Chapter 2 surveys extant theories of the nation and outlines the main positions in the historiographical debate. It begins with the primordial theories first posited by German Romantics, before turning to the “dominant orthodoxy,” modernism. It remains widely accepted that the nation is a distinctly modern type of community, the product of the profound intellectual and structural changes Western Europe underwent from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. The chapter draws attention to the role of the state in modernist theories to explain why nations are generally defined as sovereign political communities. Medieval historians for their part have contested the modern dating of the emergence of nations and provided plentiful evidence for the existence of national communities prior to the sixteenth century. Even so, many scholars adhere to a political conception of the nation. The chapter highlights a tendency among medievalists to gauge the presence and cohesion of medieval nations principally by their degree of political institutionalization and discusses the anachronism of previous approaches to nationhood, thus illustrating the historiographical relevance of the study.

Gupta’s conviction indicates that Indian nationhood had earlier beginnings than has generally been supposed. The “Mutiny-Rebellion” of 1857, long regarded as a key transformative event, being hailed as the “first war of Indian independence” having “national” elements, was situated within a longer genealogy. This underscored the evolutionary process through which Indian nationhood developed. It also highlighted the multivalence of the revolt. It at once symbolized “power,” Indian agency, and collective identity: cutting across caste, class, and communal divisions. By connecting the revolt with the imperial glory of Mughal Delhi, Gupta mediated the many meanings of 1857, and linked it with a long patriotic past that evoked the idea of India despite endless fragmentation. His remarks hold the key to understanding how the many stories of Indian nationhood converged at complex levels.

This is the first of two chapters to take a closer look at Sub-Saharan Africa, which is both the world’s least-industrialized and ethnically most-diverse continent. I start here with an examination of Somalia and Uganda, which are both states which have seen low levels of industrialization and an increase in ethnic fractionalization in recent decades. In Somalia the lack of formal sector job creation in the 1970s and 1980s contributed both to the collapse of the state along clan lines and a shift by which Somalia has gone from being considered one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in Africa to one of the most diverse, as the salience of clan identity has risen in order to allow citizens to gain access to land and livelihoods. In Uganda a failure to create structural transformation has led to increased competition for land, leading individuals to utilize their often newly formed ethnic identities to claim ownership and title over rural land. I provide evidence from a variety of local land conflicts that revolve around ethnicity, as well as ongoing debates around both the listing of ’indigenous communities’ in Uganda’s constitution and the creation of new districts.

This chapter outlines how theories of ethnicity and nationalism have been applied to the Sikhs. It reviews the distinction between primordialists and instrumentalists, the modernist and ethno-symbolic theories of nationalism and discusses the postcolonial approaches. The most recent methodological approaches applied to the Sikhs are evaluated with reference to the literature on diasporas, long-distance nationalism, globalisation and religious nationalism The approach taken in this study is integrative. It draws on theories of ethnicity and nationalism, in particular Smith’s ethno-symbolic approach, to understand the emergence of modern Sikh nationalism. It locates the nation and state-building processes in the colonial and postcolonial world which shaped Sikh destinies as a highly conscious minority in the Punjab up to 1947 and beyond. The diaspora and the politics of the Sikhs in the Punjab as seen as mutually dependent variables. And the literature on religious nationalism is taken as the point of departure for critiques of how the secular Indian state has managed the Sikh question since 1947. Like the Jews, who have struggled with self-identities of religion, nation and an ethnic minority, a reading of modern nationalism among Sikhs is possible if its religious and ethnic roots and character are acknowledged.