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‘Nation-State’ and Minority Rights in
India
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 conceptu-
alizations, political posturing and violent mobilizations and outbursts. Accom-
modating minority groups posed a predicament for the fledgling ‘nation-state’ of
postcolonial 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 dis-
course being articulated in the public sphere and poses questions about the guar-
anteeing of minority rights. The book suggests that through historical ruptures
and breaks, communities oscillate between being minorities and nations. Com-
bining 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 repres-
entation and equality both for groups and within groups, this exploration of
South Asian nationalisms and communal relations will be of interest to aca-
demics in the field of South Asian Studies, in particular Sociology and Politics.
Tanweer Fazal is Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social
Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. His previous publica-
tions include the edited book Minority Nationalisms in South Asia (Routledge
2012).
Routledge contemporary South Asia series
1 Pakistan 8 Regionalism in South Asia

Social and cultural transformations Negotiating cooperation,
in a Muslim nation institutional structures
Mohammad A. Qadeer Kishore C. Dash
2 Labor, Democratization and 9 Federalism, Nationalism and

Development in India and Development
Pakistan India and the Punjab economy
Christopher Candland Pritam Singh
3 China–India Relations 10 Human Development and Social

Contemporary dynamics Power
Amardeep Athwal Perspectives from South Asia
Ananya Mukherjee Reed
4 Madrasas in South Asia
11 The South Asian Diaspora
Teaching terror?
Transnational networks and
Jamal Malik
changing identities
Edited by Rajesh Rai and
5 Labor, Globalization and the
Peter Reeves
State
Workers, women and migrants 12 Pakistan–Japan Relations
confront neoliberalism Continuity and change in economic
Edited by Debdas Banerjee and relations and security interests
Michael Goldfield Ahmad Rashid Malik
6 Indian Literature and Popular 13 Himalayan Frontiers of India
Cinema Historical, geo-political and
Recasting classics strategic perspectives
Edited by Heidi R.M. Pauwels K. Warikoo
7 Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh 14 India’s Open-Economy Policy

A complex web Globalism, rivalry, continuity
Ali Riaz Jalal Alamgir
15 The Separatist Conflict in Sri 23 Economic and Human
Lanka Development in Contemporary
Terrorism, ethnicity, political India
economy Cronyism and fragility
Asoka Bandarage Debdas Banerjee
16 India’s Energy Security 24 Culture and the Environment in

Edited by Ligia Noronha and the Himalaya
Anant Sudarshan Arjun Guneratne
17 Globalization and the Middle 25 The Rise of Ethnic Politics in

Classes in India Nepal
The social and cultural impact of Democracy in the margins
neoliberal reforms Susan I. Hangen
Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and
Timothy J. Scrase 26 The Multiplex in India
A cultural economy of urban
18 Water Policy Processes in India leisure
Discourses of power and Adrian Athique and Douglas Hill
resistance
Vandana Asthana 27 Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka
Ethnic and regional dimensions
Dennis B. McGilvray and
19 Minority Governments in India
Michele R. Gamburd
The puzzle of elusive majorities
Csaba Nikolenyi
28 Development, Democracy and
the State
20 The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal Critiquing the Kerala model of
Revolution in the twenty-first development
century K. Ravi Raman
Edited by Mahendra Lawoti and
Anup K. Pahari 29 Mohajir Militancy in Pakistan
Violence and transformation in the
21 Global Capital and Peripheral Karachi conflict
Labour Nichola Khan
The history and political economy
of plantation workers in India 30 Nationbuilding, Gender and
K. Ravi Raman War Crimes in South Asia
Bina D’Costa
22 Maoism in India
Reincarnation of ultra-left wing 31 The State in India after
extremism in the twenty-first Liberalization
century Interdisciplinary perspectives
Bidyut Chakrabarty and Edited by Akhil Gupta and
Rajat Kujur K. Sivaramakrishnan
32 National Identities in Pakistan 41 Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign
The 1971 war in contemporary Policy
Pakistani fiction Escaping India
Cara Cilano Aparna Pande
33 Political Islam and Governance 42 Development-induced

in Bangladesh Displacement, Rehabilitation
Edited by Ali Riaz and and Resettlement in India
C. Christine Fair Current issues and challenges
Edited by Sakarama Somayaji and
34 Bengali Cinema
Smrithi Talwar
‘An Other Nation’
Sharmistha Gooptu 43 The Politics of Belonging in India
35 NGOs in India Becoming adivasi
The challenges of women’s Edited by Daniel J. Rycroft and
empowerment and accountability Sangeeta Dasgupta
Patrick Kilby
44 Re-Orientalism and South Asian
36 The Labour Movement in the Identity Politics
Global South The oriental other within
Trade unions in Sri Lanka Edited by Lisa Lau and
S. Janaka Biyanwila Ana Cristina Mendes
37 Building Bangalore 45 Islamic Revival in Nepal

Architecture and urban Religion and a new nation
transformation in India’s Silicon Megan Adamson Sijapati
Valley
John C. Stallmeyer 46 Education and Inequality in India
A classroom view
38 Conflict and Peacebuilding in Manabi Majumdar and Jos Mooij
Sri Lanka
Caught in the peace trap? 47 The Culturalization of Caste in
Edited by Jonathan Goodhand, India
Jonathan Spencer and Identity and inequality in a
Benedict Korf multicultural age
Balmurli Natrajan
39 Microcredit and Women’s
Empowerment 48 Corporate Social Responsibility
A case study of Bangladesh in India
Amunui Faraizi, Jim McAllister Bidyut Chakrabarty
and Taskinur Rahman
49 Pakistan’s Stability Paradox
40 South Asia in the New World Domestic, regional and
Order international dimensions
The role of regional cooperation Edited by Ashutosh Misra and
Shahid Javed Burki Michael E. Clarke
50 Transforming Urban Water 59 Islam and Higher Education
Supplies in India Concepts, challenges and
The role of reform and opportunities
partnerships in globalization Marodsilton Muborakshoeva
Govind Gopakumar
60 Religious Freedom in India
51 South Asian Security Sovereignty and (anti) conversion
Twenty-first century discourses Goldie Osuri
Sagarika Dutt and Alok Bansal
52 Non-discrimination and 61 Everyday Ethnicity in Sri Lanka

Equality in India Up-country Tamil identity politics
Contesting boundaries of social Daniel Bass
justice
Vidhu Verma 62 Ritual and Recovery in
Post-Conflict Sri Lanka
53 Being Middle-class in India Eloquent bodies
A way of life Jane Derges
Henrike Donner
63 Bollywood and Globalisation
54 Kashmir’s Right to Secede The global power of popular Hindi
A critical examination of cinema
contemporary theories of secession Edited by David J. Schaefer and
Matthew J. Webb Kavita Karan
55 Bollywood Travels
64 Regional Economic Integration
Culture, diaspora and border
in South Asia
crossings in popular Hindi cinema
Trapped in conflict?
Rajinder Dudrah
Amita Batra
56 Nation, Territory, and
Globalization in Pakistan 65 Architecture and Nationalism in
Traversing the margins Sri Lanka
Chad Haines The trouser under the cloth
Anoma Pieris
57 The Politics of Ethnicity in
Pakistan 66 Civil Society and
The Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir Democratization in India
Ethnic Movements Institutions, ideologies and
Farhan Hanif Siddiqi interests
Sarbeswar Sahoo
58 Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict
Identities and mobilization after 67 Contemporary Pakistani Fiction
1990 in English
Edited by Mahendra Lawoti and Idea, nation, state
Susan Hangen Cara N. Cilano
68 Transitional Justice in South Asia 77 Being Bengali
A study of Afghanistan and Nepal At home and in the world
Tazreena Sajjad Edited by
Mridula Nath Chakraborty
69 Displacement and Resettlement
in India 78 The Political Economy of Ethnic
The human cost of development Conflict in Sri Lanka
Hari Mohan Mathur Nikolaos Biziouras
70 Water, Democracy and 79 Indian Arranged Marriages

Neoliberalism in India A social psychological perspective
The power to reform Tulika Jaiswal
Vicky Walters
80 Writing the City in British
71 Capitalist Development in
Asian Diasporas
India’s Informal Economy
Edited by Seán McLoughlin,
Elisabetta Basile
William Gould,
72 Nation, Constitutionalism and Ananya Jahanara Kabir and
Buddhism in Sri Lanka Emma Tomalin
Roshan de Silva Wijeyeratne
81 Post-9/11 Espionage Fiction in
73 Counterinsurgency, Democracy, the US and Pakistan
and the Politics of Identity in Spies and ‘terrorists’
India Cara Cilano
From warfare to welfare?
Mona Bhan 82 Left Radicalism in India
Bidyut Chakrabarty
74 Enterprise Culture in Neoliberal
India 83 ‘Nation-State’ and Minority
Studies in youth, class, work and Rights in India
media Comparative perspectives on
Edited by Nandini Gooptu Muslim and Sikh identities
Tanweer Fazal
75 The Politics of Economic
Restructuring in India 84 Pakistan’s Nuclear Policy
Economic governance and state A minimum credible deterrence
spatial rescaling Zafar Khan
Loraine Kennedy
85 Imagining Muslims in South
76 The Other in South Asian Asia and the Diaspora
Religion, Literature and Film Secularism, religion,
Perspectives on Otherism and representations
Otherness Claire Chambers and
Edited by Diana Dimitrova Caroline Herbert
‘Nation-State’ and Minority
Rights in India
Comparative perspectives on Muslim and
Sikh identities
Tanweer Fazal
First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Tanweer Fazal
The right of Tanweer Fazal to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fazal, Tanweer.
“Nation-state” and minority rights in India : comparative perspectives on
Muslim and Sikh identities / Tanweer Fazal.
pages cm. – (Routledge contemporary South Asia series ; 83)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Minorities–India–History–20th century. 2. Nationalism–India–
History–20th century. 3. Muslims–India–History–20th century.
4. Sikhs–India–History–20th century. 5. Minorities–Civil rights–India–
History–20th century. I. Title.
DS430.F39 2014
323.154–dc23 2014000784
ISBN: 978-0-415-74775-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-79685-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
List of illustrations x
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction: the ‘nation-state’ and its citizens 1
2 Nationalism, minority rights and the public sphere: the terms of

an emerging discourse 28
3 Qaum, millat and ummah: liminality in the Muslim identity

discourse 53
4 Beyond hybridity: evolution of a Sikh exclusive identity; from

panth to qaum 97
5 Muslim perceptions: nation, identity and rights 150
6 Sikh narratives: nationhood and its discontents 169
7 Concluding remarks: comparative perspectives on Muslim and

