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Constitutional patriotism (German : Verfassungspatriotismus) is the idea that people should form a political attachment to the norms and values of a pluralistic liberal democratic constitution rather than to a national culture or cosmopolitan society. [1] [2] [3] [4] It is associated with post-nationalist identity because, while it is seen as a similar concept to nationalism, the attachment is based on the constitution rather than on a national culture. In essence, it is an attempt to re-conceptualize group identity with a focus on the interpretation of citizenship as a loyalty that goes beyond individuals' ethnocultural identification. Theorists believe this to be more defensible than other forms of shared commitment in a diverse modern state with multiple languages and group identities. [5] It is particularly relevant in post-national democratic states in which multiple cultural and ethnic groups coexist. [4] It was influential in the development of the European Union and a key to Europeanism as a basis for multiple countries belonging to a supranational union. [6]
Constitutional patriotism has been interpreted in a variety of ways, providing a range of positions. [7] [2] [8] On one end, there is the vision that the concept is a new means of identification to a supranational entity; [9] while on the other end, there is a focus on understanding the attachment in terms of freedom over ethnicity. [10] It is largely contested whether constitutional patriotism is supposed to be read as a replacement for nationality or traditional identity (or as a balance between the two), allowing for the "transient account of identity consistent with the diversity, hybridity, and pluralism of our modern world." [11] There are also multiple opinions as to whether a prior group identity is necessary before a moral, political one is achieved.
The concept of constitutional patriotism originates from Post-World War II West Germany, which has been described as "a 'half-nation' with a sense of deeply compromised nationality on account of their Nazi past." [12] In this context, constitutional patriotism was a protective and state-centered means of dealing with the memory of the Holocaust and militancy of the Third Reich. [12] The concept can be traced to the liberal philosopher Karl Jaspers, who advocated the idea of dealing with German political guilt after the war with "collective responsibility". [13] His student, Dolf Sternberger explicitly introduced the concept on the thirtieth birthday of the Federal Republic (1979). However, it is strongly associated with the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
Sternberger saw constitutional patriotism as a protective means to ensure political stability to maintain peace in Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. He framed the concept as a way for citizens to identify with the democratic state in order to defend itself against internal and external threats. [12] Thus, with the emphasis on state defense and protection, Sternberger linked constitutional patriotism to the concept of militant democracy. [12] He drew on Aristotelianism, arguing that patriotism had traditionally not been linked to sentiments towards the nation. [12] Constitutional patriotism is a development of Sternberger's earlier notion of Staatsfreundschaft (friendship towards the state).
Habermas played a key role in developing, contextualizing, and spreading the idea of constitutional patriotism to English-speaking countries. [3] Like Sternberger, Habermas viewed constitutional patriotism as a conscious strengthening of political principles, however, "where Sternberger's patriotism had centered on democratic institutions worth defending, Habermas focused on the public sphere as providing a space for public reasoning among citizens." [12]
Post-war West Germany provided the context for Habermas's theories. During the historian's dispute of the late 1980s, Habermas fought against the normalization of "exceptional historical events" (the rise of Nazism and the events of the Holocaust). [14] Constitutional patriotism was Habermas's suggestion as a way to unify West Germans. [14] As he was concerned by the shaping of German identity through attempts to return to traditional national pride, he argued for Germans to "move away from the notion of ethnically homogeneous nation-states." [3] [12] [15] Thus, it became an "inner counterpart to the bond of the Federal Republic to the West; it was not only an advance in respect to traditional German nationalism, but also a step toward overcoming it." [16] To Habermas, post-national German identity was dependent on understanding and overcoming its past, subjecting traditions to criticism. [14] This historical memory was essential to constitutional patriotism. [14]
Habermas believed that a nationalistic collective identity was no longer feasible in a globalized modern world. He also believed scorned ethnic cohesion as part of nineteenth-century nationalism to be irrelevant in a new age of international migration. [17] His theory was therefore grounded in the idea that "the symbolic unity of the person that is produced and maintained through self-identification depends... on belonging to the symbolic reality of a group, on the possibility of localizing oneself in the world of this group. A group identity that transcends the life histories of individuals is thus a precondition of the identity of the individual." [18] In a disenchanted world, individual and collective identities were no longer formed by internalizing nationalist values but by becoming aware of "what they want and what others expect from them in the light of moral concerns" from an impartial position. [12]
He argued that the European nation-state was successful because "it made possible a new mode of legitimation based on a new, more abstract form of social integration." [18] Rather than a consensus on just values, Habermas believed the intricacies of modern societies must rely on "a consensus on the procedure for the legitimate enactment of laws and the legitimate exercise of power." [19]
The theory of constitutional patriotism today focuses on multiple potential outcomes. Jan-Werner Müller follows in Habermas's footsteps but works to broaden constitutional patriotism within a universal framework. Craig Calhoun offers a competing framework that reflects the ideas of cosmopolitanism. Jon Erik Fossum proposes that the dynamic between these two opposing ideas are inherent to constitutional patriotism.
