June 5, 2025

Radha (Bani Thani),
Kishangarh, ca. 1750

Thursday:
My views on the nation-state – June 5, 2025

In modern times the concept of the nation as being something integral to the state, that every state should somehow derive its authority from the masses that are considered native to the land that state is defined by, has come to be seen as quite natural, but the fact that this rather recent concept should have come to be seen by most as normal is actually strange, considering historical context. At most, the concept of the nation-state goes back around 250 - 300 years, but in its most advanced form, the nation-state concept goes back no further than 200 years, around the time of the French Revolution. The nation-state is really the result of two strands of thought or the confluence of two modern ideas: the idea of a people united by a shared destiny, a common identity, that often, but not exclusively, lives within a somewhat or a clearly defined region (nationalism); and the idea that the authority of the state should be derived from the people of which that state claims authority over, proto-democracy, and that the authority should exist within a set of parameters acceptable to that people.

    This concept is therefore a necessary prerequisite for democracy and indeed for most liberal ideas that have enabled man to cut his connection to the transcendental and become ever more anchored to the material. At the core of modernity is the idea of the so-called "enlightened" man: an idea that puts man at the center of his own life and of his own purpose, and that proclaims the superiority of the knowledge that can only be known in the material domain, and thus rejects the concept of the transcendental and the noble. Therefore, in this "enlightened" time, there can be no such thing as noble men that derive their authority from the transcendent and that have ascended to the moral domain and become one with the moral order of the universe. Since the concept of nationalism requires egalitarianism as the most common denominator in society, in the form of the shared identity of being part of the nation and not the transcendental, it was no longer possible to justify the authority of the King and of the aristocracy, thus setting in motion many great revolutions beginning in Europe and culminating with World War I, which later in the 20th century would cascade into a multitude of nationalisms all over the world – creating the world of the 21st century filled with these profane entities called nation-states.

Jahangir Receives
Prince Khurram at Ajmer

    For the new and revolutionary ruling class, the nation also became a benefit, because it would enable them to concentrate power in the hands of themselves, on a level never seen before in history, and this also enabled them to raise armies on a scale never seen before, with the introduction of compulsory universal male conscription, another very new and integral concept to modern states, which has enabled war to destroy on a scale never seen before. The nation-state is in other words: a progressive idea based on the necessity for the decay of morals; and the ever greater appetite for beastly and primitive instincts to rule man.

    In rendering every man, regardless of his morals and his transcendence, equal before the authority of the state, the individual man as a part of the abstract and omniscient mass of the "people" has become the standard unit of modernity, cutting off man's bonds to the earthly and local qualities familiar to any society and any men previously in history. At the same time man is expected to act as the mass man in the form of the soldier on one hand, defending what has been deemed his birthright, and in the form of the seemingly inscrutable individual in an ocean of humanity on the other hand. This modern relation between man and authority requires no intervention from the transcendent and no moral arbitration beyond the material, and thus modern man has been made the victim of his own natural and beastly instincts, just in line with the "enlightened" praisal of the animalistic in what modern man regards to be the "natural" man.

    In its essence, the nation-state is a recent departure from the traditional relation between man and the moral order, where authority was derived from the transcendent, and where better men, noble men, held legitimate power over the material. In the times of the Kali Yuga, the nation state may be only a parenthesis, or it could be a vital part of the final stage of this era, only time can tell. At any rate, I do not consider the nation or the nation-state to be integral to the noble man, and nationalism should be rejected as the modern and progressive concept that it is.

Reginald Drax – June 5, 2025.