Blackwell Reference Online

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Topicality, the essence of good journalism, is perhaps less important for the longer-term perspectives of academic writing. Nonetheless, I shall begin with two events dominating world headlines during the week I write this chapter (June 1998): the entry on to the world stage of India in the role of nuclear power, and the riots in Indonesia which have replaced Suharto, after 32 years in power as the dictatorial president of that country.What these two events have in common is that both have been influenced by postcolonial states and conditions. Half a century after formal independence, the right wing, Hindu nationalist government of India has, with the widespread approval and “mass ecstacy” of its population (India Today, May 25, 1998), affirmed its independent status and consolidated the national imagination according to the most important criteria of state power and modernity laid down by other, predominantly Western nuclear states. Irrespective of “economic” indicators, this scientific, political, and military gesture is seen as the only equalizer that matters. In Indonesia, Suharto's “New Order” regime of modernization had followed two decades of fervent postcolonial nation-building under his equally nationalistic predecessor. In each case, regimes and nations have declared their own destiny, made their own history, irrespective of the views of world “others,” and not least in ... log in or subscribe to read full text