MODULE II
Rizal and the Theory of
Nationalism
INTRODUCTION
National or group identity is the most powerful political or social force. The ideology of
liberal individualism may be more popular at times, but its polar opposite, nationalism, tribalism,
or group or national identification, balances it out. Even if they don't realize it, belonging to a
country is one of the simplest and most basic methods to find out who you are. But what drives
this identification? Is it a natural affinity to individuals who are physically or culturally near to you,
or has it formed via debates that lead to political motivation? What benefit does national identity
have? To completely comprehend them, we must explore how they came into historical existence,
how their meaning has evolved over time, and why they are still relevant today.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:
1. Explain the views about how the concept of nationalism came into light;
2. Examine the values highlighted by the various representations of Rizal as a national
symbol; and
3. Advocate the values Rizal’s life encapsulates.
WARMING UP
Study the history of your town/municipality; know how and where your ancestors came
from. Know the hardships your town/municipality and your ancestors have experienced and the
great actions done by them to solve their problems. This would help you know where your
ancestors came from and how your country came to be.
NATION AS IMAGINED COMMUNITIES
Before tackling the issue of nationalism, it's a good idea to think about what a "nation" is
and come up with a useful definition. Nation must be regarded as an imagined community - one
that is both restricted and sovereign in nature, but that does not diminish its reality, Benedict
Anderson discussed.
It is imagined because even the smallest nation's citizens will never meet, let alone hear
of, the majority of their fellow citizens, but the idea of their communion will live on in their minds.
Even the largest of them, with perhaps a billion living human beings, has limits, albeit elastic,
borders beyond which other nations reside. No country considers itself to be coterminous with
humanity.
Because the notion was born in an age when the Enlightenment and Revolution were
eroding the legitimacy of the divinely centered, hierarchical dynastic world, it is regarded as
sovereign. Nations dream of being free, and if under God, directly so, as they mature at a time in
human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion are inescapably
confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith's
ontological claims and territorial stretch.
Finally, it is envisioned as a community, because the nation is always regarded as a deep,
horizontal comradeship, whatever of the actual inequality and exploitation that may exist in each.
In the end, it is this brotherhood that has allowed so many millions of people to gladly die for such
restricted imaginings during the past two centuries. What is the purpose of a person's sacrifice
when they die for their country? It's for a notion, according to Anderson: nations are emotional
and cultural phenomena, not concrete ones.
NATIONALISM AND IMAGINED COMMUNITIES
Benedict Anderson’s attribute nation and national identity to a number of key phenomena.
He asserts that the main causes of nationalism are the following:
1.
The concept of a continuous, solid national identity was an ideal replacement for the
religious worldview that dominated Europe during the Middle Ages. He claimed that, with
the help of the printing press, newspapers began to present the country as a continuous
story, with characters entering and exiting the stage at various times. Furthermore, you
assume that other members of the community have read the same story and that you
share a cultural code.
2. Next he argues that capitalism encourage printers to print first in Latin, but then in local
vernacular to find new markets and to keep expanding. Anderson’s study looks at
Indochina and Latin America, asking why in the former, nationalism in Vietnam, Cambodia,
and China were at odds with each other when they’re all communist countries. And in the
latter, asking why nationalisms develop in a continent with roughly a shared language. He
argues that the combination of capitalism and print media created these imagined
geographical communities.
3. Then there's the growth of the effort to eliminate hereditary monarchy and the concept of
primordialism, which holds that monarchy is based on the monarchs' divine right to govern.
Many of these events coincided with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, which resulted
in a significant shift in society in all aspects. In order to better illustrate the concept of
nationalism. Anderson drew on the new nationalism that can be seen in memorials and
tombstones of unknown soldiers. Even if these memorials are either empty or contain
unidentified bodies, public ceremonial devotion is nonetheless paid to them, nations would
create them and claim them as their own. That the unknown soldier is nonetheless put into
the imagined group, regardless of their true origins or stories.
Furthermore, he demonstrated that nationalism differs from other political ideologies in
that no one would die for liberalism, yet hundreds of people die every year for their countries.
Because the concept of nation is so powerful, everyone assumes that everyone else is a member
of one. One of nationalism's most essential impacts, according to Anderson, is to provide meaning
where it is lacking, such as when someone dies in war. As a result, a national identity was
gradually forged from collective ideas, which spurred an individual's daily quest for a better life.
