Partha Chatterjee discusses the problematic and thematic of nationalism in Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. The problematic refers to the modalities of nationalism; statements of possibility. The thematic refers to the rules and contingencies that constrain nationalist thought. What Chatterjee referred to as Eastern nationalism the nationalism adopted and appropriated by non-Europeans following the initial formation of the modern conception of European nationalism was constrained in its adherence to and implicit acceptance of European models of national progress (Western nationalism). Another thematic is the essentialism implicit in “nation-hood.”