The Limits of Derivative Nationalism: Marxism, Postcolonial Theory, and the Question of Tamil Nationalism

Abstract

‘Indian’ postcolonial writings continue to have a significant impact on contemporary scholarly approaches to nationalism in the subcontinent, and have helped displace the hold of earlier left/liberal approaches to nationalism. While the impact of these recent postcolonial trends on Indian historiography more broadly has been the subject of considerable scholarly discussions and debates, less attention has been devoted to their specific impact on scholarly approaches to nationalism. Through a close and critical reading of the changing historical approaches to ‘minority’ Tamil nationalism in the subcontinent as well as through comparison of such postcolonial perspectives with that of ‘anticolonial’ national liberation theorists such as Frantz Fanon, this essay seeks to offer a historical perspective on the strengths and limitations of the currently ascendant ‘Indian’ postcolonial perspectives on nationalism.

Keywords:

• Subaltern Studies
• Postcolonial Theory
• Marxism
• Tamil Nationalism
• South Asia

Acknowledgements

Versions of this paper were presented at the World History and Historical Materialism Conference held at the University of Manitoba in March 2009, and at the Fourth Annual International Tamil Studies Conference held at the University of Toronto in May 2009. I would like to thank Peter Ives, Serap Kayatekin, Youcef Soufi, S. Sivasegaram, Henry Heller, David Camfield, Anisha Datta, Malarvizhi Jayanth, Radhika Desai, V. Rajesh, and S. Perundevi for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

¹I am referring here to the various phases that Tamil/Dravidian nationalism had gone through beginning with the Tamil/Saivite revival, the Justice party phase, the rationalist, self-respect phase inaugurated under the leadership of ‘Periyar’ (E. V. Ramasami) in the late 1920s, and the populist phase after the formation of Dravidian political parties from the 1940s.

²If Muslim nationalism and separatism were not portrayed in the earlier works as ‘antinational’ and ‘comprador’, they were, as in the case of Tamil nationalism, often seen as the handiwork of aspiring Muslim leaders frustrated in their political ambitions by the Indian nationalist movement. In other words, it was presented as arising principally as a result of elite competition and the cynical deployment of religious ideologies.

³There were, of course, exceptions in these early writings. However, they were mostly written in Tamil, such as those by K. Kailasapathy (1979) and K. Sivathamby. However, even here, there was a tendency to separate the ‘political’ from the ‘ideological’. It is interesting that one of the most powerful critiques of the Cambridge school approach to Tamil nationalism came from the founder of subaltern studies himself, Ranajit Guha, as we shall see later (see Guha 1997, 92–3).

⁴Sanjay Seth (1995) particularly brings out this alignment of Indian communist politics with Indian nationalism in the period leading up to independence.

⁵See, for example, Ramamurthy (1983, 9).

⁶A broad range of writers identifying themselves as Marxist have written and continue to write on the Dravidian movement with varying degrees of emphasis and focus, including N. Ram (1979), Ko Kesavan (1991), Arunan (2003), and R. Nallakannu (2005).

⁷Marxists who were deeply immersed in Tamil literary studies were often more nuanced in their writings, particularly in their writings in Tamil. It needs to be said, however, that even the well-known Marxist scholar of Tamil, Kailasapathy, in his powerful Marxist critique of the Tamil purist movement where he was particularly adept at critiquing Tamil purism's tendency toward ‘archaism’ and ‘pedantism’, does not at the same time attempt to disentangle the religio-cultural aspects of the movement and ends up focusing, like many other Marxist accounts, on the elite, comprador aspects of the movement. He had begun his essay by asserting, “Tamil purist movement shows in bold relief the class position of its proponents who were pro-British and came from an essentially high caste Hindu background” (Kailasapathy 1979, 23).

⁸It is particularly this lacuna that is taken up with great earnestness by the Indian subaltern studies school, as we shall see later.

⁹In a critical survey of Communist parties’ positions with respect to the national question in neighbouring Sri Lanka, one finds similar failings (see Jayawardena 1985; Vaitheespara 2007).

¹⁰Indian postcolonial theory's exclusive focus on ‘epistemic’ transformation had even led to the suggestion that what is perhaps being silently mourned here is a loss of a precolonial, authentic past. It had, for example, led Robert Young to see in ‘Indian’ postcolonial writings perhaps a repressed Gandhianism at work (2001, 308–82).

