Catholic and monarchist nationalism in twentieth-century Portugal

The subject of this article is Christian nationalism in twentieth-century Portugal in its two ideological and organizational crystallizations. The first is the Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista), operating in the late period of constitutional liberal monarchy, founded in 1903 on the basis of Catholic circles, whose initiator, leader, and main theoretician was Jacinto Cândido da Silva (1857–1926). The second is the metapolitical movement created after overthrowing the monarchy in 1914, aimed against the Republic, called Integralismo Lusitano. Its leader and main thinker was António Sardinha (1887–1925), and after his untimely death — Hipólito Raposo. Both organizations united nationalist doctrine with Catholic universalism, declaring subordination to the idea of national Christian ethics and the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. The difference between them, however, was that, although the party led by Cândido was founded, i.a., to save the monarchy, after its collapse, it doubted the sense of combining the defence of Catholicism against the militant secularism of the Republic with monarchism. Lusitanian integralists, on the other hand, saw the salvation of national tradition and Christian civilization in the restoration of monarchy — not liberal, but organic, traditionalist, anti-parliamentary, anti-liberal, and legitimistic. Eventually, the Nationalist Party gave rise to the Catholic-social movement from which an António Salazar’s corporate New State (Estado Novo, 1889–1970) originated, while Lusitanian Integralism was the Portuguese quintessential reactionary counter-revolution, for which Salazarism was also too modernist.

Emerging Hindu Rashtra and Its Impact on Indian Muslims

This article examines the impact of the gradual Hindutvaization of Indian culture and politics on Indian Muslims. The article contrasts the status of Muslims in the still secular, pluralistic, and democratic constitution of India with the rather marginalized reality of Muslims since the rise of Hindu nationalism. The article argues that successive electoral victories by Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has precipitated political events, generated policies, and passed new laws that are eroding the democratic nature of India and undermining its religious freedoms. The article documents recent changes that are expediting the emergence of the Hindu state in India and consequently exposes the world’s largest religious minority to an intolerant form of majoritarian governance.

“The Party Leads Everything”

Chapter 2 explores the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) role in China’s grand strategy. First, it focuses on the CCP as a nationalist party, one that emerged from the patriotic ferment of the late Qing period and has sought to restore the country to its rightful place. Second, it focuses on the CCP as a Leninist party, one that has built centralized institutions—blended with a ruthless amorality—to govern the country and achieve its nationalist mission. Together, it argues, the Party’s nationalist orientation helps set the ends of Chinese grand strategy, while Leninism provides an instrument for realizing them. Finally, the book focuses on the CCP as a producer of paper and a subject of research, noting how a careful study of the Party’s own voluminous publications can provide insight into its grand strategic concepts. It then outlines much of the textual research strategy employed in the rest of this book.

The Generative Politics of Presentism in Post-15M Spain

This essay revises post-15M movement political party landscape, emphasizing the intentional yet unusual use of the present within the New Left's organizing grammar. Against sectors of the traditional Left, who see presentism as a product of neoliberalism, I claim that in the post-15M conjuncture, the present constituted a battleground in the struggle for a dignified life. First, I focus on the Catalan left-wing nationalist party CUP's use of anarchist symbols to suggest that references to sabotage were deployed to disrupt parliamentary politics, forcing constant interruption. Second, I analyze Podemos founding member Iñigo Errejón's speech after the party's 2016 national election defeat, where his rhetoric linked the temporality of the present with anti-austerity protestors’ embodied presence. Last, I read the rise of neomunicipalisms as another iteration of presentism, aiming to politicize everyday life. To conclude, I advance that such material practices of “generative presentism” problematize presentism's assumed depoliticizing nature.

Language as an Identity: Hindi and Provincial Languages in Colonial India

Language is an inherent part of an individual’s identity. Any attempt to subjugate that identity is vehemently resisted by the people. In India, Hindi is not only seen as a language per se but also linked with North Indian Hindus. In the past, the introduction and imposition of Hindi in non-Hindi-speaking states, mainly Tamil Nadu, had faced strong opposition. Since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Hindu Nationalist Party—Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)—elected to power in May 2014, the union government has taken measures to what it calls promoting the use of the Hindi language in India. These measures have been strongly resisted in the non-Hindi-speaking states of the country. This article looks at the debates between Hindi and non-Hindi speakers since the years of the anti-colonial movement in India. It examines the character of the movement to promote Hindi and the resistance against the Hindi movements in India. This article also discusses the demands for language-based states in India. In this paper, the author argues that in the non-Hindi-speaking states, Hindi is mainly looked at as a means to subsume and suppress the native’s identity. To protect their linguistic identity, which is inextricably intertwined with other identities, people in non-Hindi-speaking areas have protested in past and also resist such attempts in present.

