Nation and Nationalism

UNIT 2 ANTI-COLONIAL NATIONAL

LIBERATION MOVEMENT : ASIA
AND AFRICA*
Structure
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Violence and Non-Violence
2.3 Nationalist Ideologies
2.4 Intellectual and Social Origins and Visualizations of Nationalism
2.5 Nations, Nationalisms and the Partitions of States
2.6 Economic Context of National Movements
2.7 Summary
2.8 Exercises

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Colonialism based on territorial conquest has become a legacy of the past but
economic and military disparities between the former colonies and the metropolitan
powers are substantial even today. The history of the struggle against colonial rule
is important not merely to understand the evolution of countries in Africa and Asia
but also the regimes that emerged after independence. A comparative study of anti-
colonial movements is easier now on the basis of the published works available.
In this Unit, we will discuss the growth of anti-colonial movements in Asia and
Africa.

2.2 VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE

Although there were a few straightforward armed struggles against colonial rule
the primarily non-violent struggle led by the Indian National Congress under Mahatma
Gandhi was indeed an exception in the history of anti-colonial struggles. The struggles
against the French and subsequently the Americans in Vietnam took the course of
a violent liberation movement. The rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United
States of America as the defender of the free world introduced a measure of conflict
in anti-colonial movements after World War II that was absent in the case of those
countries that had gained independence during the late 1940s. India and China
managed to choose their paths of development after prolonged struggles against
foreign domination before the cold war began in earnest. Even smaller countries
managed to avoid the consequences of cold war rivalry like Sri Lanka and Burma
during the late 1940s. Vietnam and Korea, however, were divided as a result of
superpower rivalry after the USA decided to stop peasant armies from bringing
communists to power.
The history of liberation struggles has been shaped by two decisive factors. One
was the extent of leeway left by the colonial power for the colonized to express

*
Resource Person: Dr. Rohit Wanchoo 27
Indian National Movement their nationalist aspirations through open and legitimate channels. The British set
up representative or consultative bodies that allowed for more moderate forms of
anti-colonial politics to flourish and compete with the more militant expressions of
nationalism. The French in many of their colonies did not evolve such mechanism,
and the absence of any space for moderate and constitutional politics led to the
emergence of the Vietnamese liberation struggle under Ho Chi Minh. In China the
defeat of the communist party in the urban centres led Mao to build his base in
the rural areas during the 1930s. A powerful and predominantly peasant armed
struggle against Japanese aggression (1937-1945), based on a class coalition
dominated by the communists, emerged under Mao-tse-Tung. The opportunities
for more liberal and moderate politics in China were absent and so the movement
took a more radical turn than in India.
The second factor in the anti-colonial struggles was the role of external interventions
during the cold war. There were countries that fell clearly under one sphere of influence
but there were many that were the arenas of contestation. In Malaya the British
stayed on to crush the communist movement and in North Korea and North Vietnam
the communists assumed complete control under independent leaders with support
from China and the USSR. In many countries there were struggles to dominate
the national movement and after the Sino-Soviet split of the mid 1960s there were
pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions in the liberation struggles of many African
countries like Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. The fate of many small
nations was often determined by super power rivalry and negotiation and not the
strength of their anti-colonial movements.
The role of external factors in attaining national independence cannot be
underestimated. Developments in Paris and Lisbon determined the outcome of
struggles in French Algeria and Portuguese Angola and Mozambique. If there had
not been changes in the political equations in France in 1958 and Portugal in 1974
the liberation of colonies in Africa would have been a more long drawn affair, although
their struggles had been long and bloody enough. The decolonization of Africa was
influenced by developments in the metropolis just as the partition of Africa was
after the Berlin Conference in 1885. The movements for independence in Dutch
Indonesia, British Malaya and French Indo-China gained momentum because of
the victorious sweep of Japanese armies in their regions. The strength of national
liberation struggles is not belittled by acknowledging the tremendous economic and
political consequences of the Second World War for the colonial powers in East
and South Asia.
The colonial powers had divided up many parts of the world without regard to
the ethnic, linguistic or religious attributes of their colonized subjects. The boundaries
were drawn up in a way that militated against the earlier conceptions of shared or
overlapping sovereignty in many regions. In the late 19th century, after the period
of conflict between 1885 and 1893, the French forced the Thai king to part with
a large part of the territories that he claimed but the process of defining clear
boundaries based on maps and sovereignty also enabled him to assert greater control
over the territories that remained a part of his kingdom. The colonial powers
deliberately encouraged Arab nationalism to weaken the Ottoman Empire during
the first two decades of the twentieth century, but the boundaries of the Arab states
that they created by 1921 after its dismemberment have remained more or less
28 unaltered. The unification of Egypt and Syria, partly spurred by pan-Arabism, was
short-lived lasting from 1958 to 1961. Nationalism involved the sharper definition Anti-Colonial National
Liberation Movement:
of territory and identity and often led to violence or suppression of minorities. Internal Asia and Africa
colonialism provoked national movements against states that had emerged successful
after anti-colonial struggles. Bangladeshi nationalism triumphed in 1971 but the Kurds
have had little success against the Turks or Iraqis.

