S.

S JAIN SUBODH LAW COLLEGE

MANSAROVAR, JAIPUR

Affiliated to Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar Law University

Session 2020-21

Subject – POLITICAL SCIENCE

TOPIC:-WESTERN v/s EASTERN CONCEPT OF NATIONALISM

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Mrs.Anju Gupta Mukul Maheshwari

Assistant professor of law BA.LL.B student

1st Sem (Section A)

 DECALARATION

I, Mukul Maheshwari do hereby declare that, this project titled “WESTERN v/s EASTERN
CONCEPT OF NATIONALISM” is an guidance of Mrs. Anju Gupta (Asst. prof. of Law) at S.S
jain Subodh Law College in fulfillment for the award of the degree of B.A.LL.B. at the Bhimrao
Ambedkar Law University.

I also declare that , this work is original, except where assistance from other resources has been
taken and necessary acknowledgement for the same has been made at appropriate places. I
further declare that, this work has not been submitted either in whole or in part, for any degree or
equivalent in any other institution.

Date: July 15, 2021 Mukul Maheshwari

Place: Jaipur 1st sem (SEC-A)

 CERTIFICATE

To whomsoever it may concern

This is to certify that the Project entitled “WESTERN v/s EASTERN CONCEPT OF
NATIONALISM” submitted by MUKUL MAHESHWARI in fulfillment for the award of the
degree of BA.LL.B in S.S Jain Subodh Law College, Jaipur is the product of research carried out
under my guidance and supervision.

Mrs. Anju Gupta

Asst. Prof. of Law

S.S jain Subodh Law college

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I acknowledge with profundity, my obligation to Almighty god and my parents for giving me the
grace to accomplish my work, without which this project would not have been possible.

I express my heartfelt gratitude to my respected faculty, Mrs.Anju Gupta(Asst.Prof.of Law) for

providing me with valuable suggestions to complete this dissertation.

I am especially to all my faculty members at S.S jain subodh Law college who have helped me
imbibe the basic research and writing skills.

Lastly, I take upon myself.the drawbacks and limitations of this study, if any.

Date: July 15, 2021

Place: Jaipur

Mukul Maheshwari
 INDEX
1. INTRODUCTION
2. MEANING AND CONCEPT OF NATIONALISM
3. TYPES OF NATIONALISM
4. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN STATE NATION AND NATIONALISM
5. WESTERN V/S EASTERN NATIONALISM
6. CONCLUSION
7. REFERENCES
 INTRODUCTION
Anglophone students of nationalism have recognized Hans Kohn (1891-1971) as one of the most
learned and influential authorities on history of nationalism. Kohn’s works together with the
writings of Carlton Hayes are generally regarded as a turning point in the study of nationalism in
the English-speaking world. Kohn and Hayes have been even called “the twin founding fathers”
of modern academic research on nationalism. It was in the 1920s that they began to publish their
first works on the subject. It is argued that they were the first to adopt a more neutral stance
towards nationalism, one that made sustained attempt at dispassionate analysis of the
phenomenon in order to define, classify and explain it. However, they were successful in this
effort as they were both prone to treat nationalism as an moral issue. Anglophone study of
nationalism, namely a strongly moralistic distinction between a “good” nationalism, which he
associated with the west, and a “bad” nationalism, typical from non-western world . Kohn’s
dichotomy turned out to have enormous impact on Anglophone nationalism studies. It give rise
to quite a widespread discrimination between civic(western) nationalism and ethnic(eastern)
nationalism. For example John Plamentaz builds directly on Kohn’s typology in his famous
study called “two types of nationalism”. He retains the sharp distinction between more benign
and civic western nationalism and non-western national hich has “hostile”, “illiberal”,
“oppressive” and “dangerous”. James Kellas distinguishes between western nationalism which
was inclusive and liberal in form and Eastern nationalism which was exclusive and often led to
authoritarianism.

MEANING AND CONCEPT OF NATIONALISM

 Nationalism is an idea and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as
in a group of people), especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation’s
sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland.
 Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference
(self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity and that the is
the only rightful source of political power(popular sovereignty).
 It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on shared social
characteristics of culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics(or the
government), religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote
national unity or solidarity.
 Kohn’s definition of nationalism was not clear. In his main book “The Idea of
Nationalism” he interchangeably used various terms to define it such as a living and
corporate will, idea, sentiment and state of mind. However, for Kohn the essence of
nationalism consisted in a demand that each nationality should form a state, that the state
should include the whole nation, and that loyalty to the national-state should override all
 other public loyalties. First, he regarded nationalities, that is cultural units aware of their
distinct character, which formed a base for nationalism as a product of long history.
Second, nationalism itself, he claimed had a very long history going back to ancient
times. Third, his language was full of organic metaphors suggesting that nationalities
naturally evolved into mature nations.

