The Longue Durée of Borders

While the defenders of sovereign territory delineated by national borders are quick to claim that borders have always exist and will always continue to exist, such claims misrepresent the nuanced circumstances that borders originate from and the serious ramifications of borders’ sustained existence. Our modern conception of borders arose from a set of specific economic and political circumstances during a specific time period in a specific place, and the idea of sovereign control over defined territory spread due to yet another set of specific historical circumstances, yet too often pundits ignore the happenstance of borders’ origins and falsely paint them as both inevitable and universally necessary. Sovereign nation states were able to out compete feudal organization, churches, empires, city-states, and city-state confederations, but this fact alone does not serve as sufficient justification for the continued reliance on borders to order our world. A direct outgrowth of our modern world’s acceptance of borders as a prerequisite for effective governance is the belief that people are unassimilable. Given that many of today’s modern borders are the direct result of the colonial project, true decolonization requires that we understand the roots of modern systems, and that we understand the ramifications of such systems today, so that we may one day be able to escape the inherent inequality written into global power structures. In order to begin to construct such a world, we must fight against ideologies that ahistorically attempt to defend vestigial traits of specific historical circumstances, such as national borders, as necessary for effective governance. Cameroonian political theorist Achille Mbembe explains that “the belief that the world would be safer, if only risks, ambiguity and uncertainty could be controlled and if only identities could be fixed once and for all, is gaining momentum,” and this momentum is due to the widespread political salience of xenophobia. In order to counteract such dangerous ideology, and to escape the inimical effects of antiquated systems of governance, one must first understand that borders arose due to specific historical circumstances, not historical destiny, and thus, the problems that arise from territorial borders can only be transcended by questioning the institution itself.

It is a fact that all peoples occupy space, but conceptions of how that space should be controlled have fluctuated over time. The territorially delineated sovereign space emerged out of a multitude of distinct ideas surrounding control over space. Feudalistic societies allowed for shared control over territory, due to their lack of specific hierarchy. Local feudal rulers swore allegiance to multiple more powerful rulers in order to accumulate more lands that they were given in exchange for their loyalty. Despite this allegiance, those dominant figures did not assert direct control over the lands of their subordinates. Instead, the subordinate rulers administered the lands, and the dominant rulers would call on their subordinates to rally raise an army and fight for them when necessary. This could become complicated, with Hendrik Spruyt explaining that feudalism was “…a highly decentralized system of political organization which is based on personal ties,” and the entities who intermediate rulers swore their allegiance to did not always coexist peacefully. The lack of a specific hierarchy of control is exemplified by instances when two or more leaders, all of whom a feudal ruler had sworn allegiance to fought amongst themselves, that ruler had no specific protocol to follow. In one such instance, an intermediate ruler raised an army and split it, sending a portion to fight on one side of the conflict and going himself with the other portion of his army to fight against his own men. Thus, borders were not always as salient as they are today, given that no single entity had exclusive control over territories.

Other forms of asserting control over space similarly abstained from limiting the extent of their rule to specific territory, such as religious organizations and empires. Religious organizations believed their control to be universal, coexisting with existing rulers by using spiritual means to validate their rule. The church played a part in a two-way relationship with these rulers, wherein it needed the rulers’ armies to protect it, and in return it served as a mean to legitimate those rulers’ battles against non-believers. Still, things such as the investiture conflict, which began in 1075, complicated this relationship, due to the lack of explicit control over areas. The church and German leaders such as Frederick Barbarossa conflicted over who was endowed with the ability to select new bishops. This would eventually erode the ability of church administration to function simultaneously with local administrations. Empires similarly posited themselves as universal. While there were hypothetical central leaders, empires truly took the form of heteronomous constituencies, ruled by different intermediate sovereigns who had little accountability to the central sovereign, due to limited communication and mobility. Confederacies of city states also formed, seeking to mutually protect their independence from external control.  Yet these entities, similar to empires, were loosely attached, and their member cities operated largely independent of their other members.

Out of the myriad methods of exerting control, ranging from feudalism and city state confederacies to organized religion and empires, sovereign states emerged as a front runner due to both shifts in the socioeconomic and epistemological atmosphere during the early modern period at the end of the middle ages. The bellicist school of thought points to states’ need for a centralization and concentration of military power as the reason for the rise of territorial delineated divided sovereignty, referencing efficiencies of scale as illustrated by the Prussian military to argue that the territorial sovereign state was able to more adroitly defeat other forms of organization. This line of reasoning further leads to arguments of state formation from a political bargain to gain protection from a more powerful central monarch, yet this relies on a false teleology. The end result of specific historical circumstances cannot be misleadingly characterized as a preordained destiny that was inevitable to occur. Indeed, advancements in military technology did not occur at a uniform rate, and the presence of central monarchs was also not ubiquitous, so it is ahistorical to argue that military prowess alone enabled the territorially bounded sovereign nation state to prevail.

