nationalism

"You brave heroic minds Worthy your country’s name, That honour still pursue; Go and subdue! Whilst loitering hinds Lurk here at home with shame."

"The true Lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears and to sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy: he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism therefore may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities; ..."

"Agincourt, Agincourt, know ye not Agincourt?"

"... In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible Knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.—In every thing we are sprung Of Earth’s first blood, have titles manifold."

"This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England, ..."

"The real motive force of neo-Toryism, giving it its nationalistic character and differentiating it from ordinary Conservatism, is the desire not to recognize that British power and influence have declined. Even those who are realistic enough to see that Britain’s military position is not what it was, tend to claim that ‘English ideas’ (usually left undefined) must dominate the world. All neo-Tories are anti-Russian, but sometimes the main emphasis is anti-American. The significant thing is that this school of thought seems to be gaining ground among youngish intellectual, sometimes ex-Communists, who have passed through the usual process of disillusionment and become disillusioned with that. The anglophobe who suddenly becomes violently pro-British is a fairly common figure. Writers who illustrate this tendency are F. A. Voigt, Malcolm Muggeridge, Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Kingsmill, and a psychologically similar development can be observed in T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and various of their followers."

"I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; ..."

"Poitiers and Cressy tell, When most their pride did swell, Under our swords they fell: No less our skill is Than when our grandsire great, Claiming the regal seat, By many a warlike feat Lopp’d the French lilies.’"

"The knights are dust, And their good swords are rust;— Their souls are with the saints, we trust."

"A new scent troubles the air—to you, friendly perhaps— But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell. To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps, And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell."

"I should have hated the Roman Empire in its day (as I do), and remained a patriotic Roman citizen, while preferring a free Gaul and seeing good in Carthaginians. '. We hear rather a lot of that nowadays."

"God of our fathers, known of old— Lord of our far-flung battle-line— Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!"

""Connect girls and inspire them for the future."

"My strength also comes from the fact that I still want to work and share what I have with other people so we all can have better lives"

"I later asked my father why he chose to migrate with me of all his children and he told me he had seen that I was strong and would grow up to be even stronger"

"society today should rather dissect the culture to examine whether it advantages or disadvantages the girl child. There is need to educate the girl child, and the right approach to this will nurture girls with the right self-esteem and resourcefulness, she said."

"When I came back home for my secondary school in Mochudi I was the only girl in a class of seven and fortunately or unfortunately I happened to be the most intelligent. This made me a subject of talk and ridicule by the boys who were somehow bitter that they were being overshadowed by a girl. It was then that I realized it was sometimes an issue to be a girl"

"In terms of numbers we were almost equal but men had an upper hand and louder voices. It was like women didn’t exist. And since I was teaching in the rural areas I also interacted a lot with the local women where I realized that women were carrying more than enough on their shoulders"

"I want us not to quarrel with this culture, we must appreciate it because after all a nation without a culture is a lost nation"

"there have been historical imbalances from the traditional socialisation of boys and girls under which the boy child was socialised to be more economically empowered.However, the pioneer gender activist warned against any attempts at tinkering with the status quo"

"For us to raise the girl child at the same level in rural and urban areas, we need to give them the chance to speak for themselves, to tell us what they need, their choices and what their visionary paths are"

"In those days the gender agenda was still very foreign but since it was something within me when the time came to advance it, there was no turning back"

"We don't want to fight but, by Jingo, if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too We've fought the Bear before and while we're Britons true The Russians shall not have Constantinople."

"There is an abuse of the term when applied to politicians of intelligence and sober thought who are for the consolidation of the empire or for imperial policy. The Jingoes are mainly the habitués of the turf, the tap-room, and the low music halls, whose inspiration is beer, whose politics are swagger, and whose policy is insult to foreign nations."

"There is much talk about "jingoism". If by "jingoism" they mean a policy in pursuance of which Americans will with resolution and common sense insist upon our rights being respected by foreign powers, then we are "jingoes"."

