Email and web nationalism are the latest forms: Benedict Anderson

Benedict Anderson is most famous for his 1980s tract, Imagined Communities, which had argued that nationalism is a cultural construct. Anderson, professor emeritus of international studies at Cornell University, was in India recently on a lecture tour.

In an exclusive interview with DNA, he shares his latest thinking on nationalism, and his pet area of expertise, Indonesia. Excerpts:

Your basic argument in Imagined Communities was that nationalism was a cultural construct. More than 25 years later, have you moved beyond that idea?
I find now that nationalism is taking new forms. It is prominent in the diaspora groups, like the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Irish in America and the Sikhs from India. When Irish Americans go to Ireland, they find that Ireland has moved on to become part of the European Union and people there do not entertain the old ideas of being Irish. In fact, the Irish feel that Irish Americans are living in the past. Again, Lankan Tamils abroad would support militant organisations from their comfortable perches but it does not go beyond that. And the successful Sikh expatriate does not want his sons to come under the influence of the right-wing groups of the community. The expatriates go through three phases. The first generation struggles with the basic challenge of fitting into the set-up of the host country. The second generation is more acclimatised to the new country, but it feels the need to find its cultural identity. It is the third generation that flocks back to the mother country in search of roots.

So what are the new forms of nationalism?
Email nationalism and web nationalism are the new forms.

Is Indonesia becoming an Islamist country?
It is, in an invisible and slow way. This would not have been noticed but for the Bali bombings, which were horrendous. But what’s happening in Indonesia has little to do with the international jihad movement. Most of those who were arrested belonged to a small group. Though Indonesia is 85 per cent Muslim, the five Muslim parties got less than 30 per cent of the votes. The quality of Indonesian cosmopolitanism is such that Indonesians don’t accept Muslim puritans. 

Isn’t Indonesian nationalism Islamic?
That is difficult to say. There is an observable class difference as to who is open to Islamic influences. On a boat that moves among the many islands of Indonesia, it is the women on the upper decks who are found to be wearing the veil, while those in the hold who are mostly poor and working class do not. When I asked one of the women in the hold about the veil, she said that she would not be able to wear it because it comes in the way of her work which she desperately needs. There is also another difference in Indonesia. A Turkish academic from California who was studying the sharia court judgments in Indonesia found that though almost all the sharia court judges were male, a majority of verdicts were in favour of women, and that most of the divorce pleas were initiated by women. 

Will an organisation like the ASEAN be able to mediate in the problems of religion and nationalism in the region?
ASEAN is an impotent organisation. It is an endless cocktail party. The economies of member-countries are not complementary but competitive. It has no military significance either. It is only Myanmar and Vietnam, both marginal to ASEAN, that have standing armies.