Finally, Anderson added a crucial acknowledgment of the role of forgetting to his
numerous studies of the social and material circumstances for creative imagination. Memory
appears to fit into a pattern of national cohesion and identity reproduction that is probably selfevident. National memory is created by an entire industry of history and commemoration, which
also provides more specific recollections within a national context. Schoolchildren are taught
about their country's history. Tourists pay a visit to historical battlegrounds. But this isn't a whole
memory. It's also forgetting, as Anderson showed us. When English schoolchildren think of
William the Conqueror as a great Founding Father of the English nation, they must understand
that he did not speak English and was the conqueror as well as the parent of the English.
RIZAL AND POPULAR NATIONALISM
It's crucial to remember the situations in Asia, particularly the Philippines, during Rizal's
lifetime in order to better understand why he became the Father of Filipino Nationalism. With the
exception of China, Japan, and Thailand, the Western Powers dominated the remainder of Asia
and the Far East. Under Spanish rule, Filipinos were denied essential human rights, such as
freedom of speech, press, religion, and association, as well as other benefits that come with a
democratic society. In their native nation, they were merely "wood hewers and water draws."
Church and state were fused together in Spain, with the clergy wielding more authority and
influence than the civil authorities.
While Rizal was a passionate advocate for improving his country's deplorable conditions,
he also believed that his people should strive to develop themselves via industry and knowledge
in order to earn the respect and admiration of foreigners. Because he was the first Filipino leader
to argue for the idea of nationhood for his countrymen, Dr. Rizal has been dubbed the "Father of
Filipino Nationalism" by his own people. Unfortunately, some Filipinos still believe that our Rizal
is a "made-to-order" national hero.
Before we go any further, it's a good idea to understand what the term hero means. A hero
is "a prominent or central personage taking an excellent part in any exceptional deed or event,"
according to Webster's New International Dictionary of the English language. He is also "a man
honored after death by public worship, because of exceptional service to mankind," according to
the historical committee of the Philippine National Heroes Commission.
The National Heroes Commission's historical committee - tasked for studying, evaluating,
and expressly recommending Filipino national figures as national heroes in appreciation of their
sterling character and outstanding contributions for the country. - came up with a list of traits that
should be assessed before a person is declared a hero:
1. The extent of the person’s sacrifices for the welfare of the country;
2. Motive and methods employed in the attainment of the ideal, did the person concerned or
was there any selfish or ulterior motive in the making such sacrifices. Were the methods
employed in the attainment of the ideal morally valid?
3. The third criteria concerned the moral character of the person. Did he do anything immoral
to taint his personal character? If there was any immorality, did it affect his work, his
society of the ideal?
4. The final criterion examines the influence of the person to his age or epoch and the
succeeding eras.
If we were to choose a single work by a Filipino writer from their day that contributed more
than any other to the establishment of Filipino nationalism, we would choose Rizal's Noli Me
Tangere without hesitation. None of the works published at the same time elicited as many
positive and negative responses from friends and adversaries alike as Rizal's Noli. "The novel
was excellent," observed Regidor, a Filipino exile in London in 1872, and "if Don Quijote has
made its author famous because he exposed the world to Spain's miseries, your Noli Me Tangere
will bring you similar fame." If Rizal's friends and lovers lauded the Noli and its author with
justifiable pride, his opponents did not.
In order to demonstrate the Filipinos' potential for self-government, Congressman Henry
Allen Cooper of Wisconsin gave a tribute to Rizal and even recited the martyr's Ultimo
Pensamiento on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. "It has been stated that
if American institutions had done nothing else than provide the world with the character of George
Washington, it would be enough to earn them the respect of mankind," he added. So, Sir, I say
to all those who dismiss Filipinos as barbarians and savages with no hope of a civilized future,
that his hated race earned their respect and the esteem of mankind when it gave the world Jose
Rizal."
Another reason is that no Filipino has yet been born who might match or surpass Rizal as
"a person of distinguished heroism or enterprise in peril, or endurance in suffering." Consider what
a Filipino biographer stated about these characteristics of our hero:
"What is most admirable about Rizal is his entire self-denial, his complete
abandonment of his personal interests in order to think only of the interests of his country,"
wrote Rafael Palma. Given his natural gifts, he could have been anything he wanted to
be; he could have made a lot of money from his career; he could have had a relatively
comfortable, happy, prosperous life if he hadn't dedicated himself to public affairs.