Instead, the role of factors such as economic interests and ideological frameworks must also be considered. Towns began to declare allegiance to central monarchs in order to avoid the need to pay taxes to multiple middling authorities, thus creating a form of political and economic bargain. As the burgher class rose thanks to growing trade during the early modern period, and as people were increasingly freed from feudal servitude, they found it worthwhile to sacrifice some levels of their freedom in order for a sovereign to ensure that merchants could travel safely through territory to reach towns, thus encouraging greater local trade. Concurrently, a mutual epistemological shift occurred in Europe, wherein the king became the adjudicator and guarantor of legal concerns, creating a single font for the rule of law to flow from. Spruyt contributes a more liberal line of reasoning, forwarding that sovereignly delineated states borders emerged due to their ability to more adroitly outcompete their competitors, and to reduce interaction costs for both other states and merchants by creating a centralized point of authority. This unified central seat of power also encouraged the spread of the territorial sovereign state model of governance, allowing like units to more easily interact with one another. Other structural changes at this time cannot be ignored, for the European crusades enabled access to new trading networks and the invention of the heavy plow enabled greater crop yields. Both of these factors contributed to the shift to a monetary system guaranteed by central sovereigns. This monetary system enabled administrations to expand their size and capabilities without the sovereign sacrificing all of their land, by paying their bureaucrats with money instead of with land as had been the practice under feudalism. Furthermore, centralized state power conferred a sense of legitimacy to governments, avoiding the stumbling blocks that the divided sovereignty of feudalism and city state confederacies encountered, and leading to deliberate mimicry by other organizations hoping to achieve similar perceived legitimacy. The ideological shift occurring during this timeframe is also key. Not only did sovereignty change conceptions of legitimacy, but it also changed ideas of territorial control. As printing presses rose in prevalence, map makers would use colors to denote territory in order to make maps more visually appealing and entice rich patrons to purchase their expensive product. This changed both sovereigns’ and subjects’ ideas of territorial control, and shifted the goals of sovereigns to focus on such territory. Jordan Branch elucidates this ideological shift, using examples from the language used to dictate territorial control in treaties from the time to illustrate the new emphasis placed on territorial control during the early modern period. It is key to recognize that, throughout all of these specific circumstances that led to the rise of the territorially bounded sovereign nation state in Europe, the rest of the world was by no means latent. Instead, Europe was a backwater at the time, with governments taking in upwards of 25 times that of European monarchs, and African forges smithing far higher quality steel than European forges were capable of at the time. Indeed, trading networks moving across the Asian steppes, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean were far more developed than those in Europe at the time. Yet, the advent of the Black Plague impacted these areas more severely due to their deeper trading relationships, and as Europe gained access to new ideas and technologies through greater interaction with the rest of the world during the crusades. Europe was able to recover from the plague more quickly due to its distance from the world’s trading centers at the time and able to utilize the new technologies it had recently gained access to in order to capitalize on its historical window of opportunity, and the colonial project which would serve as the mode of dissemination for the territorially bounded sovereign state system is a direct outgrowth of such specific historical circumstances that created this window of opportunity.

The idea of divided territory, with specific territories designated for specific groups, problematically legitimizes xenophobic beliefs, for it posits that the coexistence of multiple peoples within the same spaces is a threat to security. The belief that populations’ movement and opportunities can be defined to a specific locus underpins the modern state system. When combined with ideas of cultural unassimilability, the divisions between imagine nation states become synonymous with racial divisions. The racist and imperialist belief that the movement of peoples can be restricted in the interest of purported ‘border security’ is an innate component of efforts to prolong inequitable contemporary power structures. As explained by Achille Mbembe:

Because we inherit a history in which the consistent sacrifice of some lives for the betterment of others is the norm, and because these are times of deep-seated anxieties, including anxieties of racialised others taking over the planet; because of all of that, racial violence is increasingly encoded in the language of the border and of security. As a result, contemporary borders are in danger of becoming sites of reinforcement, reproduction and intensification of vulnerability for stigmatised and dishonoured groups, for the most racially marked, the ever more disposable, those that in the era of neoliberal abandonment have been paying the heaviest price for the most expansive period of prison construction in human history.

