Gurpreet Mahajan

Multiculturalism in the Age of Terror: Confronting the Challenges

Multiculturalism appears to be under siege in Western liberal democracies. The encounter with organised terrorism has placed a question mark against the multicultural wisdom of recognising and accommodating cultural differences in the public arena. As concerns of national security dominate the post-9/11 world, distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are surfacing in a way that has prompted some to say that the present war on terror is actually a war on Islam. Will the multicultural ethic survive in this environment? Will states be willing to accommodate cultural diversity and live with the presence of visible differences? The article explores these questions through the lens of India. India has been battling with terrorism for more than a decade now. While this has severely strained the capacity of the political community to nurture multiculturalism, it has successfully resisted the challenges posed by an assertive cultural/religious majoritarianism that surfaced in the shadow of terrorism. India has dealt with the schisms produced by terrorism by drawing upon the collective imaginary and past cultural legacies that ensued from its understanding of a ‘situated self’. This was supplemented by a functioning democracy in which significant minorities were able to shape the electoral fate of political parties and reduce the political clout of those who were insensitive to their concerns. The multicultural ethic is far from secure in India, yet it does not, and has not, faced the problems that confront multiculturalism in Western Europe today. The issues before European democracies may have been accentuated by terrorism but they are linked closely to the liberal notion of tolerance. Does a notion of the ‘situated self’ that informs tolerance in India offer a viable alternative? We cannot expect any political community to erase its historically defined identity, yet a reflection on other ways of thinking and living may assuage some of our anxieties and open us to the possibility of redefining our understanding of differences.

Democracy, difference and social justice

This edited volume reflects upon the known and received ways by which differences have been understood and accommodated within democratic theory. In addition, it presents strategies of social justice that have evolved over time to take care of the various types of discrimination that result from social and cultural differences. The concluding section contextualizes these concerns in relation to India.

Secularism as religious non‐discrimination: The universal and the particular in the Indian context

The status of different religious communities and the rights that they would enjoy were issues that received close attention at the time of framing the Constitution of independent India. Within the Constituent Assembly, the Committee on Fundamental Rights took particular note of the views of the minority communities. It discussed the claims of various religious communities and by involving them in these deliberations it defined the relationship between religion, state, and community. However, debates on secularism in India have, by and large, neglected the structure that has determined the state-religion interactions in the post-independence years. They have focused instead on the nature of Indian society, discussing either the long tradition of tolerance in Indian society, or, alternately, debating the viability of the ideology of separation in the Indian context. Both sets of analyses have obscured the distinctiveness of the Indian experience and misapprehended the concept of secularism. In some accounts, secularism is associated with tolerance, and Indias constitutional framework is presented as a continuation of the long tradition of peaceful coexistence of diverse communities in India. This suggests that the Constitution of India merely carried forward the existing tradition of tolerance, and it is only the recent assertions of Hindutva that mark a break with that glorious past. Other accounts, that speak of the inappropriateness of separating religion from politics in the Indian context, confuse the distinctiveness of the Indian form with uniqueness and non-comparability of its social structure. If the former confuses consequences of particular policies with the concept of secularism, these analysts mistake policies pursued by specific countries with the concept itself. Both fail to realize that the idea of secularism everywhere denotes the concern for non-discrimination on grounds of religion. Albeit this ideal of religious non-discrimination has been pursued differently in different contexts.

Gender equality and community rights: Paradoxes of liberal democracy in India

Abstract Today, the womens movement has an uneasy relationship with liberal democracy. While most women activists continue to acknowledge the importance of democracy, they remain sceptical of the possibility of empowering women through the liberal individualist ethic. Intervening in this debate about the relevance of liberalism for womens struggles, this paper argues that in countries like India, it is the procedural aspect of liberal democracy that is a bigger stumbling block. Analysing the Indian experience, it maintains that the twin concerns of autonomy and equality are nether central to the functioning of a democracy nor realised in every democracy. Democratic practices, particularly those associated with limited representative government, are not sufficient guarantee of womens interests. In fact, the logic of representative government often goes against the interests of women. This is particularly true of democracies where equality between groups rather than individual autonomy is the operating p...

Reconsidering the private–public distinction

Although most political theorists accept that the meaning of concepts is in part context specific, this dimension tends to be neglected when they deal with concepts that have been part of the collective political imagination for a long period of time. This has been the case with the concepts of public and private. Since the time of Aristotle, public and private have often been represented as two separate and discreet zones of activity, with the private viewed as the domain of the family, home, the indoor, and the public as the domain of the outdoor, the state and the collective body of citizens. Against the backdrop of such an analysis, the paper draws attention to the ways in which the concepts of the private and public get nuanced, modified and even redefined as we move from the ancient to the modern world, and then to contemporary liberal democratic societies. It argues that in liberal democratic societies the private and the public cannot be understood in opposition to one another. Instead of associating them with separate spheres of life, it is necessary to recognize that they represent two different but complementary values – namely, liberty and equality – each of which is necessary for the effective functioning of democracy.

Book Reviews : THOMAS PANTHAM and KENNETH L. DEUTSCH eds., Political Thought in Modern India, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1986, pp. 362, Rs. 175

In an attempt to promote ’a serious and consistently high-level treatment’ of Indian political thought, Thomas Pantham and Kenneth L. Deutsch have assembled a collection of essays that provide a brief exposition of the ideas of important social reformers, literary figures and the leaders of the Indian national movement. Analysing the reactions and responses of the oppressed people to colonial rule and the rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment, the volume brings together a varied set of ideas and ideologies ranging from the liberal outlook of Raja Rammohan Roy and Ranade to the more militant voice of Tilak, Aurobindo, Bankimchandra, M.N. Roy, Nehru and Gandhi. Almost all the essayists adopt a similar strategy while presenting the ideas of these eminent personalities. Beginning with a brief biographical sketch, they go on to provide a systematic account of that individual’s views on social, religious, political and economic issues and occasionally on questions of truth, freedom, equality and the Vedas. The units in terms of which these ideas are divided are, in most instances, rather predictable and hackneyed. Further, they are treated as eternal and dateless issues to which the great minds of modern India have or must necessarily address themselves. What emerges in the process is an extremely static and a historical picture. In each case we are presented with a coherent and systematic set of ideas almost as if there are (or can be) no gaps, conflicting