar sovereignty of the Raj, most directly through the travelling Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East in 1931.     

旅游发展与非物质文化遗产的保护和传承——以莲花山“花儿”为例

“花儿”艺术源远流长,是劳动人民的智慧与情感的结晶。“花儿会”反映了所传唱地区的文化、历史,也是当地的特色民俗之一,不仅具有很高文学、音乐、历史、文化价值,也有很高的社会价值以及作为地方特色的旅游资源的开发价值。但是随着社会经济的发展和乡村城镇化进程的加快,这种古老的艺术正面临着严重的危机,其内涵和外延都在严重萎缩。本文通过对“花儿”在当地居民中传承现状、保护措施、发展趋势等方面的实践调研,结合旅游业可持续发展相关理论,对旅游业发展与音乐类非物质文化遗产保护传承之关系作出了分析和探讨;并提出以实景舞台剧、艺术博物馆等旅游开发模式来加强对这一非物质文化遗产的保护与传承。     

Brutes, beasts and empire: veterinary medicine and environmental policy in French North Africa and British India

The deep, and persistent, colonial roots of many contemporary environmental policies around the world have been increasingly recognized over the last decade. Research in the sectors of agriculture, forestry, human medicine, and public health has illuminated how environmental policies were constructed and utilized during the colonial period, as well as how many of these policies remain influential today. This paper examines the as yet little explored contribution of colonial veterinary medicine to the development and implementation of environmental policy. By comparing the experiences of the French in North Africa and the British in India, it demonstrates that some colonial veterinarians had a great deal of influence on environmental policy while others had very little. In French North Africa veterinarians played a significant role in developing rangeland management policies that impacted large swaths of these three territories, policies that can still be felt today. In British India, by contrast, the role of colonial veterinarians in developing environmental policy was much more circumscribed and, in the end, largely inconsequential. The paper suggests that three primary factors account for most of this dissimilarity: the differences in animal diseases present in India and the Maghreb; the differences between French and British veterinary education before the twentieth century; and the differences in colonial administration between the two European powers.     

Using cultural trauma: Gandhi's assassination,partition and secular nationalism in post‐independence India

Nationalism theorists have noted the link between traumatic events and national identity, and cultural trauma theory presents a framework for understanding how these events become trauma narratives. I argue for greater consideration of how these narratives are strategically linked to ideological frames of national identity. A case study of post‐Independence India considering the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the Partition of India and Pakistan demonstrates how two very different events were promoted as cultural traumas by various carrier groups in order to promote a secular vision of the Indian nation. Adapting Armstrong and Crage (2006), I suggest that the success of these trauma narratives depend on several criteria: the ease of narrating the event, how it is linked to underlying cultural meanings/frames and how the event interacts with historical contingencies.     

‘British India on trial’: Brighton Military Hospitals and the politics of empire in World War I

During the early years of the First World War, wounded Indian soldiers were treated at hospitals in southern England. Focussing especially on the hospital created within the Royal Pavilion complex in Brighton, this article examines the implications of an episode in which thousands of colonised subjects were located and managed within a metropolitan province. We show how the Indian hospitals became sites of concentrated imperial anxiety, with the potential to destabilise British rule in India itself as well as the English localities in which they were created. In particular, we argue that the agency expressed in Indian soldiers’ letters home generated an acute consciousness among British officials of the need to bear in mind subaltern subjects’ own networks when managing those hegemonic imperial networks that come more readily to historians’ attention.     

The historical dynamics of ethnic conflicts: confrontational nationalisms,democracy and the Basques in contemporary Spain*

ABSTRACT. All the historical moments in which the Basque debate reached political protagonism in contemporary Spain coincided with political contexts of institutional democratisation. The debate on patriotism in the Basque Country is connected with a uniform narrative regarding the Basques and their moral distance from the Spanish nation: the ‘Basque problem’. This narrative has fostered a confrontational discourse between Spanish and Basque nationalism. It has also promoted recourse to specific stereotypical images of the Basques, which bind ethnicity to collective identity. Such representations reveal that the invention of the Basque country as a uniform ethnic collective had much more to do with the internal contradictions of Spanish national identity – and later of Basque identity – than with the existence of a secular conflict between Basques and Spaniards. The Basque case shows that every ‘ethnic conflict’ requires adequate contextualisation in order to avoid simplifying its origins and past pathways to make it conform to present uses.     

