Can patriotism ever be progressive?
This is a guest article by Genevieve Maitland Hudson
In a recent article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free pages I questioned the way in which nationalism is being used to give rhetorical power to environmental politics and I was surprised by the vehemence of some of the blog responses. I think those responses means the subject is worth a little continued exploration and Pickled Politics seems like an ideal venue.
In the article I outlined why I was bothered – I am bothered – by the way in which certain writers have recently begun celebrating localism as ‘really’ English. By doing this these writers and activists inevitably set up an all too familiar dichotomy according to which some cultural phenomena are truly English and others are not.
This is a problem for the same old reasons it has been a problem in the past, because once you hit on your definition of ‘real’ Englishness you place those aspects of national life that are not to your taste outside the sphere of acceptable behaviour.
I think that so far this trend has been tolerable to the left because the phenomena which have been excluded are unpalatable to liberal sensibilities; they include supermarkets, industrial farming and chain stores. But isn’t the desire to define Englishness a problem in and of itself? Isn’t it even more of a problem when it is yoked so explicitly to rural tradition? After all, most of us are not rural, nor are our lifestyles recognisably traditional and I for one see no particular reason why they should be.
England is a country with a wide variety of inhabitants of different backgrounds, different faiths, ethnicities, religions and so on but also of sensibilities, views, likes and dislikes and of course shopping and cooking habits. To what extent do we need to think about these habits in nationalist terms? And what are the consequences of doing so?
I would argue that we take a risk in equating environmental choices with nationalist commitment, and that the risk far outweighs the benefits. Talking about Englishness is one thing, an ongoing national conversation can be a positive means of creating, and re-creating, civic bonds and of broadening, changing and deepening our sense of what being English is about, but settling on a fixed conclusion is quite another.
When it comes to Englishness, it’s the journey that really matters, not arriving at a fixed and firmly sign-posted destination.
Genevieve Maitland Hudson is an academic and writer employed at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and Birkbeck College in London.
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Filed in: British Identity, Race politics
This is a problem for the same old reasons it has been a problem in the past, because once you hit on your definition of ‘real’ Englishness you place those aspects of national life that are not to your taste outside the sphere of acceptable behaviour.
Interesting thought. I essentially agree, but some examples of what constitutes unacceptable and therefore ‘un-English’ behaviour to those who profess to be judge and jury of the dichotomy you speak of would be useful here, if only to reinforce your point.
On the other hand, I would like to feel that I, as an immigrant, am English enough to think that seeing society throw up thousands of 14 year old girls becoming pregnant to 15 year old binge drinking drop-outs offends my sensibilities. But does it make the phenomenon un-English or does it alienate me into my own un-English space?
As someone that finally became British two weeks ago, I must say I had to question the whole ‘what is it to be English?’ thing while sitting in Islington Town Hall awaiting a dumpy little colonel to ‘honour’ me with my Britishness certificate in exchange for an oath (for what it’s worth, I vowed allegiance to the ‘Queen and her hairs’), but I must say I noticed some distinctly ‘un-English’ things going on in the waiting room.
First there were the biscuits. Seeing a gentleman from Sierra Leone break three pieces off one biscuit to share with his family prompted me to show him the tray beneath and he greedily pocketed 12.
Then, at the actual ceremony itself, the amount of people that didn’t know what to do with the colonel’s outstretched hands (yeah, okay so I gave him a little heil, but I’m sure he’d killed enough people in the falklands to see the funny side) and I counted the number that showed any courtesy at all: one. An Australian.
Finally, the rhyme-free queueing for the photographs. And when I went to pay for mine, they all huddled around the chip and pin machine like it was a gadget from space.
So in a nutshell, this is what it is to be properly British:
We don’t horde free biscuits, we take the piss but appear polite to official figures, we know how to queue and we have credit cards.
But at least those damn foreigners brought the weather with them
Genevieve Maitland Hudson,
I’d have thought, correct me if I am wrong, that antipathy for
was pretty much a ‘given’ for Liberals whatever their nationality. It is not nationalistic, it is to do with prioritising cheap consumption over choice. It is about capitalism writ large and identifiable to consumers.
These things are essentailly wrong, I think.
Sid, teenage pregnancy is down to the stupidity of the ‘ruling class’ who see it as wrong to teach preventative measures. Through some sort of Puritan belief system. Not Liberalism. At least, that’s how I see it.
