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The Nation State, Decoloniality and the Non-Nation State

Colonialism is deeply and disturbingly entrenched in the most fundamental and vital
aspects of post-colonial societies, namely knowledge, education and legal systems.
Published 1:02 am IST on May 15, 2020By J. Sai Deepak

For quite a few decades now, decoloniality has emerged in Latina America as a
powerful critique of the Eurocentric or Western-centric nature of the Post-colonial
discourse. Broadly, as a construct, decoloniality posits that despite legal and
physical decolonization of former colonies, overt and subconscious coloniality:

(a) persists in the State institutions inherited by Post-colonial States;

(b) affects their thinking at the societal level and

(c) manifests itself even at the level of an individual.

In fact, existing scholarly literature on the subject suggests that in Post-

colonial states, coloniality was and remains most pronounced in the minds of the
Western-educated native ruling elites who continue to view their own societies and
cultures through the erstwhile colonizer’s gaze. As a consequence, proponents of
decoloniality agree that the entrenchment of its antonym is disturbingly the
deepest in the most fundamental and vital aspects of Post-colonial societies,
namely production of knowledge, education and legal systems. Not only does this
affect the native society’s view of and attitude towards its own history, it
perpetuates the perception that all knowledge and the very notion of modernity must
necessarily be traced to the West, whose validity and universality are beyond any
degree of scrutiny, and in any case beyond the native’s scrutiny.

In order to enable and empower the native voice, identity, beliefs, tradition and
system of epistemology, decoloniality challenges the dogmatic Western-centric
approach whose unspoken religious zeal could be arguably traced to or at least
partly attributed to Christian Europe of the Middle Ages. Clearly, decoloniality
represents the resistance of the native to Western epistemological imperialism.

One of the most visible yet inadequately understood consequences of Western

epistemological imperialism a.k.a coloniality, is the idea of a “nation state”.
What is unsurprising yet unfortunate is its near-universal acceptance as the litmus
test for proving the legitimacy of the Statehood aspirations of a nation, meaning
people. In other words, if a people do not qualify as a “nation” as defined by the
West, they cannot aspire for the only form of political organization currently
acceptable to the West, namely the nation state. While no single, static and
academic definition can do justice to any transient historical phenomenon, the
approximate definition of a nation that has been applied in the context of a nation
state is a group of people who are bound by conscious cultural homogeneity and who
share aspirations of statehood.

In a nutshell, under this definition, the requirement of cultural communion as a

nation precedes the political aspiration of statehood. Needless to say, the
universality of the cultural prerequisite to the idea of a nation state is expected
to be acknowledged and accepted without challenge by all “civilised” nations. The
proof of their “civilised” nature lies in their acceptance of the Western framework
without demurrer.

Pertinently, the concept of a nation and the birth of a nation state, without
applying the filter of decoloniality, have been traced by the West to the Peace
Treaty of Westphalia entered into in 1648 that marked the closing phase of the
European Middle Ages. This origin story explains the interchangeable use of the
nation state and the Westphalian state. The Treaty was intended to bring an end to
the largely Christian denominational wars waged in Europe after the advent of
Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s. The nation state is presumed to be the
product of assertion of secular sovereignty by Christian “nations” of Europe to
loosen the vice-like grip of the Church. This, in turn, weakened the glue that held
together that continent in the Middle Ages, namely Latin and Christendom. By the
turn of the 19th Century, Europe was tearing at the seams owing to the exothermic
and implosive nature of its nationalism which had degenerated into expansionism,
imperialism, colonialism and racism, in the process threatening the peace and
stability of the rest of the world.

It is these purportedly universal yet Eurocentric history-driven definitions of a

nation, a nation state and their much-maligned progeny, nationalism, that have been
applied to the Indian society since before its Independence, to question its
organic nature, as well as the legitimacy of its statehood. The commonly hurled
allegation is that there was never an “Indian nation” to begin with prior to the
arrival of the colonisers. Therefore, the Indian State, it is alleged, is
artificial and has been forcibly stitched together much against the centrifugal
impulses of a diverse group of peoples or nations, who have never existed as a
single nation and remain incapable of doing so. In other words, according to this
Westernised school of thought, both the synthetic Indian nation and the Indian
State came into existence only on August 15, 1947 owing to the benevolent act of
the colonisers, namely the Indian Independence Act of 1947.

The native school of thought, while refuting this position, claims that the Indian
nation has existed for millennia. However, the flaw in the native approach is that
it rarely challenges the unwarranted application of Euro-normative terms and
definitions to India. Even when this school of thought manages to raise an
objection to non-indigenous lexicon being applied to India, it acutely lacks a
rigorous framework within which it can present its case for Indian Statehood
without having to satisfy Eurocentric criteria. It is in this backdrop that
decoloniality presents itself as a prima facie viable framework to understand and
critique the Eurocentric approach to the Indian society and the Indian State.
Importantly, decoloniality could throw up more authentic and indigenous
alternatives to the divisive and equally colonial Left-Right binary.

Critically, decoloniality as a framework could provide indigenous and original

rationale for the legitimate attempts of the Indian society and its State to
reclaim their identities, including from a Constitutional perspective. This,
therefore, requires India to answer the following pertinent questions- if India
rejects the Eurocentric definitions of a nation and a nation state, does it have
its own definitions for the said terms? If not, does it subscribe to the idea of a
“non-nation state”? If yes, is India then a civilisational state? The author will
attempt to address these and similar questions in the next piece.

(J. Sai Deepak is an Advocate practising before the Supreme Court of India and the
High Court of Delhi.)