“A nation is a peculiar sort of community that is easy to describe but hard to define.” Elucidate.

A Nation can be defined as a community of communities. Usually, it’s the members of the nation who wanted to be a part of the community and creates political unity aim for the formation of the state. The state can be defined as an intangible body where Political-legal institution tries to gain control over the particular geographical territory and the citizens of that territory. Max Weber defines a state as a “body that successfully claims a monopoly of legitimate force in a particular territory”.

We have many examples of the specific nations with regard to common cultural patterns, historical and political institutions like religion, language, ethnicity, history or regional culture and traditions. It is difficult to characterize any feature of the nation that it must possess. For every feature, there is an exception and counter-examples. Example –we have many examples of the nations which don’t have any single language, religion, ethnicity, etc that the people follow. On the other hand, we have many languages, religion, ethnicity that the people share in many nations. All this doesn’t imply that we have a single unified nation like being called as English-speakers or Buddhists. It is clear that the nation is some sort of unusual type of community which makes it difficult to define. Thus, “A nation is a peculiar sort of community that is easy to describe but hard to define.”