Sikh identities 188
Glossary 198
Bibliography 200
Index 215
Illustrations
Figure
7.1 Minority–nation vacillation 193
Map
4.1 Proposed Sikh homeland (1967) 127
Tables
2.1 Categorization of minority communities along with
recommended reservations by the subcommittee on minorities 34
3.1 Distribution of Shia and Sunni population in India 58
3.2 List of castes among Muslims in Bihar 89
3.3 Representation in public employment by caste categories 90
4.1 Table of seats in the Federal Assembly (representatives of
British India) 117
4.2 Table of seats in the Council of State (Representatives of
British India – allocation of seats) 118
4.3 Table of seats in Provincial Legislative Assemblies 119
4.4 Religious composition of population of Punjab, 1881–1941 123
4.5 Proportion of selected castes in the total Sikh population of
Punjab, 1931 131
5.1 Biographical profile of Muslim respondents 151
5.2 District-wise share of the Muslim population: Delhi, 2001 152
6.1 Biographical profile of Sikh respondents 170
6.2 District-wise share of Sikh population: Delhi, 2001 171
Acknowledgements
This monograph is based on my Ph.D. thesis submitted at the Centre for the Study
of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I am indebted to Pro-
fessor T.K. Oommen and Professor Maitrayee Chaudhury, my teachers and super-
visors for the thesis, for their insightful comments, guidance and, above all, for
their relentless patience and encouragement. Professor Oommen initiated me into
the sociology of nations and nationalisms – a subject hitherto ignored in Indian
sociology but for his contributions. Admittedly, this work has deeply benefited
from the ‘conceptual kit’ provided by him. Professor Maitrayee Chaudhury’s
concern with the recovery of ‘critical sociology’ has profoundly influenced the
interrogation of categories that this research exercise attempts. I should also record
my gratitude for the immense faith she has placed in me all through and particu-
larly during the course of the completion of this work.
I also express my gratitude to my teachers at the CSSS, JNU, especially Pro-
fessors Dipankar Gupta, Avijit Pathak and Susann Viswanathan whose classes
on modernity, historical sociology and methodology have helped me engage
with the ‘reality’ in all its complexity. During the early years, Dr Mathur,
Waheed sb. and late Jamal sb. at the Department of Sociology, AMU, helped to
keep the interest in sociology alive.
Several people facilitated familiarization with the field and collection of valu-
able data. Faizan took me into the by-lanes of old Delhi and Mahtab helped me
to transcribe Urdu news stories into English. I must mention the support of Mian
Fayyazuddin, the owner of Haji Hotel, Maulana Asrarul Haque, President, All
India Talimul Milli Foundation and Sardar Surjit Singh Dard, Vice President of
Akali Dal (Mann). The library staff at Teen Murti library, Jawaharlal Nehru Uni-
versity library, Jamia Millia Islamia library, the Jamiat-e-Ulema library, the
library of Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee at Rakabganj and the
manager of Radiance Newsweekly were all extremely cooperative.
I take this moment to convey my gratitude to the administrators of Panjab
Digital Library for the immensely commendable work they have initiated. In
particular, I thank them for permitting me to use the digitized version of the
‘proposed map of Sikh homeland’ by AISSF. Most sincerely, I thank Professor
C.M. Naim and Dr Syeda Hameed for allowing me to use their translations of,
namely, Iqbal and Hali.
xii Acknowledgements
My colleagues at the Nelson Mandela Centre, JMI were gracious in sharing
the work and keeping me ‘offloaded’ while I was writing. I thank Professors
Radha Kumar and Tasneem Meenai, the former and the current directors of the
Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, for their support. Kaushikee and Sang-
hamitra, colleagues and friends, indulged me and took much of the burden of
administrative-cum-academic work upon themselves to help me in this effort.
They deserve special praise.
The delightful company of friends – Nabanipa, Mona, Sadiq, Sohaib, Manash,
Bidhan, Satya, Harsh, Amit and Poornima – and numerous discussions with
them has contributed to this work. Manisha could spare moments out of her
extremely busy academic and political work to painstakingly proofread and edit
the draft and also helped me in fine-tuning the arguments. Finally, thanks to
members of my family – my parents, the late Shahnaz Fazal and Dr S. Fazalud-
din; parents-in-law, Usha and R.C. Sethi; siblings, Munawar bhai, Nikhat and
Tauqueer; and brother- and sister-in-law, Anurag and Megha – for their
affection.
Tanweer Fazal
Delhi
1 Introduction
The ‘nation-state’ and its citizens
The nation-state, to borrow Tom Nairn’s expression, is a modern Janus.1 The

contradiction is inherent. The emergence of the nation-state on the one hand
announced the arrival of modernity. Sovereignty of people implied a plethora of
rights promising freedom from the shackles of tradition. Conversely, the cultural
foundation of the state obligated frequent invocations of the pristine purity of
national culture and the glorification of its age-old traditions. More often, indi-
vidual liberty and freedom was sacrificed at the altar of nationalism, prompting
Lord Acton to declare, as early as in 1868: ‘The theory of [nation-states] . . . is a
retrograde step in history . . . [it] does not aim either at liberty or prosperity, both
of which it sacrifices to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould
and measure of the State.’ More recently, in the wake of the ‘headscarf contro-
versy’, the then French interior minister (later the President) Nicolas Sarkozy
warned a gathering of Muslims: ‘This law cannot be changed; it is at the heart of
the Republic. If you demand a different law, then you cannot enjoy the same
rights as people of other religions.’2
Seen in these terms, the nation-state was, for all intents and purposes, a hege-
monic idea that allowed states and ruling groups to impose cultural monism on a
largely heterogeneous population. The term ‘state-nation’ or ‘state-led-
nationalism’ is often employed for polities in which state preceded the formation
of nation. The cultural roots of the nation – its founding myths and cultural sym-
bolism, the nationalist allegory and history, its language and literature, together
with the rituals that are yearly observed – all tend to be drawn from the ruling
culture. The nation-state had monopoly over the loyalty and identity of all its
citizens, including those from minority cultures. Long before the decimation of
Yugoslavia, Hugh Seton-Watson saw Yugoslavian nationalism as only a euphe-
mism for the dominant Serbian nationalism: ‘Slovenes and Croats were con-
sidered to be bad Yugoslavs if they continued to be Slovene and Croat
nationalists, but Serbs were never accused of this when they continued to be
Serbian nationalists.’3
Insofar as a people were assumed to be an ethno-culturally homogeneous
populace, the ‘nationals’ were to be treated as equal citizens. Simultaneously,
therefore, the unhomogenized or culturally unassimilated groups within the
nation-state were viewed as ‘non-nationals’ – representing the culture and
2 The ‘nation-state’ and its citizens
interest of other nations. From a pre-political cultural entity, the term nation
came to acquire a new connotation, whereby it was supposed to play a determin-
ing role in defining the political identity of the citizen within the state. National
identity thus came to incorporate citizenship in the political vocabulary of the
era.4 The extermination and exclusion of ‘non-nationals’ so defined from the
political community of the state led to intermittent conflicts within as well as
between states.
The task of rapprochement, arrived at through various peace treaties, led the
European nation-state system to rearrange and redefine the relationship between
state and citizens, nationals and non-nationals. Nation came to be defined in
politico-territorial terms; and insofar as members of different collectivities
shared a common membership of the state, they were recognized as ‘nationals’
sharing equal citizenship rights. The ‘nation-state’ that evolved operated at two
levels. At the visible level, nation conceived of as a politico-cultural idea integral
to the state could draw the cultural pluralities into civil society through secular
institutions and organizations such as political parties, trade unions, interest
groups and various other civic associations. And the state, by extending equal
citizenship rights to all its members, could command the loyalty of its citizens,
overriding other claims to their loyalties by different ethno-cultural communities
to which they belonged. At another level, though, the nation-state operated as a
politically majoritarian and culturally hegemonic institution as it sought to integ-
rate ethnic minorities into a national society conceived of in terms of the ideo-
logical and cultural proclivities of the dominant community.5 As T. Asad finds in
the case of Britain:
The life of the English governing class – its values, codes and sensibilities –
is the core of British culture. It is therefore only others who need to be
warned against the treacherous lure of dual loyalties: ‘One cannot be British
on one’s own exclusive terms or on a selective basis . . .’. That is to say,
participation in British life does after all require ‘forgetting one’s cultural
roots’ if they cannot in some way be accommodated by Britishness.6
Nation-state in the ‘non-West’

The ‘principle of nationality’ predominant in Europe could rarely be applied in
the case of the colonies of Asia and Africa. For nation referred only to people
endowed with history, and for the colonialists the ‘orientals’ clearly lacked it.
Hegel saw history as the development towards the ‘consciousness of freedom’
expressed in the ‘political, cultural and religious institutions of a nation
–Volkgeist’.7 This, in turn, is expressed externally through the formation of the
state. The idea of the freedom of the Volkgeist struck the Germanic nations only;
it expressed itself in the formation of nation-state. The orientals, according to
this doctrine, lacked the consciousness of freedom of the Volk, and therefore
continued to be ruled by despots. Following the dictum, William Logan, the
colonial collector of Malabar, found the Malayali people to be content without a
The ‘nation-state’ and its citizens 3
history and certain to remain so were it not for the colonial intervention: ‘The
Malayali race has produced no historians simply because there was little or no
history in one sense to record.’8
If nation-state is the convergence of culture and polity, nationalism is its
ideological vehicle. In the multinational and poly-ethnic colonies of Asia and
Africa, the consolidation of culturally homogeneous nations that could pave the
way for the arrival of the natives’ ‘nation-state’ seemed far-fetched. Nationalism
in the colonial milieu, it is argued, surfaced primarily in the course of the
struggle for self-determination against colonial and imperialist exploitation. V.I.
Lenin’s characterization of ‘imperialism as the monopoly or the highest stage of
capitalism’ was the basis of Joseph Stalin’s theses on nationalism outside
Europe: ‘Leninism broadened the conception of self-determination and inter-
preted it as the right of the oppressed peoples of the dependent countries and
colonies to complete secession, as the right of nations to independent existence
as states.’9 In such a schema, however, bourgeois nationalism for the privileges
of the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations is not endorsed. As opposed to the
linguistic nationalism of Europe, therefore, ‘It is opposition to colonialism so
defined and to those natives who benefit from the colonial relationship that con-
stitutes nationalism in under-developed countries’.10
Anti-imperialism as the forerunner of nationalism in the colonies has received
scathing criticism from theorists such as Elie Kedourie and Rupert Emerson.
Although these authors see colonial intervention as critical in explaining the
emergence of nationalist consciousness among the natives, anti-imperialism
loses its sheen. Thus Kedourie asks:
Why then has European domination in Asia and Africa evoked nationalism
in these areas? To argue that it was alien is not enough of an explanation; to
say that it represented economic exploitation is highly misleading. What
then was there in European rule to distinguish it from other alien domina-
tions and to call forth in its subjects such violence and resistance?11
It was the superior administrative apparatus, ‘centralised, impersonal, uniform,

