Understanding Nationalism: A Complex Modern Phenomenon

Few ideas have shaped the modern world as powerfully as nationalism. It has drawn the borders of countries, sparked revolutions, fueled freedom struggles, and even ignited wars. Yet for something so influential, nationalism is surprisingly difficult to pin down. Is it a deep sentiment rooted in human nature, or a political ideology engineered for a purpose? Is it a force for liberation or a tool for division? The honest answer is that it is all of these at once. This post breaks down what nationalism actually means, how scholars explain its origins, and why it remains one of the most potent and contested forces in politics today.

Defining nationalism 🔗

At its core, nationalism is an ideology based on the idea that an individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. In simpler terms, it places the nation at the centre of political life and treats belonging to that nation as the highest form of group identity.

Scholars often describe nationalism through one famous principle: the belief that the nation should be congruent with the state. This means a people who share a common identity should ideally govern themselves within their own sovereign territory. The Norwegian Center for Research on Extremism puts it directly, defining nationalism as an ideology which holds that the state and the nation should be unified.

To understand this, we need to separate two terms that are often confused.

Nation versus state 🔗

A nation is a group of people bound together by shared features such as language, history, culture, and usually a common territory. A state, by contrast, is a political and legal entity with formal institutions of government, defined territorial boundaries, and sovereignty. The two are not the same. As Britannica notes, a state may comprise one or more nations, and a nation may be spread across more than one state. The Kurds, for example, share a national identity but are divided across Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria without a state of their own.

Nationalism is essentially the bridge that seeks to merge these two ideas, demanding that the cultural community and the political unit become one and the same.

Nationalism as both sentiment and ideology 🔗

One reason nationalism is so hard to define is that it operates on two levels simultaneously.

The psychological dimension 🔗

On one level, nationalism is a feeling. It is the emotional attachment people have toward a shared culture, language, and homeland. This sentiment explains why people feel pride during a national anthem, grief at a national tragedy, or solidarity with strangers they will never meet simply because they belong to the same country. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics captures this when it explains that nationalism answers the deeply human questions of “who am I” and “where do I belong”, insisting that membership in a nation takes precedence over other loyalties.

The political dimension 🔗

On another level, nationalism is a concrete political programme. It is the organised demand for self-government, sovereignty, and statehood. The American and French revolutions were early expressions of this political nationalism, and the same logic later inspired the unification of Italy in 1861 and the creation of new nation-states across Europe after the First World War. In India, this political dimension drove the entire freedom struggle against British rule.

This dual nature, part emotion and part ideology, is precisely what gives nationalism its remarkable mobilising power.

Theories explaining the origins of nationalism 🔗

Where does nationalism come from? Scholars disagree sharply, and their debate has produced several major schools of thought.

Primordialism and perennialism 🔗

Primordialism argues that nations are natural, ancient, and almost timeless. According to this view, people have always organised themselves into distinct national groups based on deep ties of kinship, ethnicity, and culture. This approach helps explain why nationalism feels so instinctive and why people are willing to make enormous sacrifices for their nation. Perennialism is a related position, holding that nations have existed for a very long time even if they have changed form across history. Critics, however, point out that this view struggles to explain why national boundaries shift and why some groups develop strong national identities while others do not.

Modernism 🔗

Modernism is the most influential approach in contemporary scholarship. It argues that nations are not ancient at all but are recent inventions tied to modern developments like industrialisation, urbanisation, mass literacy, and print media. Ernest Gellner, perhaps the most influential theorist of nationalism, argued that modern nationalism is a direct result of nineteenth-century industrialisation, which required standardised, literate populations who could function within a shared culture.

The political theorist Benedict Anderson advanced this thinking with his famous concept of “imagined communities.” Anderson observed that the members of even the smallest nation will never meet most of their fellow members, yet each carries a mental image of their shared communion. He argued that the spread of print capitalism, including newspapers and books, allowed people to imagine themselves as part of a larger community. When people across a territory read the same news and absorbed the same narratives, a shared national consciousness became possible.

Ethnosymbolism 🔗

Anthony D. Smith proposed a middle path called ethnosymbolism. Smith accepted that modern nations are recent, but he argued that modernism ignored the deep pre-modern ethnic roots, myths, memories, and symbols on which nations are built. For Smith, you cannot fully understand a modern nation without studying the older ethnic communities that gave it raw material.