TYPES OF NATIONALISM

1. Anti-colonial nationalism:- Anti-colonial nationalism is an intellectual framework that

preceded, accompanied and followed the process of decolonization in the mid-
1900s. Benedict Anderson defined a nation as a socially constructed community that is
co-created by individuals who imagine themselves as part of this group. He points to
the New World as the site that originally conceived of nationalism as a concept, which is
defined by its imagination of an ahistorical identity that negates colonialism by
definition. This concept of nationalism was exemplified by the transformation of settler
colonies into nations, while anti-colonial nationalism is exemplified by movements
against colonial powers in the 1900s.
2. Civic nationalism and liberal nationalism:- Civic nationalism defines the nation as an
association of people who identify themselves as belonging to the nation, who have equal
and shared political rights, and allegiance to similar political procedures.According to the
principles of civic nationalism, the nation is not based on common ethnic ancestry, but is
a political entity whose core identity is not ethnicity. This civic concept of nationalism is
exemplified by Ernest Renan in his lecture in 1882.
3. Creole nationalism:- Creole nationalism is the ideology that emerged in independence
movements among the creoles (descendants of the colonizers), especially in Latin
America in the early 19th century. It was facilitated when French Emperor Napoleon
seized control of Spain and Portugal, breaking the chain of control from the Spanish and
Portuguese kings to the local governors. Allegiance to the Napoleonic states was rejected,
and increasingly the creoles demanded independence. They achieved it after civil wars
1808–1826.
4. Ethnic nationalism:- Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethno-nationalism, is a form of
nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity.The central theme of
ethnic nationalists is that "nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually
includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry". It also
includes ideas of a culture shared between members of the group, and with their
ancestors. However, it is different from a purely cultural definition of "the nation," which
allows people to become members of a nation by cultural assimilation; and from a purely
 linguistic definition, according to which "the nation" consists of all speakers of a specific
language.
5. Economic nationalism:- Economic nationalism, or economic patriotism, is an ideology
that favors state interventionism in the economy, with policies that emphasize domestic
control of the economy, labor, and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition
of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labor, goods and capital.

6. Gendered and muscular nationalism:- Feminist critique interprets nationalism as a

mechanism through which sexual control and repression are justified and legitimised,
often by a dominant masculine power. The gendering of nationalism through socially
constructed notions of masculinity and femininity not only shapes what masculine and
feminine participation in the building of that nation will look like, but also how the nation
will be imagined by nationalists.A nation having its own identity is viewed as necessary,
and often inevitable, and these identities are gendered. The physical land itself is often
gendered as female (i.e. "Motherland"), with a body in constant danger of violation by
foreign males, while national pride and protectiveness of "her" borders is gendered as
masculine.
7. Racial nationalism:- Racial nationalism is an ideology that advocates a racial definition
of national identity. Racial nationalism seeks to preserve a given race through policies
such as banning race mixing and the immigration of other races. Specific examples
are black nationalism and white nationalism.
8. Religious nationalism:- Religious nationalism is the relationship of nationalism to a
particular religious belief, dogma, or affiliation where a shared religion can be seen to
contribute to a sense of national unity, a common bond among the citizens of the
nation. SaudiArabian, Iranian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Indian andthe Pakistani-Islamic
nationalism (Two-Nation Theory) are some examples.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STATE NATION & NATIONALISM

 Nation-state, a territorially bounded sovereign polity—i.e., a state—that is ruled in the

