Suchergebnisse

The blood-laden birth-pangs of the Indian ""nation-state"" undoubtedly had a bearing on the contentious issue of group rights for cultural minorities. Indeed, the trajectory of the concept 'minority rights' evolved amidst multiple conceptualizations, political posturing and violent mobilizations and outbursts. Accommodating minority groups posed a predicament for the fledgling ""nation-state"" of post-colonial India. This book compares and contrasts Muslim and Sikh communities in pre- and post-Partition India. Mapping the evolving discourse on minority rights, the author looks at the

This article relies on a historical sociology approach to trace the shifting trajectory of community formation and the forging of boundaries through three discrete though corresponding imaginaries— panth (community) , qaum (nation) and punjabiyat (regional identity)—in the Sikh political narrative. The emergence of each of these grand ideas of Sikh solidity has a history putatively inter-laced with the social make up and political economy of its time. The central object of enquiry for this article is the Shrimoni Akali Dal (SAD) and the attempt is to examine the shifting terrain of its religio-political goals and objectives. Since its inception in 1920, the SAD as a political organisation and Shrimoni Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee as the chief ecclesiastical authority, have been the principle bearers of the Sikh religio-political consciousness. The three constitutive imageries of community formation that SAD in particular and Sikh politics in general has fostered, do not betray a linear trajectory. Instead, there is a discernible simultaneity where each of these ideas co-exist, but subject to contextual operationalisation.

This article revisits the promulgation of the Scheduled Caste Order 1950, appended to Article 341 of the Indian Constitution. The Order provides the list of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and sets the prerequisites for a series of robust entitlements to India's 'untouchable castes'. The Order of 1950, however, also serves as a dampener to the equality claims of low castes of non-Hindu denominations by precluding them from the entitlements that the SC status promises. The Order has been amended twice—in 1956 to include Sikh low castes and in 1990 to accommodate the neo-Buddhists. However, the untouchable convertees to Islam and Christianity continue to remain outside its purview. The article develops on the deliberations surrounding the promulgation of the Government Order of 1950 in the Constituent Assembly, subsequently in the Indian Parliament, in the courts and in the public domain. Through an analysis of the discussions and disputes around this question, it attempts to deconstruct the nationalist common sense on the question of inequality and caste among non-Hindus, its fears and anxieties regarding proselytisation and the emerging idea of nationhood and citizenship.

Three years since the submission of the Sachar Report, the official paradigm remains shrouded with an intrinsic 'minorityism' insofar as devising ameliorative strategies is concerned. Quite opposed to the majoritarian invocation of minorityism as minority appeasement, this article claims to make a conceptual departure by making a distinction between 'minorityism' and minority rights. Minorityism is a culturalist myopia that appeals to identity mobilisations, religio-cultural symbolisms and homogenous profiling of communities while glossing over the inequities of power and deficits of development faced by such groups. Such a distinction, the article argues, is critical in dispelling obfuscation of reality through the formulation of generic categories like 'minority' that obscure intra-group differentiation along caste, class and gender. Equipped with these conceptual tools, the article interrogates the implementation of the Sachar Committee recommendations.