Breaking down the question
The key word is resurgence. The examiner assumes that ethnic identity movements, far from fading under modernisation, have re-emerged with force in contemporary India. The task is to explain why — to identify the factors driving this revival, especially among tribal and regional communities that fall within this section of the syllabus.
A modernisation theorist would have predicted that ethnic loyalties would dissolve into class or national identities. Their persistence and intensification therefore demand explanation, and the strongest answers combine cultural, economic, political and psychological factors rather than resting on any single cause.
The note on tribes, integration and autonomy develops the tribal dimension of this theme.
How to approach it
Open by defining ethnicity as identity built on perceived shared descent, culture, language or territory, and note the paradox that modernisation has sharpened rather than dissolved it. Then set out the factors in a structured way — the psychology of relative deprivation, the instrumental use of identity to secure resources, the politics of democratic competition, and the reaction against homogenising development and cultural anxiety.
Illustrate briefly with Indian instances — sons-of-the-soil movements, demands for autonomous councils or statehood, and assertions of tribal distinctiveness — without letting examples crowd out the analytical factors. Close by noting that ethnic resurgence expresses grievances that formal integration has left unaddressed.
Model answer
An ethnic identity movement mobilises a community around a shared sense of descent, language, culture, religion or territory. Their resurgence in India reflects a convergence of factors rather than a single cause.
Relative deprivation. Uneven development produces groups who perceive themselves as disadvantaged relative to others. When tribal or regional communities feel excluded from the gains of growth, ethnicity becomes the idiom through which grievance is expressed and mobilised.
Instrumental use of identity. Following Dipankar Gupta and instrumentalist accounts, ethnicity is not merely primordial sentiment but a resource. In a competitive polity, communities discover that organised identity secures reservations, development funds, political recognition and control over land — so identity is consciously activated to advance material interests.
Democratic and electoral politics. Competitive democracy rewards mobilisation along identity lines. Numbers translate into bargaining power, and political entrepreneurs cultivate ethnic constituencies. Federal reorganisation and the creation of autonomous councils and new states have shown that ethnic assertion can win institutional concessions, encouraging further movements.
Reaction to homogenising development and migration. Large projects, resource extraction and displacement threaten tribal land and culture, provoking defensive assertion. The influx of outsiders into tribal and frontier regions fuels sons-of-the-soil movements that pit locals against migrants over jobs and land, as T. K. Oommen's work on nativism describes.
Cultural anxiety and revival. Rapid change generates insecurity, and ethnic identity offers psychological anchorage, belonging and dignity. The revival of language, script, ritual and myth restores a sense of worth to communities that feel culturally marginalised within a dominant national mainstream.
Failures of integration. Where the state's integrative promises — protection, development, representation — remain unfulfilled, ethnic movements fill the gap, articulating demands the formal system has ignored.
In sum, the resurgence of ethnic identity movements arises from relative deprivation, the instrumental value of identity in democratic competition, resistance to disruptive development, and the search for cultural security — evidence that modernisation redistributes rather than dissolves ethnic loyalties.
Examiner's perspective
Weak answers narrate examples of ethnic movements without isolating the factors the question demands, or fall back on a single explanation. Examiners look for a multi-causal analysis that combines the psychological (relative deprivation), the instrumental (identity as resource), the political (democratic competition) and the cultural (revivalist anxiety).
Within the ten-mark limit, deploying the primordial-versus-instrumental debate and citing Gupta or Oommen signals theoretical command, while a crisp Indian illustration such as a sons-of-the-soil or autonomy demand grounds the argument. The best conclusion frames resurgence as a symptom of incomplete integration rather than a relic of tradition.