INDIAN MULTICULTURALISM IN PRACTICE

Abstract

India is an excellent case for studying multiculturalism because of its vast socio-cultural lingual and religious diversity. The diversity of Indian society is not a new phenomena, like Western democratic societies, rather it existed since very past times. Therefore, it can be said that Indian minorities fall in the category of indigenous groups. Scholars like Will Kymlicka have argued that national minorities need some special constitutional safeguards for protecting their distinctive identities. The Indian constitution is a reflection of the principles of multiculturalism when it comes to the cultural and educational rights of minorities. The constitutional framers have done a commendable job by recognising the diversity of livelihood and guaranteed a safe survival to all the communities. The Indian constitution actively discourages all kinds of discriminations on the basis of particular identity of a person, like caste, creed, religion or language. It also mentions certain special rights for minorities in order to empower them and protect them from any kind of assimilationist programmes of the state. However, in the recent times there has been reported some violations of the multiculturalist framework of Indian constitution. This paper is therefore, an attempt to uncover all those violations of minority rights. The paper explores the various forces that have been responsible for curtailing the public space of minorities and trying to redefine the conceptions of citizenship and nationalism in a way that was not espoused by the constitutional ancestors. The approaches of whole marginalisation and discrimination of the Muslim community are highlighted by the Sachar Committee Report. xxxiii This report deals with the different cultural, social, economic, political and psychological issues of the Muslim minority in a comprehensive way. It empirically examines their miserable conditions and with statical data it provides an equal importance to the constitutional objective on minority rights with its normative aspect. It highlights the realisation for a strong and stable multicultural country with its democratic society while examining the constitutional provisions on minority rights. The report also shed its light on the exclusion of Indian Muslims from the governmental framework of Indian state. xxxiv The reports have highlighted the backwardness of Muslims community while analysis of different developmental indicators by the government. The Muslims are far behind as compare to other minorities and community of the society in terms of the developmental like cases, they other In case of men are better than women are in worse than men folk in the The miserable conditions of in India due both the state partly and also of the