DILEMMAS OF A MULTICULTURAL THEORY

OF CITIZENSHIP

Bhikhu Parekh

I
Most societies today are multicultural. Although this was also true of earlier soci-
eties, contemporary multiculturality is unique in several respects. Unlike the
premodern societies in which different communities led autonomous lives along-
side each other and had only minimal contact, they are today involved in close
economic, cultural, social, political and other forms of interaction, which not only
make it impossible for them to follow their own ways of life, but also require
them to agree on common principles of cooperation. Besides, unlike earlier soci-
eties, many of which accepted diversity of cultures as a fact of life, contemporary
multiculturalism in the West has occurred against the background of nearly three
centuries of the homogenizing nation-state. We have become so accustomed to
expecting a broad moral and cultural consensus, and to constructing our social
and political life on that basis, that we feel disorientated by its absence.
Furthermore, thanks to international migration, forces of secularization, and
moral individualism, the range and depth of diversity in modern society are
greater than before. And unlike the earlier societies in which marginalized groups
accepted their subordinate status, and either conformed to the dominant way of
life or quietly led their distinct ways of life on the periphery of society, today they
are no longer prepared to do so. Thanks to the space for difference created by the
absence of a moral consensus, to the democratic ethos of respect for individual
autonomy and rights, and thanks also to a search for greater honesty in interper-
sonal relations, individuals and groups today demand public recognition and
respect for their self-chosen ways of life.
While most societies today are deeply and defiantly multicultural, most of our
past and present political theories are predicated on the assumption of cultural
homogeneity. This is as true of the classical Greek, Roman and Christian theories
as of the post-seventeenth century liberal political ones. Such liberal thinkers as
Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, J. S. Mill, Kant, Acton, T. H. Green, and Rawls
assumed that all citizens primarily defined themselves as individuals and that they
agreed on the values of choice and autonomy as well as on the content and prior-
itization of their basic interests. If we are to theorize contemporary societies satis-
factorily, we need to develop a political theory fully sensitive to the logic and
tensions of cultural diversity.

Constellations Volume 4, No 1, 1997. © Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
 A Multicultural Theory of Citizenship: Bhikhu Parekh 55

Will Kymlicka is one of the few contemporary political theorists to be inter-

ested in developing such a theory. He first sketched its outlines in his Liberalism,
Community and Culture and has now provided a carefully worked out theory in
his Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. This is a
philosophically ambitious book and demands to be judged by its ability to offer a
coherent and pervasive theoretical account of the nature and ways of dealing with
the problems thrown up by citizenship in a multicultural society.
As the book’s subtitle indicates, Kymlicka is concerned to offer a liberal theory
of minority rights. Since liberalism has been understood differently by different
writers, Kymlicka appreciates that he needs to “lay out the basic principles of
liberalism, and then see how they bear on the claims of ethnic and national
minorities.” In his view individualism, autonomy, critical self-reflection, and
choice are central to liberalism. Individuals are the basic moral units of society
and the sole bearers of rights and obligations. Societies and cultures have “no
moral status of their own” and are to be judged exclusively in terms of the way
they affect the development of their members. Human beings are capable of form-
ing their own conceptions of the good, and are autonomous and free to the extent
that their lives are based on their own beliefs and lived “from within.” Since their
judgments are fallible, they should also be at liberty to reflect upon and revise
their beliefs. Kymlicka constructs a theory of the rights of cultural minorities
based on these and related principles.
Although he acknowledges that the term culture is used widely, Kymlicka uses
it extremely narrowly to refer to “cultural community,” a “societal culture,” a
“nation” or a “people” (18, 76). As he understands it, a culture refers to “an inter-
generational community, more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given
territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and history” (18). It provides its
members with “meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities,
including social, educational religious, recreational, and economic life, encom-
passing both public and private spheres,” and is “institutionally embodied – in
schools, media, economy, government, etc.” (76). Kymlicka thinks that while all
societies have cultures, a “societal culture,” one common to all its members and
embodied in its major institutions, is a modern phenomenon and intimately linked
with the modern economy and democracy (77). A state is monocultural if all its
members share a common culture and constitute a single nation, and multicultural
if they either belong to different nations such as Quebéc and the Aboriginal
people of Canada (in which case it is a multination state) or have immigrated from
different nations (in which case it is a polyethnic state). Kymlicka’s theory is
designed to specify the bases and contents of the rights of these two groups.
For Kymlicka human beings are “cultural creatures” not in the communitarian
sense of being constituted by their cultures, but in the sense that cultures are the
necessary bases of their development as human beings. This is so for two reasons.
First, culture defines and structures their world, offers them spectacles through
which to see themselves and others, helps them make intelligent judgments about