¹¹As Manu Goswami observes (citing Eley and Suny's extensive review of the literature on nationalism), this is in keeping with the wider methodological reorientation in studies of nationalism from ‘structural and materialist’ to ‘cultural studies’ perspectives (2003, 13). See also in this regard Desai's critique of Benedict Anderson's highly influential work on nationalism (2008).

¹²Consistent with such a postcolonial trend, Valentine Daniel finds it helpful to differentiate Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka, which he describes as fitting in more with “ontic” ways of being compared to Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, which he describes as ‘epistemic’ (1996).

¹³Ismail uses this term like some other poststructuralist theorists to describe his own approach, which does not claim to conceive of himself as an autonomous, agentive subject who stands apart from the object of his study but conceives “his object as also subject” (2005, xiv).

¹⁴Philips also makes this point when he observed that Ismail's tendency to characterize virulent Sinhala nationalism and its Tamil other as mirror images, both derived from colonially derived discursive regimes, “screens out the emancipatory and counter hegemonic function … Sinhalese nationalism provided a vehicle of mobility for the subaltern castes and classes among the Sinhalese … The fight for Eelam and the global dispersion of the Tamils have fundamentally broken the hierarchical structures of Tamil society, but in a perverse and debilitating manner rather than in revolutionary and constructive ways” (2007, 195–6).

¹⁵Among the earliest works of this kind are my own early publications (1996, 1999).

¹⁶For Gramsci, religio-cultural reform and religious reformers were essential agents who performed the necessary cultural work for ‘hegemony’. As Fontana writes, hegemony for Gramsci involved “the formulation and elaboration of conceptions of the world that has been transformed into the … ‘normal’ ensemble of ideas and beliefs that interpret and define the world … Hegemony is thus, in a very real and concrete sense, the moment of philosophy as politics, and the moment of politics as philosophy” (1993, 20–1). Gramsci's reading of the role of Luther and the Protestant Reformation in inaugurating a new ‘national popular’ bloc is also suggestive for understanding the role of Atikal as a Saivite reformer and Tamil purist. For example, speaking of Luther's redefinition of Christianity, Fontana observes, “To accomplish such a redefinition required the transformation of the tradition and past of the Roman Church into the tradition and past of a corrupt and self serving hierarchy whose teachings and practices deviated from those of the original founders” (36). With reference to the dethroning of Latin and writing in the vernacular, Fontana again presents a Gramscian reading: “The vernacular was thus at one and the same time a critical instrument in the undermining of the established conception, and a necessary means by which the new conception would become ‘life’… The vernacular does not simply make the texts more accessible … more important, it is intrinsic to the very notion of the community as the carrier and repository of the faith” (37). I am grateful to Peter Ives for first recommending this excellent work and for inspiring me to look more closely at Gramsci through his own writings on the subject (Ives 2004).

¹⁷While there was some difference in approach between Fanon and Cabral on the question of effective decolonization and national liberation, these are not so relevant to the argument made here regarding the difference between the subaltern/postcolonial perspectives and the earlier anticolonial approaches. Cabral's greater emphasis on the importance of ‘precolonial culture’ as an important resource in the fight against colonialism and his notion of ‘class suicide’ make his approach a little different despite the fact that they share much in common. Here I will confine myself to using examples drawn from the work of Fanon to illustrate my arguments.

¹⁸The Maoist Naxalbari or Naxalite movement, which emerged first in West Bengal in the late 1960s, is traced to the split in the Indian Communist Party (Marxist) in 1967. Often described as ‘far left’, its founders were disgruntled with the policies of India's parliamentary left and were inspired particularly by Marxist-Leninist and Maoist doctrines. They have particularly focused on mobilizing the poor peasantry and lower class ‘tribal’ population through a call for an armed struggle against the state and oppressive landlords. The Naxalite movement has currently spread to other parts of India and, by some accounts, claims to be operating in around ten states and active in areas constituting approximately forty percent of India's land mass.

¹⁹It is in this sense that one may endorse with careful qualifications Aijaz Ahmad's and Arif Dirlik's polemical attacks on much of postcolonial writing as the work of ‘bourgeois’ Third World academics in the West. While not endorsing such a position, it could be argued that the principal focus on European colonial texts and high European theory to the neglect of local vernacular sources might be reflective of the strengths and limitations of the unique ‘cultural capital’ of many such scholars and the peculiar colonial social formation from which they are principally drawn (Ahmad 2000; Dirlik 1997).