Sid, teenage pregnancy is down to the stupidity of the ‘ruling class’ who see it as wrong to teach preventative measures. Through some sort of Puritan belief system.
douglas, it may well be, I don’t know. My point is not that. My point is, essentially, is English-ness defined by the white indegenous population only? Female genital mutiliation is regarded as wholly un-English, because it is abhorrent. If I find other things abhorrent, such as teenage pregnancy, binge drinking, road rage, socks worn with sandals or what have you, does it make them un-English too, given I’m not white?
I’d like to *think* so. But I don’t know if it the definition of what constitues what is English a 2-way street.
No actually I take that back. My current English heroes are Isaiah Berlin and VS Naipaul. One a Latvian Jew and the other a West Indian. Both have done more than most to define what it is to be English.
…and VS Naipaul
That just about sums you up sid.
Pathetic.
Sid,
I trust that you and I agree that FGM is wrong? I’d have thought that that was a Liberal position, one that was completely independent of national culture?
I, obviously, agree with you that youth pregnancy is stupid, and I have addressed those I think responsible.
Like you, I have no understanding whatsoever of what is supposed to be ‘Britishness’.
I think we should mutually celebrate our differences.
FYI, I failed the test for Britishness, mainly ’cause I couldn’t give a shit about the days of the Saints. Yet the poor bastards that set up that test are stuck with me, ’cause so far, they can’t make me take it.
Englishness is idiocy 101, I think.
Patriotism is truly the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Patriotism can be expressed in different ways by individuals. Trying to define national patriotism is generally counterproductive. For example is a British Republican inherently unpatriotic given the central role of the Royal family in the minds of many Britons?
I also happen to believe that immigrants to the UK will always have the pull of the ‘mother country’ and will therefore have a different relationship to the host country than those born here.
Britishness is indefinable. Leave it at that.
Big “That just about sums you up sid” Avram – thank you so much.
I trust that you and I agree that FGM is wrong?
Yes, absolutely universally wrong.
Genevieve Maitland Hudson’s point is that twee parochial values are being reclaimed as good because they are more “English” only because they satisfy a sentimental throwback to pre WWII rural aesthetics. She claims that it is wrong to champion the English organic movement because it has roots in the far right.
She may be right but there is more to the New Nationalism than championing the “foragers”.
There *is* a need for the English to go back a generation or two to reclaim some values that have been discarded by liberal values of moral relativism. The biggest losers of which have been the White working class.
always useful to note what sociologists and psychologists have found: even with a fairly well-defined notion of a “group” (on whatever basis, fatherland, motherland, religion, whatever) there are in-”group” differences between individual members just as much/if not more between individuals who are not ‘in-group” i.e. within-group differences are found just as much as when compared to ‘out’ of the “group”.
of course it always comes down to the fact we are individuals, and we are all different because of that. at the same time we are humans too and have all that in common.
any kind of group “loyalty” ( which Patriotism is at the end of the day, based on some idea of ‘fatherland’) is always problematic. it depends of course, on how one constructs the meaning of that loyalty. I see “loyalty” as the wrong term anyway. I’m interested in positive collective feelings, which is a mutual fellow individual sort of thing. I’m not interested in a top-down authority/loyalty to institutions/”group” in the abstract, sort of situation, really.
So if the group wants to me to kill for example, i’m not going to, just because i’m “loyal” to the Group, no that’s ridiculous. i might well kill if i feel i need to, but it is for me to decide that. Blind group loyalty- however, seems too often to decide that the loyalty is and should be to the “group” in abstract – and therefore whatever the circumstance, the “group” wants you to do something, and even if it negatively affects each individual member of the group, we must go ahead as it is somehow seen to be in the interest of the “Group” in abstract.
This dynamic seems to be very easily perpetuated and THE problem in society today.
and that’s pretty much my thoughts on why ism’s like patriotism are rarely any good for anyone.
“When it comes to Englishness, it’s the journey that really matters, not arriving at a fixed and firmly sign-posted destination.”
well sure, but surely that should be so obvious it doesn’t need saying. when it comes to being anything, not just “english-ness” – any human experience, “human-ness” of course its about the journey.
