NCERT Textbook - The Challenges of Cultural Diversity | Old & New NCERTs for IAS Preparation (Must Read) - UPSC PDF Download

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D ifferent kinds of social institutions, ranging from the family to the market, 
can bring people together, create strong collective identities and strengthen 
social cohesion, as you learnt in chapters 3 and 4. But, on the other hand, 
as chapters 4 and 5 showed, the very same institutions can also be sources 
of inequality and exclusion. In this chapter, you will learn about some of the 
tensions and difficulties associated with cultural diversity. What precisely does 
‘cultural diversity’ mean, and why is it seen as a challenge? 
The term ‘diversity’ emphasises differences rather than inequalities. When 
we say that India is a nation of great cultural diversity, we mean that there are 
many different types of social groups and communities living here. These are 
communities defined by cultural markers such as language, religion, sect, race 
or caste. When these diverse communities are also part of a larger entity like a 
nation, then difficulties may be created by competition or conflict between them. 
This is why cultural diversity can present tough challenges. The 
difficulties arise from the fact that cultural identities are very powerful – they 
can arouse intense passions and are often able to moblise large numbers 
of people. Sometimes cultural differences are accompanied by economic 
and social inequalities, and this further complicates things. Measures to 
address the inequalities or injustices suffered by one community can provoke 
opposition from other communities. The situation is made worse when scarce  
resources – like river waters, jobs or government funds – have to be shared. 
6.1 The Impor Tance of c ommun ITy Iden TITy Every human being needs a sense of stable identity to operate in this world. 
Questions like — Who am I? How am I different from others? How do others 
understand and comprehend me? What goals and aspirations should I have? – 
constantly crop up in our life right from childhood. We are able to answer many 
of these questions because of the way in which we are socialised, or taught 
how to live in society by our immediate families and our community in various 
senses. (Recall the discussion of socialisation in your Class XI textbooks.) The 
socialisation process involves a continuous dialogue, negotiation and even 
struggle against significant others (those directly involved in our lives) like our 
parents, family, kin group and our community. Our community provides us 
the language (our mother tongue) and the cultural values through which we 
comprehend the world. It also anchors our self-identity. 
Community identity is based on birth and ‘belonging’ rather than on some 
form of acquired qualifications or ‘accomplishment’. It is what we ‘are’ rather 
than what we have ‘become’. We don’t have to do anything to be born into a 
community – in fact, no one has any choice about which family or community or 
country they are born into. These kinds of identities are called ‘ascriptive’ – that 
is, they are determined by the birth and do not involve any choice on the part of 
the individuals concerned. It is an odd fact of social life that people feel a deep 
Indian Society
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Chapter 6.indd   97 9/2/2022   12:52:44 PM
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D ifferent kinds of social institutions, ranging from the family to the market, 
can bring people together, create strong collective identities and strengthen 
social cohesion, as you learnt in chapters 3 and 4. But, on the other hand, 
as chapters 4 and 5 showed, the very same institutions can also be sources 
of inequality and exclusion. In this chapter, you will learn about some of the 
tensions and difficulties associated with cultural diversity. What precisely does 
‘cultural diversity’ mean, and why is it seen as a challenge? 
The term ‘diversity’ emphasises differences rather than inequalities. When 
we say that India is a nation of great cultural diversity, we mean that there are 
many different types of social groups and communities living here. These are 
communities defined by cultural markers such as language, religion, sect, race 
or caste. When these diverse communities are also part of a larger entity like a 
nation, then difficulties may be created by competition or conflict between them. 
This is why cultural diversity can present tough challenges. The 
difficulties arise from the fact that cultural identities are very powerful – they 
can arouse intense passions and are often able to moblise large numbers 
of people. Sometimes cultural differences are accompanied by economic 
and social inequalities, and this further complicates things. Measures to 
address the inequalities or injustices suffered by one community can provoke 
opposition from other communities. The situation is made worse when scarce  
resources – like river waters, jobs or government funds – have to be shared. 
6.1 The Impor Tance of c ommun ITy Iden TITy Every human being needs a sense of stable identity to operate in this world. 
