Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia

Abstract

The study of the processes by which ethnic groups and nations are formed has been beset by a persistent and fundamental conceptual difference among scholars concerning the very nature of the groups involved, namely, whether they are ‘natural’, ‘primordial’, ‘given’ communities or whether they are creations of interested leaders, of elite groups, or of the political system in which they are included.‘ 1 The primordialist argues that every person carries with him through life ‘attachments’ derived from place of birth, kinship relationships, religion, language, and social practices that are ‘natural’ for him, ‘spiritual’ in character, and that provide a basis for an easy ‘affinity’ with other peoples from the same background. These ‘attachments’ constitute the ‘givens’ of the human condition and are ‘rooted in the non-rational foundations of personality.’ 2 Some go so far as to argue that such attachments that form the core of ethnicity are biological and genetic in nature. 3 Whatever differences in detail exist among the spokesmen for the primordialist point of view, they tend to unite upon the explicit or implicit argument that ethnicity, properly defined, is based upon descent. 4 Since, however, it is quite obvious that there are very few groups in the world today whose members can lay any serious claim to a known common origin, it is not actual descent that is considered essential to the definition of an ethnic group but a belief in a common descent.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 52 citations exist upstream.