This is a problem for the same old reasons it has been a problem in the past, because once you hit on your definition of ‘real’ Englishness you place those aspects of national life that are not to your taste outside the sphere of acceptable behaviour.
If you say so …. but is this not what defines an English peasant as different from a French peasant. The inability to eat horses and frogs.
England is a country with a wide variety of inhabitants of different backgrounds, different faiths, ethnicities, religions and so on but also of sensibilities, views, likes and dislikes and of course shopping and cooking habits. To what extent do we need to think about these habits in nationalist terms? And what are the consequences of doing so?
If you say so …. but is it? In pockets there is wide divergance, but these are highly concetrated. But in the main, out in the fields , England is pretty homogeneous. I can walk around here for miles and miles, the cows and horses and wildlife, the soil, the war mermorials in the villages, the small villages with 11-13century churchs lovingly kept – where in the world are such old buildings still kept in such a state.
I could up sticks from my present rural setting and cross over 300 miles to the rural around Don, and while the weather may be different and possibly alot more sheep, the people in pub will be very similar to the people in my local.
Sure there is the village mentality and the tight fisted cunning of the farmers, but there is also a community that knows what it is.
When it comes to Englishness, it’s the journey that really matters, not arriving at a fixed and firmly sign-posted destination. …
I would agree with you but why do you are worried by the way in which certain writers have recently begun celebrating localism as ‘really’ English
Are you worried incase the rural folk of this country, forgotten and taken for granted for so long, might forget to send food parcels when things get tough in the near future?
I think if you actually went out into the countryside you might find the English in the countryside are far more forgiving, fair minded tolerant and level headed. Its the English who live in the cities and towns you need to worry about. The BNP are not a rural party.
Justforfun
Part of the problem comes from how England / Britain has always defined herself. For hundreds of years she defined herself as the centre of a global empire of millions, and all the darkies were her ’subjects’. In Nairobi, Delhi and Port of Spain, children would sing ‘God Save the King’ at their schools.
Now alot of white English people in the face of so many descendants of said darkies on their streets, in the face of European Community aspiring to create more and more administrative and legal frameworks under which England must rest, and in the face of Scottish nationalism, the English are adrift and afraid. To be honest, I feel a little apprehensive, first of all because in some ways I’m cast as an outsider in the only country I’ve ever lived in, and secondly because the rage of the white English has to alight on someones face one day.
the English are adrift and afraid
’some’ English are afraid. Not ‘the’ English.
Scottish nationalism? In my local they are apathetic about it but if pushed, just laugh. Most would wish they would actually finally vote for it instead of boring everyone to death about it. A pity, if it comes about, as my children at some point might be forced to choose.
justforfun
Sorry Suzy – forgot to add. I understand your concern, but I think its unfounded out here in the rural world. I think there are now two Englands forming and perhaps you are right about the urban England.
Justforfun
Actually, the more I think about the author’s article, the more I agree with her.
JFF – GMH isn’t saying the rural value system isn’t essentially English versus urban values, she is saying they aren’t any more English than urban values. Or that the more diverse, corporate, mall-rat culture found in urban settings should be binned in favour of exclusive, rural, localised values because that’s where English-ness is of a “purer” form. I tend to agree with her the more I think it through. The only problem is, as douglas has already pointed out, is where her argument falls down when she attempts to over-simplify and equate urban-ness with shoddy faceless, consuermism which should be avoided whether it’s English or not.
The trouble is justforfun, I don’t live in the rural world, and nor does my family.
You were right to correct me on the difference between ‘the white English’ and ‘a section of white English people’ being adrift and afraid.
Sometimes their noise is very loud though. I think they want to batter some people, and I think Asians (not Asians not just Muslim Asians) are their prime target.
* correction
(note, Asians, not just Muslim Asians)
One other thing. When all the troublesome Asians, and whatever remaining ‘troublesome’ Blacks pledge fealty to the level of Englishness required of us, will the attention of the Albion Supreme brigade start on all those white English who want nothing to do with their definitions? People from Liverpool, Newcastle, people of different classes and sections of society. I presume the Jewish English are already sold on the idea without any objections?
GMH isn’t saying the rural value system isn’t essentially English versus urban values, she is saying they aren’t any more English than urban values.
Thank you for putting it better, but to be honest I am not sure if she is actually saying anthing at all
, just chasing her tail.
