Entangled Identities, Cultural-Political Mediation and the Longevity of Nations: A Cross-National Analysis of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
Asian Studies
Final Report Abstract
By means of a comparison of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka this research project has explored the role that political institutions play in bridging and accommodating cultural difference in multi-cultural societies. The longevity of the nation is the dependent variable here, the variation in which is explained in terms of the independent variables of the entanglement and accommodation of identities. The spaces under scrutiny are the ‘moments of ambiguity’, decisive points in the early stages of young nations when new institutions have to be created and a citizenship regime has to be set up. The cultural sphere is an important site on which the degree of inclusivity of a society, and the ‘belonging’ to a community are determined. Non-state cultural actors, such as Hindu nationalists in India, conservative clerics in Pakistan, or the leaders of the subnational movement in Sri Lanka, play a crucial role in postcolonial states as they provide alternative discourses and often offer interpretations of the institutional scenario that conflict with those given by the state. The cultural arenas crucial for analysis are the theoretical-conceptual foundation of the nation, the institutionalisation of the state, and the visualization of the state and the nation. While philosophical ideas, be they endogenous or exogenous feed into the design of the institutions, icons and symbols are simplifying mechanisms that capture what their ardent followers would like their nations to embody ideally. As such, ‘iconisation’—the act of transforming an idea to an image that the nation as an imagined community can identify with— is an integral part of nation-building. Methodologically, this research project has sought to conceptualize the political problems around nation-building by means of an interdisciplinary approach combining political science and neo-institutional approaches with political philosophy and political iconography. This has not always been easy, since political science as a scholarly discipline is still predominantly informed by the positivist paradigm, where entities have to be measurable in order to be comparable and worthy of attention. I have therefore in my work advocated a ‘soft political science’ or ‘political studies’ that is more open to qualitative research and to the insights that disciplines such as social anthropology and cultural studies. In that sense, I am grateful to have been invited to a range of conferences organised by political scientists as well as historians and media studies scholars. This shows that the problems around nation-building which I have identified as political in nature do concern various disciplines, and conceptually as well as methodologically require interdisciplinary approaches.
Publications
- Cultural Citizenship in India: Politics, Power, and Media (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016)
Koenig, Lion
- Globalisation and Governance in India: New Challenges to Society and Institutions (London: Routledge, 2016)
Koenig, Lion, Harihar Bhattacharyya (eds.)
(See online at https://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315722917) - Politics of the ‘Other’ in India and China: Western Concepts in Non-Western Contexts (London: Routledge, 2016) (co-edited with Bidisha Chaudhuri)
Koenig, Lion, Bidisha Chaudhuri (eds.)
- ‘The Aadhaar Scheme: A Cornerstone of a New Citizenship Regime in India?’ in: Contemporary South Asia, vol. 26, no. 2, April 2018, pp. 127-142
Koenig, Lion ; Bidisha Chaudhuri
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2017.1369934)
