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Criticisms of Mahmood Mamdani's views on nationalism and decolonization
Executive Summary
Mahmood Mamdani’s critiques of the nation-state and colonial legacies have produced a mix of scholarly praise for their historical depth and sharp normative contention about political modernity; defenders call his work a necessary rethinking of decolonization while critics fault gaps in method, omissions, and political consequences [1] [2]. Public and political criticisms have also been intensified by contemporary partisan debates—most visibly by right-wing responses in India that frame his interventions through identity and political allegiance, transforming scholarly disagreement into a broader culture-war conflict [3].
1. Why Mamdani’s thesis about colonialism and the nation-state still shocks and unsettles readers
Mamdani’s central claim—that the colonial state and the modern nation-state were co-constitutive and that political violence is rooted in state formation, not an accidental byproduct—frames his project of decolonization as an intellectual and political task [4] [5]. He rejects simplistic narratives that treat colonialism as a temporal interruption or propose a return to precolonial origins; instead he insists on analyzing how institutional legacies produce permanent minorities and structural violence, a perspective developed in Neither Settler nor Native and reiterated across essays [1]. This approach reorients debates from moralizing accounts of oppression toward institutional diagnosis, prompting both acclaim for its theoretical clarity and discomfort among those attached to national foundations. The claim is empirically grounded in comparative historical examples—Sudan, the Holocaust, and Israel-Palestine—that Mamdani marshals to show the recurring logic of exclusion inherent in state-making, which forces interlocutors to choose between reimagining political community or perpetuating exclusion [5].
2. Scholarly praise: urgent intervention and conceptual provocation
Scholars and reviewers recognize Mamdani’s work as a major intervention that elevates the stakes of decolonization from rhetoric to statecraft [1]. Reviews note the book’s analytical ambition and its capacity to provoke rethinking about citizenship, legal orders, and minority rights; the Harvard press summary and other academic appraisals underline how the book challenges orthodoxies about nationalism and rights [1]. Supporters argue that Mamdani’s historical-institutional method opens new avenues for policy and transitional justice by insisting on structural reform rather than solely criminal accountability. This strand of appraisal frames his contribution as both timely and necessary for scholars and policymakers wrestling with chronic intercommunal violence and exclusion in postcolonial contexts. The praise tends to center on his careful historical reconstructions and the normative demand to delink the nation from coercive state practices, a remedy proponents see as essential to preventing cycles of ethnic cleansing and permanent minority status [1].
3. Academic critiques: method, omissions, and normative reach
Critical scholarship acknowledges the importance of Mamdani’s diagnosis while questioning his dichotomies and the limits of his prescriptions [2]. Reviewers such as Vivienne Jabri argue that Mamdani’s distinction between criminal-justice and political models of response to violence understates the hybrid realities of transitional contexts and that lines between crime and politics are messier than he allows [2]. Other critics highlight omissions: insufficient engagement with gendered dimensions of violence, limited attention to internationalism, and selectivity in cited literature, which can narrow the book’s applicability across different cases [6]. These critiques do not reject Mamdani’s central insight but call for a more plural methodological toolkit and fuller incorporation of intersecting social factors to translate his structural diagnosis into practical, context-sensitive reforms [2] [6].
4. Political backlash: identity, partisanship, and public debate
Beyond academic debate, Mamdani’s public interventions—on Palestine, India, and political Islam—have provoked heightened partisan backlash that reframes scholarly critique as political denunciation, especially in India where critics tied him to pro-Palestinian activism and anti-government stances [3]. Coverage in 2025 documents how Hindu nationalist voices portrayed his work through the lens of identity politics, labeling him an outsider or anti-national and thereby mobilizing broader hostility toward Indian Muslim intellectuals [3]. This politicized reception complicates scholarly engagement, as critiques become entangled with agendas that emphasize loyalty, religious identity, or geopolitical positions. The result is a cross-pressured environment where academic arguments are weaponized in culture-war frames, sometimes obscuring substantive disagreements about theory and method with ad hominem political rhetoric [3].
5. Misattribution and confusion in public discourse: two Mamdanis, one debate
Public discourse sometimes conflates Mahmood Mamdani with Zohran Mamdani, producing confusion that inflates controversy and muddies attribution; watchdog reports and commentary about electoral politics in New York involve Zohran, not Mahmood, and some media pieces have pointed this out [7] [8]. This conflation matters because it shifts scrutiny from scholarly arguments to the personal politics of unrelated figures, enabling actors with partisan motives to blur analytical critique and personal attack. Accurate attribution is essential: critiques should address Mahmood Mamdani’s published arguments and scholarship rather than ad hominem associations or misapplied journalistic narratives. Flagging and correcting these errors helps preserve space for substantive debate about nationalism, decolonization, and political remedies [8].
6. The bottom line: where the debate moves next
The literature shows a stable consensus that Mamdani’s work reframes problems of state violence and minority-making, but disagreement persists over translation into policy and the normative boundaries of his model [1] [2]. Academic critics press for integration of gender, internationalist perspectives, and more granular distinctions between legal and political responses, while public critics often pursue identity-based delegitimization that obscures theoretical points [2] [3]. Future debate will hinge on empirical testing of Mamdani’s institutional claims across diverse cases and on bridging his structural diagnosis with pragmatic transitional mechanisms that address both justice and political inclusion. The conversation must therefore maintain analytic precision and resist partisan reductionism to assess whether delinking nation and state can be operationalized without producing new exclusions [1] [2].