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This book presents a systematic account of the structure of public reasoning over group rights in India. It critiques both liberal and post-colonial narratives and constructs a framework that combines their insights for an empirical study of the norms of group rights in the country.

Embracing religious belief and societal norms, in addition to state laws and policies, covenantal pluralism has the potential to address key limitations of existing approaches to dealing with religious diversity. Nevertheless, it also shares some of the problems of other ideals. Notably, the demands of covenantal pluralism seem too onerous for most of the world, relying as they do on most of the population recognizing the value of religious pluralism. This article explores the possibilities and limits of covenantal pluralism in India, once heralded as a pluralist democracy, currently under the grip of Hindu supremacist authoritarianism. India's historical record challenges key assumptions of theories of pluralist co-existence, illuminating problems and prospects for covenantal pluralism across the globe.

AbstractSocial justice is a key concept in the theory and practice of affirmative action. In India, social justice has come to serve as shorthand for affirmative action for disadvantaged groups, mainly lower castes. This paper provides a detailed analytical interpretation of social justice in a landmark legislative debate on quotas in India, namely the 1990 Mandal debate. It unpacks political rhetoric to reveal distinct conceptions of social justice, shows that claims for quotas for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the bureaucracy drew substantially on principles of social justice and democracy and argues that, despite appearances, several arguments for OBC representation in government jobs were compatible with the principle of merit. In doing so, the paper demonstrates that contrary to common opinion, political rhetoric deserves close attention. A reconstruction of political arguments over affirmative action advances understanding of some puzzling features of lower-caste politics in India. It also illuminates important questions in political theory debates on social justice.