Friedrich Von Schlegel: The German philosopher whom India’s present-day nationalists can relate to
March 10 marks the 249th birth anniversary of the European Indologist. Friedrich Von Schlegel. | By Franz Gareis / Public Domain
It is widely considered that nationalism, as an ethos, is the brainchild of the West and branched into the rest of the world from its origins in Europe. Though this is mostly true, German Nationalism as it began through the work of the German Romantics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries makes for an important exception to this theory. The ideas of nationalism here trace their intellectual and philosophical underpinnings to India, and envisioned Germany as the “true oriental self” of Europe.