I agree rural might not be more English, but they are older. Older does not mean better or purer and there I would agree with her, but it does mean a default position when times get bad, perhaps a bedrock, or at least the first chapter in the narrative. But like any narrative, if the book is long enough, it is possible to forget what the beginning was.
Perhaps one day the rural aspect of England will disappear completely and this land will be a made up of city state identities and England will cease to be, much like medieval Italy after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. There might be a few parrallels there that I will ponder on.
Justforfun
“Can patriotism ever be progressive?”
No, it cannot.
But national consciousness can, I think. Here I’m borrowing from Franz Fanon’s understanding of the distinction between patriotism/nationalism (which he saw as inevitably veering off into xenophobia, insularity, and racism) and national consciousness, in which people are aware of themselves and others.
No, it cannot.
Um, a bit of a rash statement there. Why ever not?
Rupa – cool, but your post has inspired me to write an article on Asian women. Lets see how many replies I get to that!
Oh whoops, that response to Rupa was in the wrong thread. I’m losing my mind.
Anyway, I don’t necessarily agree with this article and will write a considered response later. Now I have to head off to another conferece…..zzzzzzzzzz
“but your post has inspired me to write an article on Asian women.”
C’mon, Sunny. A post on “Asian women?” Why, thank you for writing a post on us Asian women! It’s great to know that there is a subject out there which can be deemed and termed as “Asian women”. We are objects to be written about!
Quit it or let me write a post on “Asian men.”
“Um, a bit of a rash statement there. Why ever not?”
Because patriotism is inherently an ideology about the glorification of your nation-state, supremacy of your nation-state in contest with others, and a driving mechanism for agreeing with and fighting for the ideas of the elite and the guys in charge.
Go Desi go!
ain’t that the truth..
Desi, are you not confusing nationalism with patriotism?
Your definition is spot on, but only if discussing nationalism. It is possible to be patriotic without being chauvinist or exceptionalist.
“Desi, are you not confusing nationalism with patriotism?”
You are right, Sid, patriotism and nationalism ARE different, but only marginally. But I am not confusing them in my comments– patriotism and nationalism DO germinate a mentality, collective mythologizing (is this a word?), presumed uniqueness, and myopia, esp when it comes to global affairs.
Because patriotism is inherently an ideology about the glorification of your nation-state
Inherently ? . I don’t think that is its inherent nature. Its inherent nature is the love of your nation state.
Now one might be misguided in ones love and that it might be better to love all, irrespective of nationality, but that is the inherant human failing of tribalism, and is probably genetic. After all the curse of gentics is to love ones children more than someonelses children.
Justforfun
I still maintain that it’s nationalism you’re describing, not patriotism. Nationalism does not tolerate any mistresses except itself. The BNP are perfect nationalists because nationalism begets the crazed, myopic collective eulogisinng that you’re referring to.
However, I believe it is possible to feel patriotic for more than one nation without any loss of loyalty to either. British Jews – Israel and Britain – is a common dual patriotic impulse. Also British Bangladeshis, because they seem to be more associated to the “motherland” than other British Asians.
Well, I hang around here more than is healthy I suspect, and I probably have more loyalty to the regular commentators on here than I do to my next door neighbour. Probably because there is a lot of sense talked in the comments.
There, it seems to me, to be a difference between blind patriotism, which allows the likes of the BNP leg room and (what?) naturalistic patriotism, which as Just for Fun has been saying, is a different thing entirely.
The word is never going to have one universally agreed meaning, but I’d go for ‘Feeling a sense of identity and belonging towards a specific place and the people associated with it’. That can be both positive and negative.
On a local level, I maintain that my corner of the world is one of the finest places on this or any other planet and you should all come here on holiday, see how great it is and maybe move up. When someone visits and says what a great time they had, I feel personally elated: if they got screwed over, I feel personally crestfallen – although in neither case did I have any input.
At a national level, more or less the same. There is no logical reason that I can think of for feeling vicarious satisfaction and pride when a sporting triumph, a technological wonder, a scientific breakthrough, a masterpiece of art or just a creditable response to a testing situation is written in the nations ledger, but I do. Similarly, there is no logical reason to feel ashamed or depressed when people who merely have the same passport as me behave vilely. But I do.
Take it a stage further and there are times when I am just proud to be human, and others when I can’t look a polecat in the eye for shame of what humans can do.