"I had certainly intended to mark, by a convenient name, a new species of patriots who, often found in the germ state in their native haunts, had propagated in the bibulous atmosphere of a Government, had begun to infest public meetings, and were unrecognised and unclassified. Their characteristic was a war-urging pretentiousness which discredited the silent, resolute, self-defensiveness of the British people. … A term to obtain currency must be brief, relevant to the time, and easily spoken. The qualities I did not invent. I had no merit save that of discerning them in the new political pretensions of the Music Hall party and their Jingo song."

"People's priorities and actions are influenced by many different affiliations and associations, not just by their religion. For example, the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan was connected with loyalty to Bengali language and literature, along with political - including secular - priorities, not with religion, which both wings of undivided Pakistan shared. Muslim Bangladeshis - in Britain or anywhere else - may indeed be proud of their Islamic faith, but that does not obliterate their other affiliations and capacious dignity."

"The U.S. consul was baffled by “the mystic belief that essentially unarmed masses could triumph in test of wills with martial law government backed by professional army.” Still, Blood admired the Bengali nationalist crowds. Swept up in their effusive mood, he confessed in a cable “a certain lack of objectivity. It is difficult to be completely objective in Dacca in March 1971 when, out of discretion rather than valor, our cars and residences sport black flags and we echo smiling greetings of ‘Joi Bangla’ as we move about the streets.” He enthused, “Daily we lend our ears to the out-pouring of the Bengali dream, a touching admixture of bravado, wishful thinking, idealism, animal cunning, anger, and patriotic fervor. We hear on Radio Dacca and see on Dacca TV the impressive blossoming of Bengali nationalism and we watch the pitiful attempts of students and workers to play at soldiering.”"

"I have mentioned earlier the reason for Delhi's headache regarding Bengali nationalism. They feared that with the establishment of a secular and independent Bangladesh, the wave of this nationalism would reach all Bengali-speaking regions of India, including the states of West Bengal and Tripura, and would also create cracks in the unity of the remaining undivided India...India prefers to have a weak Muslim state as its eastern neighbor—a state towards which the non-Muslim Bengalis of West Bengal or Tripura would feel no affinity or loyalty; rather, they would fear associating with Muslim nationality and Muslim majority, recalling the memories of Pakistani rule. Moreover, although this country would nominally be a Muslim state, it would be almost entirely surrounded by India and fragmented on the basis of religious national unity, making it easy to use this weak country to tilt the balance of power and influence in South Asian politics in India's favor. Additionally, India's big businesses would have the opportunity to establish a monopoly market there without hindrance. It turns out that, despite the differences and hostilities between Delhi and Islamabad regarding Bangladesh's independence, their attitudes towards a secular Bangladesh and secular Bengali nationalism are almost identical."

"Nationalism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject."

"[R.C. Majumdar restricts the term ‘nationalist historians’ to those Indians who in reconstructing their country’s history aimed at examining or reexamining] some points of national interest or importance...which have been misunderstood or misconceived or wrongly represented. Such an object is not necessarily in conflict with a scientific and critical study, and a nationalist historian is not, therefore, necessarily a propagandist or a charlatan."

"Jadunath wrote to him on 19 November, 1937:, “National history, like every other history worthy of the name and deserving to endure, must be true as regards the facts and reasonable in the interpretation of them. It will be national not in the sense that it will try to suppress or white-wash everything in our country’s past that is disgraceful, but because it will admit them and at the same time point out that there were other and nobler aspects in the stages of our nation’s evolution which offset the former.. . . In this task the historian must be a judge He will not suppress any defect of the national character, but add to his portraiture those higher qualities which, taken together with the former, help to constitute the entire individual.”"

"Indo-European linguistics and archaeology have been exploited to support openly ideological agendas for so long that a brief history of the issue quickly becomes entangled with the intellectual history of Europe."