2.3 NATIONALIST IDEOLOGIES

In a celebrated work, Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, it has been
argued that the idea of the nation and nation-state in its modular form developed
in France after the Revolution of 1789. It then spread across the globe with the
aid of print capitalism and elites promoting national languages and sometimes creating
national languages along the way. Partha Chatterjee has critiqued this derivative
discourse of nationalism. According to him, nationalist ideas in India developed in
the private and more spiritual domain shielded from the dominant western discourse
in the public sphere. The ‘construction’ of the imagined community has also been
questioned. Elements of ethnicity or race cannot be the products of shared imagination
alone. The latter view has been advocated by S.A. Smith. Nationalisms can emerge
based on one or more elements – language, ethnicity, citizenship and even religion.
Scholars differentiate between primordialist and civic nationalisms, cultural and
constitutional nationalisms and exclusive and assimilationist nationalisms based on
historical evidence.
The ideology of Indian nationalism for the most part was concerned with an economic
critique of British rule in India as in Naoroji’s Poverty and Un-British Rule in
India. During the late 19th century the element of cultural nationalism too emerged
and influenced a small but significant number of people during the anti-colonial struggle.
The element of racial antagonism was much less evident in India than in other countries
and certainly less so than in Africa. The absence of significant number of white
settlers in India, unlike Algeria, Kenya and South Africa, partly accounts for this.
Another factor was the historical experience of slavery in Africa: the large scale
export of slaves to the New World by Europeans, sometimes in collaboration with
local African elites and Arab traders. The white settlers were responsible for creating
a strong element of racial antagonism against the white man because they appropriated
the best lands for cultivation and the most hospitable areas for habitation. The
European powers were responsible for creating racial barriers throughout the colonial
world but in Africa these often took more extreme forms. This was particularly
true of countries like Algeria, Rhodesia and South Africa. Therefore the economic
critique of colonialism was often overshadowed by the critique of white rule and
racism as in Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.
In all the countries that came under colonial rule there emerged a clear distinction
between the rulers and the colonized. The entire literature that flourished after
the publication of Said’s Orientalism in 1978 has been concerned with the unequal
power relations between the colonizing power and the colonized people and the
construction of both the Orient and the Occident, perceptions of the Other also
fashioning conceptions about the Self. European perceptions of Indian society
and culture whether by the more flattering Orientalist admirers of ancient Indian
literature and religion like William Jones or the more dismissive Utilitarians like
Mill or condescending Anglicists like Macaulay were part of the same discourse 29
Indian National Movement that in a way Orientalized India. The great veneration for the wisdom of the Vedic
texts and Aryan culture shaped Indian responses to European cultural domination.
It gave a great impetus to reform of Hinduism as well as a measure of cultural
confidence to the Hindu middle classes in their struggle against European cultural
domination.
In the case of Indian Muslims the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the eclipse
of Muslim powers after the 18th century quickened a spirit of revivalism and of
Pan-Islamism. Shah Wali-Ullah, Syed Ahmed Barelvi, Jalaluddin Afghani, the Ali
brothers and even Mohammad Iqbal contributed to these trends. Syed Ahmad Khan
and Mohammad Ali Jinnah were concerned with the political and economic rights
of the Muslims in the subcontinent and were willing to mobilize their community in
whatever way they could, even accepting help offered by the British rulers. Religion
in the subcontinent has been a very important factor in shaping political identities
and nationalism. Identities based on language and region and caste developed too
but the identities based on religion became predominant during the closing years
of colonial rule and led eventually to the partition of India in 1947. The role of
religion has been underestimated in Anderson’s emphasis on the construction of
national identities based on language. Print capitalism, communitarian competition
