Summary
Contents
Subject index
The No Nonsense Guide to Minority Rights in South Asia is a practical primer on issues related to minority rights in South Asian countries. The ‘minority’ in these countries is typically characterized by non-domination and powerlessness, two major markers apart from language, culture, religion and ethnicity. Hence, while defining minorities and minority rights in the region, the book examines in detail the State's role in recognition, protection, and exclusion of minorities in the socio-political context. It explores the process of ‘minoritization’, and evaluates the weaknesses of constitutional and legal frameworks that have contributed to the insecure conditions of the minorities in the region.
By taking a rights-based approach, the book clearly develops an understanding that majoritarian and authoritarian policies have always got an upper hand throughout the history of nation-building in South Asia. While elaborating on such ‘politics of recognition and inequality’ and ‘modes of exclusion’, it goes on to explore the ethnic composition of each South Asian country-India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. It presents a detailed account of the socio-economic inequality, religious and language discrimination, political under-representation and constitutional and legal oppression meted out to the minorities in these countries.
This book will be an important inclusion in the literature of Politics and International Relations, especially on Human Rights and Minority Rights. It will also be a useful guide for activists on minority rights to form strategies to counter oppression.
Living Modes of Exclusion
Living Modes of Exclusion
The brave new state-building order of the postcolonial societies of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and the kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan has delivered majoritarianism. To be a minority or an indigenous person is to face everyday discrimination, exclusion and violation of rights, which have led to violent insurgencies for self-determination and counter-insurgencies against ‘defiant’ peoples. Wherein does the rot lie? Is it in the ideology and the design of the state's legal, institutional and administrative framework? Is the rot in practices of governance and in social attitudes? Has dominance been produced by limiting minority group rights in the political, economic and cultural spheres? How have the hegemonic elite used the concern for ‘public order’, and the ...
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