“Write short note: Problems of nation-building in developing countries.” (1986)
Nation-building is the process by which diverse peoples within a state’s territory come to share a political community and loyalty to that state. Karl W. Deutsch and William J. Foltz made it a field of study in Nation-Building (1963). In Europe the nation largely preceded the state. In post-colonial Asia and Africa the state came first and had to create the nation. Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalism, 1983) saw nationalism as the demand that political and cultural units coincide, and that demand is hardest to meet in plural societies.
Major problems
- Primordial versus civil loyalties. Clifford Geertz (“The Integrative Revolution”, in Old Societies and New States, 1963) argued that attachments to kin, race, language, region, religion and custom compete with the civil ties a modern state demands. Integration therefore needs an “integrative revolution”.
- Imposed homogenisation. Majorities often equate the nation with their own culture.
- Pakistan’s attempt to impose Urdu provoked the Bengali Language Movement (1952) and ended in the creation of Bangladesh (1971).
- Sri Lanka’s Sinhala Only Act (1956) alienated Tamils and fed a civil war that lasted from 1983 to 2009.
- T. K. Oommen (Citizenship, Nationality and Ethnicity, 1997) argues that the homogenising nation-state model breeds such conflict and that multinational states must accept cultural plurality.
- Colonial legacies. Arbitrary boundaries bundled rival groups together, as in Nigeria, where ethnic-regional rivalry led to the Biafran civil war (1967–70). Partition and divide-and-rule left communal suspicion behind.
- Scarcity and uneven development. A new state’s legitimacy depends on delivering growth. Regional and group inequality produces “sons of the soil” movements, which Myron Weiner analysed in Sons of the Soil (1978). Gunnar Myrdal (Asian Drama, 1968) described “soft states” that could not enforce their own policies.
- Weak institutions. Many new states saw military coups, one-party rule and patronage politics replace representative institutions, so minorities lost peaceful channels for grievances.
- Contested recognition and resources. Competition over reservation, land and jobs can harden ethnic boundaries. In India’s Manipur, violence between Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities that began in May 2023 over a demand for Scheduled Tribe status had left 306 dead and 49 missing by 31 August 2026, according to the state government. President’s Rule was imposed from February 2025 to February 2026.
India: accommodation rather than suppression
In India: The Most Dangerous Decades (1960), Selig S. Harrison feared that linguistic nationalism would fragment India. India instead held together through accommodation:
- linguistic reorganisation of states under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956;
- a federal constitution with Sixth Schedule autonomy for tribal areas;
- negotiated settlements such as the Mizo Accord (1986).
Rajni Kothari (Politics in India, 1970) credited the Congress system’s capacity to absorb diverse groups. Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities, 1983) reminds us that nations are “imagined”, built through shared institutions, print, schooling and memory, not given by nature.
Conclusion
The core problem of nation-building in developing countries is reconciling unity with diversity under conditions of scarcity. Coercive homogenisation has repeatedly produced secession and civil war. Recognition, federal power-sharing and equitable development have proved more durable, though, as Manipur shows, integration is never finally achieved.