and colonial policies of divide-and-rule worked to give religious identities the
overdetermining role in late colonial India.
In many countries with an overwhelming Muslim population or with a significant
Muslim minority religion has played a prominent role in developing responses to
European cultural and political domination. In Indonesia the growth of nationalism
was linked to a kind of Muslim identity although the Sarekat Islam did not have
the influence that similar parties have wielded in South Asia and West Asia. The
difference can be attributed to the presence of other religious groups in Indonesia,
Philippines and Malaysia as well as a milder form of Islam practiced by these Muslim
communities far removed from the heartland of Islam in the Arab world. The memories
of the Arab conquest of Spain – which inspired the Andalusian novel in Arab literature
– have not been a factor in this part of the world. The principles of Panchshila as
enunciated in August 1945 dropped all reference to religion to achieve “solid unity”
in Indonesia. Sukarno, and subsequently Suharto, endorsed a broadly secular form
of nationalism. Also the rise of communist movements in Indonesia and Malaysia
before they achieved independence indicates the presence of alternative ideologies.
Retreating colonial powers ensured the success of anti-communist nationalists in
these countries. Some Arab leaders like Bourguiba of Tunisia thought nationalism
was the best antidote against communism because it promoted the interests of the
people as a whole. In the West Asian region the colonial powers exercised dominion
but did not often set down deep roots. Iraq was under formal colonial rule for a
brief period after World War I until 1932 although it was under neo-colonial influence
until 1958. Iran too had to endure informal imperialism but not direct colonial rule.
Arab nationalism emerged with the development of pan-Arabism, but there was
no demand for a single united Arab state. The earliest pan-Arabists conceived of
at least three Arab states east of Suez-Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula. The
existence of twenty odd Arab states following colonial wars and the post World
War I settlement added the more pervasive influence of local loyalties based on
nation-state sponsored nationalism. Arab nationalism was based on tradition as well
as new uses of tradition. The achievements of thirteen centuries of Islamic civilization
30 came to be regarded as those of Arab civilization. Even if Islam and Arabism were
not identical they were not perceived as antagonistic to each other. While in North Anti-Colonial National
Liberation Movement:
Africa and the Arabian Peninsula Islam played an important role in the development Asia and Africa
of nationalism this was not true of the central lands of Islam like Egypt and the
Crescent which had substantial Arab Christian populations. Advanced conceptions
of Arab nationalism developed in Iraq during the 1930s and 1940s, in Syria during
the 1950s, and in Egypt during the 1960s. Secularism and socialism too played a
role in shaping the ideology of Arab nationalism. Also there has been a prolonged
conflict between the Islamic revivalists and the nationalists in Egypt, Syria, Iraq
and Lebanon.
The Turkish people were ruled by a modernizer like Mustafa Kemal who abolished
the position of the Khalifa, the religious head of the Muslim community, even while
Indian Muslims protested against the treatment of Turkey and the Khalifa. A scholar
has found some similarities in the developments in Kemalist Turkey and those in
Soviet Central Asia during the 1920s and 1930s – in terms of modernization and
secularization from above by an elite, spread of literacy, improvement in the position
of women and adoption of the Roman script to develop the national language. The
subordination of religion to the state in Turkey was carried out by the introduction
of a uniform civil code based on that of Switzerland in 1926. As part of the
nationalization of Islam the Quran was translated into Turkish in 1933 for the first
time. During the 1990s there was an attempt to reconfigure nationalism in terms of
an Ottoman-Islamic tradition by commemorating the victory of the Ottomans against
the Christian West at Constantinople in 1453. In any case religious nationalism in
a regressive form became more significant in the Islamic world only after the upsurge
against the Shah of Iran in 1979. In the earlier period nationalist elites had supported
progressive leaders like Bourgiba of Tunisia, Baath Socialist parties in Syria and
Iraq and patriotic leaders like Mossadegh in Iran and Nasser in Egypt.

