Equality, difference and group rights, the case of India

grantor: University of TorontoRecent engagements of contemporary liberalism with questions of identity, community, and rights have led to an exciting array of research in political theory. Contemporary liberals and communitarians--Walzer, Taylor, Kymlicka, Young, Parekh, Carens and others--have, each in their own ways, challenged the traditional liberal framework of individual rights and sought to extend this framework to accommodate cultural and disadvantaged minorities. The theoretical prescriptions that flow from these works have implications for re-ordering majority minority relations in pluralist societies. However, most discussions of this sort have usually involved thinking through examples from advanced liberal democracies. And since most countries in the world today are culturally diverse, there is a need to analyze and use other, mostly non-Western, examples to illuminate our understanding of what justice requires in regard to identity conflicts and community rights. My dissertation uses the Indian example to probe morally compelling issues pertaining to liberal justifications of rights for disadvantaged groups. It explores the challenges that cultural difference and group disadvantage pose to the ideal of equal citizenship. More specifically, it draws on caste and religious identities to problematize the notions of cultural recognition and resource redistribution based on disadvantages that groups experience. At a concrete level, the analysis focuses on; (a) cultural recognition for religious minorities, and (b) affirmative action for disadvantaged groups. While arguing a case for broadening the referent of equal treatment to include fair strategies of inclusion for groups that find themselves under the burden of unequal circumstances, the thesis also addresses the reasonable limits of such group-based claims in a liberal democracy of India's size and diversity. A study of the Indian model, it is argued, poses fresh challenges and solutions to the theory and practice of liberal democracy in both Western and non-Western contexts.Ph.D