German modernity,barbarous Slavs and profit‐seeking Jews: the cultural racism of nationalist liberals

This paper examines emblematic texts by two important protagonists of post‐1848 liberalism in Germany, Gustav Freytag and Heinrich von Treitschke, focusing on their treatment of Jews and Poles. The paper analyses the social content of their statements and argues that the elements of anti‐Semitism and anti‐Slav racism that they contain were motivated by the specific kind of nationalist liberalism that frames their affirmation of the process of modernisation. This affirmation was directed against the Poles on the one hand, seen as backward Easterners who had to be pushed into civilisation by Prussian–German colonialism, and, on the other hand, the Jews, largely perceived as representing the wrong kind of modernity against which benign (supposedly German) modernity had to be protected. At the same time, the image of the Jew in Freytag and Treitschke also participates in that of the backward Easterner, permitting to see undesirable, allegedly Jewish aspects of modernity also as distortions resulting from an alien and ancient culture. This analysis has consequences for theorisations of both liberalism and nationalism: it suggests that the racism and anti‐Semitism of nationalist liberals were intrinsically related to core aspects of the liberal world‐view rather than being merely contingent opinions held by particular individuals. It also indicates that the nationalism of many German post‐1848 liberals was ethnic as well as liberal. In this way, the paper contributes to the growing body of literature discussing the illiberal aspects of liberalism as well as the shortcomings of the long‐established conceptual dichotomy of ethnic vs. liberal nationalism.     

Celebrating the prophet: religious nationalism and the politics of Milad‐un‐Nabi festivals in India

The traditional honoring of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed (Milad‐un‐Nabi) has shifted in numerous Indian cities from private prayer and ritual meals in the home to grand public festivals that bear resemblances to Hindu religious processions. In 2010 in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, large‐scale Milad‐un‐Nabi festivals became implicated in Hindu–Muslim nationalist riots that erupted weeks later at the commencement of a Hindu festival for Hanuman Jayanthi. This paper explores the political production of Muslim ethno‐nationalism and the intra‐community debates over the legitimacy and piety of Milad‐un‐Nabi celebrations. It argues that Milad‐un‐Nabi as a public performance is a (re)invented tradition that is part of the struggle for material, political and symbolic goods of the nation‐state. It is shaped by local party politics and history of anti‐Muslim discrimination. However, as the festivals highlight community divisions and religious ambiguities, they ultimately reveal the fragility of ethnic groups.     

The Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project: In situ Preservation and Long-Term Monitoring of the Clarence (1850) and James Matthews (1841) Shipwreck Sites

Increasingly, archaeologists are opting for on-site examination, reinterment, and in situ preservation of underwater cultural heritage sites as the first option in the management of sites at risk, as opposed to the more traditional excavation, recovery, conservation, and display/storage methods. This decision will inevitably be based on significance assessment, degree of perceived risk, and resourcing issues. However, long-term monitoring must become an integral part of these management programmes in order to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of the in situ preservation techniques employed. In 2012 the Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project (AHSPP) was awarded a large Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant, enabling ten partner organizations and three Australian universities to collaborate in one of the largest multi-organizational maritime archaeology projects to be undertaken in Australia to date. One of the major aims of the project is to develop a protocol for the excavation, detailed recording and reburial of significant shipwrecks under threat, fostering a strategic national approach for the management of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) sites at risk. Two historically significant shipwreck sites that are considered under threat were chosen for this longitudinal comparative study — the Clarence (1850) located in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria; and the James Matthews (1841) which lies in Cockburn Sound, Western Australia. Both sites have been preserved in situ using two very different but innovative remediation strategies. More importantly, long-term monitoring programmes have been implemented on both sites, which will characterize changes in the reburial environment and the effect on the reinterred materials. In this way, the efficacy of both in situ preservation techniques will be systematically tested, providing a comparative analysis of practical protocols for the long-term protection and management of underwater cultural heritage.     

Small state imperialism: the place of empire in contemporary nationalist discourse

Many modern European nations can trace their heritage back to one of the large multinational empires that once encompassed much of the European landscape, and nationalising elites often refer back to their place in these empires for the materials upon which their nation was purportedly built. In this article we examine some Belarusian nationalising elites and their references to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in order to demonstrate a recent trend in East European small‐state national identity construction, which we refer to as ‘small state imperialism.’ Small state imperialism exhibits realist characteristics and paints the small nation's place in empires of the past as privileged and aggressive, and in this way deviates from the oppressed but morally superior image one typically expects of a small nation. This interpretation is not limited to Belarus; in a number of East European states a similar imperialist turn has taken root in nationalist discourses.     

