SMOKERS’ CORNER: ROMANTIC NATIONALISM AND FAKE HISTORY

Romanticism was a late-18th century movement in Europe that emerged as a reaction to modernisation and industrialisation. It derided the notion that a rational disposition was far superior to the one shaped by emotions, ‘spiritualism’/mysticism and intuition.

Even though Romanticism failed to stop what it denounced, it kept returning in waves in a bid to halt the unrelenting march of the “soulless” and the “destructive” — how it viewed ‘modern progress.’

Romanticism’s primary tools were art and poetry that eulogised nature, rural life, mysticism, beauty and, apparently, a “pristine” pre-industrial past. However, the understanding of these was largely extracted from myths and folklore. From the 19th century onwards, Romanticism branched out into philosophy and politics as well.

One of the consequences of this was the birth of “Romantic Nationalism”, which sacralised the idea of a nation being navigated by an “organic state” and whose roots were in a glorious past — even though, the immediate sources of Romantic Nationalism can be traced back to the French Revolution (1789-99) which looked to turn rationalism into a faith of sorts.

Archaeology, rather pseudo-archaeology, played a major role in strengthening Romantic Nationalism. In the 19th century, Romantics became fascinated with old ruins. They saw them as echoes of a past that was “authentic” and untainted by modernity. Some ‘archaeologists’ purposely misinterpreted the history of the ruins to fit romantic-nationalist narratives and myths (“Mythistory”).

Pseudo-archaeology has played a big role in constructing mythical histories that feed into imagined pasts that ultimately only aid the political aims of ultra-nationalism

Curiously, many well-to-do people in late-18th/ early-19th century Britain actually began to get entirely fake ruins (“ruin follies”) built in their gardens and on the lands they owned. This was an aesthetic gesture, to express one’s romantic association with the past or a particular past. This may seem largely harmless, even silly, but it quickly mutated into becoming something far more disconcerting — especially when Romantic Nationalism began to surge.

Romantic Nationalism is often, if not always, manifested by ultra-nationalist ideologies. The most prominent of these first emerged in Europe in the late-19th century and in the first half of the 20th. A belief in a mythical past was a vital component of these ideologies, and there was a compulsion to ‘historically prove’ the existence of this past. Therefore, ‘archaeology’ became an important tool for ultra-nationalists.

In Italy, during the totalitarian/fascist regime of Benito Mussolini (1922-1945), massive excavation projects were launched and dozens of ancient ruins were unearthed. But here’s the thing: the idea was to restore only the artefacts, statues and structures constructed during the height of the ancient Roman Empire.

Structures constructed during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period were mostly demolished. Mussolini saw himself as the modern reviver of Imperial Rome, and his regime as a contemporary continuation of that ‘golden’ period.

In Nazi Germany (1933-1945), archaeology became a vital instrument to bolster the belief that Germans were a superior race, and that all spiritual, cultural and material progress in the world emerged from this one race. This is referred to as “Hyperdiffusion” — a hypothesis that suggests that various technologies and ideas came from a single advanced civilisation.

The Nazis spent a lot of effort on archaeological excavations in various regions of the world to prove that that single civilisation comprised of ancient Germanic people. Not much came out of the excavations, though. Just far-fetched reinterpretations of certain finds that had absolutely nothing to do with the Germanic people.

The Nazis then began to claim that the Germanic race evolved from an advanced ancient civilisation whose ruins supposedly sit underneath an ocean. This was the so-called ‘Atlantis Island’ — an entirely fictional place first mentioned by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. The Nazis established an exclusive department to find this ‘drowned’ island. The department was operational, searching the oceans, when the Nazi regime fell in 1945.

Ever since the political rise of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in India from the late 1980s, attempts have been made to put Indian history into a Vedic framework and/or “Hindu culture” from between 1500 BCE and 500 BCE. ‘Archaeology’ again became an important tool to achieve this.

In the 1920s, when the ruins of what began to be referred to as the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) were first unearthed, archaeologists and historians believed it to be of a civilisation that existed before ‘Aryans’ from various Central Asian regions began to pour in. The Aryans brought with them a system of belief that eventually evolved to become Hinduism.

However, years after the discovery of IVC, Hindu nationalists began to claim that the Aryans were neither invaders nor migrants, but part of the indigenous IVC. It was they who then began to populate regions outside India, they claimed, influencing civilisations beyond the regions they moved out from. This is a hyperdiffusionist stance.

In a bid to prove that the Vedic beliefs emerged from within IVC, many Indian ‘archaeologists’ began to produce ‘discoveries’ that they claimed substantiated this. In 2019, they claimed that they had ‘discovered’ the area where the mythical Saraswati River once flowed. The river is mentioned in the Rig Veda, one of the four Hindu canonical texts. It was also claimed that early Aryans living on the banks of this river created the IVC.

However, this was immediately debunked by multiple researchers. The debunking was backed up by refined satellite imagery, topographic analysis and more precise dating techniques.

In a 2006 essay, the German-American philologist Michael Witzel reviewed major archaeological controversies in India, such as the identification of the IVC as Vedic; the propriety of substituting the term Indus Valley Civilisation with ‘Saraswati Civilisation’; the resurgence of traditional religious pseudosciences; the censorship of standard scholarship, and the elevation of ‘mythistorical’ textbooks. According to Witzel, all kinds of folk, “from astrologers and bank clerks to professional archaeologists”, are now involved in building a “nationalistic historiography” rooted in the political tenets of Hindutva.

In Pakistan, an old mosque near Hyderabad in the Sindh province is popularly believed to have been built by the Arab commander Muhammad bin Qasim, whose armies invaded Sindh in the early 8th Century. The ruins of the mosque are displayed as a reminder of early Muslim presence in a region which, over a thousand years later, became Pakistan. However, according to Marvi Mazhar, a Pakistani expert in ancient architecture, the mosque’s design suggests that it was built in the 14th or 15th century, not the 8th.

These are but just a few (out of many) examples of how pseudo-archaeology helps weave the mythistories that are so dear to Romantic Nationalism. Pseudo-archaeology looks to concretise mythistories by purposely misinterpreting archaeological finds and/or using questionable methods to determine their history.

When mythistories are taken as actual history, they reinforce ultra-nationalist narratives that can easily slip into racist and anti-pluralistic spheres, and produce destructive delusions of grandeur.

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 2nd, 2025