Overview

Cultural pluralism has been a distinctive feature of many societies for a very long time. While pluralism indicates the presence of differences, and tries to ensure legal equality for all the communities, multiculturalism goes beyond that. By pointing out that culture-based discrimination continues even when legal equality is ensured, multiculturalism has radically redefined the democratic theory. It has challenged the prevalent notions of citizenship and tolerance by promoting cultural diversity. This book examines existing multicultural alternatives and tries to reconcile cultural rights with individual freedom. The author raises the issue of group equality by examining whether different communities occupying the same social space have the same status in the public domain. This is important as inequality often coexists with degrees of social and legal pluralism. Collective cultural participation does not mean the absence of hierarchy. It exists in the form of authority of the dominant community and the symbols of its power. This book speaks of issues that are central to democracy. The author has taken up new issues and has attempted to provide a framework within which the rights of the minorities may be discussed. She has raised a whole set of important questions about heterogeneous public culture as against a homogeneous national culture, about political and civil rights of the minorities and about discriminatory state policies. The author argues that individual rights and community rights must go side by side. An important book that deals with vital social and political issues based on the Indian experience

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9780761995791

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Gurpreet Mahajan is Professor of Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is the author of Explanation and Understanding in the Human Sciences (1992), Identities and Rights: Aspects of Liberal Democracy in India (1998) and The Multicultural Path: Issues of Diversity and Discrimination in Democracy (2001). She has also edited Democracy, Difference and Social Justice (1998) and co-edited Minority Identities and the Nation-State (with D.L. Sheth) 1999.

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