undiscriminating in their incidence’, that inadvertently evoked natives’ nation-
alist consciousness, the argument goes. Modern European bureaucracy, despite
its ‘leveling and pulverizing effect on traditional hierarchies and loyalties’,
contends Kedourie, remained distant and unapproachable to subject popula-
tions.12 If Kedourie’s imperialist thesis is to be believed, far from exploitation
of the natives’ resources, anti-colonialism, the harbinger of nationalism in the
colonies, had its seeds in this failure of colonial bureaucracy’s ‘public rela-
tions’ exercise. Again, the natives’ anger was misplaced, as the raison d’être
of colonialism was not economic exploitation; instead it willy-nilly integrated
the subsistent economies of traditional societies with the world market which
brought them ‘new and vast riches’ and the occasional depression. Thus, it
was not colonial power per se but impersonal forces of the market that trig-
gered such protests.13
The natives’ nationalism is more or less an emulation of its counterpart in
West Europe, a feat unachievable without the presence of the White man, a
strand in the imperialist school suggests. Thus, for Emerson,
Imperialism scattered the revolutionary seeds of Western Civilization in

haphazard fashion over the surface of the globe. . . . Its most important result,
ironically enough, was to rouse against itself the nationalisms – and in some
instances even to create the nations – which worked to make its continuance
impossible.14
According to the said thesis, nationalism in much of Asia and Africa was
neither a rise to self-awakening of a dormant people nor was it an upheaval
against economic oppression by an alien power. In the absence of material con-
ditions that could structure it, anti-colonialism or nationalism was ineluctably a
gift of imperialism, a Western import. If, for Kedourie, it was the ‘superior yet
impersonal colonial administrative structure that fuelled nativism’, for Emerson
this import of nationalism was facilitated through colonial education:
Colonial educational systems have frequently been attacked . . . for teaching

the history of metropolitan country or of Europe . . . but it was from Euro-
pean history that the lessons of the struggle for freedom could on the whole
be most effectively learned.
Closer to our times, yet consistent with earlier pronouncements, Benedict

Anderson’s constructivist argument portrays ‘imagined nations’ of postcolonial
Asia and Africa as mimicking Western ‘modular forms’. Anderson’s ‘imagined
communities’, once created in eighteenth-century Europe and the Americas, take
‘modular’ form as they are ‘transplanted’ to a ‘great variety of social terrains’,
primarily to the erstwhile colonies. Given the argument, the new states that
emerged from the debris of World War II, without fail, drew their ancestry from
various models of nationalism available in the West – in retaining their Euro-
pean languages-of-state they resembled the Americas; linguistic nationalism was
copied from Western Europe and, in vehemently pursuing official nationalism,
the inspiration was Czarist Russification.15
Taking cue from Chatterjee’s critique, such theorizations emanating from
Western scholarship assume the postcolonial world to be perpetual consumers of
unbridled and unidirectional modernity, but never its producer. Imagination and
creativity then is the realm of the West – for the rest, ‘even our imaginations must
remain forever colonised’. Therefore the West scripted for us not only the ‘colo-
nial enlightenment and exploitation, but also . . . our anti-colonial resistance and
postcolonial misery’, Chatterjee argues.16a Iranian philosopher Jalal Al-e-Ahmad
termed such mechanical aping of the West by the East, particularly by its West-
ernized intelligentsia, as Gharbzadegi or occidentosis (also translated as westoxi-
cation): ‘We pretend to be free just like them. We sort the world into good and
bad along the lines they lay out. We dress like them. We write like them.’16b
But Chatterjee’s is only half a critique. For he concedes that while the colon-
ized, to a certain degree, forfeited the material world – the world of ‘economy and
statecraft, of science and technology, a domain where the West had proved its
superiority’ – it was the spiritual or the cultural that anti-colonial nationalisms
secured as sovereign and national.17 Such neatly drawn opposition between the
material and the spiritual fails to take account of the powerful ‘nationalist’ critique
of colonial economy and state policies that came to constitute ‘economic national-
ism’ of the colonized. On the other hand, if the cultural, following Chatterjee, was
proclaimed autonomous, it was also the sphere of intense contestations and
coalescence, of multiple doctrines of nationalisms as well as their attendant refuta-
tions. Jalal Al-e-Ahmad called upon the East to shed its submissiveness and rise:
Why shouldn’t the nations of the East wake up to see what treasures they
hold? Why, just because the machine is Western and we are compelled to
adopt it, should we assume all the rest of the West’s standards for life,
letters, and art?18
Overwhelmed as they were by the material advances of the West, many

Indian nationalists sought to emulate the modular nations of Europe as suppos-
edly a prescription for the salvation of the backward and subjugated East. Thus,
if India was not a ‘nation’, given its linguistic and religious plurality it was ‘a
nation in the making’. The implicit foundation for this imagery could be wide
and hoary: the Vedic past, classical Sanskrit, the natural frontiers that bounded
the subcontinent, the English language as a link between diverse speech com-
munities or even the Indian Sari worn by women in various parts of the country.
Thus, the Sanskrit Commission (1956–7) instituted by the Government of India
to look into the language question made a strong plea for its adoption as the
national language: ‘Sanskrit has been the Great Unifying Force of India, and that
India with its nearly 400 millions of people is One country, and not half a dozen
or more countries, only because of Sanskrit.’19 Territorial nationalism, on the
other hand, has exhorted the subcontinent’s geographical congruity to make a
case for its nationhood. Congress leader and later India’s first prime minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, argued:
The accidents of geography have had a powerful effect on determining

national character and history. The fact that India was cut off by the tre-
mendous barrier of the Himalayas and by the sea produced a sense of unity
in this wide area and at the same time bred exclusiveness. Over this vast ter-
ritory a vivid and homogenous civilization grew up which had plenty of
scope for expansion and development and which continued to preserve a
strong cultural unity.20
(emphasis added)
Yet this was not the sole category of response that nationalism could evoke among
the natives. Far from eager emulation, the idea and its corollary – monocultural
nation-states – were also viewed with distrust and contempt by philosophers and
thinkers fearful of the havoc it could produce in the colonies marked by a multi-
plicity of ethnic, linguistic and religious collectivities. Consider philosopher and
poet Allama Iqbal’s denunciation of nationalism’s atheistic materialism:
I am opposed to the nationalism as it is understood in Europe . . . I am

opposed to it because I see in it the germs of atheistic materialism which I
look upon as the greatest danger to humanity. . . . In view of the visible and
invisible point of contact between various communities of India, I do
believe in the possibility of constructing a harmonious whole whose unity
cannot be disturbed by the rich diversity which it must carry within its
bosom. The problem of ancient Indian thought was how the one became
many without sacrificing its oneness. Today this problem has come down
from its ethical heights to the grosser plane of our political life, and we have
to solve it in its reversed form, i.e. how the many can become one without
sacrificing its plural character.21
(emphasis added)
A decade earlier, similar to Iqbal’s critique of western nationalism, Rabindranath

Tagore, the doyen of Bengali literature, also rejected Western nationalism for its
espousal of crass materialism as against the spirituality of the East. ‘Nation’ as
distinct from society was, for him, ‘an organization of politics and commerce’
which if allowed to become ‘all powerful’ would ‘cost the harmony of the higher
social life’ and mark an ‘evil day’ for the entire humanity’.22 He scoffed at
nationalism’s insatiable yearning for homogeneity and argued how the cultural
constitution of India stood in its negation. Thus, the history of India did not
reflect a unilateral trajectory; instead it was ‘a process of creation to which
various races of the world contributed – the Dravidians and the Aryans, the
ancient Greeks and the Persians, the Mohammedans of the West and those of
central Asia’.23 Accordingly, Tagore expressed his desire to work for ‘an adjust-
ment of races to acknowledge the real differences between them, and yet seek
some basis of unity’. This was the tradition that had evolved through the ages in
India and most of the East.24
Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-

idolatry of nation-worship is the goal of human history. And India has been
trying to accomplish her task through social regulations of differences, on the
one hand, and the spiritual recognition of unity, on the other. . . . Her mission
has been like that of a hostess to provide proper accommodation to her numer-
ous guests whose habits and requirements are different from one another. It is
giving rise to infinite complexities whose solution depends not merely upon
tactfulness but sympathy and true realization of the unity of man.25
The non-West’s encounter with the ideal of nation-state has generated many
more categories of responses, which may amount neither to emulation nor its
wholesale dismissal. Distinct from ‘plagiarized nations’ that catapulted on lin-
guistic chauvinism, nationalism in the colonies also sought to draw inspiration
from religion or spirituality depending on the way it was presented. Religiosity
of the orient, considered ardent, was exploited to the core in conjuring nation-
hood, particularly the spirit of nationalism. Of this, religious prejudice that
denigrated and demonized the ‘other’ was only one of the variants. More often
than not, however, the source of this ‘nationalist spirituality’ was the religion of
the majority populating the nation. Unlike the West where religion was replaced
by nationalism, the East, it was argued, stood for a creative amalgamation of the
two. The Arab writer, Shakib Arslan, a votary of Islamic nationalism, rued the
disdain that Arab Muslims held towards ‘their Quran, their creed, their charac-
teristics, to the Arabic language and its literature, to an Oriental way of life’,
thus, detaching themselves ‘from the whole of his [their] history’.26 Irrespective
of India’s religious plurality, a strand within the nationalist discourse celebrated
Hindu spirituality as the quintessence of Indian nationalism. Congress extremist
Bipin Chandra Pal was emphatic:
[T]he Indian nationalist recognizes a spiritual reference as much in religion