"As Trigger (1995) notes, the main impact of nationalism has been to influence the questions about the past that archaeologists are prepared to ask (or not to ask) and the amount of evidence that is required to sustain a particular position. This has had positive and negative effects. On the positive side, nationalist archaeology has stimulated asking questions about local cultural and ethnic configurations that would not have occurred to colonially oriented archaeologists. It has brought different assumptions, perspectives, and concerns to the data, exposed colonial predispositions and imperial biases, forced a reevaluation of old dogmas, and provided resistance to racism and colonialism. .... On the negative side, nationalism has encouraged the misinterpretation of archaeological data for political purposes and ignored important aspects of human history.... Kohl and Fawcett (1995a), note that the relationship between nationalism and archaeology seemed so natural and close at so many levels that it remained largely unexamined and subconscious throughout the nineteenth century."

"Modern history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness."

"[H]istorians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to the heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. So my profession, which has always been mixed up in politics, becomes an essential component of nationalism."

"The mere fact that the author of this book happens to be a Bengali should not stand in the way of expressing this truth out of a false sense of modesty. It is a truism that parochialism should not influence an author’s judgment. What it really means is that parochial feeling must not lead him either to exaggerate or to minimize the value or importance of the part played by the narrow geographical region to which he might belong. Both are equally wrong. His views and statements should be judged by the normal canons of criticism and must not be discredited off-hand on the gratuitous assumption of partiality for his own people or province. I leave it to the readers to judge for themselves whether the role attributed to Bengal is right or not. I may be wrong, due to ignorance, particularly of the language and literature of other parts of India, or error in judgment, and I shall be the first to admit it if I am convinced by facts and arguments ; but I shall fail in my duty as a historian' if I desist from stating what I believe to be true, simply out of the fear that it will be set down to parochialism. If I have laid an undue stress or emphasis on any point or aspect, I shall welcome a challenge which, if supported by facts and arguments, is bound to advance or correct our knowledge of history, and there- by do a great deal of good. (xviii - xix)"

"The emotional power of archaeology in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and the regions of the former Yugoslavia, for example, is that they all link the present to a particular golden age."

"All archaeological stories—be they classical, biblical, nationalist, or evolutionary—can be read as narratives of the inevitability of certain lands to be conquered and the right of certain people to rule."

"Some of them, particularly of Ulema class, sounded a warning that Pakistan might impede the establishment of Dinia by arousing unnecessary resistance among the Hindus; therefore, they stayed away from the Pakistan campaign and some of them even opposed it. They came to be known as “nationalist Muslims.”"

"What was the difference between Jinnah and the nationalist Muslims? While Jinnah wanted a separate state, the nationalist Muslims wanted the whole of India... The nationalist Muslims ... were generally no less hostile to the Hindus, or at least to Hinduism, than the Pakistan party."

"The Qaid-e-Azam had two sets of teeth in his mouth like that of a rogue elephant — one set was for show of beauty, and the other was for the real purpose of mastication. His first declaration from the throne of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan as its President was that the ‘The Hindus would cease to be Hindus and the Muslims would cease to be Muslims in matters of administration henceforth and thus form into a Pakistan Nation.’ ... This was the set of his outer teeth for show of beauty but the real teeth for mastication lay covered elsewhere within the mouth — nobody could see that; only the victims could feel and appreciate the monstrosity of them. The great leader Mr. Jinnah had the real teeth for mastication in his policy of internal administration which stood for chauvinistic aggressive Muslim nationalism."