name of a community of citizens who identify themselves as a nation. The legitimacy of a
nation-state’s rule over a territory and over the population inhabiting it stems from the
right of a core national group within the state (which may include all or only some of its
citizens) to self-determination. Members of the core national group see the state as
belonging to them and consider the approximate territory of the state to be
their homeland. Accordingly, they demand that other groups, both within and outside the
state, recognize and respect their control over the state. As the American sociologist
Rogers Brubaker put it in Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question
in the New Europe (1996), nation-states are “states of and for particular nations.”
 As a political model, the nation-state fuses two principles: the principle of
state sovereignty, first articulated in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which recognizes
the right of states to govern their territories without external interference; and the
principle of national sovereignty, which recognizes the right of national communities to
govern themselves. National sovereignty in turn is based on the moral-philosophical
principle of popular sovereignty, according to which states belong to their peoples. The
latter principle implies that legitimate rule of a state requires some sort of consent by the
people. That requirement does not mean, however, that all nation-states are democratic.
Indeed, many authoritarian rulers have presented themselves—both to the outside world
of states and internally to the people under their rule—as ruling in the name of a
sovereign nation.
 As a political ideal, nationalism aspires to a congruence between state borders and the
boundaries of the national community, so that the national group is contained in the
territory of its state and the state contains only that nation. However, in reality, the
borders of states and the boundaries of nations usually only partly overlap: not all
residents of the state belong to the core national group (sometimes not even all citizens
are part of the nation), and some members of the nation reside in other states. The lack of
congruence between state and nation has given rise to several phenomena: wars that
break out at approximately the time of nation-state formation; citizenship regimes (see
below Citizenship in nation-states) that embrace co-national immigrants—i.e.,
immigrants belonging to the same nation—but exclude other immigrants; efforts by
nation-states to nationalize additional territories and populations; and state policies that
manage ethnic, religious, and national diversity within their borders.
 The ideal of a state of and for a nation is reinforced not only through citizenship regimes
but also through mechanisms that foster national integration and develop and sustain
emotional commitment to the homeland. For example, curricula in schools are designed
to teach children an official narrative regarding the nation’s history and legacy, the
history of the state, and the shared national culture; official national calendars define
specific days as national holidays, which are celebrated with core rituals of
commemoration; nationalization of physical space is promoted by naming localities,
streets, infrastructure (e.g., roads and bridges), and parts of nature (e.g., rivers and
mountains) after national heroes and glorious or tragic events in the history of the nation;
national collective memory is also nurtured in memorial sites and monuments (e.g.,
those commemorating fallen soldiers); the nation is represented in official state symbols
(e.g., flags and the uniforms of security forces); and, in many nation-states,
the language of the core national group is made the official language of the country.
 WESTERN V/S EASTERN NATIONALISM

 The origins of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism are to be found in the
works of Hans Kohn, one of the first modern writers on nationalism.
 Writing at the end of World War II, Kohn (1944) distinguished between civic
nationalism, a rational and liberal way of thinking founded on respect for human rights
and personal freedoms, and ethnic nationalism, a mystical, religious, and ethnocentric
mindset predicated on tribal feelings.
 Civic nationalism, Kohn argued, is characteristic of liberal-minded Western states and is
a modern political phenomenon closely related to the pursuit of personal liberty; Ethnic
nationalism is typical of Eastern states, focused on folk culture, language, and ethnicity,
and therefore primitive, emotional, and motivated by blood and belonging.
 For Kohn (1944), the five Western nation-states he examined—the Netherlands,
Switzerland, Great Britain, France, and the United States—represented the desired kind
of affiliation between nation and state. In all five cases, the state preceded the nation;
nation building was therefore guided by and coincided with the interests of the state. In
the East, however, the emergence of nations preceded the building of the state.
Consequently, national borders did not overlap with those of the state, and relationships
within states remained ridden with conflict. Eastern nationalism was therefore politically
divisive.
 He argued that, the distinction between the sophisticated and developed nationalism of
the West and the crude and primordial nationalism of the East is more normative than
descriptive and was meant to establish the moral supremacy of the West. Hence, it is not
surprising that the two kinds of nationalism are assumed to be associated with different
stages of political development.
 Ethnic nationalism is depicted as characteristic of the early developmental stages, while
the aspiration to act in accordance with state law characteristic of civic nationalism is
presented as an expression of the more advanced stage of moral and political
development. These differences of character are taken to reflect the stage of moral and
political development of the respective societies.
 Western nationalism is assumed to prosper where there is a strong and confident
bourgeoisie that is able to build a citizen-nation with a civic spirit. Eastern nationalism
occurs in states lacking a solid middle class, which are often ruled by imperial autocrats
and semi feudal landowners whose repressive rule fosters authoritarian and submissive
behavior.
 Kohn's  distinction between a high and a low form of nationalism was adopted by other
scholars, who have argued that civic nationalism is characteristic of culturally developed
nations that can, from a position of self-confidence, approach each other on an equal
footing, seeking cooperation on the basis of mutual respect. In contrast, ethnic
 nationalism is characteristic of primitive nations, motivated by feelings of inferiority and
inspiring belligerent policies.
  Gellner(1983)1 sharpens the national–cultural division by arguing that Western civic
nations are united on the basis of high culture, while their Eastern ethnic counterparts are
joined on the basis of local, popular, and conventional culture. 
 Ignatieff (1993)2 follows the same line of argument, claiming that civic nationalism is
constituted by “a community of equal, rights-bearing individuals who are united in
patriotic attachment to a shared set of political practices and values.” Ethnic nationalism
is motivated by deep attachments that are inherited, not chosen, because “it is the national
community that defines the individual; not the individual who defies the national
community”
 Ignatieff (1993) Western nationalism, is the nationalism of the well-cultured,
emancipated bourgeoisie; Eastern nationalism is the nationalism of the subjugated,
uneducated masses.
 Aspiring to gain political autonomy by becoming fully fledged members of the
community of nations, East European nations espoused a national strategy characteristic
of the postwar period in the West. Entering a democratic age, they saw political
independence as inherently and intimately associated with national homogeneity. For the
emancipated countries, liberation meant a return to a culture and language suppressed by
the Soviet Empire. They aspired to secure this new state of affairs by adopting three
strategies (mainly targeting the millions of Russians who had been forced to move to
these territories in the process of Russification): assimilating those who were ready to
accommodate to the new reality (by, in particular, becoming fluent in the local language)
and driving others away or preventing them from participating in the political process.
Ethnic nationalism was harnessed to the chariots of democracy, while the West kept
silent, watching with satisfaction the decay of the Russian Bear.
 The political blindness of the liberal West is striking given the fact that in 1991 alone, 11
states won political independence due to international recognition of their right to
national self-determination: Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan,
Macedonia, Tajikistan, Armenia, Croatia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. This national
revival was widely ignored in the liberal world. Captivated by the idea of “the end of
history” (Fukuyama 1989), liberals attributed these political events to a liberal victory
over all other ideologies including nationalism. The East was seen to be finally maturing,
catching up with the West by placing civic/democratic values ahead of ethnic ones.