Understanding this allows us to understand that we cannot achieve true decolonization so long as we maintain the juridical-political boundaries of the nation state. The colonial project’s historical epoch may have ended, but the work to deconstruct persistent colonial power structures requires an understanding of the historical contexts that led to the rise of such structures. The evidence of such persistent colonial oppression is clearly found in legal codes that assert control over specific groups for the supposed protection of other groups. Such legal structures go hand-in-hand with self-congratulatory conceptions of multiculturalism, which purport themselves to be accepting of all while illiberally privileging the rights of one group over the rights of ‘tolerated’ groups who are consistently considered to be outsiders. It is necessary to dismantle the epistemological power structure that consistently reifies the need for borders without substantiating such claims. Achille Mbembe writes that “asserting the boundaries of the nation goes hand in hand in that model with the assertion of the boundaries of race,” and to escape the chains of racial borders, we must first understand the history of national borders so that we can begin to dismantle them.

Oppositional Identities: The Pitfalls of Postcolonial Identity Creation in Mongolia

As nations emerge from beneath the fold of colonial empires, they are faced with the task of differentiating themselves from their former sovereigns, yet while colonial nations had the luxury of centuries to try and test their identities, postcolonial nations are forced to hastily construct modern identities immediately after achieving their independence. The immense pressure to instantaneously distinguish themselves from their colonizers results in postcolonial nations often adopting modes of identity creation that give way to further long term hardship. One of these such pitfalls in postcolonial identity creation is the tendency to fall into the trap of grounding new identities purely in opposition to their former sovereigns. While responding to the damage done to postcolonial nations by the colonial project is an innate component of their postcolonial nations’ identity negotiation, new identities that are rooted exclusively in opposition fail to subvert the damaging material and cultural structures of colonialism that can remain latent and malicious if not deracinated by the development of entirely independent identities. The formation of a liberated and autonomous identity is an act of postcolonial resistance, yet if former members of the subaltern fail to develop identities beyond overt opposition, their identity is still inherently tied to the existence of their former oppressors. Postcolonial nations face further difficulty when undertaking efforts to economically develop, because the years of colonial exploitation often restructured their economies to be centered on the extraction of resources, without providing the technological means to even be able to extract such resources independently. The case study of Mongolia provides a quintessential example to understand the ways that postcolonial nations can fall victim to relying on oppositional identities through. While unique and independent musical and religious movements are developing in Mongolia, both movements have been closely tied to Mongolian nativist movements, and their focus on opposing external powers has delayed the development of independent cultural movements. Both the emerging Mongolian rap music scene and the resurgence of the shamanistic Tengriism religion have been tainted by nationalistic rhetoric. Problematically, the external powers, which newly created identities rely on opposing, are also some of the largest sources of the direct investment that many postcolonial nations’ economies depend upon. Opposed to following the problematic colonial model of identity creation and yielding to the simplicity of founding postcolonial identities on opposition to an ‘Other,’ true transcendence of colonial systems of oppression necessitates the development of identities founded on entirely independent ideology.

Identity creation is an integral component of truly pushing the influences of colonialism into the past in any postcolonial nation, giving citizens a way to differentiate themselves from their former rulers, yet too often this identity formation mirrors the failures of the colonial project by rooting itself in rejecting an epistemologically constructed ‘Other.’ Identities are not a monolithic entity that can be awakened from the miasma of our unconscious, but instead must be artificially invented based upon some central principles or values, as taught by Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities. It is tempting to say that what principle a new identity is founded upon is irrelevant, as long as a new identity is constructed, yet this simplistic view of postcolonial identity creation problematically leaves room for nation’s growth to be stunted by singularly focusing on opposing their former colonizers. A nation cannot be expected to develop and differentiate themselves when their very national consciousness hinges on the identity of another nation. Furthermore, the damage done by the colonial system cannot be transcended when the central component of a nation’s new identity necessitates the continual concentration on the same invented ‘Other’ as their colonizers. Such an external focus perpetuates nations’ perception of themselves as the permanent victim, impeding any independent growth. In Orientalism, Edward Said expounds that Orientalism in the colonial system undertook the deconstruction and reconstruction of the colonized nations in the ‘orient,’ and that deconstruction is what can lead postcolonial nations to repeat the same mistakes as their colonizers. In Mongolia, from 1900-1911, the Chinese New Administration (Hsin Cheng) attempted to sinify Mongolia and force locals to assimilate in order to create a bulwark against Russian aggression, in essence working to eliminate the Mongolian identity that they perceived as the ‘Other.’ Yet, attempts to root the modern Mongolian identity on opposing the Chinese presence in Mongolia hinder the creation of an independent Mongolian identity, and result from the colonial system ingraining the ideology of difference into the Mongolian consciousness. Indeed, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak references Foucault to theorize that the epistemological violence that reconstructed consciousness in Europe enacted the same changes in the subaltern, elucidating that “The clearest available example of such epistemic violence is the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as the Other.” Thus, the subaltern learned to base their own identity creation on the existence of an ‘Other’ by being essentialized as the ‘Other’ by the colonial system. The narrative of colonization indoctrinated colonial subjects in the subaltern to fix identity creation on the invention of an ‘Other’ in their own societies, hindering the subsequent identity creation of nations such as Mongolia by distracting from the formation of an independent identity.