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56 Constellations Volume 4, Number 1, 1997

what is valuable, suggests worthwhile roles, provides them with meaningful

options, guides their decisions concerning how to lead their lives, provides a
secure background necessary for developing the capacity for choice, and is in
general the inescapable context of their autonomy and choices. Second, culture
gives them a sense of identity, provides an unconditional and non-achievement
orientated source of identification and belonging, facilitates mutual intelligibility,
promotes mutual solidarity and trust, reinforces intergenerational bonds, and
conduces to human well-being. The first argument stresses the autonomy-build-
ing, and the second the community-building role of culture.
Although both functions of culture are important, they are not equally so. One
might stress the community-building role of culture, and judge it by its ability to
build deep bonds of solidarity within and between members of different genera-
tions, to inculcate a spirit of mutual concern and loyalty, to develop a strong sense
of trust and unity, and so on. Or one might give greater importance to its auton-
omy-building role, and judge it by its ability to create a strong sense of indepen-
dence, critical spirit and choice. Like most liberals, Kymlicka takes the second
view. For him choice and autonomy are some of the central liberal values, and
culture is important primarily as a context of choice and a cradle of autonomy:
“What matters, from a liberal point of view is . . . the sort of cultural context of
choice that supports individual autonomy” (101).
Kymlicka’s liberal theory of culture has important implications. First, a culture
has no intrinsic value; its value is largely instrumental and consists in providing
the individual with meaningful options and cultivating in her the capacity to
reflect upon and to make intelligent choices among them. Second, although
Kymlicka himself does not explicitly say so, he implies that, other things being
equal, a culture that encourages autonomy and choice is better or richer than, and
in that sense superior to, one that does not. Third, since a culture must sustain the
climate of choice, it should remain open to the influences of other cultures, and
neither restrict the flow of ideas nor impose censorship. It might need to restrict
the migration of people and even capital, but only under exceptional circum-
stances, and never the movement of ideas and influences. Fourth, a cultural
community is not at liberty to expel or impose prohibitive costs on those of its
members who disapprove of the established beliefs and practices and wish to live
differently.
For Kymlicka, then, cultural membership, that is, membership of a stable and
historically continuous cultural community, is essential to human freedom and
autonomy, and hence is a primary good. Although individuals have a right to
cultural membership and all that follows from it, Kymlicka thinks that the right
does not belong to all minorities equally. As we saw earlier, he is largely inter-
ested in two kinds of minorities, national and ethnic. For him the right to full
cultural membership belongs only to the national minority because it is territori-
ally concentrated, has a more or less complete cultural structure, and is often
protected by treaties. Unlike the majority community whose culture is embodied

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 A Multicultural Theory of Citizenship: Bhikhu Parekh 57

in the major institutions of society and enjoys considerable power and dignity, the
national minority is often disadvantaged by factors beyond its control and needs
the relevant rights to equalize it with the majority community. It may therefore
legitimately claim the right to self-government, to control immigration, to restrict
the sale of land, to make its own language policy, and so on.
As for the national minorities, Kymlicka thinks that a liberal society should not
impose its values on them largely for pragmatic reasons. Liberal institutions “can
only really work if liberal beliefs have been internalized” by the members of the
community concerned, and by its very nature such internalization is a slow and
voluntary process (167). However a liberal society cannot connive at non-liberal
practices, and has “a right and a responsibility” to do all it can to discourage them.
While it should appreciate that it might not fully understand minority cultures and
that liberality is “a matter of degree,” it should act if they are intolerant of dissent
or violate basic civil liberties and rights. Although it may not use coercion, it
should speak out against their illiberal practices, support and encourage liberal
opinion in them, offer incentives and apply pressure with a view to stimulating
liberal reforms, devise mutually acceptable mechanisms for respecting individual
rights, etc. If such means do not work and if the violations of liberal rights are
gross and systematic, liberal society may rightly intervene in the internal affairs
of national minorities.
Immigrants are in a very different category, argues Kymlicka. They have
voluntarily uprooted themselves from their natural homes, and thereby waived
their right to their culture. Their cultural community is fragmented and cannot be
reproduced in their host countries. And they enter the latter in full knowledge of
its values and practices and implicitly undertake to abide by these. Kymlicka
argues that they therefore have no right to self-government, to provision of public
services in their mother tongue, and so on. This does not mean that they have no
claims to the recognition of their cultural differences. They may rightly ask that
they should not be discriminated against, that they should be exempted from laws
and regulations that unjustly disadvantage them, be allowed to retain their mother
tongues, have their presence affirmed in the symbols of the state, and so on. By
and large, however, their concern, unlike that of the national minority, is or should
be to integrate into the mainstream society, and these and other related measures
are justified only as aids to that process.
Ethnic minorities might be, indeed they generally are, non-liberal, thus rais-
ing the question as to how a liberal society should deal with them. Kymlicka
argues that so far as the immigrants are concerned, liberal society is right “to
compel respect” for liberal principles: “I do not think it is wrong for liberal states
to insist that immigration entails accepting the legitimacy of state enforcement
of liberal principles, so long as immigrants know this in advance, and nonethe-
less voluntarily choose to come” (170). By contrast, older immigrants who may
have long been allowed to maintain illiberal institutions, such as the Amish, the
Mennonites and the Hasidic Jews, have a strong claim to maintain their cultural