Remaking the People

This chapter explains how a democracy weakened by damaged social foundations and corrupted governing institutions breeds despotism. The governing party machine, in the hands of a big boss leader, stirs up talk of ‘democracy’ and ‘the people’. It neuters the courts and other power-monitoring institutions and turns them into empty shells. Demagogic talk of ‘democracy’ and the need for firm rule backed by ‘the people’ grows louder, and more militant. Elections become rowdy plebiscites. Rumours, exaggerations, and bullshit are spread by its loyal media organs. The signature tactic is stirring up trouble about who counts as ‘the people’. Elections are turned upside down, they become an exercise in electing an alternative people, a ‘true’ and ‘pure’ people rid of misfits and miscreants. The government votes in the people. India is pushing in a similar direction, with the country’s 200 million Muslim citizens as the ‘non-people’ that strongman Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party seeks to disempower. They are the prime targets of verbal insults, institutional discrimination, police inaction, political propaganda, and street-level thuggery. But the country’s intrinsic plurality and a well-entrenched democratic culture remain a powerful bulwark against centralized state power.

Colonialism and Compromise: The Shanghai Municipal Police and the Arrest of Communists, 1927–37

The Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC), which was mainly controlled by British residents in the treaty port of Shanghai, and protected by the British Foreign Office, came under serious challenge from the Guomindang (GMD) (the rising Nationalist Party of China) from 1927 onwards. The Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP)—an imperial police force with powers to arrest, prosecute and detain—was forced to collaborate with the GMD, and practice unlawful arrest, extradition and re-indoctrination of Communist suspects and convicts. This resulted in the erosion of state powers and the management of prisons. This article argues that the dismantling of British colonialism began to take place in Shanghai during the inter-war period at the expense of some English legal conventions, as demonstrated by SMP violations of existing legal practices and humanitarian commitments. Second, it also suggests that English judicial conventions had an unintended impact on some Chinese civilians, who were keen to safeguard their rights during their detention and trial in and beyond the Shanghai Legation. This article, therefore, offers a new periodisation of British decolonisation and a re-examination of colonial legacy in East Asia.

Mecca between China and India

Through the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and the Nationalist–Communist War (1946–9), several Chinese Islamic pilgrimage delegations set out on their journeys across the Indian Ocean. Mecca was more than a simple endpoint destination. These travels encompassed transits and sojourns in cities in between Nanjing/Shanghai and Mecca, offering the pilgrim-cum-delegates venues of encounters with foreign dignitaries and diaspora populations. This chapter examines the published records and private diaries of members of the Chinese Islamic Goodwill Mission to the Near East (1937–9) who had been aligned with the Republican Nationalist Party, with a focus on their actions and rhetoric in Calcutta, Bombay, Karachi, and Lahore. Claims to anti-imperial Islamic solidarity and routes of the pilgrimage provided accessible channels for the Chinese Muslim delegates to conduct meetings with leaders of both the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress Party, while simultaneously attempting to garner support from Cantonese/Shandong diaspora populations and Turki refugees from the war-stricken Xinjiang Province. The practices and networks of informal diplomacy that consolidated in wartime would outlast the Second Sino-Japanese War itself.

EU regional policy as a factor for decentralization in Spain. Basque Country case

The article is devoted to the analysis of the factors of decentralization in Spain on the example of the Basque Country. Particular attention is paid to the factor of European integration and the EU regional policy in the political development of Spain. The purpose of this article is to consider the resources for decentralization in Spain with a focus on European integration (in particular, the EU regional policy). The first part of the article proposes a research methodology. The second examines some of the factors of decentralization offered by the scientific literature. The third part of the article reveals the features of the «three-tier» model of regional policy in Spain and the indicators of the EU regional policy effectiveness. The fourth part examines the experience of the Basque Country in the European integration, in particular, the EU's regional policy. Referring to the database of the «Manifesto» project, the author comes to the conclusion that connection between the processes of decentralization in the Basque Country and European integration can be manifested in the texts of the electoral programs of the Basque Nationalist Party. The scientific significance of the article is to analyze the impact of European integration on the processes of decentralization in Spain via the data of the «Manifesto» project.

Aaditya Thackeray

Aaditya Thackeray, 30, grandson of the founder of the Shiv Sena, the Mumbai-based Hindu nationalist party, has been active in politics for just over a decade. He heads the Shiv Sena’s youth wing and is a minister in Maharashtra’s current state government. Aaditya advocates for a more open and welcoming Mumbai without renouncing the party’s adherence to nationalism, supporting children of the soil policies, and a Hindutva, which speaks up for Hindus but is not against any religion.