Jan-Werner Müller is one of the leading theorists of constitutional patriotism, having written more than 10 publications in two languages on the topic. [20] Building upon his predecessors, Müller advocates for constitutional patriotism as a unification option, especially in diverse, liberal democracies. [21] His ideas center on political attachment, democratic legitimacy, and citizenship in a context that rejects nationalism and addresses multicultural states, such as the European Union. [21] He provides some of the only extensive analysis on Sternberger and Habermas's original theories and has developed and improved accessibility of the idea to the English-speaking world. He is known for "liberating it from Habermas's specific conception and opening up a more general discussion about constitutional patriotism," so it can be universally applied. [22] Müller offers some of the only modern and extensive responses to criticism of constitutional patriotism. [2] [23] Müller's ideas place constitutional patriotism in a broader context and have expanded its potential to be applied in places outside of Germany and the European Union.
Müller grounds his arguments for constitutional patriotism in the idea that political theory should supply citizens with the tools to rethink their commonalities or unifying features. He argues that, while constitutional patriotism is distinct from liberal nationalism and cosmopolitanism, the best moral attributes of these theories can be combined to form a plausible and appealing style of political allegiance. However, where liberal nationalism and cosmopolitanism fall short, constitutional patriotism "theorizes the civic bond in a way that is more plausible sociologically and that leads to more liberal political outcomes." Similarly, it is a theory "oriented both toward stability and civic empowerment."[ citation needed ]
Craig Calhoun sees constitutional patriotism as the solidifying of a more general cosmopolitanism. [8] He notices that democracy is composed of more than political culture and suggests that a democracy has many more externalities. Habermas acknowledges this and questions whether or not "there exists a functional equivalent for the fusion of the nation of citizens with the ethnic nation." [24] However, Calhoun argues that Habermas falsely assumes ethnic nationalism and nationalism to be interchangeable. [8] Calhoun says constitutional patriotism is a common project shared among all citizens, which is molded by a state's public discourse and culture. [8] Consequently, he proposes a revision to the constitutional patriotism theory and suggests that "the notion of constitution as legal framework needs to be complemented by the notion of constitution as the creation of concrete social relationships: of bonds of mutual commitment forged in shared action, of institutions, and of shared modalities of practical action." [8]
John Erik Fossum, working off Habermas's definition and ideas, argues that two opposing ideas, particularism and universalism, are inherent in constitutional patriotism and affect allegiance. [25] The pull of these two ideas is referred to as thickness. Theorists such as Sternberger, Habermas, Müller, and Calhoun each have their own degree of thickness. In order to measure the thickness of allegiance in a type of constitutional patriotism, Fossum examines three factors: exit, voice, and loyalty. [25] Exit is evaluated on how easy it is for a person to enter or exit the group and therefore has strong bearings on diversity. [25] Fossum believes that it is crucial to pay attention to exit and to a nation's historical memory in order to understand thickness. [25] This is because historical memory helps to unite communities and to preserve their sense of identity. [25] In nationalism, exit is ignored because either shared history, ethnicity, or both bind people together. [25] In constitutional patriotism, there is some room for exit, the extent of which depends on the conception. [25] Voice is defined as each citizens' relation and conceptualization of the theory. [25] Finally, loyalty is defined as the allegiance to the state's culture and constitution. [25]
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The following are commonly used as examples of applied constitutional patriotism.