Nations and nationalism (pp. 99–100)

1

2
Blood and Belonging (pp. 7–8)
 Liberals in the West underestimated the resilience of nation-states (old and new) and their
dependence on processes of homogenization. This misapprehension led to a
misunderstanding of the true nature of nationalism and the nation-state and encouraged
the spread of a dangerous political illusion that the developed world (East and West) was
moving toward a more advanced moral and political age in which civic ideals would
trump ethnic ones.
 An ideology dimension attracted the most attention and was reproduced later as a
dintinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. However, Kohn himself seemed not to
use terms “civic” and “ethnic”. Instead, apparently following friedrich meinecke who
distinguished between Staatsnation and Kulturnation in a book Weltburgertum und
nationalstaat (cosmopolitanism and the nation-state) published originally in 1908, kohn
occasionally spoke about politically oriented and culturally oriented nationalisms
(Meinecke 1970). It should be said that by ideological dimension I mean the differences
in the content of the two types of nationalism. These differences in the writings of hans
kohn a form of the binary oppositions which may be summarized as follows: politically
oriented nationalism focusing on policy-making and government versus culturally
oriented nationalism concentrating on education, propaganda and the cultivation of native
values; a nation based on the idea of social contract / a nation understood as organic and
natural community.
 The west was the first to develop nationalism and it subsequently become a model and
teacher for the rest of the world. In other words, for Kohn western nationalism had a
primary character and non-western nationalism was secondary, derivative and imitative.
Most of comtemporary theories of nationalism share this belief in the western origins of
nationalism although this is view is not uncontested (Anderson 1991). According to Kohn
the imitative character of non-western nationalism had important psychological
implications. This dependence on the west hurt the pride of the native educated classes
who developed an inferiority complex. T they compensated their pride and inferiority
complex by hostility towards the west and its rational and liberal outlook.
 In kohn’s view non-western nationalism and western nationalism sprung from different
psychological sources. The western one was the effect of the optimistic and confident
climate of enlightenment. In contrast, non-western nationalism was based on an
inferiority complex, lack of self-assurance, frustration and hostility. It is worth
mentioning that his depiction of psychological forces underlying non-western nationalism
bore a clear similarity to the mechanism of ressentiment described by Friedrich Nietzsche
in his book Zur Genealogie der Moral published in 1887 (Nietzsche 2006).
 The difference between in the concepts of nation and nationalism was a historical
consequence of the different in effect produced by Renaissance and Reformation between
germany and western Europe. According to him the later country was the original site of
the development of virulent form of nationalism, which then spread like a lethal virus to
 other parts of Europe and the world. He underlined the role of two spiritual revolutions
Renaissance and Reformation for the shape of modern times.

