The characteristic of a nation-state includes:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Common political institutions and geographical boundary
Option (1) Common political institutions and geographical boundary — Correct. The criterion that comes closest to distinguishing a nation is the state: nations are communities that have a state of their own, which is why the two words are joined as nation-state. A state is a set of political-legal institutions claiming control over a particular geographical territory and the people living in it. So a nation-state has common political institutions and a geographical boundary.
Option (2) Common geographical boundary and common language — Incorrect. The boundary is right, but language is not: there are many nations that do not share a single common language, and many languages are shared across nations.
Option (3) Common political institutions and single religion — Incorrect. Nations do not need one religion; a religion such as Buddhism is shared across many nations without forming a single nation of all Buddhists.
Option (4) Common geographical boundary and common history — Incorrect. No shared feature such as language, religion, ethnicity or a common past marks out a nation by itself; for every possible criterion there are exceptions. What a nation-state must have is a state, that is, political institutions over its territory.
NCERT (2025-26): “6.1 The Importance of Community Identity … How, then, can we distinguish a nation from other kinds of communities, such as an ethnic group (based on common descent in addition to other commonalities of language or culture), a religious community, or a regionally-defined community? Conceptually, there seems to be no hard distinction – any of the other types of community can one day form a nation. Conversely, no particular kind of community can be guaranteed to form a nation. The criterion that comes closest to distinguishing a nation is the state. Unlike the other kinds of communities mentioned before, nations are communities that have a state of their own. That is why the two are joined with a hyphen to form the term nation-state. Generally speaking, in recent times there has been a one-to-one bond between nation and state (one nation, one state; one state, one nation).…” “6.1 The Importance of Community Identity … In its most general sense, the term state refers to an abstract entity consisting of a set of political-legal institutions claiming control over a particular geographical territory and the people living in it.…” |