Ulaanbaatar emerged from colonization and dove head first into capitalism, leading to an increase in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), with an especially large amount of Chinese investment in the Mongolian mining sector. For centuries, Mongolia was ruled and occupied by Chinese empires. After 70 years of a command economy as a Soviet satellite state, Mongolia underwent a democratic revolution in 1990 and became “…one of the world’s fastest growing economies.” The majority of all investment flows directly into the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and the city has changed as a result of the foreign influence. The government promoted foreign investment by relaxing regulations and controls, allowing for the patterns of foreign domination and exploitation to arise from the shadows once more in Ulaanbaatar. In recent years, as economic growth boomed, new animosities have grown out of the influx of outside Chinese business investment which many Mongolians see as exploitative. The globalization and increased primarily Chinese Foreign Direct Investment encouraged by the government within Ulaanbaatar spawned new nationalists movements.

Mongolia attempted to create an environment favorable to external investment to replace the Soviet aid it had previously enjoyed. The government in Ulaanbaatar worked to liberalize policy to encourage FDI, fostering a market oriented free-trade regime. From the earliest days as a capitalist nation, Mongolia opened itself up to FDI by opening up currency exchanges. This opening up of the nation led to Mongolia relying on FDI to propel its economy from a transitioning phase to a growth phase – and it’s worked – with the GDP growth rate hitting new highs above five percent growth in 2004 and 2005. Yet, this growth comes at the cost of local control of much of the economy by the central government in Ulaanbaatar. Now the city is being dominated by outside companies looking to control the government so they can exploit that nation’s resources.

The gross majority of the FDI that flows into Mongolia flows directly into Ulaanbaatar from other Asian countries, specifically into the mining sector. China, Korea, and Japan constitute 63 percent of the total FDI. This illustrates the shifting manifestations of colonialism. Mongolia emerged from direct colonial rule under Dynastic China to neo-colonial domination under the USSR, and now became subject to imperial domination by the more developed Asian economies. Of that new investment, 95 percent of it flows directly into the new foreign company outposts in Ulaanbaatar. The hope of the government is that this investment will build linkages in the capital to other sectors of the economy, such as the service and retail industries, but in reality the only linkages that investors are creating are roads to the resources that they hope to extract. Mining investment makes up 40 percent of all foreign direct investment. While it is true that this investment is contributing to the success of the economy as a whole, with FDI increases paralleling GDP growth, native Mongolians perceive it as an exploitative relationship. China is clearly interested in Mongolia for the riches buried beneath its soil. The two largest FDI projects within Mongolia, Oyu Tolgoi and Taran Tolgoi, are both mineral extraction projects. While external companies on average invest $293,000 in Ulaanbaatar, those investing in mining interests invested $2,300,000 each. China already invested $10.8 billion in road networks to connect the investment hub Ulaanbaatar with mining prospects in the rest of the nation, laying down more than 3,000 kilometers of roads, and will further invest in Mongolia’s transportation channels with their ‘Belt and Road’ project. China even went as far as decreasing its income tariff for Mongolian goods from 24.6 percent 9.4 percent, not in order to promote equitable trade, but to promote the perceived beneficial exportation of ephemeral raw materials. External investment in the mining sector flows through the conduit of Ulaanbaatar, yet without bestowing any of the intended benefits upon it.

