Explain the concept of ‘Imagined Community’.

The well-known scholar Benedict Anderson, suggested that we could imagine the nation as an ‘Imagined Community’. The development of the print industry happened with the Industrial Revolution. Initially, the products of the press were only provided to the selected people. With the development of technology, transportation and literacy in the mid-19th century, newspapers reached to a large number of people. People living in different parts of the country now read and heard the same news. This had led to the people across a country to feel togetherness and develop a sense of belonging or ‘we feeling’.

The scholar Anderson viewed that such development led to the growth of Nationalism. People who didn’t aware of each other’s existence now feel like a member of the family. People who thought they would never meet each developed a sense of belonging. Thus, Anderson suggested that this way we could think of a nation as an ‘Imagined Community’.