Questions like — Who am I? How am I different from others? How do others 
understand and comprehend me? What goals and aspirations should I have? – 
constantly crop up in our life right from childhood. We are able to answer many 
of these questions because of the way in which we are socialised, or taught 
how to live in society by our immediate families and our community in various 
senses. (Recall the discussion of socialisation in your Class XI textbooks.) The 
socialisation process involves a continuous dialogue, negotiation and even 
struggle against significant others (those directly involved in our lives) like our 
parents, family, kin group and our community. Our community provides us 
the language (our mother tongue) and the cultural values through which we 
comprehend the world. It also anchors our self-identity. 
Community identity is based on birth and ‘belonging’ rather than on some 
form of acquired qualifications or ‘accomplishment’. It is what we ‘are’ rather 
than what we have ‘become’. We don’t have to do anything to be born into a 
community – in fact, no one has any choice about which family or community or 
country they are born into. These kinds of identities are called ‘ascriptive’ – that 
is, they are determined by the birth and do not involve any choice on the part of 
the individuals concerned. It is an odd fact of social life that people feel a deep 
Indian Society
98
Chapter 6.indd   98 9/2/2022   12:52:44 PM
2024-25
sense of security and satisfaction in belonging to communities in which their 
membership is entirely accidental. We often identify so strongly with communities 
we have done noting to ‘deserve’ - passed no exam, demonstrated no skill or 
competence... This is very unlike belonging to, say, a profession or team. Doctors 
or architects have to pass exams and demonstrate their competence. Even in 
sports, a certain level of skill and performance are a necessary pre-condition 
for membership in a team. But our membership in our families or religious or 
regional communities is without preconditions, and yet it is total. In fact, most 
ascriptive identities are very hard to shake off; even if we choose to disown them, 
others may continue to identify us by those very markers of belonging.
Perhaps it is because of this accidental, unconditional and yet almost 
inescapable belonging that we can often be so emotionally attached to our 
community identity. Expanding and overlapping circles of community ties 
(family, kinship, caste, ethnicity, language, region or religion) give meaning to 
our world and give us a sense of identity, of who we are. That is why people 
often react emotionally or even violently whenever there is a perceived threat 
to their community identity. 
A second feature of ascriptive identities and community feeling is that they 
are universal. Everyone has a motherland, a mother tongue, a family, a faith… 
This may not necessarily be strictly true of every individual, but it is true in 
a general sense. And we are all equally committed and loyal to our respective 
identities. Once again it is possible to come across people who may not be 
particularly committed to one or the other aspect of their identity. But the 
possibility of this commitment is potentially available to most people. Because 
of this, conflicts that involve our communities (whether of nation, language, 
religion, caste or region) are very hard to deal with. Each side in the conflict 
thinks of the other side as a hated enemy, and there is a tendency to exaggerate 
the virtues of one’s own side as well as the vices of the other side. Thus, when 
two nations are at war, patriots in each nation see the other as the enemy 
aggressor; each side believes that God and truth are on their side. In the heat 
of the moment, it is very hard for people on either side to see that they are 
constructing matching but reversed mirror images of each other. 
Communities , n ations and n ation -s tates At the simplest level, a nation is a sort of large-scale community – it is a 
community of communities. Members of a nation share the desire to be part of 
the same political collectivity. This desire for political unity usually expresses 
itself as the aspiration to form a state. In its most general sense, the term state 
refers to an abstract entity consisting of a set of political-legal institutions 
claiming control over a particular geographical territory and the people living 
in it. In Max Weber’s well-known definition, a state is a “body that successfully 
claims a monopoly of legitimate force in a particular territory” (Weber 1970:78). 
A nation is a peculiar sort of community that is easy to describe but hard to 
define. We know and can describe many specific nations founded on the basis 
of common cultural, historical and political institutions like a shared religion, 
The Challenges of Cultural Diversity
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D ifferent kinds of social institutions, ranging from the family to the market, 
can bring people together, create strong collective identities and strengthen 
social cohesion, as you learnt in chapters 3 and 4. But, on the other hand, 
as chapters 4 and 5 showed, the very same institutions can also be sources 
of inequality and exclusion. In this chapter, you will learn about some of the 
tensions and difficulties associated with cultural diversity. What precisely does 
‘cultural diversity’ mean, and why is it seen as a challenge? 
The term ‘diversity’ emphasises differences rather than inequalities. When 
we say that India is a nation of great cultural diversity, we mean that there are 
many different types of social groups and communities living here. These are 
communities defined by cultural markers such as language, religion, sect, race 
or caste. When these diverse communities are also part of a larger entity like a 
nation, then difficulties may be created by competition or conflict between them. 