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58 Constellations Volume 4, Number 1, 1997

practices. We may regret the tacit or explicit assurances that were given to them,
but should continue to respect these unless they sanction grotesquely unjust
practices.

II
I have so far sketched the basic outlines of Kymlicka’s theory of minority
cultural rights. It is full of many stimulating insights, throws valuable light on
many complex issues, and grapples with agonizing dilemmas. Above all, it
appreciates the cultural embeddedness of the individual and creates a theoretical
space for cultural rights, thereby making liberalism hospitable to the moral
imperatives of cultural pluralism. In spite of all this, and without in any way
detracting from its great merits, Kymlicka’s theory remains open to several
important objections.
First, as Kymlicka himself acknowledges, most societies today are multicul-
tural, and not all of them are liberal. A liberal theory of multicultural citizenship
has no relevance for the latter. Kymlicka is therefore unable to show them why
they should respect minority rights. Traditionally, political theory has entertained
the wider ambition of showing how and why all good or properly constituted soci-
eties should be organized, what rights they should respect, and so on. Perhaps
Kymlicka thinks, like John Rawls in his second incarnation, that all political
theory is necessarily embedded in and articulated within the framework of a
specific tradition. However, he nowhere defends such an impoverished view of
his discipline. Kymlicka sometimes suggests that since we live in a liberal soci-
ety, we should conceptualize and defend minority rights in liberal terms. This will
not do, for our society includes both liberals and nonliberals and is characterized
by a constant struggle between them. To call our society liberal is arbitrarily to
appropriate it for the liberals and to rule out nonliberals by a definitional fiat.
Nonliberals are very much a part of our society, but Kymlicka’s liberally articu-
lated arguments have no appeal for them. Part of his difficulty arises from his
assumption that every society has a single “societal” or national culture. This
leads him to impose a single and homogeneous identity on Western societies and
to turn liberalism into their collective or national culture.
Even if we accepted Kymlicka’s view that our society is liberal, the problem
would still remain. On his own account, many of the minority communities are
not liberal. They do not share his liberal principles and base their demands on
different grounds. For them the grounds on which Kymlicka defends their claims
are not the ones on which they rest their claims, and impose a false or irrelevant
self-understanding on them. They would therefore see his theory as no more than
an internal dialogue among liberals, from whose results they do not mind bene-
fiting but whose terms and assumptions they disown. When two parties to a
dispute do not share common principles, one of them is bound to feel morally
shortchanged and to complain of “paternalism” and worse if their dispute is

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 A Multicultural Theory of Citizenship: Bhikhu Parekh 59

