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missing out on the actual dynamic that drives the process of nation formation? The formal taxonomic scheme favoured in academic sociology could provide an overview, sufficiently nuanced and qualified, of the current reality. But in their application to retrospective evaluations, they could well strip history of the motive force of popular action, and slur over the important attributes of adaptability and malleability that have been inherent in practical political doctrines.
Albert Soboul, one of the most distinguished historians of modern France, has observed that "the nation" as a concept, acquired a new depth of resonance as a consequence of the French revolution. Contrarily, Maurice Block has pointed out that in its basic inspiration, the French revolution was "completely foreign to the principle or feeling of nationality; it was even hostile to it". Hobsbawm has sought to resolve this deep binary opposition by arguing that the French revolution created the conditions for a divergence between two different views of the nation: "the revolutionary-democratic and the nationalist". The distinction between the two came to be blurred within the context of the French revolution itself. As it proceeded on its path of involution under the pressure of armed intervention by the European ancient regime, the French revolution rapidly narrowed down the scope of its notion of "citizenship" - from being the natural right of all who subscribed to the revolutionary democratic values of the incipient French state, it came to be portrayed as a privilege confined only to those who spoke the French language. From a question of political conviction, "citizenship" was rapidly transformed into a cultural and linguistic attribute.
This rapid flux of identities would be incomprehensible if the conflation of concepts and the subsumption of one within another are ruled out apriori. Academic procedures that would be ruled inadmissible by the purist, could well hold the key to a deeper understanding of social reality. In advancing an uncompromising argument for theoretical rigour, Oommen has written a tract which will be read with profit by anybody interested in contemporary political realities. But the jury presumably remains out on the more vital question: does he manage concurrently to do justice to the varied complexities of nation formation as a modern historical process? If this review should advance a provisional verdict, then that would clearly be in the negative.
Sukumar Muralidharan