2.4 INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL ORIGINS AND

VISUALISATION OF NATIONALISM
The origins of nationalism in many countries were closely related to the contacts
that small minorities in Africa and Asia developed with Europeans whether missionaries,
travellers, scholars or traders. Nationalists, when they articulated nationalism, would
go back to the ancient period of their history but the development of nationalism
was intimately connected with the interaction with Europeans. It is not necessary
to argue that the initial interactions produced any spirit of nationalism; what this
period did was to create a group of people who could absorb ideas about nations
and nationalism. The British conquest of Bengal in the mid-eighteenth century created
the basis for a new class of people tied to British interests and by the early nineteenth
century a stratum inspired by western ideas of liberalism and culture. The Young
Bengal movement and intellectuals like Ram Mohan Roy and Bankim Chandra
grappled with western domination and articulated indigenous responses to it. It was
only in 1885 that the Indian National Congress was formed by westernized Indians.
China was never fully colonized and even the Japanese were unable to go beyond
the territories of eastern China, substantial though these regions were. The Chinese
had some of the attributes of nationalism even before the modern era because they
had developed wood-block printing, had a large bureaucracy recruited through
public examinations and a centralized state. The Chinese historian Liang Qichao 31
Indian National Movement early in the twentieth century anticipated Anderson’s concept of the imagined
community itself. Modern China’s conception of nationalism was based on Han
primacy although the Chinese communists believed in safeguarding the interests of
the national minorities in China. Unlike the Soviet Union, China never offered the
right of secession to the national minorities. This was partly because Chinese
communists did not need the support of the minorities to fight for freedom or socialism.
After the Japanese invasion the Kuomintang and the Communist party were able
to accept similar views about the Chinese nation or zhonghua minzu: the centrality
of the Han people and the inclusion of non-Han borderlands within China. While
the Kuomintang called the national minorities clans, the communists were prepared
to call them nationalities. All that these nationalities could claim, however, was equality
within the nation not the right to secession.
There are problems in identifying the nature of nationalities and nationalism in East
Asia which are the product of long term historical factors and also recent state
practices. The Vietnamese language has a high proportion of Chinese words because
of prolonged contact rather than any genetic connection with the Chinese language.
In standard Thai considerable vocabulary is derived from Khmer, which in turn
draws on Sanskrit, and these three languages are genetically unrelated to each other.
The Kachin in Burma developed an ethnic identity largely as a result of politics,
not any essential characteristics based on language or ethnicity. Biology and spoken
language were less important in shaping differences in the pre-colonial period
compared to differences based on locality, kinship and Buddhist or Chinese traditions.
Only after the border regions of empires were brought within well defined borders
of countries by the early twentieth century that the modern states in East Asia became
involved in ethnic classifications. The Han Chinese had regarded other nationalities
as barbarians and the Qing and Republican Chinese recognized five major ‘races’
in China. The ethnic classification or minzu shibie in 1962 put all the minzu on an
equal footing within the Chinese nation. Although about four hundred groups were
identified on the basis of difference only fifty six minzu were recognized. The Chinese
also built up the claims of groups designated the Zhuang in Guangzi and Yunnan
by encouraging this identity and allowing them to link up with the Tai-speaking groups
of Vietnam and Cambodia. The state plays an important role in promoting claims
of minorities or in modifying their rights and claims.
In West Africa the colonial intelligentsia began to emerge during the 1840s. Saro
pioneers (people of Yoruba descent, liberated slaves educated in Sierra Leone)
who settled in Nigeria in 1839 were not the ones who brought European education
to the region. The notables of the coast had hired teachers to get the necessary
education to profit from the trade of the Atlantic economy from the sixteenth century
onwards. Freetown and Lagos drew people from diverse backgrounds. Freedmen
from Brazil and the Caribbean, American blacks from Liberia, Jamaican maroons,
and indigenous Mende and Temne contributed to the educated community. The
Fourah Bay College set up in 1827 in Sierra Leone to train Africans to work for
the Church Missionary Society played an important role in West Africa. Links to
“the culture of the Black Atlantic” dominated intellectual life until late in the 19th
century. Although their numbers were not large the West African intelligentsia had
emerged earlier than in other regions.
Many members of the West African intelligentsia were deeply influenced by Christianity
32 and sought to find their place as Africans within the framework of the European
civilizing mission. The development of African cultural identity and nationalism was Anti-Colonial National
Liberation Movement:
influenced by the spread of Christianity in many regions. This set it apart from the Asia and Africa
Arab and Muslim world as also South and South East Asia. The African nationalism
or cultural self assertion took the form of creating African controlled churches with
diverse ideologies. In 1937 Lord Hailey in a survey of nationalism saw these black
churches as the indicators of a kind of national awakening. It has been argued that
although Christian missionaries provided a common language for educated members
of different tribes in West Africa they wanted to mould the Africans to suit the interests
of the colonizers. The Christian Churches were European dominated and did not
deal with the Africans as equals although the access to western education and the
Bible added to their self-worth and sharpened a sense of justice. This initially led
to the proliferation of splinter African churches and then the denial of equality led
them to turn towards nationalism. A more generalized argument has been that while
the Christian missionaries opened up the prospects of a wider world they did not
actually bring the Africans closer to achieving what they offered in terms of western
capitalist culture. This gap between what they seemed to offer and what actually
came to pass produced a range of responses from resistance to more overt forms
of rebellion. African nationalism was quickened partly by this process.
The inspiration for nationalism has come from turning to the past achievements of
the nation or the inner or spiritual life of the people based on religion or culture. In
Africa people outside Egypt were proud of the achievements of Pharonic Egypt
and the Nile civilization, but also of traditional tribal culture. Early nationalists
discovered and highlighted the strengths of traditional religion or culture. In Thailand,
which was not colonized, there was a preoccupation with the idea of civilization
and the appropriation from the west of those ideas that were relevant for a civilized
life. The west was setting new standards of civilization as once India and China
had. The Sanskrit word for civilization invented during the 19th century – Arayatham
[araya+ dhamma] – did not take off. Siwilai, an adaptation of the word from
English or charoen, a fourteenth century Khmer word, became far more popular.
In the ethnic interpretation of nationalism the Vietnamese nation had emerged almost
a thousand years ago in opposition to Chinese rule, but those who believed in
communal solidarity of the village community highlighted its role in linking up with
both nationalism and communism in various ways in the 20th century. The idea of
Annam or Indochina rather than Vietnamese nationalism inspired Nguyen An Ninh
and others during the 1920s but it eventually lost out. Contemporary scholars explore
Vietnamese history from the standpoint of the Cham, Khmer, Moung, Chinese and
not merely the Kinh. The internal divisions among the Vietnamese and not merely
their united struggle against foreign powers are now subjects of study.

