May 07, 2020
In this book, the prominent theorist Partha Chatterjee looks at the creative and powerful results of the nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa that are posited not on identity but on difference with the nationalism propagated by the West.
Arguing that scholars have been mistaken in equating political nationalism with nationalism as such, he shows how anti-colonialist nationalists produced their own domain of sovereignty within colonial society well before beginning their political battle with the imperial power.
These nationalists divided their culture into material and spiritual domains, and staked an early claim to the spiritual sphere, represented by religion, caste, women and the family, and peasants.
Originally Published in Arab News. Read the entire story here.