Page 5 - Lessonnote_Structural Change
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citizenship may appear natural to us today. Before the First World
War passports were not widely used for international travel, and
in most areas few people had one. Societies were, however, not
always organised on these lines.
Nation State as dominant political form
• Nation state pertains to a particular type of state, characteristic of the
modern world.
• A government has sovereign power within a defined territorial area, and
the people are citizens of a single nation.
• Nation states are closely associated with the rise of nationalism.
• The principle of nationalism assumes that any set of people have a right
to be free and exercise sovereign power.
• It is an important part of the rise of democratic ideas.
• It must have struck you that the practice of colonialism and the principle
of nationalism and democratic rights are contradictory.
• For colonial rule implied foreign rule such as British rule over India.
• Nationalism implied that the people of India or of any colonised society
have an equal right to be sovereign.
• Indian nationalist leaders were quick to grasp this irony.
• They declared that freedom or swaraj was their birth- right and fought
for both political and economic freedom.
