The question “Is it possible to define a nation” is a broad and debatable question. In my opinion it is possible to define a nation to a great extent. As E.Hobsbawn states there is no universal criteria required, “any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard themselves as members of a nation will be treated as such”. I agree with this statement, a nation is just not a geographic concept, it is also a statement of unity by a certain group of people and they should be respected as a nation.

Bendict Anderson’s definition of a nation is “it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. According to Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities 1991) it is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, or even hear of them. The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which enlightment and revolution were dest

Attempts to establish objective criteria for nationhood or to explain why certain groups have become nations and others not, have often been made based on single criteria such as language or ethnicity, common territory, common history and cultural traits. (Hobsbawm Nat.Pg5) This would seem to amount to a loose definition by Hobsbawm for “nation”. Stalin the dictator put forward his own definition on “nation.” He believes the nation as a “historically evolved stable community” and to define it using objective scientific criteria. (Marxism and the national Question) Many could argue that Stalin is a hypocrite when stating this as he built up the Soviet Union containing many nations with little respect for their nationhood and cultural identity, which made the nation of Russia far from stable community. However his definition is useful as many agree with his approach to defining a nation through an objective and scientific approach.

The subjective stance for a definition amounts to the individual of any nation can claim to belong to that nation which has according to Hobsbawm since the 1960s led to some attempts as nation building by consciousness-raising. However the subjective definition has its flaws in my opinion, the nation of today is not as black and white as to expect everyone living in a nation to claim to belong to that nation. For example, a person holding a British passport may also feel they belong to the nation of Islam, Indian nation and African etc. Therefore to a great extent Hobsbawm was correct in evaluating that objective and subjective definitions can be misleading.

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