2.5 NATIONS, NATIONALISMS AND THE

PARTITION OF STATES
The incorporation of vast territories in Asia and Africa by the colonial powers was
a long drawn process without any method in the mad scramble for colonies. There
were economic reasons for acquiring colonies and also strategic considerations which
led to annexations. The partition of the non-European world was also carried out
to acquire territories that were likely to be of value in the future or simply to prevent
a rival from extending his sway in a region. The countries created because of these 33
Indian National Movement factors often lacked anything in common except the ruling power. The anti-colonial
movements in countries carved out of vast unexplored territories, particularly in
Africa, lacked any clear basis for the articulation of a national movement. The
boundaries had been drawn arbitrarily by diplomatic negotiations in European capitals
and systems of rule introduced with little regard for the tribal, linguistic or ethnic
identities of the inhabitants. The national movements were based on the bonds of
colour or black racial identity. National movements based on identity of race were,
however, undermined by identities based on tribe, religion and language.
In West Africa the struggle of the Nigerian nationalists against British rule was partly
undermined because of the division between the predominantly Christian south of
the country and the Muslim dominated northern region. Ethnic divisions provoked
the Igbo to secede soon after independence. After a bloody civil war between 1967
and 1970 Biafra was reincorporated in Nigeria. In East Africa the Mau Mau uprising
brought out the ethnic tensions in the country and helped the Kikuyu move from a
subordinate position to one of dominance. Those who fought the colonial rulers
were often subjected to severe repression and ethnic differences were exploited
to perpetuate colonial rule. The Africans have found it easier to create Pan-African
ideologies based on shared blackness or Negritude as articulated by Leopold Senghor,
Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta than to unite individual countries ignoring
tribal identities. The colonial powers too encouraged secessionist demands for
economic reasons. Belgian Congo was divided so that the resources of Katanga
could be more easily controlled. The division of territories in West Asia was fraught
with great difficulties because the discovery of oil in the region had made it a vital
matter for major corporations and the colonial powers. Kuwait was carved out as
an independent country allegedly to weaken the bargaining power of the oil producing
states. The politics of decolonization bears the stamp of an implicit or explicit struggle
to control the resources of the colonies as well as estimations of the gains from
formal empire.
A recent study has asserted that the British adopted a strategy in Africa that was
designed to prevent an anti-colonial coalition of the kind that developed in India.
The British adopted a policy of divide and rule and tried to play off one ethnic
group against the other, a policy that was also pursued in India. The British recruited
disproportionately from the Tiv in Nigeria, Acholi in Uganda and the Kamba in
Kenya for the military. In Africa British policy was to rule indirectly through traditional
structures of authority which were only subordinated to colonial interests, not
undermined or destroyed. On the other hand the French, who believed in greater
centralization of power and incorporation of colonial subjects within Greater France,
destroyed traditional social structures. They also promoted an elite based on
acceptance of French language and culture disregarding earlier status rankings. Thus
the British produced an unranked system of ethnic stratification unlike the French.
This allowed ethnic competition under the British which intensified after the colonies
became independent. The traditional structures allowed disaffected ethnic groups
to organize effectively against oppressive elites in the post-colonial period in the
former British colonies. On the basis of data relevant to 48 countries the study
has concluded that the former British colonies were marked by more conflict even
though grievances were higher in the former French colonies.
It is arguable that the exploitation of ethnic differences in British colonies has been
underestimated by this study. The British divided Ireland, India, and Palestine before
34 they handed over power to nationalist leaders. Although the British often divided
their colonies before they quit them they were more willing to withdraw peacefully Anti-Colonial National
Liberation Movement:
from their colonies than the French. The former colonies, both British and French, Asia and Africa
tried to create federations with or without support from the retreating colonial power.
After the Central African Federation created in 1963 failed Uganda, Tanzania and
Kenya went their separate ways. Federations often failed because of the anxieties
of the more developed national group that it would have to bear the burden of the
less developed regions. Gabon had these fears about the Central African Republic
that four French colonies tried to set up. Cote d’ Ivoire in West Africa and Kenya
in East Africa were wary of federation for the same reasons.
In South Asia after World War II the strength of the national movement and the
breakdown of colonial authority and inter-community relations made a policy of
retreat appear eminently sensible. The Labour leadership of Britain was willing to
see the writing on the wall but only in South Asia. In the African colonies the British
thought it worth their while to focus on Empire Development schemes to link the
colonies to the metropolis and to use their resources to shore up the Sterling Area
created during the economic crisis of the inter-war period. The tin, rubber, cocoa,
tea and other products of empire were still useful in post-war British recovery and
the elites were not willing to recognize the ‘winds of change’ until the 1960s. The
defeat in the Suez crisis of 1956, marked by the fall of the British Prime Minister
Anthony Eden and the vindication of the nationalist policy of Abdul Nasser of Egypt,
helped the British come to grips with their vanishing imperial role. Formal rule and
informal systems of domination were no longer options for the former colonial powers