"These fatwas ... are the fatwas of the leading light of what would today be called the nationalist ulema: they reflect the premises, the axioms, the objectives of the ulema who supported joint action with the Congress, who endorsed participation in the Khilafat movement, in the Non-Cooperation movement, they reflect the position of the ulema who opposed the demand for Pakistan. The first thing which becomes apparent upon reading the fatwas of these ulema is that they were always on the defensive, that they had to labour endlessly to justify their position. This was so in part because, as I.H. Qureshi stresses in his Ulema in Politics, they were a minority among the ulema, but even more so because the course which they were proposing ran counter to what the Quran and Hadis so manifestly prescribe at so many places. For the latter reason, as will be evident from reading the fatwas, Kifayatullah and others could seek to justify their positions on pragmatic grounds alone. Moreover, they too affirmed that a Muslim is first and foremost a Muslim. They too held that his overriding objective, his ‘supreme’ objective is, and must be the advancement of the interests of Islam and of Muslims. They too saw the interests of Muslims to be distinct and separate from the interests of Indians—or to use the expression they used, of Hindustanis—in general. In their reckoning too, far from a non-Muslim actually furthering and protecting these separate interests, a non-Muslim could not even be acknowledged to be the one doing so. Indeed, even a non-orthodox Muslim, one who was not adhering to the requirements of the shariah could not be acknowledged to be the defender and protector of these distinct and separate interests. Their point was merely that the circumstances in which Muslims were placed at that time necessitated that they work jointly with one set of kafirs— the Hindus—to weaken and oust the other set of kafirs—the British. This necessity, they explained, arose from the conjunction of two factors: both the Hindus and the Ahl-i-Kitab are the enemies of Islam, they declared, but as at that time as the Ahl-i-Kitab, specifically the Christian British, were the more powerful, they constituted the greater danger to the interests of Islam and of Muslims; third, at that time Muslims could not rid the place of the British on their own—a trinity of aims which in today’s circumstance would entail the opposite course. That apart, even while urging joint action with kafirs they incessantly stressed separateness. Indeed on their reckoning joint action was justified precisely because it was the best available way, because in the given circumstances it was the only way for safeguarding that separateness. They repeatedly declared, as we have seen, that had it been possible for Muslims to safeguard their interests by their own efforts, it would indeed have been wrong to associate with kafirs even in joint action against the British. And their opposition to the demand for Pakistan was not that Hindustan is one and should therefore remain one. They opposed the demand on the grounds that Pakistan was not going to be realized, that if attained it would confine the sway and glory of Islam to a corner of the country alone, that Muslims in the rest of India would be weakened, and that, in any case, the aim of the Muslim League was not to create a truly Islamic state. [...]"

"Why do the secularists never comment on such material? Where do the fatwas leave the ecumenical homilies of our Sarva dharma samabhava school? The fatwas of the ‘nationalist’ ulema were surprising enough: they urged joint action with kafirs on strictly pragmatic grounds, on the ground in particular that such joint action was the best, indeed the only available way to maintain separateness. But here we have fatwas which proclaim even that pragmatism to be kufr. Notice that the person in question, the one whose leadership occasioned the fatwas was Mahatma Gandhi—a more saintly person is not likely to be available in our public life for decades and decades. And yet these were the fatwas. The cause too was as noble as a cause can be—the country’s Independence. Often—as during the Khilafat movement—the cause was of direct concern to the Muslims. And yet these were the fatwas. Notice too that while, for urging even that minimal cooperation with the kafir Hindus, an alim even of the eminence of Mufti Kifayatullah had to confine himself to pragmatic reasoning, Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan was able to justify his fatwas by citing chapter and verse from the Quran and Hadis. For the Quran and Hadis ordain the position elaborated by Ahmad Riza Khan, and not the one the ‘nationalist’ ulema strained to justify. That is the fact which our intelligentsia does not want to face."

