Imagining ‘Bangsa Malaysia’: Race, Religion and Gender in Lloyd Fernando’s Green is the Colour

The flurry of theoretical activity on the concept of "nation," or what Benedict
Anderson defines as "imagined community," shows how deeply ingrained the
idea is in contemporary imagination. Although, like race and gender, nation is
a "fictive" concept, having little or no scientific grounding, it has been, as
Anderson aptly suggests, "the most universally legitimate value in the political
life of our time" (12). Dipesh Chakrabarty is of the view that European
imperialism and Third World nationalism have together achieved the
"universalisation of the nation-state as the most desirable form of political
community" (19).