Nationalism as a Bourgeois Drug: A Critical Perspective

The word ‘nation’ came from the old French word ‘nacion’ meaning ‘birth, place of origin’. Now the word ‘nation’ refers to a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own. And the word ‘nationalism’ defines the spirit of aspirations common to the whole of a nation. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference. This notion gives birth to the transfer of power from the white colonialists to the pretended black nationalists. Before Independence in the colonised countries, some people traded the concept of nationalism as opium which made the colonised people intoxicated with the dreams for a better future. Like opium dealer who gets profit by destroying opium addict, the merchants of nationalism enriched their own condition through the blood of the addicted nationalist fighter. For instance, Pradyot Kumar Bhattacharya, who was hanged for killing Mr. Robert Doglas, wrote a letter to his mother. In this letter he said that if someone would come to ravish his mother, he would instantly attack that person instead of going to a court. In this sense, he had assassinated Mr. Doglas for saving Mother India. But after Independence his mother said that people, who were in political power, labeled her as the mother of a murderer. Our Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore did not miss to paint the scenario of the so called Nationalist Movement. The purpose of this article is to look at nationalism as a product manufactured by the bourgeois class.