proper as in his social economy and political laws and institutions. Politics
is, with him, part of his larger religion; it is a department of the science or
philosophy of salvation. And, it is therefore, that the word which signifies
the highest spiritual end represents also the highest political ideal. This is
the real spirit of Indian nationalism. It is an essentially religious spirit. Its
end is the realization of God-life in and through the activities of the social
and political life.27
The attempt thus far in this chapter is to highlight the realization that the East,
the abode of the Orient, did not respond to nationalism and the imagery of the
nation-state in a single voice, whether modular or its antithesis. While there
are instances of attempts to conjure a nation-state replicating the Westphalian
model, there have also been efforts to chart out alternative routes to national-
ism and thereby political modernity consistent with the contextuality of the
situation. Tonnesson and Antlov have identified three different trajectories
which Asian forms of nations have traversed. With a few exceptions, an ethno-
religious route has been adopted more vigorously in South Asia. Official
nationalism deployed by the bureaucracy to mobilize a single national culture
has also been adopted by certain Asian states, namely Japan, Cambodia, and
by the monarchies of Bhutan and Brunei. The third route, namely an anti-
colonial movement leading to the formation of a plural state, has been adopted
by India, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.28 To add to this
complexity, Oommen in his analysis of nationalism in South Asia marks out
seven different definitions of nation in the Indian subcontinent alone, namely
ancient civilizational entity, composite culture, political entity, religious
entity, geographical/territorial entity, collection of linguistic entities and unity
of great and little nations.29
The preponderance of multiple nationalisms suggests the variegated courses
to modernity that non-Western, particularly Indian political thought was poised
to navigate. Cultural monism of the nation-state sought to be challenged by mul-
tinationalism and multiculturalism, atomization of the individual by parallel
recognition to minority cultures and group rights, and secularization by the
admix of spirituality and pluralism. Yet it was the triumph of monoculturalism
that marked the constitution of Indian national identity. In his attempt to com-
prehend multiple roots of modernity, Craig Calhoun arrives at a similar conclu-
sion. Modernity for him is an ‘era shaped by contradictions’ and ‘nowhere are
the contradictions more apparent than in the proliferation of claims of nation-
hood’. Thus modernism as a project opened up the idea of ‘multiple modernist
projects, a diverse range of potential modernities’.30 Paradoxically, though, the
modern was associated strictly with the Western; the most energetic enthusiasts
of modernity were the intellectuals and activists in the colonized and postcolo-
nial world, those on the ‘fringes’ of the West. Consequently, these multiple roots
of modernity were obscured in the pursuit of ‘the European discourses of
enlightenment, romantic individualism and national identity’.31
Following this, intellectual energy in the colonized world also came to be
seized with constituting ‘integral identities’ as the dominant pattern over ‘double
consciousnesses’ possessed by minority groups. The national consciousness
reigned supreme in which ‘loyalties and obligations’ of individuals to ‘nations’
were considered final and ‘unmediated’.32 The ‘official nationalism’ of most
postcolonial states set out to construct a culturally integrated ‘nation’ that either
obliterated or overlooked the underlying diversity. The ‘warp of this thinking’,
Anderson writes, ‘was a totalizing classificatory grid, which could be applied
with endless flexibility to anything under the state’s real or contemplated control:
peoples, regions, religions, languages, products, monuments, and so forth.’33
Thus, while nearly half a century ago Indonesians, confined largely to their
respective ethnic languages, could not speak bhasa, in Indonesia today millions
of them have adopted and speak bhasa as their mother tongue.34
The ‘nation-state’ framework in India

Following the legacy of the anti-colonial struggle, the founders of the new state
ostensibly rejected any ethnic criterion for creating a political majority. Yet,
given the complex web of primordial collectivities which the Indian polity
sought to represent, a constant engagement of policy makers and sections of the
intelligentsia was with the construction of a national personality around the com-
monalty of cultural and political ethos. This alone, it was held, could contain fis-
siparous tendencies and concretize the foundations of the polity. Almost a
decade after Independence, Nehru delineated his ideas:
We can see disruptive forces at work in India. . . . We should not become

parochial, narrow minded, provincial, communal and caste-minded, because
we have a great mission to perform. Political integration has already taken
place to some extent, but what I am after is something much deeper than
that – an emotional integration of the Indian people so that we might be
welded into one, and made into one strong national unit, maintaining at the
same time all our wonderful diversity.35
Consequently, three parallel constructs of Indian nationhood, each reflecting the

prejudices and predilections of individuals and particular political and social
groups, emerged. Seemingly in opposition, they, we would argue, existed in a
shared discursive sphere. The traditionalists taking an essentialist view of Indian
history located the emergence of Indian national identity in the ‘golden age of
Aryan advent’. Thenceforth, the colonial and Islamic cultural importations
having mutilated the Vedic purity needed to be cleansed. Clearly a totalitarian
formulation, it was at variance with the ‘nationalists’ who embarked on a
‘national unity’ arrived at mainly in the colonial context. The modernist dream
rested on material progress and constitutionally guaranteed political freedom,
perceived as catalysts to bring about a levelling of cultures and emergence of
individualism in political praxis, thus keeping primordial categories at bay.36
Differences over modus operandi apart, the inventiveness of all three con-
structs was directed towards creating an appropriate phantasmagoria in which
the majority, if not the entirety, of the Indian population could find a reflection
of their own identity. In official parlance, India was either a nation or a ‘nation-
in-the-making’. ‘Unity in Diversity’ became the key slogan, and in the particular
context of Hindu–Muslim relations, composite culture or the fusion between
Hinduism and Islam, secured largely in the medieval courts, was drawn upon.
Nehru’s Discovery of India, written on the eve of Independence, became a major
source for this trend of thought. The ‘Nationalist’ Muslim outlook also visual-
ized a ‘fusion of mentalities’ evolving out of the encounter between Hinduism
and Islam to lay claim to their common nationality.37 As India represented a plu-
rality of ethnicities and cultures, the Indian personality was also assumed to
subsume two levels of national consciousness: ‘national’ at the all-India level
and ‘nationality’ at the regional plane. In such a construct, the two, for all prac-
tical purposes, were in a hierarchical relationship, as the former was supposed to
have emerged by transcending the latter which was discounted as little, sub-,
local or narrow nationalism. In contrast, the national was ‘based on the shared
feeling of all Indians of belonging to an India-wide community of culture’.38 The
assimilationist discourse suffered from oversimplification and generalization;
moreover it denied the possibility of the two co-existing without fusing. Further,
such a synthesis partook of a presumed hierarchy of cultures – a national main-
stream that commanded submergence from divergent and minority forms. Nehru,
an avowed secularist, also succumbed to the temptation as he apportioned
national status to the ‘Aryan faith’: ‘The Aryan faith in India was essentially a
national religion restricted to the land. . . . Within India it proceeded on its own
unobtrusive and subconscious way and absorbed new-comers and old, often
forming new castes out of them.’39 Amlendu Guha’s thesis of ‘double conscious-
ness’ also paves the way for an ideal nationhood achieved through a ‘voluntary’
fusion of cultures, the submergence of ‘jati’ or nationality into ‘mahajati’ or
nation. He approvingly cites an Assamese nationalist in this regard:
Let all nationalities (jati) of India follow their own paths. The Brahmaputra,
the Ganga, the Yamuna, the Kaveri, the Sindhu – let all of them flow down
along their respective courses. Let there be no attempts to merge one with
the other. Finally all will converge in the Indian ocean, that is, the Indian
nation (mahajati). Troubles will increase if any other method is resorted to
for creating the Indian nation.40
Subscribing to the liberal framework, the modern Indian state set forth the ideals
of secularism and religious pluralism, recognizing both the individual as well as
the corporate identity. The citizens were granted a plethora of inalienable rights;
at the same time the minorities were endowed with special cultural rights. Yet,
the near obsessive engagement with constructing a ‘national identity’ meant the
predilections of the dominant majority defining its parameters. In post-
Independent India, as in the rest of South Asia, the opposition between national-
ism and communalism, so intrinsic to nationalist historiography, often proved to
be futile as ‘more complicated patterns of affinities and distinctions’ between the
two emerged. The ‘Indian nation’ came to be appropriated by Hindu majoritari-
anism and ‘national mainstream’ became a euphemism for the latter’s cultural
preferences. The enormity of the overlap in ‘personnel, assumptions and
symbols’, historian Sumit Sarkar concludes, made nationalism and communal-
ism ‘far from being definite and stable signifiers’.41 This was evident in the
Constitution-making process as much as in the representations in the public
domain. The opening lines of the Constitution equated India with ancient and
mythical Bharat. Deep-seated majoritarianism was explicit as Hindi came to be
adopted as the Rajyabhasha (language of the state) which was to be developed
based ‘primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages’.42 For the pro-
ponents of Hindutva, the ‘nation’ found manifestation in the slogan ‘Hindi,
Hindu, Hindusthan’. ‘Hindusthan’ (not Hindustan), for them, was the ‘terra-
firma for the Hindu nation alone to flourish upon’, wherein the non-nationals, so
defined, ‘must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may
stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation’.43
The discourse over rights: is there a sufficient case for

