Nation-state and Minority Rights in India

Nation-state and Minority Rights in India PDF Author: Tanweer Fazal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317751787
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
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 overlaps between the Constitutional and the majoritarian discourse being articulated in the public sphere and poses questions about the guaranteeing of minority rights. The book suggests that through historical ruptures and breaks , communities oscillate between being minorities and nations. Combining archival material with ethnographic fieldwork, it studies the identity groups and their vexed relationship to the ideas of nation and nationalism. It captures meanings attributed to otherwise politically loaded concepts such as nation, nation-state and minority rights in the everyday world of Muslims and Sikhs and thus tries to make sense of the patterns of accommodation, adaptation and contestation in the life-world. Successfully confronting and illuminating the challenge of reconciling representation and equality both for groups and within groups, this exploration of South Asian nationalisms and communal relations will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Studies, in particular Sociology and Politics.

Nation-state and Minority Rights in India

Nation-state and Minority Rights in India PDF Author: Tanweer Fazal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317751787
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 overlaps between the Constitutional and the majoritarian discourse being articulated in the public sphere and poses questions about the guaranteeing of minority rights. The book suggests that through historical ruptures and breaks , communities oscillate between being minorities and nations. Combining archival material with ethnographic fieldwork, it studies the identity groups and their vexed relationship to the ideas of nation and nationalism. It captures meanings attributed to otherwise politically loaded concepts such as nation, nation-state and minority rights in the everyday world of Muslims and Sikhs and thus tries to make sense of the patterns of accommodation, adaptation and contestation in the life-world. Successfully confronting and illuminating the challenge of reconciling representation and equality both for groups and within groups, this exploration of South Asian nationalisms and communal relations will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Studies, in particular Sociology and Politics.

Nation-state and Minority Rights in India

Nation-state and Minority Rights in India PDF Author: Tanweer Fazal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317751795
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
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 overlaps between the Constitutional and the majoritarian discourse being articulated in the public sphere and poses questions about the guaranteeing of minority rights. The book suggests that through historical ruptures and breaks , communities oscillate between being minorities and nations. Combining archival material with ethnographic fieldwork, it studies the identity groups and their vexed relationship to the ideas of nation and nationalism. It captures meanings attributed to otherwise politically loaded concepts such as nation, nation-state and minority rights in the everyday world of Muslims and Sikhs and thus tries to make sense of the patterns of accommodation, adaptation and contestation in the life-world. Successfully confronting and illuminating the challenge of reconciling representation and equality both for groups and within groups, this exploration of South Asian nationalisms and communal relations will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Studies, in particular Sociology and Politics.

India’s Founding Moment

India’s Founding Moment PDF Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674980875
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
An Economist Best Book of the Year How India’s Constitution came into being and instituted democracy after independence from British rule. Britain’s justification for colonial rule in India stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. And the empire did its best to ensure this was the case, impoverishing Indian subjects and doing little to improve their socioeconomic reality. So when independence came, the cultivation of democratic citizenship was a foremost challenge. Madhav Khosla explores the means India’s founders used to foster a democratic ethos. They knew the people would need to learn ways of citizenship, but the path to education did not lie in rule by a superior class of men, as the British insisted. Rather, it rested on the creation of a self-sustaining politics. The makers of the Indian Constitution instituted universal suffrage amid poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. They crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution—the longest in the world—came into effect. More than half of the world’s constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries characterized by low levels of economic growth and education, where voting populations are deeply divided by race, religion, and ethnicity. And these countries have democratized at once, not gradually. The events and ideas of India’s Founding Moment offer a natural reference point for these nations where democracy and constitutionalism have arrived simultaneously, and they remind us of the promise and challenge of self-rule today.

Nation and Family

Nation and Family PDF Author: Narendra Subramanian
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804790906
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The distinct personal laws that govern the major religious groups are a major aspect of Indian multiculturalism and secularism, and support specific gendered rights in family life. Nation and Family is the most comprehensive study to date of the public discourses, processes of social mobilization, legislation and case law that formed India's three major personal law systems, which govern Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. It for the first time systematically compares Indian experiences to those in a wide range of other countries that inherited personal laws specific to religious group, sect, or ethnic group. The book shows why India's postcolonial policy-makers changed the personal laws they inherited less than the rulers of Turkey and Tunisia, but far more than those of Algeria, Syria and Lebanon, and increased women's rights for the most part, contrary to the trend in Pakistan, Iran, Sudan and Nigeria since the 1970s. Subramanian demonstrates that discourses of community and features of state-society relations shape the course of personal law. Ruling elites' discourses about the nation, its cultural groups and its traditions interact with the state-society relations that regimes inherit and the projects of regimes to change their relations with society. These interactions influence the pattern of multiculturalism, the place of religion in public policy and public life, and the forms of regulation of family life. The book shows how the greater engagement of political elites with initiatives among the Hindu majority and the predominant place they gave Hindu motifs in discourses about the nation shaped Indian multiculturalism and secularism, contrary to current understandings. In exploring the significant role of communitarian discourses in shaping state-society relations and public policy, it takes "state-in-society" approaches to comparative politics, political sociology, and legal studies in new directions.

