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India has been
criticized for not succeeding in becoming a unified and disciplined modern nation-state
like Japan and Germany. The ongoing disunity and separatist movements within the country
appear to attest to this fact. However the problem is not as simple as this comparison
might suggest.
India is a subcontinent like
difficulty in maintaining its unity, it has done better than Europe, which even today is
divided into various small states, much as if as the states of India were independent
countries. The European concept of nation-state originally reflected small countries that
were homogeneous in terms of culture and population, like Germany, France, and England.
It was a narrow idea of nationhood with a short history,
creating nations out of countries whose existence could only be traced back for a few
centuries, and which encompassed small land masses and a limited group of people,
generally those belonging to the same ethnic group and speaking the same language. Such
narrow nation-states fragmented the subcontinent of Europe and caused two world wars.
Author : David Frawley
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