NATION AND NATIONALITY, STATE AND CITIZENSHIP

The nation and nationality evolve through organic interactive relationships based on ethnocultural factors and processes with shared history within a certain territorial limit. That interactive relationship manifests into a way of life based on patterns of living, resource generation, value addition, sharing, custom, ritual, habit, communication, interaction, symbolism, observation, celebration, and performance. However, the territorial limit imposed a limit on both the area and the resources. Which has a limiting impact on the growing and expanding ways of life based on population growth and the need structures. The limiting impact triggered competition for control of shared natural resources such as land, water, mineral, and forest resources, as well as other limited resource patterns.

1. Nation to State

The competition may be interspecific or intraspecific for the display and application of overt or covert power, be it mental, physical, technological, or any other, for the control of the territory and resources. The interspecific competition is between members of different national entities for control over shared resources and extraphysical space. On the other hand, intraspecific competition is among the members of the same national entity for control over the same limited resources and physical space. The expansion or contraction is the unfolding of national power and processes into state power and processes.

The ultimate aim is to control, influence, intimidate, make subservient, and dominate through overt and covert displays of power. As power politics come into being, so does the manifestation of the state. The state and power are inextricably linked, as are other legal paraphernalia such as laws, rules, regulations, adjudication, and so on, which are required to mandate obedience, submission, and discipline to the laws, rules, and orders of the state authorities.

1.1. Features

The state became the repository of:

• Sovereign power and authority

• Law and justice 

• Membership was redefined in legal and political terms, e.g., citizenship.

• Membership was ingrained with certain rights, duties, responsibilities, and obligations.

• Laws, rules, and orders were binding.

• Obedience and compliance with state authorities are essential.

1.2. Components

The basic components of the state systems are

• Population,

• Territory,

• Government

• Independence and

• Sovereignty.

2. History

History is replete with such instances. Since ancient times, the nation-state system has moved into the state system through expansion or contraction. What was hitherto cultural, ritualized, and informal becomes political, legal, and formal. State systems are depicted in history books as empires, kingdoms, duchies, principalities, etc., with so many other nomenclatures.

Throughout their long history, most modern European countries have been divided into several duchies or small kingdoms, each with their own independence.In its long history, Germany has rarely been united. For most of the two millennia that Central Europe has been inhabited by German-speaking peoples, such as the Eastern Franks, the area now called Germany was divided into hundreds of states, many quite small, including duchies, principalities, free cities, and ecclesiastical states. The Habsburg Dynasty's long monopoly of the crown of the Holy Roman Empire provided only the semblance of German unity. Within the empire, German princes warred against one another as before. The Protestant Reformation deprived Germany of even its religious unity, leaving its population Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist. These religious divisions gave military strife an added ferocity in the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), during which Germany was ravaged to a degree not seen again until World War II. They are manifestations of intraspecific competition.

In India, interspecific competition is more profound, leading to the formation of various political entities that were sovereign and independent.

• Kalinga Empire (ancient, 1100 

– 261 BCE, Medieval 1435-1568 AD)
• Chola Empire, 301 BC-1279 AD
• Maurya Emoire, 322 - 185 BC
• Kushan Empire, 30-375 AD
• Gupta Empire, 320-550 AD
• Chalukya Empire, 543-1156 AD
• Pala Empire, 750-1174 AD
• Vijaynagar Empire, 1336-1660 AD

These empires also asserted and displayed their potency by leveraging their power and diplomacy.

3. State and Citizenship

The modern concept of state and citizenship gradually overshadowed all other ethnocultural entities with a political overtone within a constitutional and legal framework, with or without democratic nomenclature. However, the commonalities of statehood and its membership are more political, inorganic, and formal. Citizenship can be obtained through naturalisation or by birth.Citizenship is ingrained with rights, duties, obligations, and responsibilities.

The state sets the political overtone, and citizenship is its linchpin. The state’s focus is more on:

• Political symbols in terms of respect and salutations, such as state emblems, flags, monuments, institutions such as Parliament (as legislative head), Rashtrapati Bhawan (as state head), the Supreme Court (as judiciary head), the national armed forces in the form of the Army, Navy, and Air Force (to protect against external threat) and paramilitary forces to control internal disturbances, and so on.

• Political tone and tenor

• Inorganic

• Formal

• Shared political values and culture

• Impersonal bureaucracy

• Constitutional and legal

• Unconstrained by hereditary authority and power

• National infrastructures for communication (road, rail, air, and waterways), currency, legal and criminal jurisprudence, etc.

All with the aim of setting the political tone for a state-centric approach and development.

-Asutosh Satpathy