In India, as elsewhere, the folk have ethnic homelands. The folk belong to those castes and quasi castes, tribal and religious communities that determine and preserve their homelands' characteristic cultures – their languages, customs, arts and crafts, legends, traditions, and superstitions – and pass these on from one generation to the next. Since 1953, the Indian government has used “homeland” as its marker in drawing the boundaries of the quasifederal states of the Union. For the folk who notionally speak one and the same language, “linguistic” markers indicate their homeland states. Most state borders in the Union are drawn on “linguistic” lines. State borders in the northeast are marked off for their folk on “tribal” lines. Areas of existing states which have developed over time into “regional” homelands, have recently been marked off as new states: Chattisgargh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal. Under the Indian constitution, the states have the primary authority to legislate in areas closest to their folk's interests: the rural economy, education, the language or languages taught in schools and used in government business, urban development and small business, law and order. The usual political arenas in which sections of the folk contend for the benefits of politics are in their states.

Familiar to Europeans from their own history, a symbiotic relationship grows between the folk and political power. The folk sustain and develop the political unit, the political unit sustains and defines the folk. The homelandcum-quasi-federal state of the Indian Union becomes, conceptually, a “nationprovince.”