Promoting and Protecting Minority Rights

Promoting and Protecting Minority Rights PDF Author: United Nations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
"The present guide offers information related to norms and mechanisms developed to protect the rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. It includes detailed information about procedures and forums in which minority issues may be raised to minorities and by also covering selected specialized agencies and regional mechanisms, the present Guide complements information contained in Working with the United Nations Human Rights Programme: A Handbook for Civil Society"--Introduction.

The Right to Development: Obligations of States and the Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples

The Right to Development: Obligations of States and the Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples PDF Author: Margot E. Salomon
Publisher: Minority Rights Group
ISBN: 1897693990
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
The United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986. The Declaration recognizes that development is an inalienable human right, and describes development as a comprehensive process leading to the well-being of all people. All states are called upon to cooperate internationally and work nationally to ensure that this comprehensive process in which all human rights can be realized is undertaken without discrimination, and that all people may participate fully and equally in this process. This paper provides an elaboration of the content of the right to development by drawing on international law. It addresses the obligations of states, particularly with regard to international cooperation, and considers the application of obligations of conduct, as well as those of result, in giving this right meaning. This paper also details the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples and how they relate to the right to development. The creation of conditions that enable a state to develop will not necessarily lead to the realization of the right to development by the individuals within that state. Traditionally marginalized groups – notably, minorities and indigenous peoples – may not benefit from this development or may be harmed by it. Even where the right to development is being realized by the majority, the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples could be violated if the process undertaken does not take account of their rights. The authors discuss the need to have in place the standards to ensure that the protection and promotion of minority and indigenous rights are fully integrated into policies designed to fulfil the right to development. Written in cooperation with the UN Independent Expert on the right to development, this work builds on his contribution to the mandated objectives of the inter-state UN Working Group on the Right to Development. It provides an important contribution to the scope of rights and obligations in this area, and the implications that stem from them, particularly for minorities and indigenous peoples.

Minority Nationalisms in South Asia

Minority Nationalisms in South Asia PDF Author: Tanweer Fazal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317966473
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
South Asia is the theatre of myriad experimentations with nationalisms of various kinds - religious, linguistic, religio-linguistic, composite, plural and exclusivist. In all the region’s major states, officially promulgated nationalism at various times has been fiercely contested by minority groups intent on preserving what they see as the pristine purity of their own cultural inheritance. This volume examines the perspective of minority identities as they negotiate their terms of co-existence, accommodation and adaptation with several other competing identities within the framework of the ‘nation state’ in South Asia. It examines three different kinds of minority articulations – cultural conclaves with real or fictitious attachments to an imaginary homeland, the identity problems of dispersed minorities with no territorial claims and the aspirations of indigenous communities, tribes or ethnicities. The essays in this volume offer a rich menu: the evolution of Naga nationalism, the construction of the territory-less Sylheti identity, the debates over Pashtun nationalism in Pakistan, the evolution of Muslim nationalism in Sri Lanka, the politics of religious minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the making of minority politics in India, and questions of Islam and nationalism in colonial India. It is an eclectic mix for students of nationalism, politics, modern history and anyone interested in the evolution of South Asia. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

Conversations on Justice from National, International, and Global Perspectives

Conversations on Justice from National, International, and Global Perspectives PDF Author: Jean-Marc Coicaud
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316510093
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Authors from a variety of fields including law, political science, international relations and economics discuss matters of justice at the national, international and global levels.

Minorities and the Making of Postcolonial States in International Law

Minorities and the Making of Postcolonial States in International Law PDF Author: Mohammad Shahabuddin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108483674
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
A critical analysis of how international law operates in the ideology of the postcolonial state to marginalise minority groups.

Political Governance and Minority Rights

Political Governance and Minority Rights PDF Author: Lipi Ghosh
Publisher: Routledge India
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Based on in-depth investigation of some of the lasting minority majority conflicts of the postcolonial period, this book analyses the current scenario in South and Southeast Asia with respect to the position of minority groups.