Interrogating Naturalness of National Identity

Nation-state has been considered both an intellectual brainchild and a practical offshoot of the European Enlightenment. The liberal philosophy as an intellectual representative of the Enlightenment tradition and the modernists who emphasize modernization as the practical derivative of it not only deliberated on the simultaneousness and coexistence of the two happenings—the rise of national consciousness on the one hand and appreciation for modern values such as equality, liberty and justice on the other, many theorists argued that these modern values could be realized within a nation-state model (a modern institution). Hence, they contributed to naturalization and de-politicization of the nation-state model. Naturalization/secularization of the nation-state idea without deliberating on the possibilities of politicization and construction of national identities legitimize exclusion of people from national space, drives toward homogenization and nation-building process producing refugees and stateless people. Further, nation-states do not feel the urgency in meeting the normative demands of the international order that strive to defend human rights and address the problem of statelessness. In this context, the article seeks to interrogate the naturalness of national identity of individuals by examining the factors that tend to secularize and naturalize it and by unraveling the real socioeconomic forces that engender and shape national identity and help it look the way it does.