 In Ulaanbaatar, there are two kinds of migration occurring; that of wealthy Chinese business people entering the city’s core and that of rural Mongolians moving into the city’s periphery. While the Chinese constitute ‘skilled’ and ‘lifestyle’ migrants, the Mongolians compose ‘economic’ migrants. The Chinese are wealthy business people coming to work for the corporations such as the mining companies directly investing in Ulaanbaatar, whereas the Mongolians are forced to come to the city to find any work at all. This creates a divide between the two groups, and contributes to the Mongolian residents of Ulaanbaatar looking to separate themselves from the Chinese, and they have done so through rap. The sprawling Ger slums on the outskirts of the city, housing almost 1/3 of the entire nation have become a type of satellite city wherein the local population grows and expands such that it develops a different character than the core of the city. While many Mongolians in Ulaanbaatar have been pushed to the outskirts of the cities, the Chinese ‘middling trans-nationals’ are entering the economic core of the city given their higher economic status. The Mongolians in the slums of Ulaanbaatar have to fight with the fact that now outsiders are coming in and bringing their Chinese influence with them, while the While the Chinese are affluent enough to maintain many of their comforts of homeland, the Mongolians who are migrating into Ulaanbaatar for work are being pushed to the outskirts within their own city. Chinese became more and more prevalent as a language of business within Ulaanbaatar as a result of Chinese FDI. There is a growing fear among the periphery of Ulaanbaatar that they will be eventually pushed out due to the economic factors mainstreaming the Chinese identity. The Mongolians on the periphery of Ulaanbaatar are anxious about the increasing growth of a Chinese core fueled by FDI, resulting in animosity towards the Chinese and the evolution of a new differentiated Mongolian identity.

Chinese mining magnates’ relative free-reign allowed by the cooperative Mongolian government incites local tension due to the reinforced belief that their only intention is to strip wealth from the nation. The government is relocating the nomadic farmers which symbolize the nation on the falsified grounds that they are depleting the grasslands in order to allow mining companies to move in and take the land, sparking further anti-Chinese sentiments and provoking one Mongolian rapper to sing that “‘[o]vergrazing is a myth and a lie/ We have grazed animals here thousands of years/ Why has the desertification started since only a few decades ago?’” Mongolians know that they are being exploited by the Chinese, sparking rapper Gee to become almost violently anti-Chinses, going as far as to say that the Chinese want to take everything from Mongolia. The animosity is exacerbated by the intense connection many Mongolians feel to their land, and the destruction that Chinese mines bring to it. Many Mongolian rappers have songs that revere their beautiful grasslands which are now being turned into a dessert by bulldozers and dump trucks. The rappers see the wealth that the Chinese are squeezing dry from the teat of their nation juxtaposed against their own people starving for a drop to drink. Rapper Amraa calls for social reform and creates an economic commentary by positing that “‘[w]e have homeless children, we have poverty, but we also have a very grand history that was inherited from our ancestors. We sing about kids living in sewers, and we ask, ‘Where’s your kid living?’ We want to get a message to the corrupt upper class.’” The economic disparities present within Mongolia give fuel for Mongolian rappers to fire up their audiences calling for change, but the manifestation of that change is entrenching sinophobia in the Mongolian identity.

In the process of differentiating themselves from the Chinese colonizers, the residents of Ulaanbaatar have developed an anti-Chinese sentiment that derails attempts at forming an authentically distinct identity. When discussing sinphobia in Mongolian rap music, I reference an interview with rapper Gee in my article Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar, in which he expounds that “‘I’m not racist toward anybody… except the Chinese. I hate the Chinese.’” The attention given to former colonial powers became a predominant discourse intertwined with efforts to protect the Mongolian identity through musical proliferation, with some racial slurs against the Chinese prevalent and one group going as far as to release a song entitled ‘Don’t Overstep the Limits, You Chinks.’ The presence of Chinese investors in Mongolia is used as a focal point for Mongolian rappers to mobilize their followers against, coming as a consequence of the hyper-nationalistic rhetoric they employ. This fear and hatred stems from the superiority and chauvinism endemic to any exclusionary identity, and unfortunately by promoting the identity, Mongolian rappers are also promoting the animosity.

Rap music became prevalent in Mongolia because there are many Mongolian artists who have made the genre their own, providing a mode to create an entirely distinct cultural object important to the emergence of a new postcolonial identity, yet unfortunately the rise of Mongolian rap music is marred by the rise of Sinophobic tropes within the genre. As a consequence of ubiquitous Chinese FDI, Mongolians are fearful of their new identity being eclipsed by the influx of foreign nationals. Producing rap music in Mongolians’ own tongue is a vital component of encouraging the creation of Mongolians’ own unique identity, yet the mobilization of xenophobic rhetoric exemplifies the ways in which Mongolian identity creation is hindered by lackadaisically following the same problematic methods of identity creation utilized by foreign powers when they controlled Mongolia. Mongolian rapper Amraa and rap group TST both are proud to be outspoken nationalists, hoping to inspire young Mongolians to have pride in their language and their nation, at a time when many young Mongolians are learning Mandarin in pursuit of greater economic opportunities. The focus on protecting the Mongolian language is just one way that Mongolian rappers display their adroit social commentary; rapper Gee has lyrics that show his desire to help Mongolia differentiate itself in the face of neoliberal economic imperialism, rapping that “‘[i] n the ocean of globalization, Mongolia is like a boat without paddles. You better start to care before we … drown.’” Yet, when fighting against the tides of globalization, it is important to recognize that the ‘Other’ is entirely discursively constructed. While independent cultural identities can be created through the ‘Other,’ altering aspects of external influences to localize them in positive ways instead of ignoring them, the foundation of the new identities created does not need to be opposition to ‘Others.’ Despite the significant sinophobia present in Mongolian rap, there are aspects of the musical genre that provide reason to hope for positive identity creation in the future. Rappers have a strong emphasis on environmentalism, even if driven by nationalistic sentiments, wanting to protect their homeland. Mongolian rappers have also rejected the materialism and consumerism endemic to the music of their Western counterparts, allowing listeners to claim a new identity by emphasizing cultural identity over luxury goods in a country where roughly 30 percent of the population lives in poverty.