conducted entirely in terms of principles and idioms acceptable to only one of

them. A liberal theory of multicultural citizenship seeks to account for the latter
within the framework of a monocultural theory, a paradoxical and incoherent
enterprise.
The difficulties involved in discussing the problems of multicultural societies
in monocultural liberal terms also bedevil Kymlicka’s discussion of culture. As he
rightly argues, a culture performs a variety of functions, such as structuring one’s
world, giving life a meaning, building a community, and providing a context of
choice. Yet he stresses only its autonomy-fostering function, considers those
cultures which do not stress autonomy inferior, and worries about how they can
be changed. This is a standard liberal view of culture, but there is no obvious
reason why it should be shared by all. To require all cultures to conform to it is to
violate their integrity.
Kymlicka goes even further and requires that all individuals should relate to
their culture in an identical and largely liberal manner. For him individuals should
freely and self-consciously affirm their membership in their cultural communi-
ties. They should reflect on it critically, locate it within a range of options, and
decide freely whether they wish to subscribe to it. This is certainly a plausible
way of conceptualizing and relating to one’s culture, but it is not the only one.
Some communities such as the indigenous peoples, Hindus and orthodox Jews
view their culture as an ancestral inheritance to be cherished and transmitted as a
matter of loyalty to their forebears. Some others, especially Catholics and other
religious communities, ground their culture in divine self-revelation and view it
as a sacred trust to be preserved in a spirit of piety and gratitude. Some, such as
secular Jews, see their culture or parts of it as constitutive of their identity and
they do not think it possible or desirable to be detached and objective about it.
Many of these communities are not averse to self-reflection, self-criticism and
even change. Indeed they are intelligent enough to know that they must adapt to
changing circumstances, but believe that they should do so through their autho-
rized representatives or according to their traditions and in a spirit of humility.
These and other kinds of communities understand and relate to their cultures
quite differently from the way Kymlicka’s liberal theory proposes. He takes no
account of this, and universalizes and imposes the liberal understanding of culture
on non-liberal cultures and defends them only after suitably liberalizing them. He
expects Amer-Indians, Inuits and other non-liberal communities to take a liberal
view of themselves, that is, to view and relate to their cultures in a way that the
liberal does to his, and he defends them only to the extent that they behave as
respectable liberals. As he put it, “I have defended the right of national minorities
to maintain themselves as culturally distinct societies, but only if, and in so far as,
they are themselves governed by liberal principles” (153). Since Kymlicka does
not appreciate them in their authentic otherness, non-liberals might find Kymlicka
a dangerous ally, and wonder if he does not defend them in terms that subtly
subvert their cultural structures and transform them into something they are not.

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60 Constellations Volume 4, Number 1, 1997

While genuinely appreciating cultural diversity at one level, Kymlicka denies it

at another. By definition liberalism is committed to a specific body of beliefs,
including a specific understanding of the nature, structure, and role of culture. By
definition, non-liberal cultures do not share these views. Since a liberal theory of
culture is grounded in the liberal view of culture, it is structurally ill-equipped to
appreciate the specificity of non-liberal cultures and cannot avoid distorting them.
If we are to give a coherent and fair account of liberal and non-liberal cultures,
we need a theoretical framework capable of appreciating and accommodating
plural understandings of culture. Kymlicka homogenizes all cultures and reduces
their diverse modes of self-understanding and self-appropriation to a single
liberal model.
Secondly, Kymlicka’s theory of culture contains a tension. He bases his
defense of cultural membership on the ground that a stable cultural community
has the kinds of advantages mentioned earlier. Suppose some of its members were
to make choices which most of the others think will weaken or undermine its
integrity, thereby denying them and their children a stable context. One way to
deal with this tragic conflict is to allow the former the right to leave the commu-
nity. But what if they refuse to do so? Should the community have a right to expel
them? Kymlicka does not seem to think so. Or suppose that the community thinks
that their departure would damage its vital interests, and either denies them the
right to leave or attaches prohibitive emotional, moral, and social costs to its exer-
cise. Is it right to do so? Kymlicka seems to think not. Again, imagine a colonized
country whose culture has been systematically denigrated and ridiculed, and
whose members, long accustomed to looking at themselves through the eyes of
biased outsiders, lack both an authentic understanding of what their culture stands
for and the self-confidence required to make autonomous choices. The commu-
nity might think that it needs a breathing space, a period of undisturbed consoli-
dation, in order to develop authentic self-understanding, the spirit of autonomy,
and the self-confidence to make its choices itself, and that it should therefore
restrict the free movement of ideas as transmitted by such popular Western media
as films, comics, popular literature, and television. Is it right to do so? Kymlicka
again thinks not.
Kymlicka is, of course, right to argue that denying the dissidents the right to
exit, or giving the community a right to expel them or to impose censorship, pose
obvious dangers. But he is wrong to insist that these are inherently unjust
measures and never justified. Individual choice is an important value, but so is the
community’s right to self-preservation. A cultural community is a delicate balance
of restraints and choices, authority and freedom, and is easily destroyed if one of
them is given undue importance. While it should encourage individual autonomy,
it should also be able to maintain a structure of constraints and to enjoy such
powers as it needs to do so. These include, under exceptional circumstances, the
right to penalize and even expel those whose beliefs and choices are subversive
of its basic cultural structure. Such powers are dangerous and should rarely be