This is why cultural diversity can present tough challenges. The 
difficulties arise from the fact that cultural identities are very powerful – they 
can arouse intense passions and are often able to moblise large numbers 
of people. Sometimes cultural differences are accompanied by economic 
and social inequalities, and this further complicates things. Measures to 
address the inequalities or injustices suffered by one community can provoke 
opposition from other communities. The situation is made worse when scarce  
resources – like river waters, jobs or government funds – have to be shared. 
6.1 The Impor Tance of c ommun ITy Iden TITy Every human being needs a sense of stable identity to operate in this world. 
Questions like — Who am I? How am I different from others? How do others 
understand and comprehend me? What goals and aspirations should I have? – 
constantly crop up in our life right from childhood. We are able to answer many 
of these questions because of the way in which we are socialised, or taught 
how to live in society by our immediate families and our community in various 
senses. (Recall the discussion of socialisation in your Class XI textbooks.) The 
socialisation process involves a continuous dialogue, negotiation and even 
struggle against significant others (those directly involved in our lives) like our 
parents, family, kin group and our community. Our community provides us 
the language (our mother tongue) and the cultural values through which we 
comprehend the world. It also anchors our self-identity. 
Community identity is based on birth and ‘belonging’ rather than on some 
form of acquired qualifications or ‘accomplishment’. It is what we ‘are’ rather 
than what we have ‘become’. We don’t have to do anything to be born into a 
community – in fact, no one has any choice about which family or community or 
country they are born into. These kinds of identities are called ‘ascriptive’ – that 
is, they are determined by the birth and do not involve any choice on the part of 
the individuals concerned. It is an odd fact of social life that people feel a deep 
Indian Society
98
Chapter 6.indd   98 9/2/2022   12:52:44 PM
2024-25
sense of security and satisfaction in belonging to communities in which their 
membership is entirely accidental. We often identify so strongly with communities 
we have done noting to ‘deserve’ - passed no exam, demonstrated no skill or 
competence... This is very unlike belonging to, say, a profession or team. Doctors 
or architects have to pass exams and demonstrate their competence. Even in 
sports, a certain level of skill and performance are a necessary pre-condition 
for membership in a team. But our membership in our families or religious or 
regional communities is without preconditions, and yet it is total. In fact, most 
ascriptive identities are very hard to shake off; even if we choose to disown them, 
others may continue to identify us by those very markers of belonging.
Perhaps it is because of this accidental, unconditional and yet almost 
inescapable belonging that we can often be so emotionally attached to our 
community identity. Expanding and overlapping circles of community ties 
(family, kinship, caste, ethnicity, language, region or religion) give meaning to 
our world and give us a sense of identity, of who we are. That is why people 
often react emotionally or even violently whenever there is a perceived threat 
to their community identity. 
A second feature of ascriptive identities and community feeling is that they 
are universal. Everyone has a motherland, a mother tongue, a family, a faith… 
This may not necessarily be strictly true of every individual, but it is true in 
a general sense. And we are all equally committed and loyal to our respective 
identities. Once again it is possible to come across people who may not be 
particularly committed to one or the other aspect of their identity. But the 
possibility of this commitment is potentially available to most people. Because 
of this, conflicts that involve our communities (whether of nation, language, 
religion, caste or region) are very hard to deal with. Each side in the conflict 
thinks of the other side as a hated enemy, and there is a tendency to exaggerate 
the virtues of one’s own side as well as the vices of the other side. Thus, when 
two nations are at war, patriots in each nation see the other as the enemy 
aggressor; each side believes that God and truth are on their side. In the heat 
of the moment, it is very hard for people on either side to see that they are 
constructing matching but reversed mirror images of each other. 
Communities , n ations and n ation -s tates At the simplest level, a nation is a sort of large-scale community – it is a 
community of communities. Members of a nation share the desire to be part of 
the same political collectivity. This desire for political unity usually expresses 
itself as the aspiration to form a state. In its most general sense, the term state 
refers to an abstract entity consisting of a set of political-legal institutions 
claiming control over a particular geographical territory and the people living 
in it. In Max Weber’s well-known definition, a state is a “body that successfully 
claims a monopoly of legitimate force in a particular territory” (Weber 1970:78). 
