How do emotions influence the making of a nation-state? In this paper, I examine how emotions frame articulations of belonging in nation-making in British India. I argue that emotional practices—as things we do in the world—provide a template for how to feel about the nation and frame the articulation, percolation, and contestation of belonging in nation-making. Such understanding helps situate emotions in the ‘in-between’ as simultaneously cognitive, embodied, and social practices. I propose four ideal-type mechanisms through which national belonging becomes an emotional practice: (1) evocation—generating specific emotions; (2) alignment—mobilising individuals towards emotional articulations; (3) boundary maintenance—regulating who belongs and who doesn’t; and (4) habituation—inculcating a template for how to feel for a nation. To examine how emotional practices frame belonging, I conduct archival research on four anticolonial leaders—Mohandas Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Bhimrao Ambedkar, and Vinayak Savarkar—who articulated distinct forms of nation-making in British India. Using the emotional practice approach, I elaborate on how satyagraha (truth-force) in Gandhi, Pakistan in Jinnah, social justice in Ambedkar, and Hindudom in Savarkar became emotional, and in turn, framed national belonging in British India.