Constitutional patriotism emerged in Spain following the creation of the 1978 constitution as a way to unify the country while overcoming ethnic and nationalist tendencies. [26] This identity would be based on "broadly inclusive concept[s] of citizenship" and "a sense of identification with a political system that delivered freedom and equality to every citizen" as established in the 1978 constitution. [27] Although the concept of constitutional patriotism has been used by both the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español [PSOE]) and the People's Party (Partido Popular [PP]), it is most predominant among the Socialist left. [14] [28] During the last two decades of the 20th century, "patriotism" replaced the term "nationalism", as the latter was used only among "substate nationalists", who meant the term in an ethnic rather than civic sense. [29] José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero advocated for constitutional patriotism in his bid for Prime Minister in 2000 and in his election in 2004. [27] However, in the latter half of the 2000s, even the left had begun to abandon its defense of constitutional patriotism. [27]
One theoretical difference between Habermas's ideas of constitutional patriotism and the constitutional patriotism expressed in Spain is a lack of memory. [14] While Habermas believed that facing the state's past and opening it to criticism was crucial, Spain has lacked this analysis of historical memory and still faces national questions regarding the Civil War and Francoism. [14]
Switzerland was among the countries originally cited by Sternberger as an example of constitutional patriotism. [30] The country has never been a nation-state but rather has always been a confederacy, which is populated by four main ethnic groups today. [31] [32] The heterogeny of Switzerland stems from its historical position in Europe and its need to defend against its neighbors. Its identity is "driven by a process of demarcation from others, triggered, among others, by the experience of defence against superior enemies." [33] This leads theorists such as Habermas to describe it as a "prototypical political nation". [34] The cornerstones of Swiss national identity are prescribed to the political values of direct democracy, neutrality, and federalism. [34] [35] These cornerstones show themselves in the country's policies and institutions, which reinforce and are reinforced by the Swiss people, creating the common identity. [35] This has been critiqued by scholars who suggest that "nationally specific interpretations of constitutional principles do not predispose a common national culture." [34] Eugster writes about Swiss' multi-cultural identity and cultural diversity as an integral part of Swiss identity, not superseding the national political identity but at least as a factor standing alongside it. [34] This argument counters the prevalent discussion of Switzerland as a fundamental example of constitutional patriotism.
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In the United States of America, constitutional patriotism is primarily based on two documents: The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Expectations of political behavior are outlined in the Constitution, and the ideals embodied by them both have encouraged civic empowerment. [1] The United States demonstrates the ideas of constitutional patriotism in that Americans find a source of unity in their constitution which is able to supersede other cultural influences, forming a broader American identity. [4] The principles of the Declaration of Independence contribute to the basis of constitutional patriotism in America because, as William Kristol and Robert Kagan say, they are "not merely the choices of a particular culture but are universal, enduring, and self-evident truths." [36] These documents have both validated government action and citizen response.
Many of the values which contributed to the Founding Father's thinking come from ideas of the Enlightenment and over time have transformed into ideas of American exceptionalism and Manifest destiny. [37] Throughout the country's early history, the Constitution was used as the basis for establishing foreign policy and determining the government's ability to acquire land from other nations. In the country's inception, government officials broadly interpreted the Constitution in order to establish an archetypical model for foreign policy. [38] [39] [40] [41]
The battles, both political and physical, over slavery are also demonstrations of constitutional patriotism in the United States, as they demonstrate the alteration of norms and values. [2] In the mid-1780s, hundreds of thousands of slaves served as the cornerstone of American production. [42] The constitution's defense of the rights of slave owners created a rift in the values of America: half of the country adhered to the Declaration of Independence's belief that "all men are created equal", while the other half adhered to the constitution's ruling, which allowed slavery. The rhetoric of many anti-slavery protesters appealed to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence in order to resolve this split in interpretation. Frederick Douglass stated that "the Constitution of the United States, standing alone, and construed only in the light of its letter, without reference to the opinions of the men who framed and adopted it, or to the uniform, universal and undeviating practice of the nation under it, from the time of its adoption until now, is not a pro-slavery instrument." [43] Similar rhetoric led to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and a universal anti-slavery constitutional patriotic view, changing the norms and values of society, which were then reified in the Constitution.
