Common Historical Traditions of Nationality – Essay

Common historical traditions are regarded by Ramsay Muir as an “indispensable factor” in cementing the bonds of nationality. John Stuart Mill has given them the first place of precedence and Hayes places them second only to language.

Such traditions, Ramsay Muir says, involve a memory of sufferings endured and victories won in common, expressed in song and legend, in the dear name of great personalities that seem to embody in themselves the character and ideals of the nation, in the names of the sacred places wherein the national memory is enshrined.

“Here is the source of that paradox of nationality that it is only intensified by sufferings, and, like the giant Antueus in the Greek fable, rises with redoubled strength every time it is beaten down into the bosom of its mother earth.

Heroic achievements, agonies heroically endured, these are the sublime food by which the spirit of nationhood is nourished; from these are born the sacred and imperishable traditions that make the soul of nations.”

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The possession of national history, says Mill, and the consequent “community of recollections, collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past” are the most powerful factors to generate the sense of identity and sentiment of fellow- feelings.

Common Government:

A people, howsoever heterogeneous in their outlook and sentiments, develop national feelings of oneness if they live for long under the same government. The process of unity is accelerated if the government is alien. People become unified in their resolve to free themselves from the shackles of foreign domination and exploitation.

Two hostile classes come into existence; those struggling against the oppression and exploitation of the alien rulers and those who make all-out efforts to perpetuate their hold and suppress the aspirations of the subject people. Misgovernment is a prolific source of national awakening as the malcontents of today are the revolutionaries of tomorrow.

There is other side of the same problem also. When diverse people live for a long time under one government and the government is tolerant in its policy towards all such diverse elements, with the passage of time they merge into a single unified nationality.

Their children become political half-castes, and the third and fourth generations lose their parental prejudices. The peoples of the original thirteen Colonies, which comprised the United States of America after the Declaration of Independence, were in their first generation Englishmen, Germans, Poles or Czechs.

Their political aspirations to get rid of foreign domination welded them in bonds of unity and all the different nationalities were fused together in one American nation. Common government is the instrumentality through which much of the common historical heritage of a people takes form.

Common Interests:

Common interests like economic and defensive, act as a fillip in strengthening the ties of unity. Economic and defensive problems are vital in the formation of federations. Economic interests reconciled Scotland to a union with England.

The Zollverein bringing Germans with a customs union laid the foundation of the confederation in 1867. No one will, at the same time, deny that economic interests may intensify national consciousness.

Hayes says, “A nationality by acquiring unity and sovereign independence becomes a nation.” Take the example of the Jews who have now established the Israel State in Palestine. Hitherto the Jews were a nationality; now they are a nation.

A nationality may, accordingly, be defined as a nation in the making. Almost every nationality either had its own State (as the Scots), or aspires to form a State, whether it may be a new State or the rehabilitation of a previously existing State (as the Poles or Czechs before the Great War).

There may still be a nationality even if it does not wish to become a nation. The Hindus, the Muslims, the Sikhs, and many others are nationalities within the Indian nation. The Welsh and the Scots are two distinct nationalities within the British nation.

When a nation consists of distinct socio-economic groups, each of these groups may be called a nationality. But nationalities in India are divided fundamentally on religion and language.

Both the Muslims and the Sikhs have unequivocally declared that politics for them is inseparable from their religions and their political behaviour is determined by the dictates of their religions. This stark reality that India is a multinational State is denied by almost all Indians, except a handful of them, like K.M. Pannikar and Professor Gadgil.

Professor Zimmern makes the following distinction between nationality and statehood:

“While Nationality is subjective, Statehood is objective;

While Nationality is psychological, Statehood is Political;

While Nationality is a condition of mind, Statehood is a condition in law;

While Nationality is a spiritual possession, Statehood is an enforceable obligation.

While nationality is a way of feeling, Statehood is a condition inseparable from all civilised ways of living.”