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 A Multicultural Theory of Citizenship: Bhikhu Parekh 61

used, but they cannot be denied altogether. No one can be a member of a commu-
nity on his own terms. And if he wishes to lead a life wholly incompatible with
its basic values, he should be prepared to suffer the consequences of his choices.
To privilege individual autonomy and choice is to render impossible a stable
community in any meaningful sense of the term, and thereby to undermine the
very capacity for autonomy and choice. To insist on an unrestricted cultural
marketplace is also the surest way to cause moral panic and to fuel the very
“fundamentalist” impulses the liberal rightly wishes to discourage.
While permitting “external protections” to groups against the wider society,
Kymlicka rules out “internal restrictions.” The distinction is difficult to draw, and
even more difficult to maintain. External protections are intended to guard the
group against the adverse effects of the autonomous choices of outsiders. It is odd
to justify restricting their autonomy but not that of the members of the group
concerned. What is more, if we deny a religious or cultural community the right
to restrict the autonomy of its members, even when it might be democratically or
at least consensually governed, it is difficult to see how the political community
can be allowed such a right. And yet all political communities, including the
liberal, do so all the time. It would seem that Kymlicka privileges political
communities over the others. If this is to rest on more than personal preferences
or a secularist bias, he would need to offer a well-considered theoretical defense
of his position.
Thirdly, although Kymlicka’s discussion of the value of culture and cultural
diversity is illuminating, it is unpersuasive in important respects. As I suggested
earlier, the idea of societal culture is deeply problematic. Every society needs a
broadly shared body of practices and even perhaps beliefs for its stability and
smooth functioning. However this is largely confined to its civil and political life,
though even this is often contested, and rarely extends to moral, social and other
areas of life. Although fully at home in the public culture of the United States,
Asians, Jews, African-Americans, Catholics and others often entertain moral
ideals and forms of interpersonal relations different from the rest of the commu-
nity. To talk of a societal culture is to suppress these and other differences and to
give an essentialist and reified account of American society. We are all British,
American or French citizens, but to say that we are all British, American or
French simpliciter is to open the door to a quasi-ethnic and untenably homoge-
neous account of a political community.
While rightly insisting that human beings are culturally embedded, Kymlicka
only stresses the value of their culture, itself a problematic concept especially in
an age in which cultural boundaries are porous and permeable and in which each
culture both absorbs the influences of and defines itself in relation to others.
Kymlicka does not fully recognize that just as we need “our” culture, we also
need others in order to appreciate the individuality and the strengths and limita-
tions of our own. In other words, he emphasizes the value of culture but not of
cultural diversity, of our culture but not of a plurality of interacting cultures. This

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62 Constellations Volume 4, Number 1, 1997

particularly affects his discussion of liberalism. While rightly stressing its great
values, he nowhere acknowledges that they do not represent the last word in
human wisdom and that they might greatly benefit from a dialogue with nonlib-
eral ways of life. Kymlicka’s liberalism is somewhat dogmatic, self-assured,
convinced of its superiority, which is why he sets it up as an absolute standard of
all other ways of life. As a result, it lacks the necessary moral and emotional
resources to appreciate the value of cultural diversity and to enter into the spirit
of multicultural societies.
Fourthly and finally, as we saw earlier, Kymlicka establishes a hierarchy of
differential minority rights. National minorities enjoy the more or less full
complement of cultural rights. Such involuntarily brought and territorially
dispersed groups as African-Americans and the indentured Indians in the
Caribbean, Fiji, and South Africa have fewer but fairly substantial rights. Such
long-established communities as the Amish and the Mennonites to whom specific
historical commitments were made enjoy fewer rights. Refugees enjoy broadly
similar cultural rights because, in Kymlicka’s views, people should not be
required to give up their culture in order to avoid dire poverty and because we,
who are partly responsible for their predicament, should compensate for this by
allowing them to recreate their societal cultures (99). Immigrants who come
voluntarily have the fewest cultural rights.
It is difficult to see what general principles inform this hierarchy of rights.
Kymlicka appeals to such disparate principles as territorial concentration, institu-
tional completeness, past commitments, consent, the level of poverty in the
migrant’s country, and the receiving country’s degree of responsibility for it.
These and related principles do not all point in the same direction, and Kymlicka
offers no coherent way of resolving their conflicts. Like the national minorities,
the immigrants too are sometimes territorially concentrated. Institutional
completeness is a matter of degree, and many of the communities who lack it can
acquire it if they are provided with relevant resources. Again, a country might be
poor, but not its migrants, and vice versa. Consent is a matter of degree and is not
easy to establish, and hence the distinction between refugees and immigrants
becomes problematic. What is more, just as immigrants come voluntarily, the
receiving country too admits them voluntarily. It is therefore difficult to see why
the latter is freed of such obligations as its consent entails. Kymlicka has
commendable sympathies for refugees and such national minorities as Québec
and the indigenous peoples, and his theory is unduly heavily mortgaged to his
moral preferences. It would also seem that it is deeply embedded in and in part an
articulation of the Canadian political reality. While this political context and the
concomitant historical experiences give it a focus and vitality, they also limit its
wider application.

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