ABSTRACT
Most states in South Asia have been confronted with the problem of forging a cohesive national identity by accommodating the diverse and heterogeneous populations within their boundaries. Though not unique to South Asia, the assertion of separate identities has been the biggest challenge to the stability and integrity of the states in the region, which are mainly multi-ethnic pluralist societies. Each country relied upon its own forms of nation-building, some more successfully than the others, but the essential contradiction between the nature of the state and the multi-ethnic social system has persisted, in varying degrees, in most of the countries. Overall, the task has not been easy for any country; it has been often made even more difficult by the ruling elite's general reluctance or failure to decentralize political and economic authority and encourage cultural plurality. This remains particularly true of certain movements in South Asia, which if handled in a more accommodating manner, might not have become as militant and intractable as they are today.