A nation is a peculiar sort of community that is easy to describe but hard to 
define. We know and can describe many specific nations founded on the basis 
of common cultural, historical and political institutions like a shared religion, 
The Challenges of Cultural Diversity
99
Chapter 6.indd   99 9/8/2022   4:29:58 PM
2024-25
language, ethnicity, history or regional 
culture. But it is hard to come up with 
any defining features, any characteristics 
that a nation must possess. For every 
possible criterion there are exceptions and 
counter-examples. For example, there are 
many nations that do not share a single 
common language, religion, ethnicity and 
so on. On the other hand, there are many 
languages, religions or ethnicities that are 
shared across nations. But this does not 
lead to the formation of a single unified 
nation of, say, all English speakers or of  
all Buddhists. 
How, then, can we distinguish a nation from other kinds of communities, such 
as an ethnic group (based on common descent in addition to other commonalities 
of language or culture), a religious community, or a regionally-defined community? 
Conceptually, there seems to be no hard distinction – any of the other types of 
community can one day form a nation. Conversely, no particular kind of community 
can be guaranteed to form a nation. 
The criterion that comes closest to distinguishing a nation is the state. Unlike the 
other kinds of communities mentioned before, nations are communities that have 
a state of their own. That is why the two are joined with a hyphen to form the term 
nation-state. Generally speaking, in recent times there has been a one-to-one bond 
between nation and state (one nation, one state; one state, one nation). But this is 
a new development. It was not true in the past that a single state could represent 
only one nation, or that every nation must have its own state. For example, 
when it was in existence, the Soviet Union explicitly recognised that the peoples 
it governed were of different ‘nations’ and more than one hundred such internal 
nationalities were recognised. Similarly, people constituting a nation may actually 
be citizens or residents of different states. For example, there are more Jamaicans 
living outside Jamaica than in Jamaica – that is, the population of ‘non-resident’ 
Jamaicans exceeds that of ‘resident’ Jamaicans. A different example is provided 
by ‘dual citizenship’ laws. These laws allow citizens of a particular state to also – 
simultaneously – be citizens of another state. Thus, to cite one instance, Jewish 
Americans may be citizens of Israel as well as the USA; they can even serve in the 
armed forces of one country without losing their citizenship in the other country.
In short, today it is hard to define a nation in any way other than to say that it 
is a community that has succeeded in acquiring a state of its own. Interestingly, 
the opposite has also become increasingly true. Just as would-be or aspiring 
nationalities are now more and more likely to work towards forming a state, 
existing states are also finding it more and more necessary to claim that they 
represent a nation. One of the characteristic features of the modern era (recall the 
discussion of modernity from Chapter 4 of your Class XI textbook, Understanding 
Society) is the establishment of democracy and nationalism as dominant sources 
Indian Society
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D ifferent kinds of social institutions, ranging from the family to the market, 
can bring people together, create strong collective identities and strengthen 
social cohesion, as you learnt in chapters 3 and 4. But, on the other hand, 
as chapters 4 and 5 showed, the very same institutions can also be sources 
of inequality and exclusion. In this chapter, you will learn about some of the 
tensions and difficulties associated with cultural diversity. What precisely does 
‘cultural diversity’ mean, and why is it seen as a challenge? 
The term ‘diversity’ emphasises differences rather than inequalities. When 
we say that India is a nation of great cultural diversity, we mean that there are 
many different types of social groups and communities living here. These are 
communities defined by cultural markers such as language, religion, sect, race 
or caste. When these diverse communities are also part of a larger entity like a 
nation, then difficulties may be created by competition or conflict between them. 
This is why cultural diversity can present tough challenges. The 
difficulties arise from the fact that cultural identities are very powerful – they 
can arouse intense passions and are often able to moblise large numbers 
of people. Sometimes cultural differences are accompanied by economic 
and social inequalities, and this further complicates things. Measures to 
address the inequalities or injustices suffered by one community can provoke 
opposition from other communities. The situation is made worse when scarce  
resources – like river waters, jobs or government funds – have to be shared. 
6.1 The Impor Tance of c ommun ITy Iden TITy Every human being needs a sense of stable identity to operate in this world. 