Types of nationalism 🔗

Nationalism is not a single, uniform thing. Scholars usually distinguish between two broad forms, though the line between them is often blurred in practice.

Civic nationalism 🔗

Civic nationalism defines the nation as a political community held together by shared values, citizenship, and institutions rather than by blood or ancestry. In this model, anyone who commits to the nation’s constitutional principles, such as liberty, equality, and the rule of law, can become a member. It is inclusive in principle, and it allows immigrants and diverse groups to join the national community through a shared civic framework.

Ethnic nationalism 🔗

Ethnic nationalism, by contrast, grounds national identity in common ancestry, language, and inherited culture. Membership here depends on lineage and shared ethnic origin. As one analysis notes, the central bond in ethnic nationalism is blood ties among citizens rather than subscription to common political values. Its strength lies in producing a powerful sense of solidarity, but its weakness is that it can be exclusionary toward those outside the dominant group.

It is worth remembering that scholars caution against treating these as completely separate boxes. A study in the Annual Review of Political Science argues that although the two are distinct in theory, in reality the boundaries between them are blurred, and most real-world nationalisms blend elements of both.

How nationalism mobilises people through symbols 🔗

Nationalism rarely spreads through abstract arguments alone. It works through symbols, rituals, songs, and shared experiences that turn an idea into a deeply felt emotion. Flags, anthems, monuments, and festivals create a visible, repeatable sense of belonging that binds millions of strangers into a single community.

The freedom struggle offers a vivid illustration of how this works. Nationalist leaders deliberately used iconography to instill a sense of collective belonging and to mobilise the masses against colonial rule. The charkha (spinning wheel) became a symbol of self-reliance and was placed at the centre of the Swaraj flag of 1921. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s hymn Vande Mataram, written during the Swadeshi Movement, became a rallying cry, and singing it and hoisting the national flag became potent symbols of defiance against British rule. The image of Bharat Mata, first painted by Abanindranath Tagore, gave the abstract idea of the nation a recognisable human form.

This is the modernist insight in action. Rather than appealing only to ancient bonds, leaders constructed new symbols and narratives capable of uniting an extraordinarily diverse population. A shared flag, a common anthem, and collective rituals allowed people separated by region, language, and religion to feel part of one nation. National symbols thus served as instruments of political mobilisation, educating and uniting citizens around shared values, as analysts of the freedom movement have repeatedly observed.

The two faces of nationalism 🔗

Nationalism carries a fundamental tension. It can be deeply liberating, providing the energy for colonised peoples to demand self-determination and throw off foreign domination. The anti-colonial movements across Asia and Africa in the twentieth century were powered by exactly this emancipatory nationalism.

Yet the same force can become exclusionary and aggressive. Scholarship describes nationalism as simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary, capable of building states and uniting people while also drawing harsh boundaries between insiders and outsiders. In its radical forms, nationalism has fed expansionism, xenophobia, and the exclusion of minorities. This is why nationalism remains so heavily contested: the very loyalty that unites a community can also be turned against those deemed not to belong. The challenge, as commentators on national symbols note, is ensuring that nationalism strengthens unity without encroaching upon basic individual rights.

Why nationalism still matters 🔗

Far from fading in a globalised world, nationalism continues to shape contemporary politics. It influences debates over immigration, citizenship, sovereignty, and identity across the globe. Understanding its dual character, as both a heartfelt sentiment and a deliberate political ideology, is essential for making sense of the modern world. It explains why people willingly sacrifice for an abstract community, how diverse populations are forged into single nations, and why the same idea can produce both liberation and conflict.

What do you think? Is nationalism best understood as a natural human sentiment that has always existed, or as a modern construction built through print, education, and shared symbols? And in a diverse society, where should the line be drawn between a nationalism that unites and one that excludes?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/nationalism
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism
3. https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/resources/key-consepts-and-questions/what-is-nationalism.html
4. https://oxfordre.com/politics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-2039
5. https://www.thenandnow.co/2023/05/26/theories-of-nationalism-and-national-identity-an-introduction/
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernization_theory_(nationalism)
7. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7040812.pdf
8. https://senecalearning.com/en-GB/revision-notes/a-level/political-studies/edexcel/19-1-4-civic-and-ethnic-nationalism
9. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-022018-024059
10. https://carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/rekindling-nationalism-through-symbolism-asset-or-hindrance-to-globalism