The Politics of Nationalism examines the process of nationality construction within the Hill people of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. The book places the issue in an historical context and begins with the first encounter of the Hill people with the British in 1760; it traces their loss of independence and consequent marginalisation within the colonial state. The book then argues that nation-state is tuned to the needs and aspirations of the dominant community; and the Hill people being the subordinate group continued to be marginalised within the State of Pakistan and then Bangladesh. The marginalisation was total-political, economic and military. The state, however, undertook its policies in the name of nation or national development, for in the matrix of nation-state, nation and state are synonymous. Consequently the Hill people today claim themselves to be a separate nation jumma within the state of Bangladesh. The book, however, concludes that jumma nationalism too is beset with hegemonism, and as such cannot be an answer for the Hill people. It concludes by positing an alternate idea of nation-state