minority rights?
The rights discourse in political philosophy has traditionally been polarized
between the liberal-individualists foregrounding the unencumbered and
abstract individuality and the communitarians arguing for the primacy of cul-
tural constitution and social affiliations of the self. For John Rawls, individuals
as members of the political community appear as self-legislating and auto-
nomous authors and possessors of inalienable rights. Inherent in the liberal
view is the fragmented notion of the self: public and private. Public sphere is
the rational-legal arena where the system of rights has ontological priority over
competing notions of good. The individual’s constitutive attachments – of
family and cultural community – are relegated to his private world.44 The com-
munitarian critique has drawn attention to the manifest ways in which we are
embedded in various social roles and communal relationships. Communitarian
theorist MacIntyre sees the individual as a bearer of traditions and every action
of his or her being rooted in it: ‘I find myself part of a history . . . whether I like
it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the bearers of tradition.’45 The
liberal insistence on abstract reason and disembodied self, argue the communi-
tarians, has dissolved the sense of community, and impeded the potential to
constitute a shared moral universe.
The political manifestation of these philosophical contributions is the
recognition of cultural rights of communities over and above the rights that
individuals enjoy in liberal-democratic regimes. In multinational and multieth-
nic states, the communitarian critique has provided philosophical ammunition
to demand multicultural orientation in state practices and special cultural
rights for the disempowered and vulnerable minority cultures. Liberal resist-
ance to projects of this nature emanate from three sources. First, there is a fear
that recognizing communities over individuals would undermine the liberal
commitment to the liberation of the individual. Inherent in liberalism is also
an ethnocentric prejudice where the prevailing perception of the cultural
superiority of the ‘secular, democratic and liberal West’ is reluctant to admit
equal rights to ‘inferior oppressive religious cultures of the immigrants and
the indigenous population’. Finally, owing to the legacy of the European ideal
of ‘one state one nation’, recognition of a multiplicity of cultures is seen as
jeopardizing the sustainability of the state.46
Located within political theory, both schools draw heavily from concepts
hitherto exclusive to sociology. The notions of the self, the community and
cultural specificity, ascriptive identities and their formation, go a long way in
shaping their respective epistemologies. A thorough engagement with these
concepts, their critical re-evaluation in the light of new evidence and recent
developments in the discipline, is however absent. While the liberals have
overemphasized the autonomous constitution of the human personality, the
communitarians remain guilty of negating the agency and imagination of the
individual, and her capacity to moderate and mediate inherited values. The
individual is surely the bearer of tradition, but she also confronts and resists it,
negotiates and manipulates it in the course of her everyday actions. Rather
than being fixed and ossified, culture assumes a dynamic character. Without
taking note of these insights, the communitarian discourse represents a nos-
talgic and reified version of the ‘community’, which leads to a degree of cul-
tural relativism. A critical assessment brings to light the issues of power and
difference that influence the evolution of cultures and their differential appro-
priation by different members of a community. In this context, the issue of
minority rights cannot ignore the claims of women and disadvantaged sections
within the group.
Classical sociology’s engagement with the cultural rights of minority groups
may be traced through the exposition of two divergent positions – the Marxian and
the Durkheimian. Both trends converge in their critique of the atomism of the
modern age while avoiding the relativism that is so characteristic of the communi-
tarian school. Marxian intervention in the discourse on rights may be drawn from
Marx’s polemics with German philosopher Bruno Bauer in ‘On the Jewish Ques-
tion’. Bauer accused German Jews of being egoist for seeking religious emancipa-
tion when Germans themselves were battling for political emancipation.
We ourselves are not free. How then can we liberate you? . . . You ought to
work as Germans for the political emancipation of Germany, and as men for
the emancipation of mankind, and consider your political sort of oppression
and ignominy not as an exception to the rule but rather as a confirmation of it.47
Marx held that the Jewish question, a subject regarding the rights of religious
minorities in Europe and North America, was not merely a theological one. To a
large extent, it depended on the nature of the state and existing social arrange-
ments. In Germany, where the Jews where juxtaposed against a state that
accepted Christianity as its foundation, the Jewish question could be a theologi-
cal one, but in the context of France and many North American states where the
foundations of a constitutional state had been firmly laid, and where individual
citizens had been bequeathed with civil rights, it presented itself as a constitu-
tional as much as a secular question. To begin with, the right to freedom of con-
science was an indissoluble component of the imprescriptible rights – to private
property, to equality before the law, to freedom – that the individual was granted
in bourgeois societies: ‘
The incompatibility of religion with the rights of man is so far from being
evident in the concept of the rights of man, that the right to be religious, to
be religious in one’s chosen way, to practice one’s chosen religion is
expressly counted as one of the rights of man. The privilege of faith is a uni-
versal right of man.48
This was hardly surprising, since the political emancipation which the bourgeois
states promised had no agenda of emancipating man from religion. Thus, the
separation of man into a public and private man – the displacement of religion
from the state to civil society – remained the principal attribute of such a state.
Therefore, the surge for freedom of conscience among German Jews could not
be distanced from the rest of Germany’s quest for civil and political rights.
Despite his critique of the liberal political philosophy that envisaged citizens
as egoist and atomistic, Marx’s position on the discourse on rights departs from
the communitarians of our times in two ways. First, unlike the communitarians,
Marx explicitly saw the right to religion or culture as indistinguishable from cit-
izenship rights that contributed to the withdrawal of the sovereign man from
‘species-life’: ‘Man was therefore not freed from religion; he received freedom
of religion. He was not freed from property; he received freedom of property, he
was not freed from the egoism of trade; he received freedom to trade.’49 Second,
Marx had no illusions about restoring the ‘purity of community and traditions’
as constitutive elements in the self of an individual. The critique of the rights of
man was a part of the political project for the emancipation of humanity and this
required that ‘man must recognize his own forces as social forces, organize
them, and thus no longer separate social forces from himself in the form of polit-
ical forces’.50
Durkheim distinguished between ‘egoistic individualism’ espoused by the
utilitarians and liberal economists, and ‘moral individualism’ to which he lent
his support. In Durkheim’s account, the former conceived of society as no more
than a group of disparate individuals in pursuit of aggregating private interests.
All forms of communal life, he believed, were ‘impossible without the existence
of interests superior to those of the individuals’.51 ‘Moral individualism’, on the
other hand, was the individualism of Kant and Rousseau, one that the Declara-
tion of Rights of Man in revolutionary France attempted, and one that was the
basis of the moral character of French society. ‘Far from making personal
interest the object of conduct, this one sees in all personal motives, the very
source of evil.’52 In the language of moral individualism, there was no funda-
mental opposition between individual rights and the common good. In espousing
the cause of ethical individualism, Durkheim confronted the conservatives who
had denounced individualism and claimed that it was debilitating France. Rather
than eschewing traditions, ‘moral individualism’ had its origins in French tradi-
tion, and therefore was a set of beliefs and practices that is characteristic of the
modern common good.
Another lacuna in the communitarian argument pertains to the relationship
between culture/community and identity, wherein it presumes a reified com-
munity and fixity in identity. Since the individual is supposed to be the bearer of
tradition that alone constitutes her social self, it fails to take cognizance of mul-
tiple identities – religious, linguistic, class, gender – each being historically
contingent. By assuming a community-centred perspective, it remains culpable
of privileging one part of the self over the whole. Since neither the community-
centred approach nor those emphasizing the universal virtue of individualism
appear sufficient, the question then arises as to how to reconcile the two. Faced
with such a dichotomy in political philosophy there have been recent attempts to
find common ground. Will Kymlicka has tried to show how the basic premises
of liberalism could not be fulfilled without institutionalizing the prerequisites of
the community. Similarly, Joseph Raz has shown how demands for multicultur-
alism can be safely accommodated without compromising the rights of the
individual.53
The deliberations on minority rights, however, should not be restricted to a
communitarian versus libertarian or individual versus collective rights frame-
work. Generally, arguments in favour of conceding to minority demands or those
favouring a renegotiation between citizenship and collective rights assume
intra-group unanimity despite the existence of sectional interests. Thus the
complex differentiations within minority groups tend to be ignored as both the
minority and the majority are attributed cultural and political homogeneity. The
plethora of concerns that the subject ‘minorities within minorities’ throws open
are largely left unattended.54 The question that is increasingly coming to the fore
now is: does external protection of minority groups from majoritarian encroach-
ments license the dominant groups among minorities to impose internal restric-
tions on divergent groups within? Moreover, for a multicultural state supposedly
inclined towards protecting minority cultures, the dilemma remains: what is to
be protected and from whom? If vulnerability provides the frame for the protec-
tion of mainstream minority cultures, an extension of the same principle quali-
fies internal minorities for privileges and safeguards. The real challenge for the
theorist of minority rights is to reconcile diversity with demands of equality
being raised by the minorities within. The response from the theorist is varie-
gated. Mahajan groups them into three different kinds of suggestions: (1) pre-
scribing the limits of permissible diversity in liberal democracy; (2) providing
exit options for community members who differ from the dominant tendency;
and (3) seeking a deliberative consensus within.55 From the outset, all three
modes of reconciling this tension remain within the realm of culture while cir-
cumventing the questions of material dispossession and persisting intra-group
power differentials.
Although the communitarian critique has received wide acceptance in polit-
ical philosophy, it is in need of modification to a certain extent. The recognition
of the value of culture should logically extend to providing protection to those
cultures that are vulnerable in multicultural societies. Further, since individuals
have a right to culture, a logical corollary would be that they have the right to
choose as well as exit from a culture. Group entitlements therefore have to be
mediated in such a way as to ensure the freedom to evaluate and choose. Inter-
nally, the rights of the members should limit community rights. Externally, it
should be limited with respect for other cultures.56 Minority rights as a subject
throws open issues related to two different domains. One refers to series of dis-
crimination and material deprivations that a marginalized minority may face in
matters purely secular such as political representation, recruitments in public ser-
vices or admission in educational institutions. Second, it refers to the devaluation
and stigmatization to which the cultures of such groups may be subjected in a
majoritarian framework.
Conceding extensive rights of citizenship and ensuring equality in opportun-
ities to individuals, it is often assumed, can easily address the former. By citizen-
ship is meant the wide arena of civil, political and social guarantees to ensure
substantive equality. The second case arises from what Axel Honneth and
Charles Taylor have termed the want of ‘recognition’. The perspective holds that
individuals are constituted as persons by learning to refer to themselves from the
perspective of an encouraging or approving ‘other’. Therefore it is not enough to
provide people with material goods; it is equally important to grant them recog-
nition in the sense of valuing their lifestyle and their affiliative community.57
These two conceptions of justice, of recognition and of redistribution, have come
to be at loggerheads as we debate representation, group identity, individual
liberty, affirmative action and so on. In India, for instance, the central govern-
ment’s attempt to create a sub-quota for backwards (i.e. socially and education-
ally backward classes) among religious minorities precipitated a sharp
polarization of public opinion, and eventual proscription by the Court.58 Nancy
Fraser, therefore, proposes a ‘bivalent’ conception of justice that can ‘accom-
modate both defensible claims for social equality and defensible claims for the
recognition of differences’.59
The problem and the scope

