Nation Building and Ethnicity

Nation builders are members of a state who take the initiative to develop the national community through government programmes such as military conscription and mass schooling with national content. Nation-building can entail the use of propaganda as well as major infrastructure development to promote social harmony and economic growth.

Concept of Nation Building

Andreas Wimmer, a sociologist at Columbia University, believes that three factors tend to determine the long-term success of nation-building: “the early development of civil-society organisations, the rise of a state capable of providing public goods evenly across a territory, and the emergence of a shared medium of communication.”

The goal of nation-building is to bring people together within a country so that it can remain politically viable and stable in the long run.In the modern era, it typically refers to the efforts of newly independent African states, as well as nascent Balkan countries such as Serbia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, and Slovenia.Nation-building is a difficult and risky endeavour, particularly in countries with deep religious, ethnic, and/or political divisions among their people. Some argue that the task is nearly impossible because that country never truly functioned effectively.

Nation building has a good chance of success if the country or region has a good skill base and uses it effectively, as the Marshall Plan did after WWII. Even in such favourable circumstances, however, there is no guarantee of success.To summarise, nation-building can refer to the reconstruction of a defunct state or region.Creating a functioning state where none previously existed.Policies aimed at instilling a strong sense of national identity.

Relationship Between Ethnicity and Nation Building

Is it possible to reconcile ethnicity and nationalism? Yes, if strong political and economic institutions that can accommodate people who speak different languages and follow different religions and cultures are built. The European Union and pre-Modi India are recent examples of stable political entities establishing themselves within contiguous geographic space. However, this type of nation-building must be constantly monitored, or else tensions between ethnic groups will emerge. This has occurred in Europe as well as India. Britain chose to leave the EU after some of its citizens grew tired of having Brussels, rather than London, dictate how they lived.

The chain of events that followed the British withdrawal from the South Asian Subcontinent in 1947 was a vivid example of the importance of ethnicity. When the British decided to abandon their Indian colony after 200 years, it had 400 million people, 100 million of whom were Muslims. Muslims were concentrated in two areas of the colony. Around 70 million people were distributed evenly between the northwest and northeast. The remaining 30 million people were dispersed throughout the Indian British domain. Eight million of these people moved to Pakistan, leaving 22 million behind. Their population has nearly tenfold increased to 200 million, accounting for 15% of modern India’s total population.

State Building vs Nation Building

Historically, there has been some confusion between the terms nation-building and state-building (the terms are sometimes used interchangeably in North America). In political science, both have fairly narrow and distinct definitions, with the former referring to national identity and the latter to infrastructure and state institutions. The existence of two very different schools of thought on state-building has muddied the debate even more. The first (most prevalent in the media) portrays state-building as a foreign country’s interventionist action. The second (more academic in origin and increasingly accepted by international institutions) views state-building as a native process.

Role of Education in Nation Building

The expansion of primary school provision is frequently regarded as a critical driver in the process of nation-building. During the nineteenth century, European rulers relied on state-controlled primary schooling to instill in their subjects a common language, a shared identity, and a sense of duty and loyalty to the regime. Mass primary education was introduced in Prussia to foster “loyalty, obedience, and devotion to the King.” These beliefs about the power of education in forming loyalty to the sovereign were adopted by states all over the world, in both non-democratic and democratic settings.

Government-sponsored education programmes in the Soviet Union emphasised not only academic content and skills, but also “a love of country and mercilessness to the enemy, stubbornness in overcoming difficulties, an iron discipline, and love of oppressed peoples, the spirit of adventure and constant striving.”

Conclusion

Economic and social factors are both viewed as influential in a functional understanding of nation-building. Different conditions influence the development of nation-states at different times and places. It has been proposed that as states were established, elites and masses in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States gradually grew to identify with each other, and that nationalism developed as more people were able to participate politically and receive public goods in exchange for taxes. Because of differences in underlying conditions, the more recent development of nation-states in geographically diverse postcolonial areas may not be comparable.