McCarthyism brings to light one critique of constitutional patriotism, which is that it, in the critics' eyes, can lead to political witch-hunts of those traitorous to the political system. [44] In the 1950s, thousands of Americans, including government officials, members of the armed forces, cultural stars, and ordinary citizens, had to stand before a congressional board to prove that they had no communist relations. [45] This strict adherence to the constitution's declarations and fear of communism led to the removal of civil liberties of many citizens and the suspension or inversion of the law. [46] However, after numerous televised hearings and irrational accusations, Senator Joseph McCarthy was deemed no longer legitimate by the American people, and the communist concern regarding constitutional patriotism was relatively abandoned. [47] This confirms Müller's argument that, while instances like McCarthyism are possible in countries which adhere to constitutional patriotism, these societies often have values which eventually contest intolerance. [2]
The civil rights movement in the 20th century often referred to the constitution in order to gain popularity and legitimacy with the American people. In W. E. B. Du Bois's 1905 Niagara Movement Speech, he pleaded for equal voting rights and said, "We want the Constitution enforced." [48] This style was repeated throughout the movement by leaders such as Malcolm X, Ralph Abernathy, and Martin Luther King Jr. Using the Constitution, King justified the movement's message in his December 1955 address to the first full Montgomery Improvement Association meeting, stating, "If we are wrong, then the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong then the Constitution of the United States is wrong." [49] In 1968, King employed the Constitution once again to challenge the US government's civil rights legislation and stated, "Be true to what you say on paper." [50]
Recent US administrations have handled the idea of constitutional patriotism differently. The Clinton administration instituted a policy which allowed the US government to determine what the Constitution needed. Ultimately, foreign policy required that sovereignty be safeguarded so that the Constitution itself can be secure. [51] This resulted in rejections of the Land Mines Convention, the Rome Treaty, and the Kyoto Protocol. [51] Constitutional patriotism's effects shifted during the Bush administration. After the attacks on September 11th, the Bush administration released the National Strategy for Homeland Security (NSHS) and the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSSUSA), which defined the American people as a culture with shared liberal and democratic principles. [52] The NSHS specifically defined the American way of life as a "democratic political system... anchored by the Constitution." [52] This version of constitutional patriotism continues to be prevalent in US government and citizen action.
Constitutional patriotism in the United Kingdom is traditionally connected to Magna Carta and the Ancient Constitution. [53] [54]
Constitutional patriotism in the European Union is extremely important because it is one of the only supranational case studies. While the theory can be observed in various instances throughout the world, most are observed in cases specific to the constitution of a single country.