In India, the issue of minority rights does not limit itself to being a ceaseless aca-
demic exercise; it has far-reaching implications that threaten to alter the state–
citizen relationship, the very basis of the legitimation of the state and the
structure of interaction between and within different collectivities. Unlike the
conditions prevailing in Western Europe and Northern America, the Indian case
offers certain peculiarities that need to be delineated at the outset. In Western
liberal democracies, collective group rights are being demanded at a time when
community life, to a large extent, has weakened. Much of the intellectual exer-
cise, particularly those owing their philosophical origins to communitarianism,
therefore arises from a kind of nostalgia of a community long lost. Consequently
the concern is overwhelmingly focused on cultural rights without any concomi-
tant claim to power. Further, the demand for minority rights emerges principally
from immigrant populations and indigenous people; and it is the concerns of
these communities that are shaping the contemporary Western writings on
minority rights. In most cases, such groups are on the fringes of national polit-
ical life – numerically and otherwise – the dominant political culture remaining
untouched by these concerns. In India by comparison, minority groups are
neither immigrant populations nor outsiders who need to be accommodated by
the rest of the society. Instead, identified religious and linguistic bodies have
been integral to India since time immemorial.60
While, in the West, cultural rights have become only a recent concern, the
sensitivity for minority rights was coeval to the evolution of the Indian demo-
cracy and sovereignty. The Constitution, while acknowledging an elaborate set
of rights of the citizen, also made it a point to provide for minority safeguards,
particularly in matters of culture and religion. However, the conceptualization of
the term ‘minority’ has itself received scant attention. The definition of who
qualifies to be a minority and thereof the claimer of safeguards remains vague. Is
the numerical criterion substantial enough to perceive minorities as disadvan-
taged groups? Or does it need further qualification? Is minority identity within a
‘nation-state’ indelibly fixed or is it flexible? Indeed, social science writings on
the subject are also marred by a certain degree of ambiguity.
For most scholars, number alone cannot determine the minority status of any
group. Banerjee draws attention to the situation in which a powerful minority
can reduce a numerically superior group to the status of a disadvantaged
minority. For him it is the accessibility to power and dominance that alone can
qualify as the definitive criterion.61 Others have taken into account both the
actual location of the community vis-à-vis its accessibility to power and
resources as well as the subjective self-perception of the community members
themselves. For Wirth, the term ‘minority’ may be attributed to only those
groups ‘who because of their physical or cultural characteristics are singled out
from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal
treatment and who, therefore, regard themselves as objects of collective discrim-
ination’.62 Enriching the concept further, Laponce has distinguished between
‘minorities by will’ and ‘minorities by force’. He assigns minority status to
people ‘who because of a common racial, linguistic or national heritage . . . fear
that they may either be prevented from integrating themselves into a national
community of their choice or be obliged to do so at the expense of their
identity’.63
We can arrive at some common ground on the basis of the above contribu-
tions: (1) that minority groups are cultural collectivities whether religious or lin-
guistic; (2) statistics alone lead us nowhere, minority groups are, fundamentally,
disadvantaged ones; (3) the presence of any minority group in a particular
society is predicated on the existence of a dominant group enjoying a privileged
status. Scholars, however, have cautioned against any fixity in assigning the
status to any particular group, the argument being that the terms ‘minority’ and
‘majority’ are historically contingent categories and therefore subject to
change.64 Given the scale of hybridity among communities inhabiting the cul-
tural landscape of India, such imageries connoting neat compartmentalization
appear fuzzy and mythical. Boundaries are transgressed at will and majorities
and minorities, almost habitually, exchange roles. Minoritization is a process
that produces context-specific minority groups out of communities without any
history of possessing ‘awareness of kind’.
In the Muslim majority Pakistan, there are still Pashtun-, Baluch-, Sindhi- and
Saraiki-speaking Muslims who would resist being lumped together as the
majority in the country. Hindus are a majority in India but, when analytically
examined, assigning such a status to all Hindus is fraught with problems. Thus,
the question, do Hindus in their entirety – Dalits and backwards, speakers of
Dravidian languages, the ‘Hinduized’ tribes of Central India, or the Meitees of
Manipur – have similar access to power and privileges to constitute a majority
that suits the definition? The minoritization of Sikhs does not have a long
history, and more recently Jains too have shown restlessness about their inclu-
sion in the Hindu fold. Referring to the ‘vertical and horizontal divisions of the
Indian social structure’, Moin Shakir affirmed that the terms ‘majority’ and
‘minority’ were ‘imprecise’. ‘There is no homogeneous oppressor “majority”
which exploits other “minorities” ’, he argued.65 Stretching this argument a little
too far, the single judge Bench of an Indian Court declared the Hindus as the
only genuine minority if caste and sectarian divisions were taken into account.66
However, for scholarship on the subject, an acknowledgement of the ephemeral
nature of such categorization is to realize its dynamism, its historicity, its
Another random document with
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[I thought of these words many a time after that short and
merry life had come to its miserable close, and that fair
head, with the crown it coveted and wrought for, lay
together on the scaffold. I did never believe the shameful
charges brought against her, by which her death was
compassed, but 'tis impossible to acquit her of great
lightness of conduct, and want of womanly delicacy, or of
the worse faults of lawless ambition and treachery against
her kind mistress, than whom no one need wish a better.
Though I am and have long been of the reformed religion,
my feelings have ever been on the side of Queen
Catherine.]
The next day we went across the moor, to see the woman,
Magdalen Jewell, of whom Dame Lee had told us. Mistress
Anne was not with us, pleading a headache as an excuse,
and I was not sorry to miss her company, but we had
Master Griffith instead, and a serving man, who led the
Queen's donkey. The rest of us walked; and oh, what joy it
was to me to feel the springy turf under foot, and smell the
fresh odors of the moorland once more! How beautiful the
world is! I can't think why God hath made it so fair, and
then set it before us as our highest duty to shut ourselves
from it between stone walls. "The earth is the Lord's and
the fulness thereof," we sing in the Venite, and all the
Psalms are full of such thoughts. But this is beside the
matter.
We had a charming walk over the high, breezy moor, and

Master Griffith entertained us with remembrances of his
own country of Wales, where he says the people speak a
language of their own, as they do in some parts of Cornwall.
The Queen riding before us, would now and then put in a
word to keep him going.
Presently the path dipped into a little hollow, and there we
saw the cottage at the foot of the Tor which had been our
landmark all the way. 'Twas to my mind more like a nest
than a cottage, so small was it, and so covered (where the
vine gave the stones leave to show themselves) with gray
and yellow lichens. A humble porch well shaded with a great
standard pear, and fragrant with honeysuckle and
sweetbriar, held the good woman's chair, wherein lay a
spindle and distaff.
Magdalen herself was at work in her garden, gathering of

herbs to dry, and attended by quite a retinue. There was a
very old dog lying blinking in the sunshine, and a motherly
cat with two or three mischievous kitlings, and also a lame
and tame goose, which attended her mistress' footsteps,
and now and then with hisses and outspread wings chased
away the kitlings, when they made too free. A more
important member of the party was the little orphan maid,
a child of some five years, who with grave and womanly
industry, was carrying away the cut herbs, and spreading
them in the shade to dry. A row of beehives reached all the
length of the garden wall, and before them a bed of sweet
flowers and herbs, such as bees love. On one side was a
field in which fed a cow and an ass, while on the other was
a small and old, but well-tended orchard, and at the bottom
of this a still, glassy pool. Behind all, rose the gray, steep
Tor, like a protecting fortress. It was a lovely picture, and
one on which I could have gazed an hour; but presently, the
woman catching sight of us, laid aside her industry, and
came forward to give us welcome, which she did I must say
somewhat stiffly at the first. But she presently thawed into
more cordiality under the charm of her Grace's manner, and
remarking that we had had a long walk, she busied herself
to provide refreshment.
"Pray do not incommode yourself, my good woman," said
the Queen: "we have come but from the convent yonder,
where I am at present abiding, and this is one of the young
pupils, whom I dare say you have seen."
"Not I, madam!" she answered, somewhat bluntly. "I have

no errand to take me to the convent since I desire no alms
at the hands of the ladies, and I have naught to sell but
that which their own gardens supply."
"You might go thither for purposes of devotion," said the

Queen: "'tis a great privilege to worship in a church
possessed of so many holy relics."
A strange look, methought, passed over the woman's face,

as her Grace spoke, but she made no answer to the Queen,
only to press us to eat and drink.
"And you live here quite alone, save this child?" said the
Queen, after she had asked and heard an account of the
little maiden.
"Aye, madam, ever since my old father died, some ten

years since, till this child was sent me, as it were."
"But had you no brother, or other relative?" Again the

strange look crossed Magdalen's face, as she answered: "I
had a brother once, and for aught I know he may be living
now; but 'tis long since I have seen or heard from him. Our
paths went different ways."
"How so?" asked the Queen.
"Because I chose to maintain my old father in his

helplessness, and he chose to bestow himself in yonder
abbey of Glastonbury, with his portion of my gaffer's
goods."
"Doubtless he chose wisely!" she added, with a scorn which
I cannot describe. "'Twas an easier life than tilling barren
land, and bearing with the many humors of a childish, testy
old man."
"You should not speak so of your brother," said the Queen,

somewhat severely.
"You are right, Madam;" answered Magdalen, softening.

"Scorn becomes not any sinner, whose own transgressions
have been many. Nevertheless, under your favor, I believe
my brother did mistake his duty in this thing."
"Yet you yourself have chosen a single life, it seems!" said

the Queen. "Why was that?"
"I did not choose it," she said quietly, but yet her face was
moved. "'Twas so ordered for me, and I make the best of it.
I doubt not many married women are happier than I; but
yourself must see, Madam, that no single woman, so she be
good and virtuous, can possibly be as miserable as is many
a good and virtuous wife, through no fault of her own; aye
—and while she hath nothing of which she may complain
before the world."
"'Tis even so!" said her Grace; and again saw the cloud
upon her brow. I wonder if she is unhappy with her
husband? After a little silence, the Queen fell to talking of
the child, and after some discourse, she offered to leave
with the parish priest such a sum of money as should be a
dower for the girl, whether she should marry or enter a
convent. Magdalen colored and hesitated.
"I thank you much for your kindness," said she, at last. "I
have never yet received an alms, but the child is an orphan,
and hath no earthly protection but myself; and should I die
before my brother, he, or the men with whom he has placed
himself, would take that small portion of goods which
belongs to me, and little Catherine would be left wholly
destitute. I believe Sir John, the village priest, to be a good
man, so far as his lights go, and anything you may be
pleased to place in his hands will be safe. I therefore accept
your offer and thank you with all my heart; and may the
blessing of the God of the fatherless abide upon you."
"That seems like a good woman," remarked Master Griffith

to Mistress Patience, after we had left the cottage.
"Yet I liked not her saying about the priest," returned Mrs.
Patience, austerely. "What did she mean by her limitation
—'A good man, so far as his lights go,' forsooth! What is
she, to judge of his lights? Methinks the saying savored
somewhat too much of Lollardie, or Lutheranism."
"Then, if I thought so, I would not say so," said Master

Griffith, in a low tone. "You would not like to cast a
suspicion on the poor creature, which might bring her to the
stake at last."
Whereat Mistress Patience murmured something under her

breath about soft-heartedness toward heretics being
treason to the Church; but she added no more. I think
Master Griffith hath great influence over her, and if I may
venture to say so, over his mistress as well; and I wonder
not at it, for he hath a calm, wise way with him, and a
considerate manner of speaking, which seems to carry
much weight. It was odd, certainly, what Magdalen Jewell
said about the priest, and also about her brother. It does
seem hard that he should have gone away and left her to
bear the whole burden of nursing and maintaining her
father, and yet, as we are taught to believe, it is he who
hath chosen the better part. Another thing which struck me
about this same Magdalen was, that she was so wonderful
well spoken, for a woman in her state of life. Even her
accent was purer than that of the women about here, and
she used marvellous good phrases, as though she were
conversant with well-educated people.
This was the last of our walks. To-morrow the Queen goes,
and then I shall fall back into my old way of life again, I
suppose—writing, and working, and walking in the garden
for recreation. Well, I must needs be content, since there is
no other prospect before me for my whole life. It will not be
quite so monotonous as that of the poor lady who lived for
twenty years in the Queen's room, and never looked out.
I ought to say, that when we returned from visiting

