The Movement of World Revolution

9. The Rise of Oriental Nationalism

102 9 The Rise of Oriental Nationalism The development of the nationalist movements in Asia and Africa is one of the most momentous features of the present period . During the last ten years it has changed the face of the world and altered the balance of world power. Its consequences affect not only the powers like Britain and France and the Netherlands, whose political and colonial interests are directly threatened, but every Western power and not least the United States. It means nothing less than the sudden awakening to political consciousness of the greater part of the human race, both the peoples which have been for centuries passive spectators, like the Indians and the Chinese, and those, like the Negro peoples of Africa, who have up to now remained almost totally unconscious of the world forces on which their fate depended. Now they are all plunging into the political arena with intense excitement and unlimited self-confidence and hope. The stately quadrille of the old European diplomacy has been converted into a shouting match between hundreds of peoples who have only just realized their own identity and each other’s existence. The victorious Western powers in 1945 asked for One World and they have got it with a vengeance, and no one can foretell what the results will be. It is perhaps difficult for us to realize the importance of what is happening. The national state and the concept of nationality have been familiar to us in the West for centuries, but in Asia during the past, nationality and even the State as we know it hardly existed. There was kingship and empire, and the ideal of a universal monarchy had existed ever since the days of the Persian King of Kings and even back to Sargon of Akkad. When the western European nations were acquiring The Rise of Oriental Nationalism 103 political form the Asian world was dominated by a real world monarchy , the Mongol Empire, which ruled from the Pacific to the Black Sea. In later times the oriental world was dominated by three great empires, the Turkish Empire in the Near East, the Mogul Empire in India, and the Chinese Empire in the Far East; but none of these were political societies of the same type as the Western nation states are. They were far removed from the interests and anxieties of the ordinary man, whom one cannot even call a citizen. The most important functions of the modern Western State were performed by other social institutions; by the sub-caste in India, by the family and clan in China and by the tribe or religious community, or millet, in the Turkish Empire . Politics was in theory the business of kings and in practice was often an affair of intrigues by the eunuchs of the court or conspiracies by mercenary soldiers. The idea of the ordinary man’s having anything to do with politics was unheard of and when the first nationalists in the East tried to make their voices heard they paid for it with their heads. Nothing is more instructive than the terms of the sentence of death, in 1859, on Yoshida Torajiro or Shoin, the Japanese nationalist, whose story was told long ago by R. L. Stevenson. The text of the sentence is as follows:1 Item. He tried to go to America. Item. He advised the Government on central defence while in jail. Item. He opposed the hereditary succession to office and favoured the selection of able men by popular vote. Item. He planned to give his opinion regarding foreigners to the Bakufu. Item. He did such things while in domiciliary confinement, thus showing great disrespect for high officials. The emergence of the Asiatic peoples from this state of total subservience to a state of political consciousness, self-determination and full citizenship has been the great mission of oriental nationalism and that is why it arouses such intense emotional reaction. For as President Sukarno said recently, “For us nationalism is everything. Though na1 . As quoted by G. B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan (London: Cresset Press, Ltd.; New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 289. 104 The Movement of World Revolution tionalism in the West may be an out-of-date doctrine for many, for us in Asia and Africa it is the mainspring of our efforts.” No doubt oriental and African nationalism is itself of Western origin, like so much else...