in the world order emerging during the cold war period. The two superpowers
dominated although the non-aligned countries under Nasser, Nehru and Tito tried
to retain their autonomy.
Notions of nationalism were promoted by the colonial powers and post colonial
elites according to various economic and strategic considerations that sometimes
brought them together. The idea of Greater Malaysia was promoted by the British
after the Malay leader Tanku Abdul Rehman supported the notion in 1961. Although
the Tanku did not particularly want Singapore as part of greater Malaysia he had
to go along with the plan to secure the resources of Sarawak and Sabah in Borneo.
Thus Malaya that had achieved independence in 1957 accepted Singapore and
the Borneo territories as part of Malaysia in 1963. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore
went along with the British strategic plan to protect their interests during the cold
war because he too wanted to thwart the rise of communism. Thus the fear of
communism helped to sustain a federation that had little to do with grassroots support,
although Singapore itself pulled out in 1965. Nationalism did not always play a
role in the creation of nation-states or political formations.
The impact of the cold war on decolonization is complex. In some ways it led to
the mistaken perception in the west that the autonomous national movements in
Asia and Africa were the subordinate allies, or worse still, the stooges of Soviet
and Chinese sponsors. In some countries the colonial powers retreated because
they did not want the more radical elements in society to come anywhere near
power. Metropolitan economic interests could be more effectively defended by handing
over power to pliant nationalist elites dependent on external support than to more
independent or pro-socialist leaders. The emergence of several military dictatorships
in Africa reflected the sharp polarization in societies during the cold war — reducing
the middle ground for moderate reformers and democratic socialists. 35
Indian National Movement
2.6 ECONOMIC CONTEXT OF NATIONAL
MOVEMENTS
It has been an acknowledged fact that the possession of colonies was a matter of
great economic importance. The motives for colonial expansion were the search
for raw materials, markets for industrial products and opportunities for profitable
investments. In so far as natural resources are concerned both in Asia and Africa
there is overwhelming evidence to support the case of exploitation. The political
tribute to Britain and the famous ‘drain of wealth’ from India was not a phenomenon
confined to India. It has been argued that the Netherlands East Indies developed
the ‘Cultivation System’ to export the agricultural commodities from the resource
rich Indonesian archipelago to the markets in the west. Arguably, the transfer of
resources to the metropolitan power from Indonesia was greater than from India
for over half a century. The Dutch took away 17% of the Indonesian national product,
which amounted to 8% of Dutch domestic product, during 1921-38. The exploitation
of the natural resources of the Asian economies was not confined to the European
powers alone. The Japanese exploited the resources of Korea, Manchuria and later
China.
The export of industrial goods was dependent on the economic development of
the colonial world and the possibilities for export of goods. The intense exploitation
of peasant producers reduced their purchasing power and made it difficult to expand
the market for manufactured goods from the metropolitan countries. The effort to
retain a dominant market share in the colonial countries led many colonizers to try
and prevent the development of indigenous industries as well. This was done primarily
by following a policy of free trade during the 19th century when Britain was the
leading exporter of textiles, railway equipment, steel and machinery. The new industries
like chemicals, electricity and motor transport were less dependent on colonial markets
in Asia and Africa but they became steadily more important. In countries like India,
South Africa and even smaller countries the indigenous manufacturing class became
resentful of colonial monopolies and domination and promoted economic nationalism
and the struggle for national independence.
In many countries of Africa the development of the indigenous capitalist class was
not very significant until after World War II and they did not have a ‘national
bourgeoisie’ trying to use nationalist political pressures to secure more suitable tariff,
currency and monetary policies. Where colonialism had a less disruptive role both
economic and political progress could be achieved. The pre-colonial culture of the
Tswana tribes which led to the institutionalization of property rights in cattle but
also progressively in land, a favourable orientation towards the market economy
and greater inter-ethnic cooperation enabled Botswana to achieve remarkable growth
rates after independence. Traditional Tswana culture with its “integrative political
institutions” survived but similar institutions among the Barotse in Zambia and
Bophuthatswana in South Africa collapsed because of a more disruptive colonial
impact.
Although some indigenous industries benefitted by the decline in imports from
metropolitan countries during the depression years of the 1930s import substitution
industrialization worked only for a handful of countries like India, South Africa and
Australia. The key fact to note is that the experience of the drain of wealth and
36 the collaboration of many sections of the indigenous elites with the process of colonial
exploitation pushed many anti-colonial movements in an anti-capitalist, anti-landlord Anti-Colonial National
Liberation Movement:
or anti-elite direction. High land revenue assessments, railway building beyond Asia and Africa
indigenous requirements and resources, the political alliance of colonial rulers with
exploitative indigenous elites and the forced or market driven commercialization
of agriculture led to economic exploitation, low per capita incomes and disastrous
famines. The common people suffered immense hardships during the depression
years of the 1930s. The loss of economic opportunities and well-being propelled
many poor peasants and ordinary people to join forces with nationalists trying to
fight colonial systems of economic exploitation. In many parts of Africa there was