Questions like — Who am I? How am I different from others? How do others 
understand and comprehend me? What goals and aspirations should I have? – 
constantly crop up in our life right from childhood. We are able to answer many 
of these questions because of the way in which we are socialised, or taught 
how to live in society by our immediate families and our community in various 
senses. (Recall the discussion of socialisation in your Class XI textbooks.) The 
socialisation process involves a continuous dialogue, negotiation and even 
struggle against significant others (those directly involved in our lives) like our 
parents, family, kin group and our community. Our community provides us 
the language (our mother tongue) and the cultural values through which we 
comprehend the world. It also anchors our self-identity. 
Community identity is based on birth and ‘belonging’ rather than on some 
form of acquired qualifications or ‘accomplishment’. It is what we ‘are’ rather 
than what we have ‘become’. We don’t have to do anything to be born into a 
community – in fact, no one has any choice about which family or community or 
country they are born into. These kinds of identities are called ‘ascriptive’ – that 
is, they are determined by the birth and do not involve any choice on the part of 
the individuals concerned. It is an odd fact of social life that people feel a deep 
Indian Society
98
Chapter 6.indd   98 9/2/2022   12:52:44 PM
2024-25
sense of security and satisfaction in belonging to communities in which their 
membership is entirely accidental. We often identify so strongly with communities 
we have done noting to ‘deserve’ - passed no exam, demonstrated no skill or 
competence... This is very unlike belonging to, say, a profession or team. Doctors 
or architects have to pass exams and demonstrate their competence. Even in 
sports, a certain level of skill and performance are a necessary pre-condition 
for membership in a team. But our membership in our families or religious or 
regional communities is without preconditions, and yet it is total. In fact, most 
ascriptive identities are very hard to shake off; even if we choose to disown them, 
others may continue to identify us by those very markers of belonging.
Perhaps it is because of this accidental, unconditional and yet almost 
inescapable belonging that we can often be so emotionally attached to our 
community identity. Expanding and overlapping circles of community ties 
(family, kinship, caste, ethnicity, language, region or religion) give meaning to 
our world and give us a sense of identity, of who we are. That is why people 
often react emotionally or even violently whenever there is a perceived threat 
to their community identity. 
A second feature of ascriptive identities and community feeling is that they 
are universal. Everyone has a motherland, a mother tongue, a family, a faith… 
This may not necessarily be strictly true of every individual, but it is true in 
a general sense. And we are all equally committed and loyal to our respective 
identities. Once again it is possible to come across people who may not be 
particularly committed to one or the other aspect of their identity. But the 
possibility of this commitment is potentially available to most people. Because 
of this, conflicts that involve our communities (whether of nation, language, 
religion, caste or region) are very hard to deal with. Each side in the conflict 
thinks of the other side as a hated enemy, and there is a tendency to exaggerate 
the virtues of one’s own side as well as the vices of the other side. Thus, when 
two nations are at war, patriots in each nation see the other as the enemy 
aggressor; each side believes that God and truth are on their side. In the heat 
of the moment, it is very hard for people on either side to see that they are 
constructing matching but reversed mirror images of each other. 
Communities , n ations and n ation -s tates At the simplest level, a nation is a sort of large-scale community – it is a 
community of communities. Members of a nation share the desire to be part of 
the same political collectivity. This desire for political unity usually expresses 
itself as the aspiration to form a state. In its most general sense, the term state 
refers to an abstract entity consisting of a set of political-legal institutions 
claiming control over a particular geographical territory and the people living 
in it. In Max Weber’s well-known definition, a state is a “body that successfully 
claims a monopoly of legitimate force in a particular territory” (Weber 1970:78). 
A nation is a peculiar sort of community that is easy to describe but hard to 
define. We know and can describe many specific nations founded on the basis 
of common cultural, historical and political institutions like a shared religion, 
The Challenges of Cultural Diversity
99
Chapter 6.indd   99 9/8/2022   4:29:58 PM
2024-25
language, ethnicity, history or regional 
culture. But it is hard to come up with 
any defining features, any characteristics 
that a nation must possess. For every 
possible criterion there are exceptions and 
counter-examples. For example, there are 
many nations that do not share a single 
common language, religion, ethnicity and 
so on. On the other hand, there are many 
languages, religions or ethnicities that are 
shared across nations. But this does not 
lead to the formation of a single unified 
nation of, say, all English speakers or of  
all Buddhists. 
How, then, can we distinguish a nation from other kinds of communities, such 
as an ethnic group (based on common descent in addition to other commonalities 
of language or culture), a religious community, or a regionally-defined community? 
Conceptually, there seems to be no hard distinction – any of the other types of 
community can one day form a nation. Conversely, no particular kind of community 
can be guaranteed to form a nation. 