I don’t think it is a matter of nation states, the sense could apply to a single village (or a faction thereof) or to the species as a whole. It’s a sense of saying, ‘This is my group, I share in and celebrate its achievements – as it shares in mine. I blush for its flaws and failings , as it blushes for mine.’
More prosaically, group identity is almost certainly a product of evolution through natural selection. That doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing, most evolutionary adaptations turn out to be blind alleys. Perhaps ‘patriotism’ in this sense can be seen as being as deeply embedded in us as ‘fight or flight’. If your ‘fight or flight’ instinct always responds to being startled or suspicious by ‘Fight, Fight, Fight’ then you have a negative adaptation and your genes are likely to fare ill. Get the balance right and it will enhance your survival chances.
Because patriotism is inherently an ideology about the glorification of your nation-state
That can’t be right: England isn’t a nation-state, and an English patriot isn’t necessarily in favour of making it one. As many have said, nationalist is the word you want.
More prosaically, group identity is almost certainly a product of evolution through natural selection.
I suspect that to be true: that there’s a part of almost everyone’s brain that has an emotional response to the ‘tribe’ that lights up whenever it is talked about.
I tend to think that when talking about the emotions fired up that way, strong versus weak is a more useful distinction than positive versus negative. Extreme love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Rationality tinged with a bit of hope and affection, (paired with complacency and parochialism on the flip side), are the true opposite of both, another coin in a different pocket.
Sid,
I’d argue that patriotism involves totems, symbols, etc (ie flags, military flying exercises that people get to see on the 4th of July, etc) whereas nationalism involves a consciousness/awareness of a collective fraternity. I do think the lines are blurred between patriotism and nationalism.
I don’t think nationalism is necessarily wrong (it is the driving vehicle of many anti-colonization movements, such as Indian independence, and currently, Palestine, for example) and it ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, I do abide to the idea that nationalism/patriotism are ideologies that seek to cordone ourselves off from others, and to think that we are the world and the world is us.
What I meant “national consciousness” was what Fanon believed was the only collective awareness that could forge solidarities and understanding across borders. National consciousness, the way I understand it, is the awareness of a collective struggle, and throwing off the chains of oppression, but being aware of similar struggles that others face. Some would argue that nationalism could also imbibe that kind of sentiment, and I wouldn’t vociferously argue against that… but far too often, nationalism does veer into xenophobia, etc the things that I mentioned in my other comments.
I think her description as an academic sums up the whole thing. All everyone has to do is read Billy Bragg’s just published book on what it means to be English. Nothing more to be said.
34. Soru – england isn’t a nation-state. no its not. which is why you hear people going on usually about Britishness.
The nation-state is the dominant form of political organisation today. In many ways it is a Western European concept. However, due to myriad social, ethnic, religious and linguistic reasons the nation-state and the nationalism and patriotism it imbues in the West is not as prevalent amongst Asians and Africans as loyalty to region, tribe or religion. This is why so many developing countries are weak and divided unto themselves. Many of the countries in Asia and Africa are colonial constructs. A possible reason why immigrant and second generationers originating from Africa and Asia find it difficult to relate to ideas of Britishness as defined by the state.
To give examples British Bangladeshis/Indians/Pakistanis born in the UK generally tend to like life in Britain but also feel some allegiance and hold a candle for the ‘home’ country. Yet the majority of such individuals originate from certain distinct regions of the home country. So for example is a British Pakistani from Kashmir going to politically support Pakistan over Kashmir given the troubles on both sides of the LoC? Will a British Bengali support the celebration of the ‘national language’ Bengali when he/she speaks a language (Sylheti) unrecognised by the Bangladeshi government? Sometimes it is difficult to entangle support for the ‘home nation’ from that of the home region of origin. Hence when my mum exhorts me and my bro/sis to speak Bengali, she actually means speak Sylheti as she does not understand Bengali as is politically defined by unrepresentative Bangladeshi elites.
@ashik: yes.
You can reduce it all down to a simple matter of a balance sheet:
A is the amount of easily collectable centralised tax, especially from things like mines and exports.