In efforts to differentiate themselves from their former colonizers, Mongolians have embraced the resurgence of the historic shamanistic religion of Tengriism (sometimes referred to as Tengrism), but this religious resurgence is coupled with the emergence of hyper-nationalist groups that have embraced the religion as a focal point of their identity as Mongolians. Since 1990, the population of shamans in Mongolia ballooned from 10 to 20,000. The rebirth of Tengriism was been largely influenced by the presence of Chinese mining interests within the nation, with a heavy emphasis on environmental concerns, accentuated by the fact that deities in Tengriism have physical geographic representations that are worshipped. Yet, nationalists’ approbation of Tengriism is a stumbling block for the development of a new Mongolian identity. While the resurgence religion in isolation is an incredibly positive way to reclaim an aspect of Mongolia’s precolonial identity, it is tainted by the endorsement of swastika-toting ultra-nationalists. One group, called Tsagaan Khaas, engages in violent crimes such as shaving the heads of Mongol women they suspect of having slept with foreigner. The leader of another previously hyper-nationalist group, Standing Blue Mongol, was convicted of killing his daughter’s boyfriend for studying in China. Presently, Standing Blue Mongol adopted an environmentalist agenda, and is fighting against a Canadian mining company intending to extract resources from a locally revered mountain. While this action is not problematic in and of itself, Standing Blue Mongol used to be a neo-Nazi organization that latched onto Hitler’s beliefs of ‘ethnic purity.’ Even as Tengriism offers a positive route to developing an independent identity, Mongolians turn to nationalist groups because they fear that their capital city is being overrun by Chinese foreigners who they perceive to be ethnically impure. In “Religious Revival, Nationalism, and ‘Tradition,’” Marlène Laruelle examines the ties between the resurgence of Tengriism and ethnocentrism, postulating that “a process of an ethnicization of the divine with ambiguous political consequences reveals the deep ideological changes and the process of social recompositions, which are being experienced by post-Soviet societies.” The use of distinct religious traditions to differentiate nations in the subaltern from their colonizers is widespread throughout former Soviet satellites, with ranging from neo-paganism in Baltic States to Zoroastrianism in Tajikistan. Unfortunately, the construction of this religious identity as exclusive inhibits the successful development of a postcolonial identity, for no nation is entirely homogenous and precluding members of the society from subscribing to a nation’s new identity only serves to create further internal divisions. These examples Tengriism being coopted by nativist movements in Mongolia provide important examples of how easily nations can fall victim to tacit identity creation attempts, such as chauvinism. If attempts at identity creation hinge on rejecting an ‘Other,’ then Mongolia will be inexorably tied to their invented ‘Other’ and the nation will never go on to develop its own unique identity that is necessary to dismantle the remaining structures of colonial oppression.

The process of inventing a national identity out of thin air has been shown to have many obstacles that must be avoided, such as those associated with grounding a new identity on opposing an ‘Other,’ yet the mobilization of exclusive identities to endeavor to develop a postcolonial character also has serious implications for members of nations’ own populations. Women in Mongolia are put in a tenuous position as hyper-nationalism gains prevalence, for as explained by Undarya Tumursukh, “problems arise when we deconstruct the homogeneous and static image of the nation and recognize that contemporary societies, democratic or not, are structured so as to systematically privilege some groups over others along class, race, ethnicity or gender lines.” Tumursukh elucidates that when being masculine is seen as synonymous with being Mongolian, as is evident in the rhetoric employed by nationalist groups such as Tsagaan Khaas, women become the ‘Other’ in society as much as foreigners. Just as it is dangerous for a postcolonial identity to rely on their former oppressors, it is equally dangerous for nationalism to come part and parcel with the domination and control of women’s bodies. As evidenced by the attacks perpetrated by ultra-nationalist groups against women who are suspected of copulating with outsiders, the control that such groups attempt to asset over Mongolian women’s sexuality is the antithesis of modernity and could bar Mongolia from claiming a postcolonial identity if it propagates.

