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How does Mahmood Mamdani characterize postcolonial nationalism in his scholarship?
Executive Summary
Mahmood Mamdani characterizes postcolonial nationalism as a historically constructed, often violent political project that frequently reproduces colonial categories and institutional frameworks rather than dissolving them. He argues that nationalism and colonialism are co-constitutive: postcolonial states inherit and reenforce settler/native binaries, create permanent minorities, and risk substituting one form of domination for another unless decolonization transforms institutions and identities [1] [2] [3]. Recent expositions of his work emphasize the need for intellectual and institutional decolonization—reworking universities, citizenship, and legal regimes—to uncouple identity from state violence and create inclusive democratic politics [4] [5] [6].
1. Why Mamdani sees nationalism as the heir to colonial violence
Mamdani insists that postcolonial nationalism does not simply overturn colonial rule but often inherits its essential political logic: the production of legal and social categories that map groups into permanent majorities and minorities. He traces how colonial techniques—especially indirect rule and legal codifications of identity—created racialized or ethnic categories that nationalist politics later mobilized for state formation and mass politics. In this reading, the violence associated with nationalism is not an aberration but a predictable outcome of a political architecture designed to manage difference through exclusion. Scholars drawing on this claim point to case studies such as Rwanda to show how colonial-era identities were reified and weaponized in postcolonial struggles, illustrating Mamdani’s claim that identity is historically produced rather than primordial [2] [1] [3].
2. The argument for unmaking settler/native identities as the core of decolonization
Mamdani advances a prescriptive but evidence-grounded remedy: decolonization requires the deliberate unmaking of settler and native identities and the creation of equal citizenship institutions. He argues that law and governance must be reconfigured so identities no longer determine political status and access. This entails legal reforms, institutional redesign, and intellectual work to restore historicity—thinking about the present in relation to deeper pre-colonial and colonial processes. His call for “unmaking” identities is both normative and diagnostic: without dismantling these binaries, postcolonial nationalism risks reproducing exclusionary politics and fostering cycles of violence that mirror colonial governance [1] [5] [6].
3. Universities and the battlefield for postcolonial relevance and restraint
Mamdani situates part of the struggle in intellectual institutions, arguing that universities are contested terrains where disciplinary nationalism can either reproduce colonial universals or foster locally relevant, decolonial inquiry. He contrasts visions of the postcolonial academic: one that preserves universalist, discipline-based scholarship and another that insists on engaged, socially rooted scholarship addressing local political realities. Mamdani warns that if universities merely mimic colonial models, they will validate an elitist nationalism that becomes a tool of state control; conversely, if they are reformed—multilingual, accessible, interdisciplinary—they can nurture a nationalism that is democratic and transformative [4] [5].
4. Competing readings and methodological stakes: violence, modernity, and historical depth
Different presentations of Mamdani’s work emphasize distinct stakes: some highlight his stark linking of nationalism to modernity’s violent foundations, arguing that the state’s formation involves racialized dispossession stretching back to early colonial expansions; others stress the practical institutional reforms he proposes to reduce political violence. Both emphases share an insistence on historicizing identity and the state, but they suggest different interventions—structural transformation of political institutions versus a broader intellectual project to reframe historical narratives. These divergent emphases reflect methodological agendas: one aimed at diagnosing deep continuities of violence, the other at actionable policy and institutional redesign [3] [7] [5].
5. What to watch next: implications for policy and scholarship
Mamdani’s characterization implies concrete policy directions: prioritize citizenship reforms that delink identity from legal status, reform education and university governance to be multilingual and accessible, and focus conflict prevention on institutional redesign rather than solely on peacebuilding narratives. It also instructs scholars to situate postcolonial studies within long historical arcs and to question assumptions of primordial identity. These prescriptions have been taken up in recent commentary and institutional debates about decolonizing curricula and law; the policy question moving forward is whether states and universities will adopt Mamdani’s combination of historicizing analysis and structural prescriptions or instead revert to symbolic reforms that leave colonial architectures intact [5] [6] [1].