B is the amount of free (or cheap, sub-market-price) labour people are willing to donate to defending or running the state
C is the amount of free or cheap labour people are willing to donate to overthrowing the state
If the ratio A:(B-C) is high, you are going to get instability and violence until the situation changes, if only by A tending to near zero as all centralised infrastructure is destroyed in the fighting. If you can make a rational business case for a hostile takeover, someone in the world is going to financially back it. This describes the situation in African countries like Sudan, Somalia and the Congo, and also risks becoming true of Iraq.
A country under foreign or imperial occupation is effectively getting an artificial subsidy to B, and when that goes away, the resulting state may well be non-viable if B isn’t high enough to balance out A and C.
Sources of a viable level of B are any and all the traditional measures of state legitimacy: personal, dynastic, territorial, liberal, constitutional, welfare, market, linguistic, religious, war-fighting, racial, national…
Some of these suck more than others, but they all do the same necessary job. You mostly just need to avoid picking an incompatible combination that doesn’t easily resolve into an agreed set of lines on a map.
“In many ways it is a Western European concept.”
no it isn’t.
sorry but that’s a very “western european-centric” history point of view! there are examples of city-states way back – for example indus valley civilisation- which had similar social conceptualisation of their collective and the city entity as equivalent to ‘nation-state’. what is uncommon and unique now in the world is that the nation-state is globalised and the recognised form of social organisation. you -and every individual – HAS to belong to one nation-state or another, we have no choice, otherwise we are fucked, pretty much. Then, once you have nationality of one country or other, there are of course other ’social forms of organisation’ one can associate with or not, network forms or not, which make a significant difference in one’s life, however, they do not have the same impact as NOT having a nationality.
I would say that is the intriguiging thing about today – the options open for humans, we ALL have to have citizenship of a nation-state (otherwise we have serious problems in living)- whereas back in the day, it wasn’t as uniform or regulated as it is now. And if you’re not in the system as it is, you don’t exist.
Given the truly appalling state that progressive thinking has got this country into i”ll take patriotism any day,and as for that left wing sacred cow of multiculturalism,a lot more English people would be far more relaxed about it if we had been asked beforehand before letting the world and his wife in,now thanks to that wishful “why can”t we all just get along” thinking we have Abu Qatada and his loathesome kind walking free among us,and you try to smear the English as racist because we object to the import of foreign terrorists and criminals and the suppression of our own culture to appease them.Its that attitude that WILL drive the English to violence.
Kismet Hardy – “I must say I had to question the whole ‘what is it to be English?’ thing while sitting in Islington Town Hall awaiting a dumpy little colonel to ‘honour’ me with my Britishness certificate in exchange for an oath (for what it’s worth, I vowed allegiance to the ‘Queen and her hairs’)”
Surely you have mastered what it means to be English – to complain.
Personally I think the argument is at once over and about to get ugly. The “left” wrings its hands over timid displays of native patriotism while having largely achieved its objective: 40 years of multicultural propaganda has largely succeeded in convincing the English that they no longer exist.
Well done – the “colonel” Kismet so roundly condemned is now a figure of contempt, but what next? The commissar?
The nation state is a Western convention although now accepted pretty much universally. Many of the Asian and African countries today are weak and unstable because some Colonial era official drew a straight line on a map (please peruse a map of Africa) regardless of social, economic, ethnic, religious and tribal regard. Many of the resultant countries of this bastardised form of creation are not recognised by parts of their citizenry. Please ask a Kashmiri what they think of India.
This is one reason the Islamist idea of a worldwide Muslim Ummah and Khalifate have such a hold on some people. For centuries allegiance to a religious political order over racial/nationalistic lines was the norm. For example the vanguard of the early Arab nationalists was led by mostly Christian Arabs influenced by Western ideas, trying to secularise society in order to be treated as equals. These ideas were then accepted by wider Muslim Arabs hence movements like Nasserism, Ba’athism etc.
I agree on the formal importance of nationality and citizenship in a nation state. In practicality though such things are largely irrelevant in developing countries. For example most Bangladeshis/Indians/Pakistanis don’t register births and deaths. Passports are only necessary if one travels and most people don’t/can’t.
In the Brit Sylheti Bengali context our turbulent history means we don’t take the nation-state concept overly seriously. Especially given our history of travel and emigration and preference for reliance on local/phillial networks rather than overt trust in state institutions. During the British period we were tossed between Assam and Bengal. Then became a part of erstwhile East Pakistan and since 1971 Bangladesh. Who knows in another 20 years what will happen?