Why have postcolonial theorists criticized nationalism in newly independent countries?

Postcolonial theorists have criticized nationalism in newly independent countries for several key reasons rooted in the complex aftermath of imperialism:

• Institutional Challenges: Theorists, including Frantz Fanon, were prescient in noting that the aspirations for self-determination central to anticolonial struggles often proved difficult to institutionalize democratically within postcolonial states.1
• Reliance on Western Frameworks: Many theorists argue that nationalism often adopts European conceptions of politics, secularism, and historical time. By using these Western categories to define collective action and self-understanding, these movements inadvertently locate non-European peoples along a continuum that terminates with European institutions.1
• Critique of Nativism: While critical of nationalism, theorists are equally wary of the romantic communitarianism and "nativism" often proposed as alternatives. These approaches can sometimes reject all knowledge accumulated under imperialism as "Western," which risks undermining the logical categories necessary for meaningful cross-cultural argument and evidence-based discourse.12
• Persistence of Hegemony: Subaltern theorists argue that even after independence, former imperial powers often maintained cultural and economic hegemony, rendering the independence of many new states more notional than real.2