The criterion that comes closest to distinguishing a nation is the state. Unlike the 
other kinds of communities mentioned before, nations are communities that have 
a state of their own. That is why the two are joined with a hyphen to form the term 
nation-state. Generally speaking, in recent times there has been a one-to-one bond 
between nation and state (one nation, one state; one state, one nation). But this is 
a new development. It was not true in the past that a single state could represent 
only one nation, or that every nation must have its own state. For example, 
when it was in existence, the Soviet Union explicitly recognised that the peoples 
it governed were of different ‘nations’ and more than one hundred such internal 
nationalities were recognised. Similarly, people constituting a nation may actually 
be citizens or residents of different states. For example, there are more Jamaicans 
living outside Jamaica than in Jamaica – that is, the population of ‘non-resident’ 
Jamaicans exceeds that of ‘resident’ Jamaicans. A different example is provided 
by ‘dual citizenship’ laws. These laws allow citizens of a particular state to also – 
simultaneously – be citizens of another state. Thus, to cite one instance, Jewish 
Americans may be citizens of Israel as well as the USA; they can even serve in the 
armed forces of one country without losing their citizenship in the other country.
In short, today it is hard to define a nation in any way other than to say that it 
is a community that has succeeded in acquiring a state of its own. Interestingly, 
the opposite has also become increasingly true. Just as would-be or aspiring 
nationalities are now more and more likely to work towards forming a state, 
existing states are also finding it more and more necessary to claim that they 
represent a nation. One of the characteristic features of the modern era (recall the 
discussion of modernity from Chapter 4 of your Class XI textbook, Understanding 
Society) is the establishment of democracy and nationalism as dominant sources 
Indian Society
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2024-25
Threatened by community identities, states try to eliminate 
cultural diversity
Historically, states have tried to establish and enhance their political legitimacy through nation-
building strategies. They sought to secure … the loyalty and obedience of their citizens through 
policies of assimilation or integration. Attaining these objectives was not easy, especially in a 
context of cultural diversity where citizens, in addition to their identifications with their country, 
might also feel a strong sense of identity with their community – ethnic, religious, linguistic and so on.
Most states feared that the recognition of such difference would lead to social fragmentation 
and prevent the creation of a harmonious society. In short, such identity politics was considered 
a threat to state unity. In addition, accommodating these differences is politically challenging, 
so many states have resorted to either suppressing these diverse identities or ignoring them on 
the political domain.
Policies of assimilation – often involving outright suppression of the identities of ethnic, 
religious or linguistic groups – try to erode the cultural differences between groups. Policies 
of integration seek to assert a single national identity by attempting to eliminate ethno-
national and cultural differences from the public and political arena, while allowing them 
in the private domain. Both sets of policies assume a singular national identity.
Assimilationist and integrationist strategies try to establish singular national identities through 
various interventions like: 
?	 Centralising all power to forums where the dominant group constitutes a majority, and 
eliminating the autonomy of local or minority groups;
?	 Imposing a unified legal and judicial system based on the dominant group’s traditions 
and abolishing alternative systems used by other groups;
?	 Adopting the dominant group’s language as the only official ‘national’ language and 
making its use mandatory in all public institutions;
?	 Promotion of the dominant group’s language and culture through national institutions 
including state-controlled media and educational institutions;
?	 Adoption of state symbols celebrating the dominant group’s history, heroes and culture, 
reflected in such things as choice of national holidays or namin g of streets etc.;
?	 Seizure of lands, forests and fisheries from minority groups and indigenous people and 
declaring them ‘national resources’…
Source: Adapted from UNDP Human Development Report 2004, Ch.3, Feature 3.1
Box 6.1
of political legitimacy. This means that, today, ‘the nation’ is the most accepted 
or proper justification for a state, while ‘the people’ are the ultimate source of 
legitimacy of the nation. In other words, states ‘need’ the nation as much or even 
more than nations need states.
But as we have seen in the preceding paragraphs, there is no historically fixed 
or logically necessary relationship between a nation-state and the varied forms of 
community that it could be based on. This means that there is no pre-determined 
answer to the question: How should the ‘state’ part of the nation-state treat the 
different kinds of community that make up the ‘nation’ part? As is shown in  
Box 6.1 (which is based on the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report 
The Challenges of Cultural Diversity
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