Magdalen Jewell, we found that a post had arrived with
letters for the Queen, and also a packet for Mistress Anne,
who seemed wonderful pleased with her news, and with a
fine ring which she said her brother had sent her.
"Your brother is very generous," said her Grace, (and I saw

her face flush and her eyes flash.) "Methinks I have seen
that same ring before. 'Tis not very becoming for your
brother to make so light of his Majesty's gifts, as to bestow
them, even on his sister."
"I trust your Grace will be so good as not to betray my poor

brother's carelessness to his Majesty," answered Mrs.
Bullen, with an air and tone of meekness, which seemed to
me to have much of mocking therein. "It might prove the
ruin of us both."
To my great terror and amazement, the Queen turned

absolutely pale as ashes, and put out her hand for support.
Both Mrs. Anne and myself sprang forward, but she
recovered herself in a moment, and her color came back
again.
"'Tis nothing," said she, quietly. "I think the heat was too
much for me. Patience, your arm; I will lie down awhile."
The glance which Patience cast on Mrs. Bullen in passing,

was such as one might give to a viper or other loathsome
reptile. Mrs. Bullen, on her part, returned it, with a mocking
smile. Presently I saw her in the garden in close conference
with Amice, as indeed I have done several times before. I
cannot guess what they should have in common, and it is
all the more odd that I know Amice does not like her.
CHAPTER XIV.
August 14.
HER Grace left us yesterday, and to-day Amice and I have
been helping Mother Gertrude to put her rooms to rights,
and close them once more.
"How lonely they look," said I, as we were going round

closing the shutters. "I suppose they will always be called,
'The Queen's Chambers,' after this; and will be looked on as
a kind of hallowed ground."
"They will always be hallowed ground to me, I am sure,"

said Amice, so warmly, that I looked at her in surprise.
"Well, well, I am not sorry they are empty once more," said
Mother Gertrude. "I trust now we shall go back to our old
quiet ways, and at least we shall have no more singing of
love songs and receiving of love tokens, within these holy
walls. Yonder fair Bullen is no inmate for such a place as
this."
"Why should you think of love tokens, dear Mother?" I

asked, feeling my checks burn, and wondering whether she
referred to me, though indeed I might have known she did
not. 'Tis not her way to hint at anything.
"Because Mistress Anne must needs show me her fine

diamond ring, and tell me in a whisper how it was a token
from a gallant gentleman, as great as any in this realm."
"She said it came from her brother," said I, unguardedly,

and then I all at once remembered what she had said in the
presence, and the Queen's answer. Can it be that her Grace
was jealous, and that she had cause for jealousy? However,
that is no business for me.
Mrs. Bullen must needs watch her chance and ask me

whether I had no message or token for my cousin? I told
her no—that in my position, it did not become me to be
sending messages or tokens: but I did not add what I
thought—that if I had any such message, she would be the
last person I should trust therewith.
"Well, well, I meant you naught but kindness," said she. "I
dare say our squire wont break his heart."
To which I made no answer.
Mother Superior gave me leave to write to my father by

Master Griffith, who kindly offered to carry a letter. When I
had finished, I carried it to her, as in duty bound. She just
glanced at it, and then opening a drawer, she took
therefrom poor Richard's packet and enclosed all together,
sealing them securely, and said she would give the parcel
into Master Griffith's hands, together with certain letters of
her own. My heart gave a great leap at sight of the packet,
and I must confess a great ache when I saw it sealed up
again, because I knew how sadly Richard would feel at
having his poor little letter and token returned on his
hands; and I am quite sure he meant no harm in sending
them, though it was ill considered.
The Queen gave magnificently to the Church and house on

leaving, and also bestowed presents on those members of
the family who have waited on her, mostly books of
devotion, beads, and sacred pictures. She hath also
provided for an annual dole of bread and clothing on her
birthday to all the poor of the village.
CHAPTER XV.
August 25.
WE have begun the general reformation which Mother

Superior promised us. I suppose, like other storms, it will
clear the air when all is done, but at present it raises a good
deal of dust, and makes every body uncomfortable.
Mother Gabrielle and Mother Gertrude still keep their old

places, the one as sacristine, the other as mistress of the
novices and pupils. But Sister Catherine is discharged of the
care of the wardrobe, and Sister Bridget, of all people, set
in her place. Sister Bonaventure takes Sister Bridget's place
in the laundry, and Sister Mary Paula is in charge of the
kitchen, which I fancy she does not like over well, though
she says nothing. Sister Mary Agnes has the accounts, and
Sister Placida the alms. As to Sister Catherine, she is
nowhere and nobody, which I suppose will give her all the
more time to meddle with everybody. She has been in
retreat for a week, and is still very mum and keeps quiet. I
have still charge of the library, to my great joy, and Amice is
by special favor appointed to help Mother Gabrielle in the
sacristy.
Our rules are to be more strictly enforced in future. No

more exclusive friendships are to be permitted. Silence is to
be rigidly enforced, and in short we are to turn over a new
leaf entirely. A great deal of needlework is to be put in hand
directly, including new altar covers for the shrine of Saint
Ethelburga in the garden, for which her Grace hath given
very rich materials. Besides we are to make many garments
for the poor against winter.
A good many wry faces have been made over all these
changes. For my own part I like them well enough. I think
people are always more comfortable when each one knows
his own place and his own work. Perhaps I should feel
differently if I had been put out of office, like Sister
Catherine, or set to work I did not like, as was Sister Mary
Paula. Poor Sister Catherine! She little thought how it was
to end when she used to talk about the enforcement of
discipline. I must say, that as far as the wardrobe goes, she
had no right to complain, for she did keep everything at
sixes and sevens, so that two whole pieces of nice black
serge were spoiled by her negligence, and many of the
spare napkins were moulded through and through. I
ventured to ask Mother Gertrude how she thought Sister
Bridget would succeed.
"Why, well enough, child," she answered. "Sister Bridget's

mind is not very bright, but she always gives the whole of it
to whatever she does."
"I have noticed that," said I. "If she is folding a napkin, or

ironing an apron, you may ask her as many questions as
you will, and you will get no answer from her till she has
done folding or ironing, as the case may be."
"Just so; and she hath another good quality, in that she will
take advice. When she does not know what to do she will
ask, which is to my mind a greater argument of humility
than any kissings of the floor, or such like performances."
Amice and I do not see as much of each other as we used,

but she is always loving when we meet. She appears to me,
somehow, very greatly changed. At times she seems to
have an almost heavenly calmness and serenity in her face;
at others she seems sad and anxious, but she is always kind
and gentle. She is much in prayer, and reads diligently in
the Psalter, which the Queen gave her. Sister Gabrielle has
grown very fond of her, though she was vexed at first that
Amice was assigned to her instead of myself; but she says
Amice is so gentle and humble, so anxious to please, and to
improve herself in those points wherein she is deficient, that
she cannot but love the child. I have, at Amice's own
request, taught her all the lace and darning stitches I know,
and she practises them diligently, though she used to
despise them. I am teaching her to knit stockings, an art I
learned of Mistress Patience, and we mean to have a pair
made for the Bishop against his next visit.
CHAPTER XVI.
St. Michael's Eve, Sept. 28.
IT is a long time since I have touched this book, and many

things have happened. Ours is now a sad household. Out of
the twenty-three professed Sisters and novices who used to
meet in the choir, but fifteen remain. The rest lie under the
turf in our cemetery. Mother Gabrielle is gone, and poor
Sister Bridget, and of the novices, Sisters Mary Frances and
Agatha. Mother Gertrude had the disease, but was spared.
Three others recovered. The rest were not attacked. The
disease was the dreadful Sweating sickness. It began first in
the village, in the household of that same Roger Smith, but
broke out in three or four other cottages the same day. The
news was brought to the convent gates the next morning by
some who came for alms, as they use to do on Wednesdays
and Fridays, and produced great consternation.
"What are we to do now?" said Sister Catherine, while the

elders were in conference by themselves.
"We shall do as we are told, I suppose," answered Sister

Bridget, with her wonted simplicity.
"But don't you suppose Mother Superior will order the gates
to be shut, and no communication held with the villagers?"
said Sister Mary Paula.
"I should certainly suppose not;" answered Sister Placida.

"Think what you are saying, dear Sister! Would you deprive
the poor souls of their alms, just when they are most
wanted? Methinks it would ill become religious women to
show such cowardly fears."
"Beside that I don't believe it would make any difference,"

said I. "Master Ellenwood, who has studied medicine, told
my father the disease was not so much infectious, as in the
air. I wish we might go out among the poor folk, to see
what they need, and help to nurse the sick, as my mother
and her women used to do."
"Rosamond is always ready for any chance to break her

enclosure," said Sister Catherine, charitable as usual. "She
would even welcome the pestilence, if it gave her a pretext
to get outside her convent walls."
"Sister Catherine," said Sister Placida, reprovingly, "you are

wrong to speak so to the child. Why should you be so ready
to put a wrong construction on her words? I am sure the
wish is natural enough. I had thought of the same thing
myself."
"O yes, I dare say," retorted Sister Catherine. And then,

with one of her sudden changes, "but I am wrong to answer
you so, Sister. It is my part to accept even undeserved
reproof with humility, and be thankful that I am despised."
"Nonsense," returned Sister Placida, who is by no means so

placid as her name, "I think you would show more humility
by considering whether the reproof was not deserved. As to
being thankful for being despised, that is to my mind a little
too much like being thankful for another's sin."
"How so?" I asked.
"Why, in order to being despised, there must needs be

some one to despise you, child, and is not contempt a sin?"
I do like Sister Placida, though she is just as often sharp

with me as Sister Catherine, but it is in such a different
way.
"Anyhow, I hope they wont shut out the poor folk," said
Sister Bridget.
"Who is talking about shutting out the poor folk?" asked