As the case study of Mongolia exemplifies, nations can fail to emerge from beneath structures of colonialism if their attempts at identity creation are stained by the tendency to rely on constructing an ‘Other’ to be oriented against. Oppositional identity creation such as that invoked by Mongolian rappers and ultra-nationalists may result from external exploitation, but it is self-propagating by perpetuating reliance on an ‘Other,’ both inside and outside of the postcolonial society. Oppositional identity creation must be avoided in order to successfully develop a postcolonial identity, for it impedes the authentic identity creation necessary to transcend systems of exploitation.

The Way: Religion as a Path for Postcolonial Identity Creation

As populations emerge from the fires of colonial oppression, alone and newly independent, they are left to make sense of the ashes with fires lit by imperialists still burning. Very often, groups embark on the journey to claiming their postcolonial identity devoid of any organized efforts to undo some of the strife that colonizers wrought. This juxtaposes nations on the cliff’s edge, scrabbling to find some foothold, from which they can begin to push back up the slope. The road to identity creation that emerges from this tumult is a long and twisting one, which nearly all postcolonial nations and populations arising out of colonization endure in an effort to renarrativize the legacies of colonization. There exist paths through which positive identity creation can be facilitated, but those paths can be confounded by convenient pitfalls of identity creation which target or repress portions of the population with the society’s newly invested power. One route to this positive identity creation can be reverting to or reclaiming a prior religious identity, which sees success due to its transferrable nature and its strong moral backbone.

Using a religious identity to unite people and create an idiosyncratic cultural identity marks a stark contrast to instances of traditions which spontaneously arose out of the identity vacuum left by vacating colonizers. One such case manifests in the emergence of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, which demarcates a deft lunge at formulating some sense of national identity. Instead of revitalizing some portion of identity which may have been previously castoff, in cases such as Kyrgyzstan, inhabitants create a united identity through the propagation of an invented tradition. Members of the populace can ignore any collateral damage caused by the tradition such as the threats it poses to women’s education in Kyrgyzstan in lieu of protecting this new artificial practice. Professor Simon Gikandi quotes author Chinua Achebe to say that “most of the problems we see in our politics derive from the moment when we lost our initiative to other people, to colonizers.” Indeed, in many cases where colonizers were able to supplant preexisting identities with a colonial identity, it is difficult for populations to find an on-ramp on the road towards modern identity creation. One way in which countries and cultures can make an effort to take their initiative back and create a positive postcolonial identity is through the use of religion, for religions are accompanied by moral structures that dissuade .

Identities can be created through many means, for the imperative is created once colonizers have withdrawn to unify nations and push forward together. The departure of a domineering power leaves a void that must be filled. An identity must be created on or around some unifying concept. As highlighted by Professor Roger Keesing, it is superfluous whether the concept that a group’s new identity is oriented by is ‘real’ or not, because its purpose is simply to distance the population from the legacy of the colonizer. The substance veiled behind the larger separation is extraneous to the end goal of the process of identity creation. Yet, this indifference to foundation is not without its dangers; it can allow avenues for identity creation that have no historical backing and complacently target subsets of the population. Gikandi summarizes another scholar Frantz Fanon to elucidate that the creation of new separate identities restores “…dignity to…peoples, describes and justifies, and praises ‘the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence.’” Thus, it is important that the nuanced process of identity formation is done in a way that is conducive towards the formation of positive and inclusive postcolonial society. These newly created identities place their aspirants at a crossroads, between the different identities they have lived during different parts of their lives. In this confusing place, it is important to create a shared identity that is easily accessible so that all of society can move out of the shadow of colonization together. It is an easy derailment for identities to have certain exclusivities or specifically ostracize some groups, because that is one way to find commonality. Yet, it is of tantamount importance that any identity creation can be shared across an entire population so that a nation can assume its postcolonial identity.

A moral structure can serve as an important aspect of positive identity creation, which can often be found in religious structures. It is suggested that value is socially created, and thus what we value is a resultant of our socially created identities. Thus, in the creation of a group identity, it is important to have a moral structure that creates common moral values, so that those values are adhered to as the new identity forms. There can be societies who undergo drastic shifts in moral structures, but the imposition of a moral structure that is not common can have large ramifications. Religious structures often come with moral structures such as these, and can thusly serve as a positive compass to orient identity creation by.