Constitutional patriotism is especially applicable in the European Union because there is no single shared history or culture. [55] It is not rooted in pride in a culture, race, or ethnicity but rather in a political order. [56] The European Union makes multinational claims in its constitution, which makes political allegiance a complicated question to address. [25] Creating a unified European identity is a difficult task, but constitutional patriotism has offered a liberal alternative to other forms of nationalism. [56] It allows people to remain attached to a unique culture, potentially to their individual countries, but still share a common patriotic identity with other Europeans. [57] It also encourages Europeans to distance themselves from "ethnic public self-definitions, ethnic definitions of citizenship and ethnic-priority immigration." [58]
Constitutional patriotism holds a political order accountable because people have the choice to be constitutionally patriotic. People will only feel pride in a political order which they feel warrants the emotion. [56] The diversity of states in the European Union also makes a constitutional bond an appealing style of unity. [25] [59] [60] Similarly, in the context of a history of wars, persecutions, genocide, and ethnic cleansing, states may choose to gather behind a constitution at the supranational level. [61]
Today, constitutional patriotism plays a role in distancing the current European Union from its past totalitarian experiences with Nazism and Stalinism. [59] This is because it focuses on the acceptance of human rights but also "multicultural and multireligious tolerance." [62] While Müller argues that the European Union has yet to fully acknowledge and embrace constitutional patriotism as an identity, countries do seem to be converging on "political ideals, civic expectations, and policy tools" that fall under the umbrella of constitutional patriotism. [58] Other skeptics note institutional features, such as a lack of focus on meaningful electoral politics, as reasons for why it has not fully been embraced at the supranational level in the European Union. Many see their own national governments as their only hope of electoral accountability. [61] The European Union also faces a question different from a lot of individual countries. While most countries are working "within the framework" of a constitution, the European Union must decide how strongly it will commit to a future of "constitutionalization". [25] As trust in the public institutions continues to decrease, the future of its constitution could also come into question. [63]
Critics have argued that loyalty to democratic values is too weak to preserve a deep bond to unify a state. [64] [65] This is because it is missing a key feature of individual identity for modern subjects—nationality, which in turn provides national identity "essential for realizing important liberal democratic values such as individual autonomy and social equality." [66] They believe national identity is the base on which political morality can be achieved. [67] In response to this, it has been questioned whether or not the nation should be responsible for the unity of a state. [4]
Vito Breda argued that Religious pluralism curtails reason in constitutional patriotism. [68] Specifically, two issues arise: that some may not be able to accept a secular and rational morality and that some may prioritize religious beliefs. [68] "By inserting the protection of pluralism, perhaps modeled on the liberal safeguard of freedom of faith, constitution patriotism might gain much cognitive strength." [68]
Critics have also argued that the theory focuses too much on a "domestic German agenda", or is "too specifically German". [12] [69] [70] [71] Essentially, its principles are only applicable in its original context: post-war West Germany. Especially when talking about Habermas's original theory, too much is attributed to a domestic German agenda and Habermas's concept of the public sphere to be applied in other, nonspecific situations. [12] [69] However, while it is argued that constitutional patriotism is too German, it is also criticized from the other, almost opposite, direction. Political theorists deem constitutional patriotism to be too abstract. [1] [12] It is argued that the concept lacks specificity on a global scale and has not been thought out enough to be applied to actual cases. This parallels Müller's acknowledgements that "there have been relatively few attempts to define the concept clearly" and "there has been significant disagreement as to whether [it] is a political value in itself or a means to ensure other values." [22]
In response to many of the discussed criticisms, Müller responded with articles in 2006 and 2009, discussing ways in which he feels constitutional patriotism has been misunderstood or objected.
Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining its sovereignty (self-governance) over its perceived homeland to create a nation-state. It holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on a combination of shared social characteristics such as culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity. There are various definitions of a "nation", which leads to different types of nationalism. The two main divergent forms are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism.
A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory or society. Some nations are constructed around ethnicity while others are bound by political constitutions.
Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and a sense of attachment to a country or state. This attachment can be a combination of different feelings for things such as the language of one's homeland, and its ethnic, cultural, political, or historical aspects. It may encompass a set of concepts closely related to nationalism, mostly civic nationalism and sometimes cultural nationalism.
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state claims its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes such factors as language, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and customs of the nation in its primal sense of those who were born within its culture. It can be applied to ethnic nationalism as well as civic nationalism. Romantic nationalism arose in reaction to dynastic or imperial hegemony, which assessed the legitimacy of the state from the top down, emanating from a monarch or other authority, which justified its existence. Such downward-radiating power might ultimately derive from a god or gods (see the divine right of kings and the Mandate of Heaven).
An imagined community is a concept developed by Benedict Anderson in his 1983 book Imagined Communities to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially-constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of a group.
