Majorities, Minorities and Separatist Movements in India
نویسنده
چکیده
Once a paper with this title could have started with a summary of India’s linguistic and religious diversity backed up by a table or two of official population statistics showing various majority-minority configurations. Today many readers would find that unsatisfactory. Most contemporary students of the subject subscribe to some kind of a constructivist position vis-à-vis identities: that they are ‘ultimately fluid, chosen, instrumentalizable, responsive to change in relevant incentive structures, and susceptible to manipulation by cultural or political entrepreneurs’ (Lustick et al. 2004: 213). Accounts that do not ask how particular ethnic or national categories come into being and, why and how at certain times and places, people from being indifferent to nationality or ethnicity are suddenly ‘overcome by nationhood’ (Slavenka Drakulic cited in Brubaker, 1996: 20) or by some form of identity-centric politics are no longer convincing.
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