The Nation and Its Fragments

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 anticolonialist 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. Chatterjee shows how middle-class elites first imagined the nation into being in this spiritual dimension and then readied it for political contest, all the while "normalizing" the aspirations of the various marginal groups that typify the spiritual sphere.

While Chatterjee's specific examples are drawn from Indian sources, with a copious use of Bengali language materials, the book is a contribution to the general theoretical discussion on nationalism and the modern state. Examining the paradoxes involved with creating first a uniquely non-Western nation in the spiritual sphere and then a universalist nation-state in the material sphere, the author finds that the search for a postcolonial modernity is necessarily linked with past struggles against modernity.

To flesh this out a bit, Chatterjee does acknowledge the contribution of the West to Asia and African nationalism, but only in what he identifies as the space of the "outside." This space is comprised by such things as the economy, statecraft, science and technology. There is more, apparently, the more important previously unreflected upon area of the "inner" domain of the spiritual.

In his groundbreaking study, Chatterjee takes a page out of Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" but he reacts to it. If nationalism is relegated to the realm of the rise of modernity, it misses lots of nuance and may be missing some very important elements. Chatterjee takes aim at the problematic head on at, as I mentioned earlier, the rise of nationalism as a process of modernity. His examination of the peasants in relation not only to Indian nationalism, but as a group within its own, often paradoxical values. Is this cultural nationalism an elite movement as discussed by Leah Greenfeld (Nationalism - Five Roads to Modernity) and E. J. Hobsbawm (Nations and Nationalism since 1780)? (both available on Amazon.com) Is so, how did the peasants come to be involved? This almost "subaltern" approach is indicative of its postcolonial/postmodern roots. Chatterjee argues that it must be superseded by `concrete forms of democratic community' that transcend hierarchical and bourgeois equality models. If you see the rise of a nation simply (or exclusively) within the framework of a function of modernity, do you then lose a sense of how the nation was formed from a cultural perspective? Gandhi's notion of family, community and group, based on mutual respect seems to pale in significance by the political and bureaucratic power of the modern state. Chatterjee then offers us the exception that the rise of Bengali nationalism. The items engaged in by Chatterjee are provocative to say the least and does challenge us to question what we feel or know about nationalism. Particularity and difference comes to the forefront of consideration in this book. We all need to take a long hard look at it.

Miguel Llora


Worthwhile study   October 25, 2001
 13 out of 13 found this review helpful

Chatterjee is a typical `postmodern' scholar, and he has a rather jargon-filled and oblique writing style. In some cases, knowledge of Indian and Bengali history, to say nothing of familiarity with contemporary Bengali society and the intricacies of the caste system, would seem to be required to truly understand certain sections of this book. Also, while Chatterjee states that his argument is meant to clarify (to some extent) the conditions of nations, nationalism and society/communities in the postcolonial states of Asia and Africa, his examination is almost exclusively restricted to Bengal in India. There is nothing wrong with this as such, since he deals with the area with which he is most familiar. However, one of his principal underlying themes is a (rather persuasive) criticism of European or `Western' scholars for mis-applying European philosophies and sociological models to non-European, postcolonial societies, and he seems to commit the same error by assuming that his Bengali example can be used to explain circumstances in the vast, diverse lands from the western shores of Africa to southeast Asia.
Nevertheless, "The Nation and Its Fragments" is a very strong argument against simply assuming that nationalism, postcolonial development, industrialization and modernity itself in India (or elsewhere in the so-called `Third World') are simply following `models' already formulated in Europe/America. Chatterjee's most important point is perhaps his call for scholarship on postcolonial societies to commence from completely different fundamental assumptions, rather than trying to force upon it outside (read European) `scientific' models.


An alternative view of nationalism   July 13, 2000
 4 out of 5 found this review helpful

Pranab Chatterjee wisely cautions us to remember that there are ways of expressing nationalism that differ from the Western models. With examples from literature and history the author helps us explore the "inner" spiritual or cultural world of Bengalis in colonial India, a world they tried to keep safe and distinct from the "outer" world of British-imposed politics. The writing in places is a bit vague, but the reading is worth the effort to remind us that wisdom does not begin and end in the West.


This book,like many others, pleads for acceptance.   July 11, 1997
 4 out of 50 found this review helpful

The text is one of many in the field. It is asking to be accepted in the domains of the (white Western) colonial overlord, while, at the same time, attempting to mount a palace coup. These ex-colonials, who so eloquently plead from the "margins" are really to be pitied. They are NOT on the perameter; they are right there at the center, with Homi B Babha and Stewart Hall etc