Mother Gertrude's voice, coming in sharp and clear as
usual, (by the way I ought to call her Mother Assistant now,
but I never can remember to do so.) "Children, why are you
all loitering here, instead of being about your business in
the house? Let every one set about her duty just as usual,
and at obedience, you will hear what has been decided."
[Obedience is that hour in a convent when the nuns

assemble with the Superior to give an account of their
labors, to receive special charges, and not seldom special
reproofs as well. In our house this gathering took place just
after morning recreation. Amice and I, not being even
regular postulants, had no business there, and since the
reformation in the house, we have never attended, but we
were called in to-day, and took our places at the lower end
of the line, and therefore next the Superior, who addressed
us in few but weighty words, which I will set down as well
as I can remember them.]
There was no doubt, she said, that the pestilence known as

the sweating sickness had broken out in the village, and we
might with reason expect its appearance among ourselves,
at any time. She said she had heard with sorrow that some
of her children had desired to have the gates closed against
the poor folk who used to come for alms. Such cowardliness
as this was unbecoming to any well-born lady, and above all
to religious, who were doubly bound to set a good example
of courage and resignation: but she was willing to think this
only a momentary failing, which a second thought would
correct; and she bade us consider that there would be no
use in shutting the gates now, since they were opened
yesterday, as usual.
Then she told us what she, with the advice of our confessor
and the other elders, had decided upon. The doles were to
be given out at the outer gate, by the proper officers, only
they were to be given every day, instead of Wednesdays
and Fridays. The two distributing Sisters were to be helped
by two others, taken in turn from the professed, to hand
the things as they were wanted. All embroidery, with other
unnecessary work of every kind, was to be laid aside, and
all were to employ themselves under the direction of the
Mother Assistant and herself in making linen and in
preparing food, cordials, and drinks for the poor. If any
Sister felt herself ill in any way, she was at once to repair to
the infirmary, and report herself to Sister Placida. Finally,
we were all to have good courage, to give ourselves as
much as possible to prayer, and such religious meditation as
should keep us in a calm, cheerful, and recollected frame of
mind, observing our hours of recreation as usual; and she
added that nobody was to presume to take on herself any
extra penances or exercises without express permission
from her superior or confessor.
"We are all under sentence of death, dear children, as you

know!" concluded Mother, "And it matters little how our
dismissal comes, so we are ready. Let us all confess
ourselves, so that the weight, at least, of mortal sin may
not rest on our consciences here, or go with us into the
other world. If we are called to suffer, let us accept those
sufferings as an atonement for our sins, considering that
the more we have to endure here, the less we may believe
will be the pains of purgatory hereafter. As for these
children," she added, turning to Amice and myself, who
stood next her, "what shall I say to them?"
"Say, dear Mother, that we may take our full share of work
and risk with the Sisters!" exclaimed Amice, kneeling before
her. "I am sure I speak for Rosamond as well as myself,
when I say that is what we desire most of all, is it not,
Rosamond?"
"Surely," I answered, as I knelt by her side: "I ask nothing

more than that."
"And what becomes of the Latin and Music lessons, and the
embroidery, and our learned librarian's translations?" asked
Mother Superior, smiling on us.
"They can wait," I answered.
"And surely, dearest Mother, the lessons we shall learn will

be far more valuable than any Latin or music," added
Amice.
"Well, well, be it as you will!" said dear Mother, laying her

hands on our heads as we knelt before her. "Surely, dear
children, none of us will show any fear or reluctance, since
these babes set us such a good example. Well, hold
yourselves ready, my little ones, and wherever you are
wanted, there shall you be sent."
That afternoon there was a great bustle in the wardrobe;

taking down of linen, and cutting out of shifts and bed-
gowns, and the like, and in the still-room and kitchen as
well, with preparing of medicines, chiefly cordial and
restoratives, and mild drinks, such as barley and apple
waters, and the infusion of lime blossoms, balm and mint.
This was by the advice of Mother Mary Monica, who has
seen the disease before, and understands its right
treatment. She says that those who on the first sign of the
disorder took to their beds and remained there for twenty-
four hours, moderately covered, and perfectly quiet, and
drinking of mild drinks, neither very hot, nor stimulating,
nor yet cold, almost all recovered; but that purges,
exercise, hot or cold drinks and stimulants, were equally
fatal. The dear old Mother has seemed failing of late, but
this alarm has roused her up and made her like a young
woman again.
Thus things went on for more than a week. We heard of

great suffering among the villagers for lack of nurses who
knew how to treat the disease, and also because from
selfish fear of taking the pestilence, people refused to go
near the sick and dying. One day Mother Superior was
called to the grate, and presently sent for me to the parlor,
where I found her talking through the grate to a woman
whom I at once knew as Magdalen Jewell of Torfoot. Hers is
not a face to be forgotten.
"This good woman says she believes you were at her house
with her Grace," says Mother.
I answered that I was so, and added that her Grace did
much commend the neatness of the place and the kindness
of Magdalen in taking the little one. I saw Magdalen's face
work.
"The babe hath been taken home!" said she, almost sternly.
"God's will be done! I have been telling these ladies that
there are divers orphan maids in the village (left so by this
sickness), who are running wild, and are like either to die
for lack of care, or worse, to fall into the hands of gypsies
and other lawless persons, whom this pestilence seems to
have let loose to roam about this wretched land."
"Are there so many dead in the village?" asked Mother

Gertrude.
"There is not a house where there is or hath not been one

dead!" answered Magdalen; "And the terror is worse than
the pestilence; children are deserted by parents, and they
in their turn by children, and 'tis the same with all other
relations. 'Tis a woeful spectacle!"
"Could not you yourself take these poor babes to your

home, since you have one?" asked Mother Gertrude.
"I cannot be spared, madam," answered Magdalen: "I must

nurse the sick."
"That is very good in you, and you must take comfort in the
thought that you are thereby laying up merit for yourself!"
said Mother Superior.
I saw an odd expression pass over Magdalen's face, but she

made no reply.
"And you think we might take these babes and care for
them, at least till the present emergency is passed?" said
Mother.
"Nay, madam, I did but state the case to you," answered

Magdalen; "'tis not for me to presume to offer advice."
"But what to do with them, if we took them?" said Mother

Superior, in a musing tone. Then catching my eye, which I
suppose ought to have been on the floor instead of on her
face: "Here is Rosamond, with a ready-made plan, as usual.
Well, child, you have permission to speak. What is brewing
under that eager face?"
"I was thinking, dear Mother, that I am used to young

children," said I. "Why could I not take these little maids
into one of the rooms called the Queen's room, and tend
them there? I suppose there are not many of them."
"I know of but five utterly friendless maids," answered

Magdalen.
"Then I am sure I could care for them, with some help and
advice," said I. "They would be away from the rest of the
family, and would disturb no one; and if we were kept in
health, I might teach them as well."
"'Tis a good thought, but we must do nothing hastily," said

Mother Superior. "We ought to have the permission of our
visitor, the Bishop, but he is now in Bristol, and some days
must elapse before we could hear from him, and this seems
a case for instant action."
"I am sure you would say so, madam, could you see the
state of these poor babes!" returned Magdalen.
"Well, well, come to-morrow, and we will see," said Mother.

"Meantime the holy relics are exposed in the church for the
comfort of the faithful in this trying time. You had better
visit them, and then go to the buttery and obtain some
refreshment."
However, she did neither—I suppose from want of time. The

next day she came again, and to my great joy, Mother
consented, the need being so great, to receive the five little
maidens, who were placed under my care in the Queen's

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Nation state and Minority Rights in

India Comparative Perspectives on

A Secular Need: Islamic Law and State Governance in

Being Muslim in Central Asia Practices Politics and

Media Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia 1st Edition

Forging Identities: Gender, Communities, And The State

State of Democracy in India Essays on Life and Politics

Contemporary Issues in Human Rights Law Europe and Asia

Minority Studies (OIP) (Oxford India Studies in

Land and Society in Early South Asia Eastern India 400

The blood-laden birth-pangs of the Indian ‘nation-state’ undoubtedly had a

1 Pakistan 8 Regionalism in South Asia

2 Labor, Democratization and 9 Federalism, Nationalism and

3 China–India Relations 10 Human Development and Social

7 Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh 14 India’s Open-Economy Policy

16 India’s Energy Security 24 Culture and the Environment in

17 Globalization and the Middle 25 The Rise of Ethnic Politics in

33 Political Islam and Governance 42 Development-induced

37 Building Bangalore 45 Islamic Revival in Nepal

52 Non-discrimination and 61 Everyday Ethnicity in Sri Lanka

70 Water, Democracy and 79 Indian Arranged Marriages

1 Introduction: the ‘nation-state’ and its citizens 1

2 Nationalism, minority rights and the public sphere: the terms of

3 Qaum, millat and ummah: liminality in the Muslim identity

4 Beyond hybridity: evolution of a Sikh exclusive identity; from

5 Muslim perceptions: nation, identity and rights 150

6 Sikh narratives: nationhood and its discontents 169

7 Concluding remarks: comparative perspectives on Muslim and

The nation-state, to borrow Tom Nairn’s expression, is a modern Janus.1 The

Nation-state in the ‘non-West’

It was the superior administrative apparatus, ‘centralised, impersonal, uniform,

Imperialism scattered the revolutionary seeds of Western Civilization in

Colonial educational systems have frequently been attacked . . . for teaching

Closer to our times, yet consistent with earlier pronouncements, Benedict

Overwhelmed as they were by the material advances of the West, many

The accidents of geography have had a powerful effect on determining

I am opposed to the nationalism as it is understood in Europe . . . I am

A decade earlier, similar to Iqbal’s critique of western nationalism, Rabindranath

Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-

[T]he Indian nationalist recognizes a spiritual reference as much in religion

The ‘nation-state’ framework in India

We can see disruptive forces at work in India. . . . We should not become

Consequently, three parallel constructs of Indian nationhood, each reflecting the

The discourse over rights: is there a sufficient case for

The problem and the scope

We had a charming walk over the high, breezy moor, and

Magdalen herself was at work in her garden, gathering of

"Not I, madam!" she answered, somewhat bluntly. "I have

"You might go thither for purposes of devotion," said the

A strange look, methought, passed over the woman's face,

"Aye, madam, ever since my old father died, some ten

"But had you no brother, or other relative?" Again the

"How so?" asked the Queen.

"Because I chose to maintain my old father in his

"You should not speak so of your brother," said the Queen,

"You are right, Madam;" answered Magdalen, softening.

"Yet you yourself have chosen a single life, it seems!" said

"That seems like a good woman," remarked Master Griffith

"Then, if I thought so, I would not say so," said Master

Whereat Mistress Patience murmured something under her

I ought to say, that when we returned from visiting

"Your brother is very generous," said her Grace, (and I saw

"I trust your Grace will be so good as not to betray my poor