growing dependence for food on the adaptation of maize to local conditions, particularly
during the last hundred years. The dangers of this over dependence on maize would
only manifest itself many years after these countries had gained independence.
It was proposed by Ali Mazrui in the early 1980s that in Africa the evolution of
social classes had not advanced sufficiently in the period leading up to independence.
Kin and clan based ethnic and tribal identities played a greater role in shaping popular
movements than inadequately articulated class identities. The struggle against colonial
exploitation and the exploitation of the resources by European business interests
and white settlers led to economic resentments and racial animosities. The mobilization
of the masses in some of the African countries might have been lower than in India
during the national movement but exploitation was equally strongly felt by those
who participated in the struggles for independence. The relative weakness of the
anti-colonial struggles in many African countries might have enabled the retreating
colonial powers to retain greater economic control over the economies of the post
colonial countries than in the case of India. Yet it must not be assumed that all the
struggles were nationalist in nature, or that an anti-colonial attitude inevitably led
to participation in nationalist struggles. In many countries ordinary people had to
endure hardships without being able to join movements whether based on class,
ethnicity or religion. This was true of large countries like China and Indonesia as
well as smaller ones.
Nationalism arose with the development of social classes associated with the rise
of capitalism as propounded by Stalin and Soviet nationality theory of his time.
Gellner argued that it was linked to the rise of industrialization and the need to
bind society replacing loyalties to clans and kinship by loyalty to the state. In most
Afro-Asian nations industrialization was not sufficiently advanced to play a vital
role in promoting nationalism. Agrarian capitalism and the elites who profited by
the commercialization of agriculture often played a role in promoting nationalism.
In Egypt and Iraq the powerful landlords — not more than two to three thousand
families — played a role in promoting nationalism and in preventing the emergence
of powerful peasant movements through hacienda type estates and repression backed
by the state. In Turkey and Iran too those who controlled and owned land and
engaged in production for the world market became supporters of national movements
to acquire greater control over domestic resources. Of course the educated middle
classes played a key role in most national movements. In fact in order to promote
industrialization the educated middle class often turned towards socialism and
communism.
In India the peasant movements often slipped out of the control of those organizations
that sought to keep them within the confines of a broad based national movement.
Many spontaneous movements of the peasants and tribals remained outside the 37
Indian National Movement mainstream national movement. Nevertheless the Indian national movement was
sufficiently broad based. Although the upper sections of the peasantry identified
more closely with the Gandhian programme and method of struggle the national
movement was much more a multi-class movement providing the basis for a successful
democracy based on adult franchise in the post independence period. In China
the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance succeeded on the basis of a peasant based
movement that included patriotic landlords based on the experience of the Chinese
Communist party in Yenan. The Chinese movement was based on Mao’s idea of
a popular front against imperialism based on the ideas of New Democracy. Nationalism
and socialism became closely inter-twined. Although the Chinese Red Army under
Zhang Guotao created six soviet regimes among the Tibetans during 1935-36 based
on class struggle this was not mainstream official policy.
In the countries where the spirit of economic nationalism was stronger and the mass
base of nationalism greater, economic development after independence was probably
higher. This was complicated by the logic of the cold war in the case of East Asia
where United States’ investments in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan led to high
growth rates. Foreign investments accelerated growth in the context of agrarian
reforms, public investment in education and export oriented development. By contrast
in Africa the cold war did not have such positive consequences in the context of
military dictatorships, illiteracy and ethnic conflicts. Even so, the eventual transfer
of power in Zimbabwe to the radical Robert Mugabe in 1980, a leader the British
conservative government under Margaret Thatcher did not favour, produced a
relatively stable government for two decades.
In South Africa which had actually become independent under its white elite early
and had imposed apartheid in 1948, the armed struggle spearheaded by the African
National Congress led to black majority rule eventually under Nelson Mandela.
The struggle against the racist regime cannot be viewed simply in terms of nationalism
since the anti-racist struggle did not always take a nationalist form; there were traces
of socialism, tribalism and religious sentiment. Further there were different conceptions
of nationalism – of the four separate nations consisting of the Blacks, the Coloureds,
Asians and the whites recognized by the Congress Alliance because the masses
were not ready for a purely anti-racial struggle against apartheid. The economic
sanctions against South Africa weakened the resolve of the Afrikaners to retain
the system of apartheid as did the struggle of the nationalist groups in South Africa
itself. There is enough ground to believe that the relatively peaceful transfer of power
to the prisoner of Robben Island may have been made in order to protect the
economic position of the powerful mining interests and foreign companies with a
stake in the country and that the ANC went along with it in order to ensure the
continued prosperity of South Africa under its new black leadership. The Truth
and Reconciliation Commission assuaged racial antagonisms and facilitated this
relatively peaceful transition to black majority rule.

