Can a Muslim Be an Indian

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2109489
AutoresGyanendra Pandey (0000-0002-0360-3638, Johns Hopkins University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1999
Volumen41
Número4
Páginas608-629
Fecha de publicación1999-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417599003072
PMID20120548
OpenAlexW2160961940
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas91

I want to begin this paper with two simple points. One is that nations are established by constructing a core or mainstream-the essential, natural, soul of the nation, as it is claimed. The other is that minorities are constituted along with the nation-for they are the means of constituting national majorities or mainstreams. Nations, and nationalisms, are established by defining boundaries. However, these are not always-or perhaps, ever-sharply or easily defined. Nationalisms have therefore commonly moved along the path of identifying the core or mainstream of the nation. Alongside this emerge notions of minorities, marginal communities, or elements,Brackette F. Williams makes the point as follows in her discussion of ethnicity in the context of territorial and cultural nationalism. Like tribe, race, or barbarian, she notes, the label ethnicity identifies those who are at the borders of empire or nation. "Within putatively homogenous nation-states, this border is an ideologically produced boundary between 'mainstream' and peripheral categorical units of this kind of 'imagined' social order." Williams, 'A Class Act: Anthropology and the Race to Nation across Ethnic Terrain,' Annual Review of Anthropology, 18 (1989), 439. the fuzzy edges and grey areas around which the question of boundaries-geographical, social, and cultural-will be negotiated or fought over

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