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NATIONS & NATIONALISM
Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism
Association
for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism
13th Annual
Ernest
Gellner Nationalism Lecture
at London School of Economics, 16 April 2007
Professor
Craig Calhoun,
President Social Science Research Council, University Professor of the Social
Sciences
New York University, Visiting Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
Comment by tamilnation.org
"To those
who would advocate cosmopolitanism for others, whilst
holding fast to their own nation, that
which
Sun Yat Sen, wrote more than 80 years ago,
will serve as a continuing reminder of the political reality - and the need to
match their own words and deeds:
"At present, England and France are advocating a new idea which is
proposed by the intellectuals. What is that idea? It is an anti nationalist idea which
argues that nationalism is narrow and illiberal; it is simply an idea of cosmopolitanism..
Cosmopolitanism will cause further decadence if we leave the reality, nationalism, for the
shadow, cosmopolitanism.... First let us practise nationalism; cosmopolitanism will
follow." (The Triple Demism of Sun Yat Sen, 1924)
A true trans-nationalism will emerge, not by the suppression
of nations but when nations flower and mature. To work for the flowering of nations is to
advance the emergence of a true trans-nationalism. It is true that no people are an island
unto themselves. But nationalism is not chauvinism - it becomes
so only when it takes exaggerated forms and is directed to the subjugation of one nation
by another."
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