Nation‐freezing: images of the nation and the migrant in citizenship packages

ABSTRACT. New nationalism differs from classical nationalism in terms of its content and focus. Whereas classical nationalism distinguishes itself from other nation‐states in defining its national identity, new nationalism distinguishes the ‘native’ national identity from that of its current and prospective citizens of migrant origin. The terms of integration thus become conditions of membership in the national community. Citizenship and integration policies emerge as central arenas where the discourse of new nationalism unfolds. This study looks into the discourses of cultural citizenship by studying the content of the official ‘citizenship packages’ – materials designed to welcome newcomers and assist them in their integration – in three Western European countries: The Netherlands, France and the UK. What images are depicted of the nation‐state and the migrant in citizenship packages, and (how) do these images freeze the nation?     

Protestantism,nation and diaspora in Imperial Germany

This article examines the close connection between Protestantism and nationalism in Imperial Germany within a transnational context. In the years before 1914, the Prussian State Church in particular strengthened the legal and organisational framework for an increasing number of diaspora congregations to become attached. These acted as an important vehicle to embed the nationalist rhetoric produced within the Reich into emigrants' notions of belonging. Whilst previous scholarship has noted this connection in general, the article sheds more detailed light on the mechanics and structure, but also on the limits, of this process. Feedback processes from periphery to centre, in turn, had an impact on German national identity construction as that of a nation that was not confined to state borders. Applying a constructionist theoretical framework, the contested question of whether the heterogeneity of Germans abroad allows for the application of the diaspora concept is answered affirmatively.     

Idealisations of self and nation in the thought of diaspora intellectuals

ABSTRACT. Diaspora intellectuals have often played prominent roles in the formation of national revival and independence movements. This article explores the factors that may help to explain this phenomenon through a survey of the literary responses of intellectuals from Eastern Europe, colonial Africa and Asia to their experiences in the capital cities of Western Europe over the early modern and modern era. These reactions, expressed through the writings of influential figures such as Adamantios Koraes and Leopold Senghor, reveal, in their thematic convergence, aspects of such encounters that have remained consistent over time. Portrayed throughout are the emotional hardships of talented individuals who found their status suddenly conditioned by the ideas associated with their places of origin in the host society's imagination. Unwilling, for reasons explored below, to submit passively to these affronts, the individuals studied here threw their energies instead into ambitious projects of national re‐imagination and rehabilitation. The article makes use, finally, of the rather visceral quality of the literature surrounding the experience of diaspora intellectuals to account for the complex weave of modern and traditional elements often exhibited in the new idealisations of self and nation that appear throughout their works.     

我国文化遗产保护科技成果转化对策研究——基于文化遗产保护科技成果供求分析

进入"十二五"后,文物保护领域面临着新的发展形势。其中,科学和技术成果转化问题受到了高度关注,成为当前文化遗产保护领域的一大热点问题。目前,由于我国文化遗产保护科技成果转化的特殊性和相关领域科技事业发展的阶段性,文化遗产保护科技供给与需求脱节,科技成果转化率不高。针对这种状况,国家应建立激励评价体制,促进文博系统内外的合作,保证科技成果的有效供给和有效需求。     

Market civilisation meets economic nationalism: the discourse of nation in Russia's modernisation

This article examines how the discourse of nation functions as a mechanism furthering the expansion of a neoliberal market civilisation in Russia. It contributes to discussions that have challenged the assumed mutual exclusivity of economic nationalism and neoliberalism. The article develops its argument in the context of the idea of contemporary international society as a market civilisation characterised by an adaptation to and adoption of neoliberal standards by states. The ongoing modernisation project in Russia illustrates the workings of such standards, as exemplified by the project for an innovation city in Skolkovo, in the Moscow metropolitan area. Building on an analysis of the Skolkovo debate, the article agues that there is no inherent contradiction between economic nationalism and neoliberalism. Rather, the nation is an important symbolic system that produces a cultural susceptibility to, and a discursive field for, the introduction of neoliberal standards of market civilisation in Russia.     

Mobility and modernity in Luang Prabang,Laos: re-thinking heritage and tourism

Numerous studies of tourism in Luang Prabang World Heritage site in Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic are critical of the perceived impacts on heritage values of the city. Criticisms relate to the incursion of new buildings into the historic core, the loss of older dwellings, increases in foreigners renting and restoring properties as guest houses and restaurants and the movement of locals out of the historic core. Other criticisms relate to the effects on community support for the monastic communities that create the sacred and ritual geography of the city, the loss of community diversity within the World Heritage boundaries and increasing uniformity as the development of tourism continues apace. While our research does not challenge these observations it raises questions about the type of analyses and conclusions reached. Too often ‘heritage’, ‘tourism’ and ‘community’ are considered self-evident and bounded entities, with tourism something faintly alien that causes disruption to the urban fabric of Luang Prabang and, consequently, to the values for which it was inscribed. We propose a different way of conceptualising the relationship between heritage, community and tourism by examining the interaction between global, regional and local mobilities in the context of globalisation and under the aegis of modernity.