2.7 SUMMARY
The historical record does not support any simple theory explaining either the rise
of nationalities or national movements or the policy towards them of colonial and
post-colonial elites and states. Nationalism is not necessarily connected to capitalist
development or industrialization although they do create the basis for national
38 mobilization. Language and print capitalism do play a prominent role in the rise of
nationalism, but in many cases nationalist elites have promoted the spread of national Anti-Colonial National
Liberation Movement:
languages and public education to spread the spirit of nationalism after creating a Asia and Africa
nation-state. Languages are not always the basis of nationalism since religion has
also promoted nationalism. Religious nationalism has been important in many Middle-
Eastern countries although other strands of nationalism and other ideologies also
co-exist even in this region. Nationalism and the accompanying emphasis on borders,
sovereignty and singular identities creates national minorities and sub-national or
alternative nationalist ideologies.
Nationalism is a modern ideology which is ‘constructed’ but cannot be entirely an
act of imagination. Ethnicities and languages are themselves products of historical
evolution. The alliances forged during the period of nationalist mobilization and the
subsequent policies of the post-colonial states shape the evolution of nationalities.
The rise of nationalism cannot be understood in terms of the opposition between
western and indigenous sources of nationalism. The elements that go into making
nationalities are subject to long term evolution and the impact of mass mobilization
and state practices. Outside the historical context it is not possible to understand
the rise and growth of nationalism in Asia and Africa or anywhere in the world.

2.8 EXERCISES
1) Why did some national liberation movements stick to the path of non-violent
struggles while others resorted to violence to counter the colonial rule?
2) Discus the intellectual and social origins of nations in Asia and Africa.
3) Discuss the economic contexts of some nationalist movements.

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