All across Asia, religion has served as a tool for cultures to undertake identity reclamation and renarrativization. Religion can provide a structure to organize the new identity by, complete with its own moral guide stones to keep aspirants on course. Faiths throughout nearly every example have some larger moral structuring principles, telling followers what actions were permissible and what was to be eschewed. It also creates a unifying universal identity that can allow countries to take something that may have initially been imposed by colonizers and surpass this to join into the larger identity. Indeed, religious identity structures have also been shown to help spur increased social mobilization throughout South East Asia, which is key for societies recovering from trauma. Churches can also serve as a platform and catalyst for the creation of hybridity and facilitate cultural encounters. By involving populations all across the planet in the name of a single faith, churches can allow for the intermingling of populations possibly even previously in conflict with one another. Introducing aspects of hybridity into newly forming national identities can help to defer any tendencies towards hyper-nationalism, tendencies that may fan the flames of internal divisions and result in the targeting of a specific sect.

The final facet of religion that makes it a positive tool for postcolonial states is that it is entirely transferrable. No matter where someone is on the planet, their religion and the basic ways in which it is practiced are unified. In the case of the Hindu population on Portugal, all of its members can carry their religion with them as a way of maintaining their unique and separate identity. Faith can also be altered to fit the needs of the population it serves in relation to the identity it plays a part in. The Khojas of South Asia have had to change aspects of their faith to fit a need for a resilient identity, and these changes, as explained by researcher Inês Lourenço, are not “…in any case are not ultimately of great significance for a group that doctrinally considers the esoteric dimension of faith more significant than the exoteric.” Similarly, the Ghazal hymns of the Himalayas have been adapted and modernized to fit the same organizing moral structure that they were created out of to modern pop-music tastes. Just as a religious identity can help to give freshly born identities a bulwark to withstand the travails of a disparate populace, it can help to bridge the gaps between the desire to formulate a unique identity with encroaching modern global influences. With such significant evidence pointing towards the benefits of religion as a tool for identity creation, it is no wonder that one can observe Tengrism reemerging in Mongolia and a resurgence in Islamic movements all across the region.

Obstacles in the way of creating a new national identity arise out of the fact that there are no guiding lights to illuminate the path for positive methods of identity formation. Identity creation has a unified goal, as highlighted by Professor Keesing: “That is, colonized peoples have distanced themselves…from the culture of domination, selecting and shaping and celebrating the elements of their own traditions that most strikingly differentiate them from Europeans.” Yet, simply denoting that the goal of identity creation is to differentiate one’s self from European colonizers is hardly helpful, for there are numerous ways to drive a wedge between one’s own identity and one’s colonizer’s.

In Zimbabwe, the ZANU-PF exploited underlying national sentiments lusting for a new renarrativized identity to create a nationalist identity that gave their ruling party an “exclusive postcolonial legitimacy to rule,” as explained by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. By turning the emotional tension of voters seeking an identity change, ZANU-PF was able to insert chauvinism into the new national identity and solidify their hold on power.

Other attempts to undo the pain of colonialism, such as land reparation or reclamation attempts in Australia and South Africa, where even though efforts were made to make recompense for the theft of ancestral homelands, ineffective implementation and a lack or orienting concept made both efforts ultimate failures. In the instances where people were given land or money, they were still left without the separation they sought from the colonizing power. There was no group identity that could spawn out of the poorly administered reparations, and thus the reparations without any orienting structure proved to be of little help on the long path towards postcolonial identity creation. Even when there are attempts made to formulate or reclaim a cultural identity, the efforts are not always grounded on a sound foundation.

The primary example that scholars can turn to illustrate the dangers of identity creation is the invention of the supposed tradition of ‘bride kidnapping’ in Kyrgyzstan, which blurs the lines of consent, inhibits education, and disenfranchises a significant portion of the population. What is especially important to note is that this tradition is pure invention: the populous wanted to separate from the colonizer, yet this tradition had never existed previously outside of ambiguous references from hundreds of years prior. Vested with a lust for a new identity, but left without any predetermined foundation to start creating that identity from, states can become derailed by lackadaisical efforts that target some subset of the population in order to unify the majority. Thus, we can see that not only is having an orienting principle important to identity creation, but also the choice of principle is equally key.

Religion can serve as a funnel, pushing societies that are renarrativizing their identities towards an ultimately positive end result through their inherent moral structure and their transferrable and alterable characteristics. As identity is created, it is important to adhere to a moral structure so that chauvinism or discrimination do not hijack the process. As nations continue to cast of their colonial bonds, we should not be surprised if we see an uptick in alternative or reemerging religious movements. With it’s transferrable universal character, strong moral mettle, and its propensity to grow and change with its devotees, while religion is not a panacea to the travails of postcolonial identity creation, it is certainly a strong and defensible foothold.