CONCLUSION

In the ancient world of classical antiquity and the Near East, ethnic ties and identities were
prevalent, alongside attachments to city-states, tribes, and, to a lesser extent, empires – notably in
ancient Greece and Persia. On the other hand, the processes that conduce to the rise of nations
(let alone nationalism) were generally absent. Notwithstanding, there were a few exceptions:
ancient Egypt, early Christian Armenia, and especially Judah just before and after the exile in
Babylon. In the two latter cases, the creation of different symbolic and cultural resources helped
to ensure the survival, albeit in altered forms, of the normative community after the exile of
many of its members from their homelands. Perhaps even more significant for the subsequent
shaping of nations have been the legacies bequeathed to later periods by the ancient world. Here
I singled out three main cultural traditions of public culture: those of hierarchy, covenant, and
commonwealth or civic republic. The first was, of course, dominant and widespread throughout
the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean from Old Kingdom Egypt and the Akkadian empire
of Sargon to the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman empire. It provided a model of sanctified
inequality and sacred rule, and when conjoined to a dominant ethnie and to the memory of the
Davidic kings of Israel and Judah, an ideal of sacred kingship, as in medieval France – a legacy
that, mediated through imperial Rome, was drawn upon time and again throughout the Middle
Ages from Pepin and Charlemagne to Charles V and Henry VIII. Equally important in the long
term were the other two cultural traditions. The covenantal ideal of ancient Israel was purveyed,
first through the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, and then by the Church in the Greek
Orthodox East and the Latin Catholic West, particularly the beliefs in ethnic election and unity
and in divine mission. Similarly, the civic model of the republic or commonwealth took as its
inspiration the patriotism and citizen solidarity of the Greek polis, notably ancient Athens, and
the heroic simplicity and self-sacrifice found in an idealized Republican Rome. Revived in the
medieval Italian cityrepublics, it was taken up by many of the free communes of medieval
Germany, Switzerland, and Flanders.

However, for the most part, much of the European land mass as well as the Near East was the
domain of successive empires. Here, the basic processes of formation of nations were not
developed, and hierarchy was seldom linked to an isolated or dominant ethnic community.
Where, after the fragmentation of European Christendom and the rise of centralizing states, it did
come to be conjoined with a dominant ethnie, as in the states of Muscovy, Spain, France,
England, Denmark, and Sweden, it helped to provide the underpinning for a hierarchical type of
nation, in which, despite the fact that the sentiments of the mass of the population went largely
unrecorded, a powerful and often exclusive sense of national identity nevertheless manifested
itself among rulers and elites. Such national sentiments were in turn encouraged by, as they
helped to stimulate, commercial competition and warfare between rival European states, which
in turn mobilized armies, instilled in them the virtue of solidarity and the need for defense of
“their” national territories, and provided them with myths of battle and heroic deeds. In this
sense, we may speak of hierarchical nations in the later Middle Ages, in which a predominantly
“crown-centered patriotism” began to percolate down to the urban middle classes, providing a
fulcrum for powerful national sentiments within the framework of an increasingly bounded and
centralized national territory, standardized legal order, and distinctive public culture. It was the
Reformation that provided the “breakthrough” to both popular nations and the first kind of
nationalism. Its return to the Old Testament in the radical Reformist versions, notably Calvinism,
reintroduced the covenantal model, so long a theological concept, into the political mainstream.
In late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scotland, England, and Holland, as well as in many of
the American colonies and Swiss cities, the covenantal ideal and the Exodus narrative, vividly
conveyed in the vernacular Bible, came to provide the dynamic for radical change in the quest
for individual salvation and collective election – including the election of nations. In many ways,
this period is pivotal for the rise of both nations and nationalisms. Building on pre-existing
national sentiments among the elites, covenantal nations and nationalisms were able to offer
broader and more dynamic conceptions of the nation and its ideals – even creating republican
commonwealths – and thereby to mobilize large numbers of people for political programmes and
military action.

REFERENCES

1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9780470696613.oth1
2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41275158?seq=11#metadata_info_tab_contents
3. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog128/node/534
4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4464622