Stories and Nation Building #1: 1947
One of the main “superpowers” that humans have, as per Yuval Noah Harari, is the ability to tell stories. Not only of the fairy-tale variety, but also the grander ones that can unify people into massive groups based on some common theme (real or imagined), stretching in size from regional to national to global. In Missing in Action , Pranay Kotasthane says the same: “Narratives have the power to make the unreal real.” Narratives are critical when a nation is formed: “Every newly formed nation has to define this imagination.” This involved 3 steps: (1) Call for a new beginning, a fresh start; (2) if a region has a long history that can’t be wished away, then “use the trope of slumber and reawakening to represent a departure from the past”; and (3) use historians to “reframe history that show past events as serving the nation-building… objectives of the present”. If you found some of the ab...