Rendezvous with Ben Anderson

A new book is a good reason to give a lecture. An anthropological explorer of various national-liberation movements in East and Southeast Asia, PROFESSOR BENEDICT ANDERSON, Aaron L. Binenkrob Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government and Asian Studies at Cornell University, spoke of his work-in-progress at the third Indian Economic and Social History Association lecture (co-hosted by Sage) in Delhi this week.

The lecture, 'Rooted Cosmopolitanism and its Political Preconditions' with reference to Dutch colonialism in Asia was also the occasion to bring out of the bag, Quay, a writer-journalist in pre-independent Indonesia, the 'protagonist' of the non-fiction narrative. Quay was a polygot. He made fun of all - even the Dutch - in his columns. He did not dream of going to China for holidays. And he never left his country.

Anderson is one of the first and original theorists of nations and nationalisms. His pathbreaking work 'Imagined Communities' is an exploration of how various peoples have at a certain juncture in history imagined themselves into nations. An anthroplogical explorer of various national-liberation movements in East and Southeast Asia, Prof Anderson sees the rise of nationalism as being closely connected with the growth of printed books and with the technical development of print as a whole.

He spoke to Paramita Ghosh during his recent visit to New Delhi. Here are the excerpts:

Q: Java in a Time of Revolution, Imagined Communities, Under Three Flags - your books have always been studies of nationalism as an expression of anti-colonial / national liberation movements in the Third World. In your opinion, how true have the leaders of post-colonial countries like India, China and Indonesia to their origins?

A: I look at it this way: in the beginning, anti-imperial struggles have the attractive look of an unmarried boy or girl. Unless they are able to destroy the structure of the state, they eventually get married to it. In China, a popular image on TV these days is that of the Dowager Empress Cixi of the Manchu dynasty. There's a reason why now she is considered a terrific heroine. There is now trouble in Xinjiang, Tibet, so it's a good time for nationalist China to bring back its former enemies as 'our ancestors'.

Post-independent states are hybrids with liberal instincts. Their women do vote, they will have mass literacy programmes installed. But they pick up bad habits of the old state. So I don't think I could have written Imagined Communities now. About the fate of post-colonial states built on an agenda of national liberation, I wish them well. It's as if they were my daughters who have run off with bad guys but I would still wish them happy lives.

Q: East Asia is full of examples of the ruling elite behaving like former colonial masters. Why is so much dirty work done in our parts in the name of 'development'?

A: Before Industrialisation, when a country came into its own, it would want the people on it and their culture. One of the big changes after Industrialisation is that the focus shifted to what lies below the ground - the mines, the seas. Everyone wants a big frontier. An obvious example is the Acehnese. They had gas and other natural resources so they were valuable to Indonesia. In the new world order after Industrialisation, it's unlucky for people to have resources they didn't know they had. The ugly behaviour of post-colonial states have to do with this.

Q: How do you view India's record?

A: India is a unique case. Its colonial encounter produced three states. It's been able to federalise to a large extent except in certain states. In Sri Lanka, with only one party, it's a zero-sum game. Compared to Lanka, India looks better.

Q: The development of nation states and the co-dependent rise of the publishing/newspaper industry has also been your 'project'.

A: National movements rise at the time of the birth of new press markets. The publishing industry makes it possible to imagine the nation. But the big change that you can reach people by other means other than traditional media. TV is more manipulative than print everywhere. The internet is another phenonmenon that has gone untheorised. If you go to a BJP site for example, it is a place where you can be a fanatic if you want to be, you don't need to go anywhere else.

Q: As a man of the Left, what is the future of Marxism in south Asia and in India?

A: Communism has taken a beating in the last 20 years. But it won't go away if underlying problems in society don't go away. There has to be new ways to revive it. However, one framework which Marx never anticipated was how the atomic tests would destroy civilisation. The limits of resources are not there in Marxist vocabulary, it comes from Thomas Robert Malthus and it has to be grappled with.

India has three kinds of Communisms. The established left, the CPI M-L and the new Naxalites who are no longer led by college students. They go to the bottom of society.

Q: One of our living realities is the competition between Indian and China amid the babble of economic cooperation. How can Third World solidarity be revived?

A: What solidarity can there be to speak of? There was never a leftist government in India. The Cold War put China on one side and India played a role in between…. Both are rapidly expansionist, they are bound to get in each other's hair. But it is in everyone's interest to reduce the power of America.

China wants a ring of friendly countries around it, but it won't occupy them. It's not clear what China wants in Africa. I don't know whether they intend to stay. If the Chinese start moving there, then it might get interesting.

There is, I think, however, a growing acceptance that war will not get you more territory. What threatens nation-states are not external states, but internal collapse. It has happened in Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia. It may happen in India. States can't get any bigger, but they can get smaller.

Q: Post-Obama, how do you look at the new world order? One of the first things he does after getting a Nobel Peace Prize is to send more troops to Afghanistan and continue the war.

A: Obama is a liberal in charge of a very conservative country. He got elected because of the Crash. He is in the middle of a war. Any man who wants to be President again cannot seem to be seen as 'giving in to Obama.'