Guest Editors’ Introduction: South Asian Nationalisms

This article intends to raise questions related to nationalism in South Asia, while also addressing the rationale for this special issue. Is nationalism a monolithic construct based on a European precedent or is it something much larger that is developed pluralistically in a variety of contexts around the world? If the latter is true, which is our position, then how do we go about studying the various versions of global nationalism? We argue that good comparison is based on both similarity and difference. To make a case for multiple versions of nationalism, the articles included herein focus on the Indian Subcontinent. Each article looks at a particular country belonging to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the intergovernmental group representing the geopolitical union of states in South Asia, which was founded in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1985. The overall purpose of this collection of articles is to highlight the varieties of nationalism found in the region, with the goal of interrogating the idea of a singular form of nationalism inherited by postcolonial societies from their European colonizers.