German nationalism is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and of the Germanosphere into one unified nation-state. German nationalism also emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one nation and one people. The earliest origins of German nationalism began with the birth of romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars when Pan-Germanism started to rise. Advocacy of a German nation-state began to become an important political force in response to the invasion of German territories by France under Napoleon Bonaparte.
National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language".
European values are the norms and values that Europeans are said to have in common, and which transcend national or state identities. In addition to helping promote European integration, this doctrine also provides the basis for analyses that characterise European politics, economics, and society as reflecting a shared identity; it is often associated with human rights, electoral democracy, and rule of law.
Kemalism or Atatürkism is a political ideology based on the ideas of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. Its symbol is the Six Arrows.
A Berlin Republic is a 1997 book composed of a collection of transcripts of interviews with the German philosopher and social critic Jürgen Habermas conducted by various European media in the mid-1990s. The common thread of the interviews is Habermas's disagreement with resurgent German nationalism after the reunification with the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).
European nationalism is a form of pan-nationalism based on a pan-European identity. It is considered minor since the National Party of Europe disintegrated in the 1970s.
Dolf Sternberger was a German philosopher and political scientist at the University of Heidelberg.
Civic nationalism, otherwise known as democratic nationalism, is a form of nationalism that adheres to traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights, and is not based on ethnocentrism. Civic nationalists often defend the value of national identity by saying that individuals need it as a partial shared aspect of their identity in order to lead meaningful, autonomous lives and that democratic polities need a national identity to function properly. Liberal nationalism is used in the same sense as 'civic nationalism', but liberal ethnic nationalism also exists, and "state nationalism" is a branch of civic nationalism, but it can also be illiberal.
Postnationalism or non-nationalism is the process or trend by which nation states and national identities lose their importance relative to cross-nation and self-organized or supranational and global entities as well as local entities. Although postnationalism is not strictly considered the antonym of nationalism, the two terms and their associated assumptions are antithetic as postnationalism is an internationalistic process. There are several factors that contribute to aspects of postnationalism, including economic, political, and cultural elements. Increasing globalization of economic factors have shifted emphasis from national economies to global ones.
Among scholars of nationalism, a number of types of nationalism have been presented. Nationalism may manifest itself as part of official state ideology or as a popular non-state movement and may be expressed along Race, civic, ethnic, language, religious or ideological lines. These self-definitions of the nation are used to classify types of nationalism, but such categories are not mutually exclusive and many nationalist movements combine some or all of these elements to varying degrees. Nationalist movements can also be classified by other criteria, such as scale and location.
Demoicracy is a polity of multiple distinct people (demoi), polity of polities. The term is derived from demoi, meaning "peoples" and kratos (κράτος) meaning "power". It is apparently meant to become an alternative to democracy, understood as power of a single demos. The term is used mainly to describe the genus of the European Union (EU) but is also gaining currency in more general theories of democracy above state level.
Socialist patriotism is a form of patriotism promoted by Marxist–Leninist movements. Socialist patriotism promotes people living within Marxist–Leninist countries to adopt a "boundless love for the socialist homeland, a commitment to the revolutionary transformation of society [and] the cause of communism". Marxist–Leninists claim that socialist patriotism is not connected with nationalism, as Marxists and Marxist–Leninists denounce nationalism as a bourgeois ideology developed under capitalism that sets workers against each other. Socialist patriotism is commonly advocated directly alongside proletarian internationalism, with communist parties regarding the two concepts as compatible with each other. The concept has been attributed by Soviet writers to Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric approach to various political issues related to national affirmation of a particular ethnic group.
Composite nationalism is a concept that argues that the Indian nation is made up of people of diverse ethnicities, cultures, tribes, castes, communities, and faiths. The idea teaches that "nationalism cannot be defined by religion in India." While Indian citizens maintain their distinctive religious traditions, they are members of one united Indian nation. Composite nationalism maintains that prior to the arrival of the British into the subcontinent, no enmity between people of different religious faiths existed; and as such these artificial divisions can be overcome by Indian society.