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23 Brown J. World Aff. 239 (2016)
Nationalism as the Framework for Dalit Self-Realization

handle is hein.journals/brownjwa23 and id is 240 raw text is: Nationalism as the Framework for Dalit Self-realization GOPAL GURU Professor of Social and Political Theory Jawaharlal Nehru University THE CONSOLIDATION OF NATIONALIST ASPIRATIONS drives the formation of national identity in most colonial and postcolonial cases. This process involves a multifaceted struggle for self-definition in the presence of socially dominant actors and an effort at self-realization among socially dominated sections of society. Socially dominant actors shape the formation of a new nation. Follow- ing independence, for instance, Indians had an opportunity to redefine their 239 sociocultural identity, which had become destabilized and saturated due to the impact of colonialism. Nationalism, for the traditional social elite, denoted the recovery of lost social prominence. Hence, the historical purpose of such an elite found its expression in the nationalist struggle, articulated primarily against the colonial configuration of power. On the other side of the spectrum, those who are socially suppressed throughout history are driven by the normative need to achieve self-realization: they are no longer a suppressed, silenced lot, but rather an active and assertive subject of history. To put it differently, social groups such as Dalits, who have been historically cast out of the framework of the public sphere and forced to remain passive objects of history, view nationalism as an opportunity to achieve self-realization as active subjects. Such groups thus require a nationalist space to foreground this self-realiza- GoPAL GURU is Professor of Social and Political Theory at the Centre of Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Previously he was Professor at Delhi University and held the Mahatma Gandhi Profes- sorial Chair at Pune University. He has also worked as a member of the Equal Opportunity Commission within the Government of India. He is editor and author of Humiliation: Claims and Context (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009) and has written numerous articles on Dalits, women, social movements, and Indian political philosophy. Copyright © 2016 by the Brown Journal of WorldAffairs FALL/WINTER 2016 - VOLUME XXIII, ISSUE I

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