Nationalism, Violence, and Globalization: Reflections on Gandhi's Political Thought

Philosopher Nelson Goodman once observed, “Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already at hand; the making is a remaking.” ¹ The world “already at hand” is an increasingly interconnected place whose global designs erupt with growing frequency within and onto the familiar landscape of the national and the local. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, one can say with some confidence that a “global imaginary” is on the rise, stoked, among other things, by technological change, scientific innovation, and new political ideologies I have referred to as “globalisms.” ² But this deep-seated global consciousness is being built on the foundation of the familiar national imaginary. The continued impact of the national is apparent in its enduring power to organize crucial aspects of social life—even at the close of the troubling 2000s marked by 9/11, the ensuing global War on Terror, and the most serious global economic crisis since the Great Depression. Thus, in spite of its tremendous power, globalization remains a partial and conditional dynamic.