However, the voice of the species overrode the voice of personal advancement and
private money in him, and he preferred to live far from his family and sacrifice his personal
attachments for an ideal he had envisioned. He paid little attention to his brother or even
his parents, both of whom he admired and revered.
"He didn't have much in the way of resources to carry out his campaign, but that
didn't deter him; he made do with what he had." He endured the rigors of Europe's frigid winter,
starvation, poverty, and misery; but his hope was resurrected when he raised his eyes to heaven
and recognized his aspirations. He bemoaned his compatriots, he bemoaned those of those who
had promised him support but failed to deliver, to the point where, deeply disillusioned, he wanted
to abandon his quest and give up everything. But such feelings faded quickly, and he returned to
his work of bearing the cross of his suffering."
To bigoted Spaniards in Spain and the Philippines, Rizal was the most intellectual,
courageous, and deadly opponent of reactionaries and tyrants; as a result, he should be publicly
murdered as an example and a warning to those of his ilk.
If you're still looking for a reason why he's regarded as the greatest Filipino hero of all
time, look no further. It's simply because he is "a man honored after death by popular veneration,
because of remarkable service to mankind." We can see that Rizal was already regarded as the
preeminent leader of his country by both Filipinos and foreigners even before his execution. Many
people thought he was the Philippines' greatest export, and that his arrival in the world was akin
to the emergence of a rare comet, whose unusual brilliance occurs every other century.
Many examples may be provided to show that Rizal's leadership was recognized by his
countrymen both at home and abroad even before the commencement of the Revolution against
Spain in 1896. He was frequently elected or appointed as president or leader by a unanimous
vote. The revolutionary group known as the Katipunan recognized Rizal's leadership and
magnificence by making him Honorary President and using his surname Rizal as the password
for third-degree members, according to history.
We occasionally come across Filipinos who believe that Andres Bonifacio, not Jose Rizal,
is the first national hero who deserves to be recognized and canonized. They claim that Rizal
never used a gun, rifle, or sword in the fight for the country's liberty and independence on the
battlefield. In these lines, Rafael Palma sums up the case of Rizal vs. Bonifacio perfectly:
It should be a source of pride and satisfaction for Filipinos to have one of such exceptional traits
and merits among their national heroes, which may be equaled but not surpassed by any other guy. Unlike
most heroes in western countries, who serve their cause with the sword, distilling blood and tears, the
Filipino hero served his cause with the pen, demonstrating that the pen is just as powerful as the sword in
freeing a people from political enslavement. True, the sword of Bonifacio was needed to break the yoke of
a foreign power in our instance; yet the revolution organized by Bonifacio was merely the effect, the result
of the revolution prepared by the people.
During his lifetime, Spanish reactionaries regarded Rizal as the country's worst enemy
and traitor, and they continued to persecute him until his execution on December 30, 1896;
nowadays, Rizal is widely regarded as his country's greatest hero and martyr, and the "Father of
Filipino Nationalism." "Not only is Rizal the most prominent man of his own people, but the
greatest man the Malayan race has produced," Prof. Blumentritt remarked, "his memory will never
expire in his fatherland, and future generations of Spaniards will learn to pronounce his name with
respect and reverence."
We have shown that until the moment of his immolation, Rizal had projected himself as
the foremost leader of the Philippines through his own efforts and sacrifices for his oppressed
countrymen, and that this fact was spontaneously acknowledged not only by his own people but
also by the elite of other lands who were intimately familiar with his patriotic labors. There was no
single person or group of people who made the Greatest Malayan the People's Number One
Hero. Rizal's own people, as well as foreigners, all contributed to his status as the greatest hero
and martyr of his people. Rizal could not be transformed into a great hero no matter how much
adoration and canonization he received from Filipinos and foreigners.
Give it a try on your own
Make a poster of you expressing your nationalistic sentiments as a Filipino.
ASSESSMENT
Name: _______________________________________
Date: __________
Course / Section: ______________________________
Score: _________
Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
TEST I
1. What is a nation and why is it “imagined”?
2. How does Rizal and his works relate to Philippine nationalism?
3. Why is Rizal considered the Father of Filipino Nationalism?
TEST II
Instruction: In an essay, write about a particular value Rizal advocated that should be given
emphasis and of why it should be emulated by the people.
REFERENCES
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