The reference here is to a variety of literature produced by several American social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by the members of the Committee on Comparative Politics. The theory of nation-building these scholars sought to propound ignored uniformly the ethnic dimension of politics in the new states and the historical continuities that dogged the policies of the new states towards nation-building. These include, among others, Gabriel Almond and James S. Coleman, The Politics of Developing Areas (Princeton: 1960); Lucian Pye (ed.), Communications and Political Development (Princeton: 1963); G. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: 1963); David Apter, Politics of Modernization (Chicago: 1965); Willard A. Beling & George O. Totten (eds.), Developing Nations: Quest for a Model (New York: 1970); Karl Deutsch and William Foltz, Nation Building (New York: 1966).
2.
For a detailed analysis of this process of interaction between ethnicity and State in India see, KothariRajni, ‘Ethnicity’, in his Rethinking Development: In Search of Humane Alternatives (Delhi: Ajanta Publishers, 1988), pp. 191–224.
3.
Such a response of an ethnic majority, when it expresses itself through the state policy of forced assimilation of the ethnic minorities, throws the normal process of assimilation (market and citizenship as also inter-cultural dialogues) out of gear. The insecure ethnic minorities then demand separate and autonomous political arrangements for themselves. For a detailed analysis of this process in the context of an Indian State, Assam, see, AcharyaS.K.; ‘Ethnic Processes in North-Eastern India’, Economic & Political Weekly, 21 May 1988.
4.
For further details on ethnic composition in Iran and for implications of the shift, which emphasizes ethno-religious identity in place of the ethno-linguistic, in the post-Revolution Islamic Republic of Iran, see HigginsPatricia J., ‘Minority-State Relations in Contemporary Iran’, in BanuaziziAliWeinerMyron (eds.), The State, Religion and Ethnic Politics: Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1987).
5.
Ayatollah Khomeini's policy of not consolidating the State too prematurely and keeping the revolutionary elan alive had, no doubt, succeeded in maintaining the primacy of religious identity over other ethnic identities. But once the state, after consolidation, begins to address problems of economic development and normalizes its functioning in the international order, its ethno-religious character is likely to make itself vulnerable to the pulls of ethnicities. For a detailed analysis of this issue see AkhaviShahrough, ‘State Formation and Consolidation in Twentieth Century Iran’, in BanuaziziAliWeinerMyron (eds.), The State, Religion and Ethnic Politics, op. cit., note 4.
6.
For a detailed analysis of how the revivalist Islamic movement is being made a basis for a new national identity in Afghanistan, see, NabyEden, ‘The Changing Role of Islam as a Unifying Force in Afghanistan’, in BanuaziziAliWeinerMyron, The State, Religion and Ethnic Politics: Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, op. cit., note 4.
