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The IUP Journal of History and Culture
Formation and Fragmentation of Nation-States: Partition of India – An Example
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The paper demolishes the lingering viewpoint that partition of Indian subcontinent was caused by religious animosity between the Muslims and the Hindus, and substantiates that unequal exchange of material and mental amenities among the people belonging to sensitive social groups leads to the formation and fragmentation of nation-states along the march of the process-structureprocess syndrome in extant society.

 
 

At one time the idea prevailed that partition of India happened basically on religious grounds. During the onward march of history, that idea has, more or less, filtered out, but on what is left after filtration there are diverse opinions. This paper presents one, leaning heavily on Bangladesh for illustrative purposes. The apology is that, negatively, it totally denounces the religious ground for the subcontinent's partition and, positively, it focuses on an immanent social process through which the formation and fragmentation of nation-states find their destination.

In 1925, Surendra Nath Banerjee, a reputed Indian nationalist, wrote a book entitled A nation in the Making, in which `nation' refers to the subcontinent en bloc. The book was acclaimed by Indians of all religious faiths who desired the formation of a nation-state replacing the colony known as the `Jewel of the Crown' of imperialist Britain. Along with the spread of anticolonial upsurge, in 1930s, a `national flag' was designed by the Indian National Congress which became the emblem of Indian nation to be established comprising the entire subcontinent.

However, from about the same time, dissensions emerged between the acknowledgedly deprived Muslim community and the imputedly privileged Hindu community. The deprivation voiced concerned unequal exchange between the Hindus and the Muslims on the scale of local, regional and the colony at large, and proofs were adduced thereof in India and abroad substantiating the Muslims as the aggrieved community in terms of culture, economy and polity. Culture, in this context, denotes language, education, religion and all other forms of social intercourse; economy, the kinetic force displaying the relation among citizens with respect to material goods and services and their mental integration with culture; and polity, the immanent potentiality of the rulers and the ruled, those upholding power and those bereft of it, to promote, subvert, or demote any economic move by invoking culture.

 
 

History and Culture Journal, Formation and Fragmentation of Nation-States, Social Groups, Social Process, Indian National Congress, Hindu Community, Muslim Community, Hindu Sharecroppers, Indian History, National Integrity, Public Resources.