Discuss how far the politics of regionalism and communalism have affected nation building in India. (1998)
Nation building means turning a diverse population into a political community with a shared loyalty. Two forces have strained it. Regionalism mobilises territorial identities for power, resources or recognition. Communalism, in Bipan Chandra’s definition, treats the worldly interests of believers as flowing from their religious identity. The federal order has absorbed regionalism. Communalism has done deeper damage, because it disputes who belongs to the nation at all.
Regionalism: strain absorbed
- Early alarm. The DMK campaigned for a separate Dravida Nadu until 1963. That year the Sixteenth Amendment required candidates to swear to uphold India’s sovereignty and integrity, and the DMK dropped the demand. By 1996 it held Union ministries. That path from exit to office is the Indian pattern.
- Continuing costs. Statehood demands take decades to resolve and often turn violent before they are met — Telangana, merged into Andhra Pradesh in 1956, became a state only in 2014. For the Gorkha hills the Union set up yet another committee in August 2026. Nativist job laws strain common citizenship: Karnataka put its private-sector quota bill for locals on hold in July 2024 after protests from industry.
- The integrative effect. Ramachandra Guha (India after Gandhi, 2007) argues that linguistic states consolidated unity rather than dissolving it. A community that governs its own state has a stake in the Union. On balance, regionalism has federalised nation building rather than defeated it.
Communalism: damage at the core
- Born in partition. Nation building began with a communal amputation. The two-nation theory left religion as the fault line that every later conflict reopened.
- Violence as a produced event. Paul R. Brass (The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence, 2003) describes an institutionalised riot system: specialists keep tension alive and convert it into votes. The pattern runs through Bhagalpur (1989), Bombay (1992–93), Gujarat (2002) and Delhi (2020). Ashutosh Varshney shows that where associations cut across religious lines, cities stay peaceful.
- Competitive appeasement. In the 1980s majority and minority communalism fed each other. The reversal of Shah Bano and the Ayodhya shilanyas (1989) were concessions to rival religious pressures.
- Belonging eroded. The Sachar Committee (2006) documented Muslim deprivation in jobs and education. The 2024 Lok Sabha has only 24 Muslim MPs (4.4%). The Waqf (Amendment) Act 2025, partly stayed in September 2025, and the Places of Worship litigation keep faith at the centre of public dispute.
- Resilience. S. R. Bommai (1994) made secularism part of the basic structure. Voters also check religious mobilisation: the ruling party lost Faizabad, the Ayodhya seat, in 2024.
Weighing the two
| Dimension | Regionalism | Communalism |
|---|---|---|
| What it contests | Distribution of power | Definition of membership |
| Constitutional remedy | Articles 3 and 371, Schedules, Finance Commissions | Only rights and courts |
| Reversibility | High: movements subside once met | Low: memories of violence persist |
The worst decade came when the two fused: in Punjab in the 1980s an autonomy demand merged with religious mobilisation and became insurgency.
Conclusion
Regionalism has shaped nation building mainly by pushing it toward federal bargaining, which made the Indian nation more plural and more stable. Communalism has affected it more deeply: it reopens the question of civic belonging that the Constitution meant to close. It is the heavier burden.