Living on the Margins. Minorities in South Asia - EURAC

eligious state, thus making minorities of its Hindu, non Bangla speaking and adivasi
populations.
Sri Lanka’s minority rights discourse does not include recognition of social (depressed
caste) minorities India does not list its Dalit population as a minority and state institutions
(e.g. judiciary) legitimize a homogenous Hindu identity excluding multiple sects from the
religious minority category. Constitutionally, there is the construction of religious and
linguistic minorities as a cultural category, sidestepping the issue of power and public
participation. Nepal (under the 1990 constitutional system) denied its multi-religious
character and institutionalizes exclusion of its linguistic and ethnic minorities. Bhutan in
the pursuit of a ‘One Nation, One People’ – Drupkaization’ policy pushed out a 120,000
ethnic Nepali Lhotsampas, and rejects their claims to citizenship.
A key criterion is self identification as a minority (and the group’s right to determine who
is a member of the minority). Several groups, as for example the Tamil community or the
Naga peoples of north east India, indigenous peoples of the CHT, Bangladesh - have
repudiated identity as a minority (a subordinate group) and claimed for themselves
identity (and rights) as a ‘nation’, e.g. peoples of the ‘Jumma’ nation CHT, and the
Mohajir as an ethno-nationality. None of these peoples see themselves as ‘ethnic
communities’. Each claims to be a nation. viii
South Asian states in the political organization of their plural societies have experimented
with different models from republic to constitutional monarchy, from federal
arrangements with special autonomies to unitary state structures; from multi-party
democracy to party less authoritarian and military governments; from secular to a
theocratic orientation, and from a multicultural public sphere to a hegemonic monocultural
mono ethnic one.
Whereas some polities like India, have articulated an elaborate framework of
constitutional guarantees for minority rights protection and degrees of federalism
including asymmetric autonomous structures for devolving power; in the case of others
like Pakistan and Bangladesh, the constitution itself is the source of discrimination and
victimization. In the ‘old’ Nepal. Mahendra Lawoti argues that democracy as practiced
by the upper caste hill elite (CHEM) that monopolized power in the Cabinet, the
government and political parties, institutionalized the exclusion of the ‘majority’ of the
population comprising janajatis, backward castes and women. Overlaying this was
regional disadvantage and deprivation in a highly centralized - Kathmandu centric –
polity. The ‘new’ Nepal’s constitution, it is expected, will provide for greater inclusion
and federal restructuring.
Sri Lanka’s unitary state had pursued a constitutional path of accommodating minority
rights –equal rights, some language rights and a limited degree of decentralization –
against the backdrop of the military conflict. It challenged the terms of the liberal
minority rights discourse effectively displaced the minority question with the national
question, bringing to the fore claims to ‘group rights’ as Uyangoda emphasises. The final
solution in the end was a military resolution. That can only reinforce the Sri Lanka state’s
7