A community refers to a group of people whose members are connected to each other by consciously recognized commonalities which may be based on language, religion, culture and so on.
Nation: A nation is a territorial community psychologically bound together by common ties of kinship, religion, language, history, customs or traditions. A nation has aspirations for political autonomy or political organization. It is not sovereign. The desire for political unity of a nation expresses itself as the aspiration to form a state.
State: It is a community of persons, settled in a definite territory, having an organized government, and enjoying absolute independence from external control. It has the following elements:
- Population: There can be no state without people as state is an association of people. Exact number of people essential to form a state cannot be fixed. However, just a few families can't constitute a state. Population should be more or less numerous.
- Territory: A group of people must occupy a clearly defined territory in order to constitute a state. A group of nomads cannot constitute a state. Territory of a state includes a clearly demarcated piece of land, territorial waters, and even the entire air above the territory of the state. This territory is under the supreme control of the state.
- Government: It is the machinery or agency through which the state functions and exercises its will. It includes selected people to enact laws, implement them and enforce justice. It maintains official relations with other states. All members of the state are not part of the government. It includes only those officials, and departments who are elected, appointed or employed to determine and carry out the regulations of the state.
- Sovereign: It is the absolute power of the state. State has full and independent control over its territory and population. It is independent of any external control.
- Nation-state: Nation states are those states in which the great mass of population are citizens who regard themselves as a part of a single nation. Differences between community, nation and state:
- Community: No political aspirations to form a state.
- Nation: A community with political aspirations not yet a state, not sovereign.
- Tate: A state is a politically organized community, sovereign and internationally.