"The foundation of the Muslim League and Minto’s concessions had the effect of dividing the Hindus and Muslims into almost two hostile political camps. A remarkable example of this is afforded by a letter written about 1908 by Mr. Ziauddin Ahmad, later Vice- Chancellor of the Muslim University, Aligarh, to Mr. Abdulla Shuhrawardy, both of whom were then prosecuting their studies in Europe. Abdulla Shuhrawardy shared the national feelings which then characterized Indian students in Europe, and for this he was rebuked by Ziauddin in a letter from which we quote the following extract; “You know that we have a definite political policy at Aligarh, i.e. the policy of Sir Syed. I understand that Mr. Kirshna Varma has founded a society called ‘Indian Home Rule Society’ and: you are also one of its vice-presidents. Do you really believe that the Mohammedans will be profited if Home Rule be granted to India de lene. There is no doubt that this Home Rule is decidedly against the Aligarh policy...What I call the Aligarh policy is really the policy of all the Mohammedans generally—of the Mohammedans of Upper India particularly.” Mr. Asaf Ali wrote to Pandit Shyamji in September, 1909: “I am staying with some Muslim friends who do not like me to associate with nationalists; and, to save many unpleasant consequences, I do not want to irritate them unnecessarily.” Thus the Muslim antagonism to the Freedom Movement of India dates back to its beginning itself. (151ff)"

"The Moslems in general and Indian Moslems in particular have not as yet grown out of the historical stage, of intense religiosity and the theological concept of state. Their theology and theocratical [sic] politics divide the human world into two groups only—The Moslem land and the enemy land. All lands which are either entirely inhabited by the Moslems or are ruled over by the Moslems are Moslem lands. All lands, which are mostly inhabited by non-Moslem power are enemy lands and no faithful Moslem is allowed to bear any loyalty to them and is called upon to do everything in his power by policy or force or fraud to convert the non-Moslem there to Moslem faith, to bring about its political conquest by a Moslem power. It is no good quoting sentences here or there from Moslem theological books to prove the contrary. Read the whole book to know its trend. And again it is not with books that we are concerned here but with the followers of the book and how they translate them in practice. You will then see that the whole Moslem history and their daily actions are framed on the design I have outlined above. Consequently, a territorial patriotism is a word unknown to the Moslem—nay is tabooed, unless in connection with a Moslem territory. Afghans can be patriots for Afghanisthan is a Moslem territory today. But an Indian Moslem if he is a real Moslem—and they are intensely religious as a people—cannot faithfully bear loyalty to India as a country, as a nation, as a State, because it is today ‘an Enemy Land’ and doubly lost; for non-Moslems are in a majority here and to boot it is not ruled by any Moslem power, Moslem sovereign. Add to this that of all non-Moslems the Hindus are looked upon as the most damned by Moslem theologians. For Christians and Jews are after all ‘Kitabis’, having the holy books partially in common. But the Hindus are totally ‘Kafirs’ as a consequence their land ‘Hindusthan’ is pre-eminently an ‘enemy’ and as long as it is not ruled by Moslems or all Hindus do not embrace Islam . . . What wonder then that the Muslim League should openly declare its intention to join hands with non-Indian alien Moslem countries rather than with Indian Hindus in forming a Moslem Federation? They could not be accused from their point of view of being traitors to Hindusthan. Their conscience was clear. They never looked upon our today’s ‘Hindusthan’ as their country, nation. It is to them already an alien land, and enemy land—‘a Dar-ul-Harb’ and not a ‘Dar-ul-Islam!!’"

"The jingoes and war speculators are filling the air with the sentimental slogan of hypocritical nationalism, "America for Americans," "America first, last, and all the time...The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americanism...the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country."

"Shall it be 'America First' or 'Workers of the World, Unite!'""

"The real meaning of America First is Blame America First."

"That sales pitch he's making to be your President? Put your faith in him -- and you'll win big? That's the same sales pitch he made to all those small businesses. Then Trump walked away, and left working people holding the bag. He also talks a big game about putting America First. Please explain to me what part of America First leads him to make Trump ties in China, not Colorado. Trump suits in Mexico, not Michigan. Trump furniture in Turkey, not Ohio. Trump picture frames in India, not Wisconsin. Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again -- well, he could start by actually making things in America again."